FM18: Serie A - The home of Calcio

[zlatanera]

2 hours ago, karanhsingh said:

I've already had to give big pay rises to  Simeone, Chiesa, Lafont, even though they all had 4+ years left to run because they wouldnt stop complaining. But I guess they are my 3 top youngsters at the club. In fact, Simeone I had to give another new deal just 6 months down the line to increase his release clause! 

What is your suggestion for the thread?

 

13 hours ago, zlatanera said:

 

Also I have a suggestion for the 2018/19 Serie A thread title:

It was always going to happen! He's scored against his former club!

We're struggling for clean sheets at the moment and I get this message in pretty much every game. Its slightly less frequent if you're not one of the Milan clubs with their chaotic recruitment over the past decade, but its still far more common than in other leagues.

I missed a word out when I posted.

Sucks about the contracts man. My finances are sorted out for now which is good - 100% of revenue, building new facilities - weirdly Youth Facilities are going to take 2 years instead of 1, which I've never seen happen before - and improved youth recruitment and junior coaching. We're projected to have increased balances for the next three seasons and increased transfer budgets as well, although still nothing to write home about there so I'm going to have to hope Bonucci doesn't get injured as that could ruin him as he's over 30 and there's no way I could afford a replacement of his calibre. So I guess my taking in so much money that I effectively covered the debts helped. Doing really well in the league so far (only 16 games in still have to play Juve, but more than 6 points clear of Lazio in 2nd and unbeaten) and got through my CL group - Kalinic missed a pen against Spartak Moscow that could have put us 1st instead of old enemies Arsenal who beat us twice, so he's never taking a penalty for me again - but we drew Bayern in the next round so I'm not hopeful given my backup RW is still Borini.

Andre Silva is on fire, I think he has 22 goals, might be more, and we're not even at halfway nor have we even started the Italian Cup, nor has he played every game. Kalinic is nearly there and Cutrone is a Golden Boy hopeful despite limited playing time. I've been reasonably lucky with injuries but also some of the youth are performing well. Matteo Gabbia has started 3 games, scored in the first 2 and got a straight red in the 2nd, which we still won. I'd recommend scouting him as AI Milan will not use him, but if you get him young enough and fulfil his potential he's looking like a solid Serie A BPD.

[karanhsingh]

Wow you’re running through the season! I’m still sifting through my friendlies. Good work! And best of luck against Bayern. 

[Jonas1987]

My safe got corrupt, had to restart and couldn't get Dolberg :/.

[zlatanera]

@Jonas1987 that sucks man. You do have 3 very good strikers already though in Kalinic, Silva and Cutrone. Try Lautaro Martinez?

Another "potential...best of his generation" but this time its a goalkeeper. Doubtful he'll actually become Donnarumma 2.0 but we'll see. Not going to update on results until I finish the season but this was a fun game:

The club's record high-scoring game is 9-3 and their record win of 13-0 happened in 1914 so this was pretty special. Frosinone aren't even in the relegation zone.

[zlatanera]

Talk about spirit! I played pretty much a reserve defence in this match, we went down to ten men, then conceded, then down to nine, then scored 2, then lost Kalinic to injury for about four minutes played with 8 men. Not only did we preserve our unbeaten run in the league, but we sealed the title on 20th April!

We have exited the Champions League at the QF stage as well, we beat Bayern after hammering them at home then nearly letting it slip in Munich before an away goal gave us a 2 goal cushion. Chelsea were too much though, 0-1, 2-2 and we're out with me having lost to English teams all 6 games I've played against them.

We defeated Bologna (4-0), Lazio (3-0), Juventus (5-3) and Roma (2-0) to clinch the Coppa Italia. The Juve 2nd leg was a thriller but other than that it was the most comfortably I've ever won a cup competition on FM18.

Now, back to the league....UNBEATEN SEASON BABY!

If it wasn't for Manuel Locatelli's 94th minute equaliser against Juve in winter this couldn't have happened, but even as we ran away with the league it was far from a foregone conclusion, owing to our final game also being against the hunchbacks, who took an early lead and appeared completely in control before Andre Silva scored two either side of Chiellini getting a red card to seal an invincible season whilst also beating their points record and equalling their wins record. 112 goals has to be one of the highest totals in league history as well given the record is 125 (Torino, 1947/8).

