[FM18] Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg

[zlatanera]

Welcome to my second attempt at a career thread! By this time, FM19 has been pre-ordered and I had hoped to tide over the time with my Ajax save, but within two seasons we were so dominant in the league it wasn't worth it. So I return for the third (possibly fourth?) time on FM18 to one of the most fallen of giants, Hamburger SV. 

The aim - simply, to turn the club around, either by winning things or clearing their debts, whichever comes first, and keep it going until November 2nd. I will have some philosophies though, two to be more precise:

1. Use a Structured or Highly Structured shape - I mostly go for (Very) Fluid so this will be a nice change.

2. To only sign players from the nations (or preferably the cities) that formerly belonged to the Hanseatic league (see below)

3. Establish a network of affiliate clubs in the former Hanseatic league cities, similar to how said cities in the middle ages had the kontor.

Source

Some of the above cities obviously have since been renamed, some of the nations aren't able to be set as active such as Latvia, and I used the list from the wikipedia article rather than the image to form my list of Hanseatic cities. 

My computer is relatively underpowered, so I've managed to get to under 35k players and a decent speed by only going for top divisions outside of Germany, and stuck Portugal on View-Only as I don't like encountering the likes of Benfica in Europe and not having their histories visible. No first window budgets as I want to see how far I can get with a squad that got relegated irl, and no attribute masking as that disadvantages me against the AI and I'm not that good. I've set my manager as the best possible, with no player knowledge due to the lack of attribute masking. Although I'm English I have him as speaking German and French as those are subjects I studied at school and it makes things easier. 

The facilities are great bar data analysis, which I don't really use anyway so will probably not upgrade to save money. Hopefully if I get the team playing some exciting football we can sell all 57,000 tickets week in, week out and work our way out of these monstrous debts!

That £92m debt is ridiculous, especially when our entire first team squad - complete with multiple key players on expiring contracts - is valued at £112m. Also 'gift loan' is an oxymoron if I've ever seen one.

First steps will be overhauling the staff (below) who are very sub-par. One change from most of the clubs I manage is that barely any of the club favoured persons are even in the game, so sentimentality won't be dragging me down for once! 

Next post will detail the tactics I'm planning on using, any successes / failures on the contracts front and most likely all games up to October. Looking back this is quite a dry post so hopefully my writing style will improve as well.

[zlatanera]

So, needless to say the staff overhaul was a long process...

But fruitful! Below is our first team setup:

The under-21s I may have actually not needed to clear out completely, but I tried to get coaches with decent personalities as well as coaching ability, just on a hunch that it might help a little:

 

 

 

 

 

Most of my u19 coaches were very good already, actually the level I had to change the least:

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the exception of one Fiete Arp, our youth system doesn’t really have much in it and the first team is lacking in quality tutors so I won’t be paying much attention to it (particularly off the back of an obsessive 2 and 1/2 seasons micro-managing Ajax youth) but hopefully I’m giving them the best chance to grow into consideration for the first team. Speaking of…

A number of actual out-and-out wingers, pacy, physical forwards and a good mix of midfielders who can pass (5, overkill) and tackle (2), with no-nonsense centre backs leads me to a 442.

As I accidentally highlighted the analysis button I’ll just point out that No. 7 is Bobby Wood.

Our first XI is reasonably strong, but there are issues at full back - our 2nd best LB is our RB, who has low concentration. His backup meanwhile has even lower anticipation. So I’m really hoping our forwards catch fire in order to keep us out of trouble. To that end, I’m focussing heavily on set pieces, although I forgot to have a philosophies meeting with the board as it could have been useful to have something to focus on to keep them onside if results don’t go our way.

[Carambau]

Hope you can steer them clear of relegation this time 

[zlatanera]

October 2017

I played a mostly reserve team in the cup as my AM somehow had only got 11 players fit when I gave him 8 friendlies to work with. Unsurprisingly, we were much too good for a 3. Bundesliga team. 

