Timetxu Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 INTRODUCTION After my previous save in Guatemala was caught short due to an error in the file, I've decided to move over to another challenge. While in Guatemala, I was afraid that in the long run, doing a youth only save would be impossible as the money from international competitions are in no way comparable to the ones in Europe, where you're able to up your youth facilities in a couple of years. Therefore, I've chosen to move back to the old continent and start a proper youth only (no exceptions this time) challenge. The goal is easy: win the Champions League without buying any players. All my players must be from my own academy. Alrighty then, where does that lead us to? FC SFÎNTUL GHEORGHE SURUCENI If you're thinking: "Hey, why does team have such an awesome badge with a saint on a horse slaying a dragoo...ooooh it's Saint George isn't it?", then you're right. Our team has been named after him. This has all to do with the fact that a 223 year old orthodox christian monastery for nuns is only 2 kms away from our ground. Oh yeah, we're in Moldova! Stunning isn't it? Speaking of our ground, this is it: To summarize: Sfîntul Gheorghe was founded in 2003, primarily as a youth academy only. In 2008/2009, they registered their first team in the Moldovan football pyramid and entered in the 2nd tier straight away. After one lousy season, they were actually invited into the Divizia Nationala (1st tier) because their facilities looked that good. However, after a couple of bad seasons, they relegated in 2012. Five years later, they're back on the highest level after having won promotion in the 2016/2017 season. Our journey will start in May 2017 with a slight twist: The Moldovan football league will switch to a calendar year format (like most former Soviet countries) 2018 onward, so there will be a small transition league in between, played from May to November in which everyone pleays eachother twice, instead of the regular four times. NEXT UP Squad analysis Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 PROGRESS TRACKER Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 PRELIMINARY INFO After the first obligatory vodka the chairman insisted on having with me, I was able to get to my squad: Quite some depth, not a lot of wingers, but I can live with this (only found out I have PA on the left and CA on the right, I'll correct this in future updates) Artur's our best guy! So we have good players, just not a lot of them? I can work with that in an 18 team season. Fun fact is that our youth intakes will arive in February, annually before the start of our season. With a bit of luck, they can fit in right away! There's only one team going down in a 10 team league, so this should be possible. Also, win one match in the cup and we're good. I'm feeling positive! Swimming in cash. NEXT UP A preseason recap in which we'll play 5 Moldovan teams and one from Ukraine. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
oriole01 Posted January 10, 2018 Share Posted January 10, 2018 Good luck! I hope this one ends much better than your last. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 10, 2018 Author Share Posted January 10, 2018 Soon the whole of Suruceni will only drink avocado-quinoa frappuccinos! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaunvamos Posted January 11, 2018 Share Posted January 11, 2018 Good luck with this 😀 Should be a bit of a challenge to knock Sheriff Tiraspol of the top once you get there! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 18 hours ago, oriole01 said: Good luck! I hope this one ends much better than your last. If I get past October 2017, it's already a success xD 3 hours ago, shaunvamos said: Good luck with this 😀 Should be a bit of a challenge to knock Sheriff Tiraspol of the top once you get there! Thanks! To be honest, Sheriff don't look as dominant in the game yet, so I feel like this might even be possible sooner than we might think! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 11, 2018 Author Share Posted January 11, 2018 PRESEASON The quality of opposition was so-so, but I'm still happy with the amount of goals scored. Not too worried about the last match because we outclassed them but forgot to score. However, that wasn't the story of preseason: Three starting XI players injured of which two will likely miss the biggest part of the season (the season is only 5 months long). On top of that, 3 of my best youngsters are also injured, which is a very big problem actually: the Moldovan league rules tell me I have to register 7 clubgrown players. If you can't comply, you lose a registration spot, which means at the moment, we only have 23 registered players (no-one clubgrown? Christ...) So that's great. Just great. Awesome. NEXT UP Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 JULY 2017 We start the season of with the first four matches, which ended like this: My opening day lineup: The match against Milsami started off pretty well: we were dominating early out, but after our goal, we kept walking backwards. Luckily we were able to hang on to the draw pretty easily. The second match was the best of the month in which we dominated Dacia from start to finish. After taking an early 3-0 lead, we gave them their first shot on goal with 20 minutes to go, which they scored, followed by a 3-2 just minutes later. However, the end was easy to contain even though the result should have been 6-0. Both the last two matches were useless defeats: more chances, more possession, more losses. Especially the Zimbru one is something I see happening to way many people. The "losing against the lowest in the league" thing. The standings: Outdoing ourselves really. This spot would probably mean Europa League!! NEXT UP We'll be meeting the sheriff in this competition. