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Jimbo's Thread (aka [FM20] Nordicland - The Northener Diaries.)


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2 hours ago, JWVG said:

I watch so little football these days, I did not even know about Euro Cup II...

I watch lots of football and although I had heard that there might be a new competition, I knew absolutely nothing about it. That being said, we're not going to know until people start qualifying and then we will wish people would shut up about it. 

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2 hours ago, rodesire said:

Unfortunate end to a season but very very good overall!

Bit of a side-step, what does Lichtenstein's European allocation look like in fm20? Is it still just the cup winners going to europa league/league II?

Yeah. I might have tried a bit harder were we not assured of 5th place, but it wasn't a great end. 

Oh yeah, you mean because of the new competition. Could be interesting. Let me have a look at Liechtenstein now.... 

Here is the bottom half of the qualifications table and I'm afraid it's not good news. Liechtenstein must still be hard-coded as just 1 spot and have even been relegated from EURO Cup to EURO Cup II.

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1 hour ago, rodesire said:

Wiki suggests Lichtenstein gonna get demoted to a single Europa Conference League slot, wanted to check

If so, Lichtenstein challenge could be very fun this year, win the Lichtenstein cup, then win EL II to go to europa league, win it to get a shot at CL..

 

Jeez. That's a bit much even for me. I'm sure @Makoto Nakamuracould bang a successful Champions League winning Liechtenstein save out in a couple of weeks though. :lol:

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18 minutes ago, Deisler26 said:

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Good to see you're well on the way with this save! I love it!

You love it? 

I properly love it! :lol:

You know, all those years ago when @Gundostarted his challenge, I had a decision to go to N.Ireland or a Patryk Burda, (now there is a blast from the past), inspired Scandi save, and I was all ready to go full Scandi and changed my mind at the last minute for some reason. The rest as they say is history. 

I'm already quite deep into the save and the game isn't even out yet. I'm positive that barring any technical issues, (or being repeatedly sacked and becoming unemployable), that this is going to be comfortably my longest save ever. 

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Facilities. Jan 2028.

I've just had cause to look at our Facilities and was surprised to see this. 

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Youth Recruitment: Average. 
Youth Facilities: Average. 
Junior Coaching: Adequate. 

That's much lower than it was before isn't it? 

This is what it was in September 2027. 

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Youth Recruitment seems to have dropped from Exceptional, past Excellent, past Good, past Adequate to Average
Youth Facilities have staid at Average
Junior Coaching seems to have dropped from Good to Adequate

I haven't seen any messages to say that the facilities have been downgraded, and I have just gone back and checked all available messages, but I use continue game Timeout and it's possible that I have missed the message. That being said, dropping from Exceptional to Average is a drop of 4 levels which seem really extreme. :mad:

It's off to the bugs forum for me again. :(

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30 minutes ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

I've just seen that someone has given my thread a Nickname. :lol: :cool: :applause:

How long has it been like that for? 

Just since yesterday afternoon. I couldn't resist since it's become a bit of a running gag by this point ;) I at least kept the original title intact and you can change it back if you like.

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Transfer strategy. Jan 2028

I have started to have young Brazilians recommended to me by my DoF and I need to make a decision about what if any restrictions I am going to place on myself and the team moving forward.

A lot of people go on and on about "club identity" and "club DNA", and although they are not usually words that you would see in any thread of mine, the simple fact remains that I actually implement an "identity" or a "brand" without really giving it a label. 

Will I be signing Brazilians? No. Absolutely no. Not at any point in the save. 

What about other South Americans? No, if I'm going to ban the signing of Brazilians throughout the save, then I think the rest of South America can join them on the banned list. 

Well ok. That's South America being ignored, but what about the rest of the World outside Europe? Is there any Continent that I would want to sign players from outside Europe? No is the short answer. I think I'm going to add Africa, Asia, North America and Oceania to the list, leaving me with just players from Europe. 

That was easy, but am I going to sign all European players, or am I going to limit it further? Brits? Southern Europe? Central Europe? Easter Europe? Scandinavia/Nordicland/whatever you want to call it? I think the answer that's jumping out at me at the moment is that I only sign players from Nordic Nations, (so Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland & Faroe Islands). Yeah, I think I'm going to limit my signings to just these Nations. Is that going to make the save much harder? Yeah, of course it is, but if it was easy then where would be the fun in that? 

I hadn't really thought about that until now but I like it. I plan on being the flag-ship for Nordic players wherever I go and whoever I manage. 

[Edit]

Just to clarify, that doesn't include players that come through the Academy wherever I am and if a player has a Nordic 2nd Nationality then that will be fine too. 