The league however, did not get off to a great start. We had opportunities to win at Schalke, but like Manchester United last week were unable to deal with a Ukrainian winger, and the game against The Franchise was closer than the scoreline suggests - Hahn in particular was spraying shots around as if he was playing with his eyes closed. I tried a slightly more aggressive tactic against Wolfsburg as they haven't been great in real life, and got destroyed - 1-0 was an incredibly flattering scoreline. Coming up to half time in the Leverkusen game it was looking to be more of the same, until I unticked "pass into space" and was instantly rewarded with a goal - when they equalised they made the mistake of injuring Kostic, and his replacement Ito scored 2 and assisted the other to get our first league win of the season in style. 

The final three games we dominated, so to only get 5 points is disappointing - our shots on target ratio may be the joint 3rd best in the league but a lot of them are straight at the keeper. I've been playing Hahn and Wood in the opposite striker positions to what I showed in the last post as I figured Wood's "Plays With Back To Goal" trait would work best on the furthest forward player, and after Hahn scored our first 3 league goals, Wood has then scored in the last four games, although two were penalties and former Hamburg player Rene Adler saved one for Mainz to snatch a draw for them.

Overall we're 8th, solidly mid-table which is far better than the real life team, or our media prediction or board expectations. However on my previous saves I've challenged for the title first season so may look to change things up depending how things go after the international break. Without a win away from home I might change the thread title to "Free and Hanseatic City of Burnley 2016/17" too.

[MarcxD]

Interesting idea with the Hanse cities. Good luck!

[john1]

Good luck with Hamburg!

[zlatanera]

Cup Game ✔️

Early Red Card ✔️

Unsung Striker Hat-Trick ✔️

One Whole Lot Of Derby 👏

Glad it was Papadopoulos who got the red card, the fine will save me £100k!

[zlatanera]

It gets better...

That's the largest Nordderby victory ever! Previous was Werder's 6-0 win in 2004. 

In real life Fiete Arp made his debut in this game, becoming the first 2000s-born player in Bundesliga history. In this case I gave him his debut as a substitute against Mainz, but his first league goal coming in a derby is pretty cool. 

Also, have added a new philosophy in the original post

[zlatanera]

Winter Break 2017/18

So things are going pretty well! We went on a 12 match unbeaten run until some wasteful finishing against Freiburg brought that to an end. Other than that, the only black mark is a weakened lineup being blown away in a 5 minute spell early in the first half against Hannover to put us out of the DFB-Pokal.

We're not looking like hauling in Bayern's 12 point lead so I'm going to call it now - we're not winning any trophies this season. But I also don't think we're getting relegated, and the board clearly agreed as my contract has been extended until 2020! 

Hahn and Wood have turned into a proper strike partnership with 14 and 12 league goals respectively, and although nobody else has hit double figures for us players have generally been coming up with the goods when needed. 

Going forward one problem is an over-reliance on Filip Kostic - we have no more left-footed pace and he's wanting to move to a bigger club with the usual suspects lurking. Given the transfer restrictions I've placed on myself and my low budget it'll take a huge offer to get rid as there appears to be no replacements of suitable calibre out there.

[Blah_1123]

Cool concept, love a bit of history. Also sounds like quite a challenge with all that debt. Good luck. Followed.

[zlatanera]

I'll do a full update tomorrow - I may make it to the end of the season depending on if I end up watching many films (I've stopped playing FM at the same time as watching stuff because you always end up getting really into a contract negotiation and miss something funny / important). But I was a bit dejected after losing to The Franchise 1-0 away - mostly because the performance was awful, could have easily been 10 I thought...

Given the stats in our encounter were basically the same (except fouls, my BWM usually gets 5 per game by himself), we got off lucky.

[zlatanera]

2017/18 Second Stage

A significant drop-off in our form in the 2nd half of the season (although only 4 points left, performances were much worse) which may be down to my gambling in the transfer market. I negotiated PSG to €30m + €30m over three years + loan back on Filip Kostic but as they agreed instantly, I figured I could get more and rejected. They went out and spent the money on Alex Grimaldo instead and Kostic went from 12 assists in the first half of the season down to 5 in the second half. He's still unhappy with no interest. Still, the nailed-on relegation candidates got a Europa League finish!