We further set a record win streak (19 wins, ongoing, beating Inter's 17 from 06/07) and have gone 45 games without defeat so far (Record is 58, also Milan).

After focussing on set pieces all season (and finally doing routines for all the free kick options) we scored 18 goals from corners, and 6 from indirect free kicks (joint top) whilst conceding 0 from corners or direct fks and only two from indirect fks.

But now, what I really want to talk about is this guy:

After scoring in each of our first eight games for 12 goals in 8, he never slowed up, smashing all the records:

Most league goals in Serie A history: 39

Most goals in a season for a Milan player: 49, far surpassing Gunnar Nordahl's 38 in 1950/51 (although weirdly it hasn't counted on our records tab yet).

Chelsea and Manchester United are lurking, and as he's only on £63k / week I won't get a Neymar-level offer, but that's what it would take as barring a broken leg he's a shoe-in for the Ballon D'Or which would be the first Italian-based player since Kaka in 2007. Definitely the best statistical season I've had out of a player on FM.

Going forward I'm debating moving away from my domestic bias to try and improve us to get to the next level and win the CL, as my long term aim for the save is to overtake Madrid on CL titles, but a £27m budget simply isn't enough to buy the new DLP, Winger, LB and possibly RB I need, as any income from the planned sale of Nikola Kalinic ("only" 32 goals this season but is the wrong side of 30 and has interest) would barely fund his own replacement unless I go for Rodrygo.

[Jonas1987]

Are you still playing the 442 fluid? Mind sharing who plays where?

I'm not doing bad myself in my first season on a second place after Juventus, but that's a lot of goals for 2 strikers!

[zlatanera]

1 hour ago, Jonas1987 said:

Are you still playing the 442 fluid? Mind sharing who plays where?

I'm not doing bad myself in my first season on a second place after Juventus, but that's a lot of goals for 2 strikers!

Yeah so my base is the tactic from this thread:

But I offset the CF-Su (Move Into Channels) to the STCL position, and move the AM-At up to STCR as a CF-At with no PIs. I'd previously used a TM-At with Manchester United to get the best out of Romelu Lukaku.

I also used a mixture of loversleaper's Atletico set pieces for Corners (Attack and Defend) and right-sided throws, Keysi Rensi's long throw on the left, and did my own free kick routines. Not sure if the free kick routines added that much tbh.

So we would mostly line up like this:

Biglia was first choice DLP at the start of the season but he got two red cards in the space of a month (pretty sure it went Red-suspended-Yellow-Red-suspended) so I let Torreira stake his claim. Cutrone was probably better than Kalinic by the end of the season, and got a run of games in March but I'd noticed that Silva scores more with Kalinic and assists more with Cutrone so I kept playing Kalinic in the league to break that record, which I did.

It was a ton of goals, actually more in the league than my Kane-Lukaku (Rashford-Pellegri) strikeforce with United had got, I think that's partially down to having better set piece routines and takers - that United team really didn't have anyone once I sold Mata and also probably TM-At makes your attacking play slightly more one-dimensional. Although given we completed 377 crosses, with Juventus in 2nd on 208, perhaps we were one-dimensional too.

One thing I'm quite happy with is my transfer business as I've signed 6 players - Torreira, Barreca, Leali, Chiesa, Pellegrini and Sportiello - but two of those are reserve goalkeepers who haven't actually played a game. The core was already there. 

 

[Jonas1987]

I always wanted to get Pellegri, I think he's one of the best future Italian players. Monaco doesn't sell though :P.

[zlatanera]

@Jonas1987 I was on original database. Got him for a steal, around £5m from memory. Got like 10 goals in 5 starts 7 sub apps in that season then was 18 months into a two year loan at Inter where he was keeping Belotti out of the Italy team. Got him for free on my Real Sociedad save on the original database too.

On this game Monaco want £54-£100m though and we're still not rich - the directors paid themselves a huge dividend despite our huge debts (which they loaded onto us) then we had to pay a ton of tax.

[karanhsingh]

@zlatanera - amazing season! I've still never gone unbeaten in the league. Last year we  made it to February, before away defeats against Napoli and Juventus. Great work indeed. How is Chiesa faring for you? He has truly developed into an elite player now in my game, valued at over 50 million!

Can you share your set piece routines?  Seem to be working very well!

Irritatingly, I am not getting much time to play these days, hence progress is a bit slow. Have made it through pre-season, and just played a few games. We have won our first 3 league games including a crazy 6-3 away win against Sampdoria, and a 3-1 at home vs Napoli. 