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 Cool, this just happened. Luckily there were only 2 minutes of stoppage time and my goalkeeper had the ball for a goal kick at 92:47. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 AUGUST 2017 Truly a month from hell. Nothing worked, nothing clicked. Every initiative I tried was just crushed by FM. Speaking of which, the entire month was full of the usual annoyances: Dinamo-Auto beat us with the last minute goal you can see in the gif above this post. The match against Sheriff (who had won everything before that) I approached with a very containing tactic, but obviously they scored with a deflected free kick from 35 yards after 1:30 minutes. Against Spicul we dominated the match from beginning to start, but we didn't score. The Zaria match just didn't have anything. We couldn't create anything. And to top everything off: Of course last placed Petrocub beat Sheriff to put us in last place. I mean. Come on. Really? Was there anything good? NEXT UP Rematches of the only matches we've won (and should have won) + Petrocub. This month is vital already. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 I'm trying everything, but I mean EVERYTHING that I have in me to turn this around. But this has got to be the most woeful savegame I have played in the last 5 years. I can't believe the amount of FM'ing that goes into this. We even missed an absolute sitter just a minute before that 95th minute goal. This entire match had it all. We played well, but we got behind because the player who has been nagging and whining about getting playing time makes a huge error in the back. Then we get an injury, I want to replace him by another defender, but I can't because my team needs to have at least one u21 Moldovan player, which forces me to substitute my best winger as well. We still manage to equalise, but then my CM gets injured as well and we're down to 10 men. Miss the sitter in the 94th, get a penalty against in the 95th after a breakout over the flank where I had to take my player away from because of the injury. I just can't believe this is all happening. It's not just one game, but it's every game during this streak. It's absolutely farcical. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 You can't be serious. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaunvamos Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 8 minutes ago, Timetxu said: You can't be serious. Noooo 😫 Home advantage though, could make it work! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 SEPTEMBER 2017 The Speranta match has been moved to October, so only three matches this time Petrocub was the team to beat but obviously they were in a good run of games before the one against us. We were even lucky not to lose there. The match against Milsami has been described in a very explicit way in two posts above this one and the Dacia game was just another one where you put the same team out on the pitch to play in the exact same way you wanted them before and they suddenly play like they never even met. It's starting to turn into a drab. Not enjoying this save one bit. Everything started off so well with a 1st spot after two matches and some great football, but for some reason those matches can't seem to be replicated. I have no idea anymore how to stop this slipping slide. We have such a ridiculous amount of bad fortune, injuries and missed chances that I as a manager can't seem to be influence things anymore. Even the "go back to a 4-4-2 and take it from the start" option failed as you see in what happened against Milsami. We only have seven matches to do something or my days are counted. NEXT UP Surely something? Just anything? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 YOUTH INTAKE DAY Pretty surprised by this one as I had expected it to happen in February. Very curious to see what happens with the future intakes as our season will shift to a calender year long format... I like Cojocaru, even though we have way too many MC's. I was hoping for a right winger, so I'm happy with Grigore, even though a lot of these still look absolutely atrocious. I'm actually only keeping the first four. Cojocaru probably the only decent in this intake. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 13, 2018 Author Share Posted January 13, 2018 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