Edited by Jimbokav1971
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5 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

It would seem that my Facilities are back up to where they were again, but I'm not sure why they dropped in the 1st place or why the were returned after just saving and reloading the same save again. :idiot:

 

Now they are back down again.

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On 16/11/2019 at 06:00, Jimbokav1971 said:

How many? Youth Intake. Sep 2027.

For years now, a youth intake in full fat FM has been 16 players. Not usually 16 players but sometimes only 15 and sometimes 17. Always 16. Every single time without fail. 16. How many players did I get through this years intake? 17. :lol:

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(27a) Sjöberg (2027) *.

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In the past, what I would have done is dissect the Youth Intake and tell you what we have got and how pleased or unhappy I am with the intake. What's done is done though so who cares about the past. I want to keep us moving forward, and with that in mind I'm going to look at where I can improve the Youth Intake between now and next season. I haven't done this before and haven't really given it any thought until now so let's see how this goes. 

This info is correct for FM19..... Oh hang on. I think we have a problem.

The problem is that our Youth Recruitment is classed as Exceptional, and Exceptional was not a level in FM19 sowe know that the system has had an overhaul. I can't even guess as to what this would equate to in old money. Let's have a quick look at the big Swedish clubs and see what they've got. 

Youth Recruitment

Level 1. Limited. 
Level 2. Limited. 
Level 3. Basic.
Level 4. Basic.
Level 5. Basic.
Level 6. Fairly Basic
Level 7. Fairly Basic.
Level 8. Fairly Basic.
Level 9. Average.
Level 10. Average.
Level 11. Average.
Level 12. Above Average.
Level 13. Above Average.
Level 14. Above Average.
Level 15. Established.
Level 16. Established.
Level 17. Well Established. 
Level 18. Well Established. 
Level 19. Extensive. 
Level 20. Extensive. 

Youth Facilities

Level 1.
Level 2. 
Level 3.
Level 4.
Level 5.
Level 6. 
Level 7. 
Level 8. 
Level 9.
Level 10.
Level 11.
Level 12.
Level 13.
Level 14.
Level 15.
Level 16. 
Level 17.
Level 18.
Level 19.
Level 20.

Junior Coaching

Level 1.
Level 2. 
Level 3.
Level 4.
Level 5.
Level 6. 
Level 7. 
Level 8. 
Level 9.
Level 10.
Level 11.
Level 12.
Level 13.
Level 14.
Level 15.
Level 16. 
Level 17.
Level 18.
Level 19.
Level 20.

Club Reputation

Prom my post on page 4, this is what we are told influences the production of youngsters. In order to work out where we are going to be in the Swedish Newgen pecking order, I need to know what we are up against elsewhere. 

Ok. So I have had to scrap the above bit because the system has changed from FM19 to FM20. Instead, what we have is this. 

Table A.

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The above table shows the Swedish Premier league clubs and lists them by reputation. 

We don't want them listed by reputation though. We want them listed 1st by Youth Recruitment and then by Reputation. (Like the table below). The problem I have is that although I can work out the ranking in most of the adjectives, I don't think it possible to accurately make a decision about Average - Adequate. The definitions are just not comparable. I guess when we get access to the fill game it will give us more info on stuff like this. So anyway, I have to decide what is higher between the two so I'm going to go for...... Adequate being better than Average, (just for the sake of this table). 

Table B.

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Some of you are probably looking at this thinking to yourself, "well it's really pretty and all that, but what the hell is he talking about? What does it actually show us?" Well let me explain. 

So just for a minute pretend that I haven't just had 17 players promoted in my Youth Intake and instead imagine that it was 16. And every club in Sweden got 16 players through their Youth Intake and then the AI managing them had to decide how many of them it was going to keep. So the game knows the total number of players that it has to produce. What determines how good these players can be, (the maximum), is the National Youth Rating and the Game Importance of Sweden. Using FM19 I can tell you the following information. 

National Youth Rating. 88. This is higher than I was expecting, but then again I don't know any other Nations Youth ratings so I don't really know what 88 actually means. 
Game Importance. I can't find this in the FM19 editor. I'm not very au fait with the editor and I'm afraid this is beyond me. As far as I'm aware both are static anyway within the game, (although I think National Youth Rating should be fluid, but only just fluid). 