In our first CL season, we have been drawn in a fairly hard group along with Monaco and Valencia. However, we beat Monaco 2-1 in the first game away from home, even if it was a bit smash & grab.

Players wise, Manolas has come in as our record signing (and top earner) and had an absolute shocker against Samp at fault for 2 goals.  I then warned him about his last game to which he laughed it off and suggested I get my eyes checked. The next day he got himself injured and is out for 3 months, splendid. Back to Pezzella & Lemos playing CB and they still just dont mark their strikers properly. We dont have a single clean sheet yet this season. 

Interestingly a couple of my rivals have lost key players with Dybala and Icardi both moving to English clubs. I have a feeling that Napoli will be our biggest competition, but of course you can never write off Juve. Cristiano Ronaldo & Higuain showing barely any signs of decline despite their age.

[zlatanera]

@karanhsingh Chiesa hasn't really developed that much, despite averaging a 7.64 over the last season. Still a top player, but currently 3 stars with potential for 4.

this routine by Keysi Rensie is my long throw one for the left side. I trained Ricardo Rodriguez and Antonio Barreca to take "long flat bullet throws" and they're the only two assigned for them.

For my right throw-in, taker is unassigned, I use "throw-in routine offensive" from this post

I use "attacking corner offensive" and "defensive corner offensive" from this post, from the same thread as the throw

Obviously I don't have carbon copies of those routines, I adapt to the players at my disposal, and I try to have similar players backing eachother up, so for example my smallest outfield starter (Lucas Biglia) was always backed up by my smallest player (Lucas Torreira) meaning I know the routines will work similarly when I rotate.

I'll list all my free kick ones now as I did them myself, not sure how great they actually are though. If you know how to do spoilers please let me know so I can make this post smaller.

The lineup these were constructed for was the one in my post above (but with Biglia in for Torreira, as I've said though that doesn't really matter).

Direct fk defend:

Direct (small chance of shot) defend:

Indirect (wide) defend:

Indirect (deep) defend:

 

Direct attack:

Direct (small chance of shot) attack:

Indirect (wide) attack:

Indirect (deep) attack:

You'll notice I have DL as taker and ML often standing with him - that's because Ricardo Rodriguez is my best set piece taker who regularly starts (Bonaventura has better free kicks), but otherwise it'll be MCR (Pellegrini) or wherever Bonaventura is playing (usually ML or MR). ML is usually Locatelli who has 16 long shots. I don't think taking it short to him actually works that well tbh and would look to change it, but if you're using him I'd have him lurking on pretty much all set pieces as he's a potent weapon to have waiting outside (actually scored a volley from outside of the box off a deep pass in my last pass, and a carbon copy of that Paul Scholes goal versus Aston Villa on a couple of occasions

 

[stgahoy]

Hey guys, did anyone of you manage to sign Donnarumma when playing as a different Italian team? I would like to sign him to my Juve side, the more Italians the better, but Milan keeps declining

[zlatanera]

@stgahoy I usually play to 5 seasons and I've never seen him move no matter what league I'm managing in. How much are you offering? I'd guess you'd have to play a long game - have him as your Top Target for a while before the transfer window, get high rep players to talk about him in the press, constantly send your DoF to scout him, if you get the option to scout him yourself, do it - stay the whole 90 even if you just leave your computer running on it whilst you do something else as it can be incredibly boring - and then once you're in the window make a bunch of steadily rising non-negotiable bids - they'll either accept one or he'll kick off and get transfer listed. I've used this approach on less important players who are hot prospects such as Diogo Dalot (rejected a £50m bid, got him for £9.25m) and Christian Pulisic (rejected a £100m bid, as in it would reach £100m no matter what, no clauses, got him for £50m). You could also hope they miss out on Europe and their finances go to crap. Also, if my non-negotiable bids approach works the manager will hate you, so if you ever want another player from them, you have to hope he gets fired / a better job.

[Jonas1987]

Silva is gold you say?
By the way, what a crazy game!