oriole01 Posted January 13, 2018 Share Posted January 13, 2018 Oh man, this is a rough one so far. Looks like you finally got a win, so hopefully there's some room for more success. You're definitely not getting outclassed by too many opponents, so a little push is all that's needed to survive. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 You have got to be absolutely s***balling me... Third time this has happened in an 18 match season. This is starting to get absolutely grotesque. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 15, 2018 Author Share Posted January 15, 2018 OCTOBER 2017 Buckle up, dear followers, because this month had everything! LEAGUE I started off this month with a thorough evaluation of my squad. I felt that we never really got outclassed in any match, but we just can't seem to either win the midfield battle, or when we do, link our midfield to the attackers. I've gone balls up and go for a way more attacking shape with wingers, inside forwards and shadow strikers and finally. Yes, finally, things clicked. We were the better team against Speranta from the beginning out, but when they scored in the 40th minute, I felt we were treading a very familiar road. Luckily, we scored right before half time and from there, we dominated. We finally broke our slump of 9 matches without a victory. We played equally well against Zimbru who we needed to beat to not limit the relegation race to two teams. The result of that match is detailed in the post above this one. The 3rd time in 12 matches in which we conceded an injury time penalty kick. Luckily we bounced back with arguably the best match of the season against Dinamo-Auto. 3-0 was highly deserved. THEN CAME THE SHERIFF SERIES... First up, the cup game at home. Instead of defending which delivered us nothing the last time out, we took the initiative and we forced them all the way to penalties. Of course we missed a penalty kick in the 81st minute to pull off a stunt, because in Suruceni, we like pain. We missed some more penalties after that when we lost 2-4 against PKs to end our cup run. The good thing about having to play Sheriff again is that both our teams equally suffered from fatigue after the long midweek game. We took our chances this time: This one's the league game and maybe even more important than the previous one. Again we managed to push them and at half time, we even had more shots. I couldn't change anything because everything was going according to plan. Unfortunately, a shot deflected off the post onto the backhead of our goalie Turcan for a Sheriff lead. Luckily, we got ourselves another penalty and this time around, we did make full use of it. However, in the 72nd minute, Sheriff too received yet another penalty kick. Turcan though, was well fed up with all this crap and managed to save a poorly taken kick by Bordian. One massive point for us against the most dominating team in Moldova. Only one goal conceded in 210 minutes of football. This leads to: Out of the drop zone we go! Only three matches to go with a head to head against Petrocub... WAIT WHAT? I learned today that Moldova has quite some interestnig rules. Besides the obligation of having at least one Moldovan u21 in your starting XI, we have this: Just your ordinary run-of-the-mill it's-almost-the-end-of-the-season-so-why-not-spice-things-up-with-a-random-6-day-transfer window around the 15th matchday. All teams in our same division started putting out loan requests for our starting XI players like mayhem broke loose. Absolute scenes, but luckily I rejected them all without any unhappy players. This is weird. Very curious what'll happen in the calendar long season. NEXT UP The Final Push. I really hope we can continue our good form and decide this before the nailbiting possibility of facing Petrocub in a winner-take-all-match on the final day comes up... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 NOVEMBER 2017 To start off, this happened: We only needed two points to achieve another year in the highest league. That went well. At Spicul, we didn't even have a shot on goal. The Zaria match was the complete opposite. We managed to get 17 shots in, of which 4 clear cut chances, but none of them resulted in a goal. Looks like we're going to have a final day update here... Sheriff clinched the league title, with Zaria very close to a Europa League spot. I don't understand how Speranta are fourth, because we dominated them twice. NEXT UP This is it. The final match. A draw is enough to secure a 9th place finish. I'm at least hoping for a last minute penalty against us. Luckily Petrocub is playing a semi final cup match only three days prior, which could give us a big help. Wish me luck! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 Unbelievable. Their players were all tired from their cup match. They even fired their manager a day before the game. And then this. I genuinely have never had this amount of bad luck in a single save. Four stoppage time game deciding goals against me. I'm out of words and energy. This save was just ridiculous from start to end. I don't know if there's some kind of spot in the Hall of Fame for bad luck, but this should be in it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Makoto Nakamura Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 Just now, Timetxu said: I think you needed to pray more What's next? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deisler26 Posted January 16, 2018 Share Posted January 16, 2018 Unlucky dude. Where next? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Timetxu Posted January 16, 2018 Author Share Posted January 16, 2018 3 hours ago, Deisler26 said: Unlucky dude. Where next? 3 hours ago, Makoto Nakamura said: I think you needed to pray more What's next? Thanks for the support guys. I think this'll be it for the Moldovan adventure right here. I feel I need a country closer to home with a club dearer to me to revamp my love for the game. I have one on the lookout, so you guys can expect something new and (three time's the charm) more durable. Guess who? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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