Irritatingly we would only have needed to equalise against Borussia Monchengladbach to get a CL finish which would have helped a lot with our finances - at 1-0 we missed a sitter, they went straight up the other end, won and converted a penalty. Still, a best finish since 2008/09 is nothing to be sniffed at. 

Now, a brief detour to Leipzig...

Timo Werner managed to equal Gerd Müller's 1971/72 Bundesliga goal haul, which is ridiculous! Especially as Gonzalo Higuain was the only other striker to hit over 30 in the top 10 leagues. 

Going forward, provided nobody I wanted to keep left I calculated I'd need to buy 10 new players, and I've gotten a good start:

Karavaev is a significant upgrade on their of our right back options and Subotic is about on a level with Papadopoulos, so getting two defensive upgrades for €4.2m is the sort of Mike Ashley-esque business I need to be doing (and before anyone asks, yes, there were Russian cities in the Hanseatic league, and yes I do count Subotic as he fled Bosnia very young and holds a German passport). 

Although the board have given me 70% transfer revenue I'm hoping the €67.77m prize money for our league placing will allow me to negotiate that upwards as I've been given no new transfer funds.

I also need to work on my away tactics - our home record of 11/3/3 was very good with one of those draws being against Bayern, one of the losses The Franchise and another a wonder-strike from Schalke. But going 5-7-7 away was not great - we were pretty good at withstanding barrages so tended to draw 1-1 or lose 1-0 but I either need more clinical attackers (unlikely on our budget) or to give my strikers more chances. That we conceded the same amounts both home and away (24 each way for 48 total) yet scored 48 at home but only 21 away reinforces my suspicions. 

[zlatanera]

"biased MSM" expect us to finish 9th, board want top half (which 9th would be), to get out of our Europa group and to make the 3rd round of the DFB-Pokal again. An amazing amount of realistic expectations to be honest - I did this save on FM16 and after taking us from relegation favourites to 5th the next season was expected to get Champions League, so this is much better.

We're also working towards the goal of building up a network of Hansa clubs - our first new affiliate is Lyngby from the suburbs of Copenhagen to go with Lech Poznan and Kapfenberger SV who were already affiliated at the beginning of the game. Lyngby have great youth facilities so I'm hoping for some quality Danish newgens either coming through our academy or for us to exercise our first option on. 

Now, to transfers...

As 5 debuts in one game might suggest, in this window I made Harry Redknapp look like summer 2018's Pochettino, with so many transfers they won't fit on one screenshot, so I'm just going to list the important ones (and a couple of failures):

Failures

 

 

 

Pierre-Michel Lasogga - turned down a €10m move to Hoffenheim and nobody else would take him without me being on the hook for his wages, so I'll keep him as a €64k/week backup option who offers something different to our other strikers as a Target Man - although 3/4 strikers having "Plays With Back To Goal" might be a bit one-note. Bit of a *****, told me he'd rather get paid to do nothing than leave.

Walace - promised he could go to Dortmund for double what we paid for him, no bid materialised and I couldn't even loan him for all his wages let alone sell him, so he stays to hopefully gain in value.

These two meant two players I wanted to keep around - Gideon Jung and Sven Schipplock - have been loaned out to Serie A and 2. Bundesliga respectively.

 

 

 

In

 

 

 

Neven Subotic - Dortmund - free - Goes straight in as a key player CB

Timo Horn - Cologne - €11.75m - Begged the board to sign him as soon as their relegation was confirmed, they actually lowered his wage demands but €14.75m CL release clause may screw us over.

Marvin Plattenhardt - Hertha Berlin - €8m - an actual backup left back for this season, good at taking set pieces.

Sebastian Rode - Dortmund - €4.2m - supposed to be first choice BWM but now Walace is staying will probably be backup. Still a bargain though.