 

[zlatanera]

Silva just came up with the goods for me too haha - scored 2 in 10 minutes to snatch a draw against Roma to keep our unbeaten ruin going. I've just finished the transfer window, and it was one that either will weaken us in the short term for long term gain, or just weaken us in the short term or no long term gains. We missed out on three main targets - Nelson Semedo (Barca - PSG), Jose Gimenez (Atletico - PSG) and Benjamin Mendy (Man City - Bayern) - so this is what I ended up with:

In:

Franck Kessié - £17.75m - pre-arranged at the start of the game

Marco Benassi - £17m - overpaid somewhat here, with his wages too, but he is a versatile, complete backup player capable of playing in two midfield positions, all across AM, DM and once I've retrained him CD as well hopefully. Italian too which is nice.

Rodrygo - £9m - was tempted to go for Domenico Berardi and keep an Italian bias but it doesn't look like anyone's interested so I figure I can either have a third top striker for the next decade, or flip him for a huge profit. Plus on future FMs it will be harder to enjoy him given his pending move to Real Madrid. Have to hope squad personality affects him to get his 13 determination up a bit though.

Diogo Dalot - £9.25m - I missed out on Nelson Semedo , who is inferior defensively to Andrea Conti but would be a more defensive alternative to Chiesa at RM for big games whilst also superior to Calabria as a backup RB, to a last minute bid by PSG (one of those where they bid, its accepted, and the transfer is confirmed in three short messages that appear all at once in your inbox). There was no real alternative, but Dalot has great potential and can already play RM and RB, with no obvious deficiencies in his game. At one point I couldn't get them to accept a £50m option to the two year loan I was going to get, so I started to unsettle him as I outlined a few posts back, and eventually got my man on the cheap despite late interest from Fiorentina.

Out:

Lucas Biglia - £14.5m - Monaco - his physicals had started to drop rapidly from their already low starting position, and Torreira was more than ready to make the step up. Making a £0.75m loss on a 33 year old whilst getting rid of his £110k / week wages is a pretty good deal.

Fabio Borini - £10.75m - Crystal Palace - an unheralded gem of a backup player for two seasons but this was already arranged when the Semedo deal fell through and tbh I can't complain at doubling our money. He was made quite easy to offload by the fact that he takes a wage cut from £70k / week to £30k / week when he joins permanently.

Nicola Leali - £1.5m - Fiorentina - can't really ask more from a transfer from Juve than this. The guy comes in for £850k, tutors the next Donnarumma to get his Resolute personality, never kicks a ball, barely earns any money, never complains, then happily moves on to Fiorentina for almost twice what we paid for him.

Nikola Kalinic - £50m - This was a gamble, as by letting him go and bringing in Rodrygo I've effectively replaced a two-footed complete forward who had scored 60 goals in two seasons and was happy as a rotation option for a wonderkid who I now have no tutor for. Still, he was 31, had two years left on his deal which he would no doubt want an improvement on, and United were not only the only reasonable bidders but my favourite club. £30m plus £20m in 6 monthly payments over 6 years for a 31 year old is a good deal for the club.

EDIT: Best business though is all the contract extensions I've been handing out, that will be implemented at the end of the season. Calabria, Conti, Pellegrini, Silva and Torreira all signed on to somewhere between 2024 and 2027 depending on the initial contract length and extension clauses I was able to add.

 

[zlatanera]

Well our unbeaten run is over at 49 games! Can't decide if its better or worse that it was a derby.

[lblanc]

2 hours ago, zlatanera said:

Well our unbeaten run is over at 49 games! Can't decide if its better or worse that it was a derby.

FORZA INTER!!!

 

Have to get back to my Inter save

[Jonas1987]

I finished my first season of AC Milan with good results!

I won the Copa Italia and the Uefa League came in second in the Serie A behind Juventus, who really overclassed the competition this season.

Best player this season in term of results was Andre Silva, with an impressive 23 goals in 13(2) matches in the EL. His value increase to a crazy 73mil.

I fear Locatelli won't be in the squad for a long time, as youth academy sent me following gem.

The only bad thing are finances. Champions League next year will be a good source of income, but I'm not really sure how to improve my finances as I don't think I'm overpaying my players...

For next season and future plan I would like to move to an all Italian team and have as many of home grown players as possible.
Torino relegated to Serie B and I have my eye on Barreca and Belotti. I plan on getting rid of Suso if a good bid comes by, he doesn't fit in my 3-5-2 sadly. Not sure if I should "exchange" Silva for Belotti.

We shall see!

