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[FM19] Doing the Ayatollah


Earnie is God!

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No surprise that Piatek won so many awards. At one stage of the season, he was scoring a goal a game but had a bit of a barren spell in the middle. Still, can't complain and just have to try and hold onto him now. He's just signed a new contract so hopefully he won't want to leave.

After expanding our stadium last season, the board have recognised that the demand for tickets still far exceeds our capacity and so a new stadium is being built.
In all my years of playing FM, I have never had a stadium named after me. I doubt it's going to happen here either as, even though I've juts moved to the top of Cardiff's icon list, there are three legends in Fred Keenor, Phil Dwyer and Craig Bellamy ahead of me. Perhaps I'll be up there too by the time the new ground is finished but I doubt it.
Ah well. I'm happy with the plans for the new stadium though.

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It's summer so it must be "let's raid Cardiff" time :seagull:

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We only signed JD last season but he wanted to move. As I later brought in Lainez, young JD didn't feature that much so I negotiated with Spuds and ended up with a decent price, more than double what we paid for him.

With Giles' excellent performances, not just the winner in the CL, and Piatek's fantastic season, I decided I could let £36.5m valued Fabio Silva go for the right price. He'd missed a number of easy chances in games this season and I thought it best to sell. Unfortunately, some clubs must also have noticed his poor form and they thought the right price was £26-£29m :rolleyes:

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And then £38.5m :stop:

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Fabio wanted a move to Arsenal but I'd prefer he went overseas so I wouldn't regret selling him by seeing him come back to haunt us. Juve were interested and I asked for £60m; surprisingly they didn't even argue.

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Schalke then offered £63m and Arsenal £42m and of course he wanted to join Arsenal. I accepted all three and we'll see where he goes.

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A few other players have moved on too and we have signed some youngsters. I'll do a full transfer update once the window is closed.

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  • 3 weeks later...

A bit of a delay in updating this. First, I'll post our transfers, as promised in the last post...

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Yup, you read that right. We have signed both Bobby Firmino and Kylian Mbappe!!

Firmino's 33yo so not exactly in his prime but I love the guy and his incredibly white teeth :D
Signing Mbappe though was unbelievable. Just goes to show you what you can get when you are Champions of Europe eh?

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We might be in 2025 but he's still only 26yo, with plenty of years ahead of him, hopefully all with us.
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Season 2025/25 - Part 1

Champions League draw could have been easier but I'm confident we'll get through the group, alongside Atletico Madrid.

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Early season results have been exceptionally good and we are scoring goals for fun!

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After the season started, there was a consortium looking to buy the club from Vincent Tan. I've had these before where they drag on and on for months on end, and you are under a transfer embargo until it is resolved. Fortunately, this was not a lengthy process and we are now under new ownership.

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Went through without a hitch and no restrictions on transfers, etc. which is great to see.

Our early season form continued and we were breaking our own records too.

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But any thoughts of an unbeaten season were soon blown apart when we were thumped 4-0 by Ateltico Madrid. This, after we beat them 3-0 at home, meant that they topped our CL group and we'd have to face one of the other group winners in the 1st knockout stage.

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That turned out to be PSG, our opponents in last season's finale.

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With Christmas fast approaching, we were also through to the final of the Club World Championship and would be up against Corinthians.
This would also be a milestone game for me...20190717210327_1.thumb.jpg.7845d0cfa3ed07288171effb0b4f063c.jpg

It was a match we would win comfortably

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Although we then lost our unbeaten league record a few days later when we were humped by Liverpool.

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Season 2025/26 - Part 2

We added to our trophy cabinet with yet another Carabao Cup after a nervy penalty shootout win over Leicester, who had equalised late on in the game.

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PSG were suitably disposed of in the last 16 and we then faced Inter Milan in the QF
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We took a solid 3-1 lead to the San Siro but Inter came roaring back in the 2nd leg and we weren't helped with the 1st half sending off of Oriol Busquets.
Three quick Inter goals either side of HT put them in control, now 4-3 up on aggregate, but we were still in there fighting and managed to grab one to make it 3-1 and a 4-4 agg tie. Extra time came and went with no further action but it wasn't to be for us as we lost on penalties.
A disappointing end to our European campaign in which I had high hopes we could retain the trophy but you've got to take the rough with the smooth and we still had the league title to go for, something we have yet to win.

As has become a quite familiar picture, the title was going down to the wire. We had a slender lead at the top...

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But we slipped up with our games in hand which meant, for the third season running, it came down to the last game of the season!

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Liverpool's form wasn't great but it was still a tougher game than Arsenal's trip to lowly Everton.
Please can we not lose the title on the final day again. Please!

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Two days before the last game of the season, we were hit with some devastating news.20190724030632_1.thumb.jpg.f0737e57e77b60152e4cc9d1781d511a.jpg

Not only would he be unavailable for the Liverpool game, he'd also miss our FA Cup final match v Arsenal.
These are the two trophies we have yet to claim and Mbappe's injury felt like the curse had struck again.
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As it turns out, I needn't have worried. We dominated Liverpool and ran out worthy 3-1 winners. The Premier League trophy was ours!

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I was named Manager of the Year, my 3rd such title in a row and 5th in 8 seasons

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Our players were also recognised for their achievements this season

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Just the small matter of the FA Cup final next weekend and I've not played the game yet. Really hoping we can add that trophy to the cabinet too.

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Arsenal are slight favourites but we've been given a boost...

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Mbappe won't be fully fit but I'm going to risk him.
Turns out it was a good decision and we won this one more comfortably than the 1-0 scoreline suggests

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99 years after our previous and only FA Cup win, we've grabbed another.
I just hope we don't have to wait another century for our next one ;)
And I'm not sure about the quintuple. It's a magnificent treble with two other trophies

End of Season Review

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But it's not all good news...

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No, we only had 100% capacity all season long. Of course we don't need a bigger stadium :seagull:
Not liking this new board we have

Good news on the financial front though and our wages aren't too high at all

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Such a great start to the season and, despite a defeat here and there, I've got to be happy with what we've achieved this year.

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Transfer Plans for 2026/27

Maguire's 33yo now so I need a quality CB replacement. De Ligt could be available if I can prise him away from PSG and the other option is to bring back Lisandro Martinez who left us for Arsenal a number of seasons ago. If I can't get either of those two, not really sure I want to bring in an inferior one as we have some youngsters who could grow into the role given the chance.
Not really needing much else tbh but let's see if we can hold onto our best players this year.
We have too many attacking options really so some will go if we get the right price.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I'm a city fan and just about to return to the FM addiction after a good 10 year absence, will keep an eye on this, thinking I may have to start with a "big name" team after such a long break from the game , first things first is finding the right laptop tho 

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Tbh you don't need a top spec laptop. Mine is a pretty standard hp i5 and the game runs fine. FM19 isn't as 'hungry' as FM17 was.

I've been a bit busy these past two weeks so am still on the 27/28 season but things are going superbly well.
We had a bit of a saga over De Ligt, I'll cover that when I have the time but we didn't get him.
I decided against trying to bring back Lisandro Martinez too. He's a quality player but lacking a little in the aerial challenges.
Instead, I looked around for another option and plumped for another former player, Mavrpoanos.
I remember being impressed with how he did for us in his relatively short stint here before and got him for £21m I think.

Currently watching the Ashes debacle so won't update this properly until later.

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