Ludwig Augustinsson - Werder Bremen - €5m(€6m) - First choice LB, also a good Corner and Free Kick taker which is something we lacked last season.

Vyacheslav Karavaev - Sparta Prague - €4.2m - an absolute bargain release clause for my new first choice RB

Amin Younes - Ajax - €1.5m - fans and coaches don't rate him but can cover either flank ably.

Youssef Toutouh - let him stew for a couple of weeks once his Copenhagen contract expired, a nice cheap backup who can cover anywhere from CM strata forwards.

Alfie Mawson - Swansea - €7.5m - one of few affordable English players, again raiding a newly relegated team. 3rd Captain.

Hidde ter Avest - Twent - €6.75m - another release clause, another right back. Also comfortable at CB.

Mohammed Elyounoussi - Basel - €10m(€12m) - couldn't find an out-and-out replacement for Kostic so went for Norway's best wingers as an IW on the left.

Jamaal Lascelles - Newcastle - €8.75m - fell out with Rafa. Expensive rotation option on €45k / week but a real leader. Vice Captain.

 

 

Out

 

 

 

Gôtoku Sakai - Bournemouth - €11m - transfer listed, got a decent bid, sold. 

Julian Pollersbeck - Cologne - loan (€2.8m) - heard they were in need of a keeper after I bought theirs, fee nearly covers his initial cost to the club.

Douglas Santos - Dortmund - €17.5m - unlike Walace didn't agree to leave for twice his €10m cost, but this was a decent offer and funded both of my new LBs. 

Filip Kostic - The Franchise - €60m - our most expensive signing becomes our most expensive sale. Will probably get 6 assists against us, but a great deal allowing me to sign half a new squad. 

Kyriakos Papadopoulos - Nantes - €7.5m - a real struggle to get anyone to not lock in a wage contribution, turned down three clubs but eventually got rid for what we paid for him. 

Alen Halilovic - Cologne - €5m - was our 3rd best-paid player and non-Hansa so bit their hands off when they offered what we paid for him.

Dennis Diekmeier - Cologne - €5.5m - really dropped off in the 2nd half of last season and had two new guys ahead of him in the pecking order. 

Luca Waldschmidt (Kaiserslautern), Arianit Ferati (Cologne), Rick van Drongelen (Ajax) - loan - I want to keep all these guys but they won't get playing time so I'm hoping to get other teams to develop them for me, something I rarely do in my saves.

 

 

As I said in the "In" section, we've made a slight tactical tweak owing to not being able to find any good, affordable left-footed wingers.

Moving the AP over to the right may be a risk as Holtby prefers the left but I thought he'd end up getting in the way of the IW, whereas this way he should have more options and if the IW is caught infield the BWM should be able to cover. Still Structured, Standard and quite a direct tactic. 

Weirdly the first Bundesliga game is on 1st September so I got to the end of the transfer window having only played a cup game against a non-league team. It's nice. 

[zlatanera]

2018/19 Season

I meant to do a winter break update and a post-season update, but when it came round to the winter break I really was not in the mood (as you will see below) so I'm going to put the whole season in one post. I'll summarise all three competitions we competed in ranked in terms of the date we exited them.

DFB-Pokal

 

 

 

An incredibly easy game for my reserve team, followed by an easy game for my reserve team, followed by a Mourinho-esque defensive performance by my first team as we really got a handle on The Franchise this season. At the quarter final stage I thought we had a genuine chance to win it - the other teams were Bremen, Wolfsburg, Hertha Berlin, Aue, Heidenheim and Cologne. I sent out a slightly weakened team as Bielefeld weren't tearing up any trees in 2. Bundesliga and we had a lot of games coming up, which backfired greatly - they scored in the 7th minute and we never had any semblance of control over the game.

 

Europa League

 

 

 

I played fairly cautiously through the groups, as unlike the Champions League there is no reward for finishing 1st vs. 2nd, so I knew as long as I avoided defeat to Lazio I'd be fine. We then settled into a habit of blowing teams away at home then clinging on abroad - although we drew 2-2 with City at Volksparkstadion, we had by far the upper hand. Despite the scorelines we probably played best in the away leg against City too, but drawing two English teams in a row was just too much for us - for a bit of context our entire squad is valued at €172.55m, and they City a net spend of €221m this season. 