[Ronaldo Beckham]

I fancy doing a Seria A save next, is there any teams here that aint been picked recently in this forum, I am thinking of doing a save with Bologna, Udinese,Genoa, SPAL, Frosinone, Chievo, Parma, Cagilari, Empoli or Sampdoria, so many teams to choose from.

Can someone give me reasons for each team if possible to help me make my decision.

[FlairRA]

Just now, Jonas1987 said:

Looks amazing, wow!

@Ronaldo Beckham I can't give detailed reasons for all the teams but I would recommend Parma as a "fallen giant" with a great story line to follow.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Yeah I might do a save with Parma, I think in FM 19 I will do alot of Seria A saves.

[stgahoy]

Damn something strange happening to my finances season 2 as Juve.

Last year I had a wage budget of 3.1M and I was loosing ~2M each month so accaptable. Now the only thing changed is my wage budget - it rose to 3.5M and suddenly I lose 10M each month  - what the hell ?!

 

Apparently the Taxes rose I've already spent 63M on taxes (March) while I did spend 16M the whole last season  - any idea about this ?

[zlatanera]

Typical pro-PL FM bias...

[FlairRA]

Back to my Roma save for the last two months of FM18, we're a top team but not completely dominant yet in Europe, though Serie A is a cakewalk! Anyways after getting a 'Best of Generation' GK last year in game, my luck definitely isn't running out as I found the heir to Alex Di Maria - AS Roma legend, magnificent goalscoring striker and boyhood supporter - Alberto Bensaja!

Bensaja is the perfect fit to take Di Maria's goalscoring mantle. 

 

 

[zlatanera]

@FlairRA Di Maria looks like an absolute beast! That league scoring record is phenomenal, how much have you won? And has he got ahead of Bruno Conti and Totti in your legends list?

Apparently we're going to beat the previous league attendance record (80,018 as the game doesn't seem to keep these records) and get over 83,000 people for the "home" derby against Inter, so I looked to see how far I was off selling out the stadium...

Apparently the reason Inter have barely spent any money is because they decided to expand San Siro for us? I guess there's no reason why it wouldn't happen but this really surprised me, has anyone else who stadium shares seen this happen? i.e. managing Sampdoria and Genoa expanded your stadium?

 

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Hi guys I am going to start a save with Udinese tomorrow so will start posting updates in here.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Udinese Pre Season Update

I decided to start a save with Udinese as I always fancied managing them, they have had some good players play for them in the past with Alexis Sanchez, Roberto Pereyra, Isla, Asomoah etc so I wanted to try make some superstars who go onto better success with other clubs. 

I haven't done much so far today, I have just sorted out staff, tactics and buy a couple of players with the 8m I had for my transfer budget.

I only bought in 3 players, these 3 players are David Von Ballmoos and Gregory Wuthrich from Young Boys FC and Bryan Heynan from Genk.

I know of Von Ballmoos and Wuthrich from my time managing Young Boys recently.

On my transfer wishlist are Kevin Mbabu, Christian Fassnacht, Jean-Pierre N'Same, Jordan Lotomba and Djibrill Sow but these players are out my price range at the moment.

My aim for the season is mid table at the moment, anything else is a bonus.

I am using Rashidi's tactic so plenty of goals afoot hopefully.

I will update every 6 months I play into the game.

[FlairRA]

@zlatanera I've been solid but not spectacular in the trophies department, the Champions League is becoming a real pain to take on, this year we had a man sent off in the second leg when 1-0 down on aggregate. Serie A however, is easy now as I've got 107, 105 and 105 points in my last three seasons.

Di Maria has a while to go before beating Totti in the legend's list, unfortunately time is against him! Good to see another one-club youth product of mine with him though, Lorenzo Ruttmann. 

Somehow though my (yet another) world class youth product who's been captain for 8 years is stuck on the favored personnel list alongside my vice-captain of 4 years, which really doesn't make sense. 

[zlatanera]

@FlairRA Yeah CL can be a bitch, the fine margins count for more. I'm only in my third season now and running away with the league - it definitely helps that FM expected so much more from this squad than what they produced, Andre Silva is world class now and Cutrone is no slouch either - so I need to make CL progress or I'll tire of the save pretty fast.

Fabio Rossi is outstanding, definitely the one I'm most jealous of out of those - you can find good strikers everywhere but never had a good BPD come through the youth ranks in any of my saves over the past four versions of FM. I'd be reticent to sign a foreign centre back given Milan's history with Italian defenders too.Got a "best of his generation" player in each youth intake, the first was a really good CB but he's more of a long-term heir to Romagnoli rather than a BPD, Passing iis lacking. Second was a GK which is...fine, except I have Donnarumma who is the best wonderkid gk in the game and unlike the likes of Früchtl at Bayern is actually been developed.

Have you found full backs easier to come by as the game goes on? I'm playing with a small database which has made it easier to get value for players when selling, but even with 40,000 players I find its impossible to find good full backs who aren't already at the top clubs, so wondering if the newgens tend to maintain that scarcity.

[FlairRA]

Just now, zlatanera said:

@FlairRA Yeah CL can be a bitch, the fine margins count for more. I'm only in my third season now and running away with the league - it definitely helps that FM expected so much more from this squad than what they produced, Andre Silva is world class now and Cutrone is no slouch either - so I need to make CL progress or I'll tire of the save pretty fast.

Fabio Rossi is outstanding, definitely the one I'm most jealous of out of those - you can find good strikers everywhere but never had a good BPD come through the youth ranks in any of my saves over the past four versions of FM. I'd be reticent to sign a foreign centre back given Milan's history with Italian defenders too.Got a "best of his generation" player in each youth intake, the first was a really good CB but he's more of a long-term heir to Romagnoli rather than a BPD, Passing iis lacking. Second was a GK which is...fine, except I have Donnarumma who is the best wonderkid gk in the game and unlike the likes of Früchtl at Bayern is actually been developed.

Have you found full backs easier to come by as the game goes on? I'm playing with a small database which has made it easier to get value for players when selling, but even with 40,000 players I find its impossible to find good full backs who aren't already at the top clubs, so wondering if the newgens tend to maintain that scarcity.

I've definitely found plenty of fullbacks who are or have potential to be world class. I had two world class fullbacks come to my youth ranks in the same golden generation but aside from that I do have a healthy amount of young players in my squad who can play fullback at a high level. Keep in mind though my transfer strategy after the first couple of seasons is sign U-18 players with 5* potential with the odd world class player or hidden gem thrown in, and I've been very strong in the fullback position so that was almost never a priority. Some examples of bargains that you can certainly find are:

The first guy may be more the type of signing you're talking about: I signed him from Pumas at 21 for 10.75 million when he was a step below world class. The other two were signed for a combined 6.4 million at 18 years (Tomasz is being sold for 90!) and look great now.

So yeah, fullbacks are definitely much easier to get as the game goes on. 

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Udinese Update

A decent start to the season, I made the bold decision of loaning out Scuffett as he his lack of effort in training irked me so I sent him to Catania on loan for the season.

I barely pay any of my transfer signings but will bed them in gradually. 

I started the Seria A season with a 2-1 loss to Lazio but bounced back with an awesome 4-0 win over AC Milan and a 2-1 win over Sampdoria.

I then came crashing with a 5-1 loss to Torino, a 1-1 draw against Sassulo and I drew 2-2 with Cagilari.

The last game I played was a 3-1 over Napoli, my team seems to enjoy playing against the big teams.

I think Felipe Vizeu is going to be my first superstar at Udinese with 6 goals in 8 games so far, 3 assists and an average rating of 7.65, his value is already 9m and will shoot up I think, I hope to sell him onto a big club for mega profit.

I will update you month by month I think instead of every 6 months in the game.

[Jonas1987]

1 hour ago, Ronaldo Beckham said:

I then came crashing with a 5-1 loss to Torino.

If Belotti is out of form, Torino is rather easy. If he's playing well though... :s

 

Anyway my game vs Napoli...  3 goals for Cutrone, 1 goal and 3 assists for Silva!

[zlatanera]

1 hour ago, FlairRA said:

I've definitely found plenty of fullbacks who are or have potential to be world class. I had two world class fullbacks come to my youth ranks in the same golden generation but aside from that I do have a healthy amount of young players in my squad who can play fullback at a high level. Keep in mind though my transfer strategy after the first couple of seasons is sign U-18 players with 5* potential with the odd world class player or hidden gem thrown in, and I've been very strong in the fullback position so that was almost never a priority.

The first guy may be more the type of signing you're talking about: I signed him from Pumas at 21 for 10.75 million when he was a step below world class. The other two were signed for a combined 6.4 million at 18 years (Tomasz is being sold for 90!) and look great now.

So yeah, fullbacks are definitely much easier to get as the game goes on. 