Surprisingly, our group winners Lazio did make the semis, losing to the other half of the all-English final, Chelsea.

 

Bundesliga pt.1

 

 

 

Given the significant squad turnover I expected a slow start...I was wrong. Getting our first win (and maintaining our unbeaten record) against Bayern was a rare victory for the "away" tactic, following it up with another derby smashing really had me smiling and when we overcame our Leipzig hoodoo as well we were 5 points clear at the top of the table.

Then Dortmund happened.

It should have been 1-1 going by performances, but two dribble+long shot wondergoals from Nabil Fekir and Emil Forsberg put paid to that idea. Then in pretty much every other game bar the two clean sheets between then and the end of 2018 we conceded at least one stupid goal - think Augustinsson playing a short defensive throw, receiving the return by volleying it full pelt at Timo Horn in goal, who has to head it clear, only for the opposition forward to beat Subotic to the ball and volley it into the net. We ended the year in 7th, about 10 points off the top and I was considering desperate measures. 

 

 

Winter Transfers

 

 

 

Around the time of the Wolfsburg game Lewis Holtby declared his intentions to leave for Schalke as they would offer him a Key Player contract whereas I only played him as an AP and Ekdal as DLP, his €13m release clause not helping matters (a downwards move, Schalke were 18th at the time). They duly triggered the clause after about 10 rounds of attempting to get him for under €5m which I laughed off. At this time I had many options for replacements but my scouts came back saying they'd all signed new contracts in November. I'd pre-arranged Max Kruse to join from Bremen and fulfil his dream of playing for us (Hamburg are one of his favoured clubs as "supporter") in the summer but brought it forward to January for €3.8m and retrained him to CM. I also managed to offload Walace to The Franchise for €11.5m and 20% next sale, and replaced him by bringing in Christoph Kramer as our record purchase at €17m(€21m) and make him our highest-paid player at the time. 

I also thought part of my woes in autumn may have been down to only having 1 HG player (Fiete Arp) meaning I only had a 22-man squad for Europa. So I searched for more, finding Vitaly Janelt for €3.2m from Bochum. However, as he was only 16 when he left the club, he doesn't count! Luckily he was a U-21 for this season but next season I'll again be down to 22 players I imagine, unless I can entice Jonathan Tah back to the club as nobody else is of requisite quality. 

One final transfer was a wonderkid centre back from our affiliate Lech Poznan, for €2m(€4.5m)

 

Bundesliga pt.2

 

 

 

Walace getting a straight red in his final game for the club prevented us from doing the double over Bayern (but not losing to them until 2019 is still good in my book). But then we went on a great run - Kruse getting his first and only league assist for us on Younes' 93rd minute winner against Bremen was particularly satisfying - despite some heavy rotation due to European commitments, a highlight being my B team thumping BMG 6-0 (with one disallowed). As you will notice though, there weren't many clean sheets and like all the best nearly-men we have a sense of impending disaster - at times I felt like at half time in every game I was giving Steven Gerrard's "don't slip" speech. 

When we lost to Schalke, kick-starting their revival with 5 games remaining I thought we were destined to spend another year in Europa (fun, but not good when you have debts to pay), but we took 13 points from our last 5, same as Bayern, whilst Dortmund only took 5 allowing us to sneak into 2nd!

69 points is a record total in the 3-points era, and we get a tasty €93.15m prize money. We were 2nd top scorers but only had the 5th least conceded (almost double that of Bayern), although 10 clean sheets was exactly double what we obtained last season. 

 

I'm debating how to continue with this save - on the one hand a 13 point improvement from the previous season suggests progress, but on the other we had 49% shots on target and I'm not sure how sustainable that is. I may switch to a 433 but my transfer restrictions are hindering me - there's barely any good enough midfielders who are both interested and available to me that aren't BWM (of which I have three). 

The FM19 beta is probably coming out this week too, and with it I imagine quite a few career threads which may push this out of the way of anyone's eyeballs, but if I do continue I'll most likely update here as I enjoy it.

Our Hanseatic Affiliates network gained another member - NEC from Nijmegen, oldest city in the Netherlands. I'm hoping they've gotten promoted to Eredivisie this season so they produce more good regens. But anyway this means we'll now have German, Dutch, Polish, Danish and probably English regens coming through due to my nationality, which is fun. 

One last thing - Klaus-Michael Kühne, who I think the game lists as our owner, announced his intention to retire. One day later, we got our youth intake. Behold one of the star regens:

[zlatanera]

That's the £18m bank loan gone!

[zlatanera]

Transfers Summer 2019

A quieter year in terms of incomings than previous - as I planned to switch to a 433 but still be able to play my 442 if that tactic wasn't all that, I identified the need for 2 DLP comfortable at both CM and DM, and an AP similar to Kruse comfortable at ST, CM and preferably AM. Delaney is a natural BWM but with playmaker traits and attributes and also comfortable at CB, and Malli is an upgrade on Kruse technically although weaker physically. The former was devalued due Bremen finishing 15th then 16th in consecutive seasons and the latter had a release clause, so I arranged their transfers within days of the 2018/19 season's end. Ginter, a natural BPD but with the attributes for DLP and familiarity at DM and CM was another one I had to beg the board for after Horn last season - no release clause this time! 

In terms of outgoings, as well as the above ones, Mërgim Mavraj left for free and I gained a further €10.9m on loan fees for some unwanted (Schipplock) and just not needed for this season (Ferati, van Drongelen, Ekdal, Toutouh). A few youth players out for free as well. With my tactical change it was a toss-up between Pierre-Michel Lasogga and Bobby Wood - the latter would have been easier to get rid of but I'm playing a pressing game and what Lasogga has over Wood in mental attributes he severely loses out on in movement. He turned down moves to Real Betis and Sassuolo for €8m, again insisting he would happily sit around un-registered and earn his money (although I imagine he'd kick off). Our relationship is beyond repair so I eventually persuaded Sassuolo to pay his wages with an €8m mandatory fee, which was made optional as Lasogga turned down the contract offer yet again. I've left him on "Not Needed" transfer status so hopefully he'll sign for them or someone else next summer (he got 11 goals 4 assists in 13 apps last season so I'd signed him on until 2021).

Tactically this season I've made a change I mentioned earlier to a 433, still Structured, with PIs and OIs to make a high block. 

As you can see our strongest XI can easily transition between formations, and every single player has a direct backup - due to lack of homegrown players I can only have a 23 man squad in Europe and I don't want to keep around unhappy unregistered players. I've begun to try to unsettle Jonathan Tah in hopes of increasing that number to 24 in the near future, but Leverkusen held out for his €74m release clause this summer which won't happen. 

Speaking of Europe, our CL group looks...fun.

 

[smp20]

Following. Keep your enemies close

[smp20]

Also, you should set up a link with King's Lynn, lots of Hanseatic history there!

[zlatanera]

@smp20 did not know that, interesting. Probably won't be top of my list though, can't see them bringing through many good regens. 

[zlatanera]

A 3 month injury to Max Kruse in the derby just played, meaning I'd only have Yunus Malli to cover the position (AP) that seems to be the most intensive (or maybe just has the least fit players - 3/4 of my other midfielders have Stamina and Natural Fitness 16+) - and the release of the beta has me not wanting to continue.

Yet again we made an unbeaten start domestically, and went down 3-1 to Shakhtar in the tough CL group thanks to some clinical counter-attacks. I really like how the tactic played, we weren't as one-not as before, getting a combination of through balls from the DLF / AP, and cut backs from the Treq / Raumdeuter to eachother. There were still a few issues where we'd be scythed through like a hot knife through butter, but I think that's the risk when you play so pro-actively when you're not an absolute elite team.