Ah yeah, that's very similar to what was happening in my Lyon save where I had two consecutive "golden generation" intakers, although I don't think either full back was every going to become truly world class they were going to be good. That's sort of what I normally do with transfers, but with this save I'm playing such a demanding, technical style (Very Fluid, very high press and offside trap) so have been going after more proven quantities, but even when I have looked around so far my scouts haven't found many good newgens. I'm ok for now with Conti, Calabria, Robertson and Barreca so hopefully I'll find them when they hit their early 20s. Money being relatively tight (for a team that wants to win the CL) doesn't help things much. Aures looks like Phillip Lahm with the physicality of peak-Cristiano Ronaldo.

Coppa is a bit of a joke until you meet the big teams it seems, played this 2nd leg the whole 90 minutes with "Take A Breather" selected!

Also, much like Arsenal when they were a big club, I've got Bayern at the same stage of the CL two years in a row, 3-3 home draw doesn't bode well though.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Udinese Mid Season Update

I have had a disastrous time of it with Udinese since my update earlier, I have gone to mid table now and I am currently 12th in the league, loss after loss after loss.

My only victories was a 1-0 home win against Juventus and a 3-0 win over Fiorentina.

I think things will change though as I got a scout report for Roberto Pererya who used to play for Udinese and was at Watford, the scout report said I could get him for 0, I thought this was a joke but I decided to offer Watford 0 pounds for him and strangely they accepted, I managed to get him on a contract without any agent fee and signing on fee, just gave him loads of bonuses etc and he accepted. I now have a great player for 0 pounds. I feel like this is a bug but I aint complaining lol.

It has to be a bug probably with a data update I downloaded as I just offered Watford 0 for Doucure and they accepted lol. 

 

[zlatanera]

@Ronaldo Beckham no bug, its your affiliation. Used to be you'd have a similar deal with Granada, but the Pozzos sold them (and they promptly were relegated). Udinese got Pereyra for a free on my current save. I'd guess some of the players maybe won't want to come to you due to the PL being a higher ranked league, but if you get into Europe I'd say Watford could be a valuable source of players for you.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

I am currently mid table Seria A team, I got knocked out of the Europa League in the 2nd round and yet the only reason I didn't get Doucure on a free was I didn't have enough to give him decent wages but I will come in again for him.

The annoying thing about Pereyra is I can't play him at the moment due to squad rules, he is ineligible,  very frustrating lol. 

[zlatanera]

@Ronaldo Beckham you definitely need to get Giulio Pasta in your sports science department and Massimo Maccarone on the coaching staff to help train Kevin Lasagna

[Armistice]

This is my save with Udinese, first season.

 

Aguirre, Perica, Lasagna and De Paul have contributed to 95% of the goals and assists. The whole point in this save is to continue the Pozzo model which is buy cheap and sell for profit. I sent my scouts abroad but they couldn't find any bargains. Hopefully I will have a few transfer targets set before the summer transfer window. In the winter I plan to ship Angella out because he's asked for a move and went mad when I told him I won't sell him for less than 4m and Larsen who asked to leave because he couldn't adapt to the area.

[FlairRA]

@zlatanera Yeah I'm playing a similar way, Attacking Very Fluid with a deep defensive line. Great creative football with a solid defensive record along with it.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

8 hours ago, zlatanera said:

@Ronaldo Beckham you definitely need to get Giulio Pasta in your sports science department and Massimo Maccarone on the coaching staff to help train Kevin Lasagna

Pasta only had a sports science rating of 11 in my save so I left him, my head of sports science is better then him and Maccarone is a player still and not a coach yet but will keep an eye on him, cheers for the advice.

 

[zlatanera]

@FlairRA I'm absolutely on fire in attack and at one point was on course to beat the Grande Torino record of 125 goals in a season from 1947/8 before Andre Silva got a couple of injuries, but defensively not that great - I think I just haven't found the right combination of player style and ppms to get my CMs working, we tend to just let in 1 in about 2/3 of our games, so whilst we rank 2nd for goals conceded we're not getting many clean sheets. I definitely find Very Fluid styles best to watch though, especially this one on 2D where you can really see the defensive shape working.

@Ronaldo Beckham missed the point completely...

[Muerte706]

Hello, 

I have a save with AC Milan and for the first time i won the league with no defeats at all.  And i won the Champions League too. I have some World Class players in my team, aside from Gigi, Locatelli and Romagnoli.

Now i saw that Lazio got relegated.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

5 hours ago, zlatanera said:

@FlairRA I'm absolutely on fire in attack and at one point was on course to beat the Grande Torino record of 125 goals in a season from 1947/8 before Andre Silva got a couple of injuries, but defensively not that great - I think I just haven't found the right combination of player style and ppms to get my CMs working, we tend to just let in 1 in about 2/3 of our games, so whilst we rank 2nd for goals conceded we're not getting many clean sheets. I definitely find Very Fluid styles best to watch though, especially this one on 2D where you can really see the defensive shape working.

@Ronaldo Beckham missed the point completely...

Oh sorry mate. What was the reason then please?

[Jogo Bonito]

@zlatanera Tasty advice indeed. They would jump through hoops to get jobs at his club.

Back on topic, this was a good read whilst I was watching the Inter v Tottenham game, cheers.

[zlatanera]

@Ronaldo Beckham I just think they'd make a very saucy coach-sports scientist-player combo.

I won the league again, similar time to last season (23rd April versus 20th April), and then came back from 2 goals down at home versus PSG to beat them 4-2 in the CL semi-final first leg. But they hammered us in the second leg, 4-1 to dump us out on aggregate. Cavani lobbed Donnarumma from about 35 yards to clinch it which at least was something spectacular. The 3rd goal was awful though - Donnarumma had the ball nearly on the goal line, stood on it for about 10 seconds as two PSG players sprinted from halfway to pressure him, he played a risky ball, Cavani outjumped Robertson and set up Neymar for a tap-in, very frustrating.

We've got a chance to retain the Coppa Italia, Benevento are the other finalists. Another surprising "small" team success in cup competition was that after dispatching Bayern in the CL 1st KO for the second year in a row we faced Hertha Berlin in the QF! They've done very well on this save somehow, now spearheaded by MIlik whereas usually they're solidly mid-table.

Andre Silva is not repeating his heroics as he had a couple of injuries, should still easily break 30 goals this season in all comps though. Cutrone has 40 goals and over 20 assists though, he's been my main man this season, 2/3 of our chances falling to him against PSG was probably why we went out, he's got "doesn't like big games" but I hope that'll change as he usually performs well in them.

Going forward I'm unsure how to improve - I can only make marginal improvements on any of my defenders with my current budget, same with my strikers and wide men. I could change to a 4411 but I'd probably have to get rid of one of Cutrone or Rodrygo.  I might go to a slightly less intensive style that might give us more cover for mistakes when 1 person has a bad game - this Very Fluid high pressing style means if a forward makes an error the ball can be beyond our last man in seconds if a team is technical enough to play through us.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

@zlatanera I just realized what you did lol, very funny.

[zlatanera]

I raise myself the lols of Juventus "celebrating and unbeaten season" whilst being 15 (most likely 18 points) off the pace. Although they are in the CL final...can't decide who I want to win there.

Oh, and Fiorentina managed to get relegated! Spalletti had from early December to turn things around and didn't. Their squad looks worse than when they started, but I still assumed they were mid-table. If they want to loan my players in Serie B I might let them, nothing like being overwhelming overdogs in Serie B to prepare them for being overwhelming overdogs in Serie A!

[zlatanera]

2019/20 Serie A TIM to henceforth be referred to as 2019/20 Serie Cutrone TIM.

Also, this happened:

So despite contributing a finalist and a losing semi-finalist this season, due to the abysmal showing from Serie A in previous seasons (last season 1 QF - me - 2 1st KO, 2017/18 1 1st KO (Napoli)) this happened:

Given the state of all other non-Juve clubs I could see us falling further unless I win the CL next year.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Udinese End Of Season 1 Update

Bit of an unspectacular season, I ended the season in 11th place in Seria A, I lacked goals and conceded too many, so I need better players.

My best player and highest goalscorer was Felipe Vizeu who scored 15 goals in 25 games for me.

Notable mentions to Bart Nieuwkoop a loan signing from Feyenoord who was a consistently good player for me, I wish I had the money to sign him permanently.

 I have raided Watford and got Will Hughes and Doucure on free's from Watford, poor Watford lol.

[Ronaldo Beckham]

Sorry for the double post but I just got this in my inbox, I am a bit worried that it means Watford can raid my players for nothing now lol.