So a National Youth Rating of 88 tells the game that the game should produce [insert number] of players of [insert quality] each season and this is not an exact figure. Once the game has decided how many Swedish players will be created, it has to determine which clubs they will be generated at. If we assume just for a minute that all Swedish players will be produced at Swedish clubs and no non Swedes will be produced at Swedish clubs, then all we have to do is divvy up the best players and what this little exercise is about is how that is done. Now nothng is set in stone here. You know, (at least I hope you do), that the likes of Kim KällströmZlatan Ibrahimovic and Henrik Larsson can all be generated at any Swedish club in any league, but the chances of players of this quality, (yes i know that Källström wasn't as good as the others in real life but he is an FM legend so on here it counts), being produced at a club depends first on Youth Recruitment and then on Reputation. We have already clarified that no Swedes are going to be generated at foreign clubs, (I'm just making that up to make it easier). 

So now we know that the ranking in Table B tells us the pecking order in terms of where the best players are likely to be produced and why. We are 5th on the list and the only way we can improve is to either make our Youth Recruitment better than everyone else in the Country, or make sure that is equal to the best in the Country AND that we have the highest reputation of clubs in the Country. That makes sense to me. We know the number of and quality of players produced. Now we just have to decide where they go and we do that by Youth Recruitment, (well what else is it for?), and when that is equal we use reputation as a decider. (That seems pretty reasonable and sensible to me). No I know what to do to get to the front of the queue, all I have to do is go and do it. (Easier said than done). 

The 1st question I have is.... Is Exceptional the best Youth Recruitment rank you can get? The truth is that i don't know, but let's go and have a look at the clubs who have the best reputation for producing stars and see what theirs is rated as. 

Ajax. Exceptional, Superb, Excellent

Man Utd. Excellent, State of the Art, Excellent

Barcelona. Exceptional, State of the Art, Excellent.

Sporting LisbonExceptional, State of the Art, Excellent.

Bayern Munich. Excellent, Superb, Good. 

Schalke 05. Good, Excellent, Good. 

Southampton. Excellent, Superb, Good.

Anderlecht. Exceptional, Superb, Good.

Dinamo Zagreb. Exceptional, Great, Excellent.

Lyon. Exceptional, Superb, Good. 

So this suggests to me that Exceptional is the highest rating for Youth Recruitment, State of the Art if the highest rating for Youth Facilities and Excellent is the highest rating for Junior Coaching

So with that in mind, I can't exceed Exceptional Youth recruitment, so the only way to get to the front of the queue is to beat them on reputation. So that's the plan. My aim is to become make Örebro SK into the club with the highest reputation in Sweden, see what happens to the Youth Intake during that time, have at least 1 Pre-Intake whole we have the highest rep and follow it through, and then consider moving on.

When I posted this earlier in the thread, I wasn't sure of the order of some of the Facility ratings. 

I am now. 

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So actually adequate is below average

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1 minute ago, hasdgfas said:

I assume you are rapidly having large weather disasters that leave your facilities in tatters, and then also just as rapidly rebuild them.

I'm really not sure, but it's a little worrying if I'm honest because there have already been instances in this save where I was surprised by how poor the intake was, but equally I also being pleasantly surprised at how relatively good one was too. 

That there could be an issue in this area is pretty concerning when you consider that the release date is on Tuesday. 

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Ah, Örebro SK! I've had two spells there, and would go as far as saying going to a game there is on my bucket list.

Interesting signing policy, Jimbo. How about South Americans etc who are already playing in the Nordic nations though, does that change anything?

My own limits were applied by age group rather than nationality (simply as a way to increase the homegrown talent pool) but I do like this idea of yours. 

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Annoying bit expected. Mar 2028

The board have just accepted a bid of £850,000 for one of our bright prospects. 

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I would have been much happier with £500,000 and 50% of his next sale, but the board just doesn't think like that.My plan to avoid this to just keep so much money in the bank that they don't sell players from under me, but obviously we have to get to that stage first. 

I've got a transfer kitty of £527,738 and I really need to start investing it in youngsters. 

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I had signed a number of freebies during close-season, (notably 3 Icelandic lads who all look decent), but I have only really "invested" in the most recent 2 players. Something I am going to have to be careful of here, (especially after signing the 3 Iceland lads), is that you have to have a minimum of 9 players in each match squad who have been trained in Sweden for 3 years before their 21st birthday. It's probable that I will be signing large numbers of teenagers going forward so will have to be careful that I also keep a number of Swedish talent at the club. 

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1 hour ago, henryzz said:

They don't stop doing that sort of fixes for a while. There is plenty of time for them to get it right.

I'm hoping that it is purely a "cosmetic" error, but I guess time will tell. I'm also hopeful that the boffins at SI will do what they can. 

***Reminder to all***

If something is wrong in your game, PLEASE report it. It's much easier to upload your saves now and the whole thing is done in a couple of minutes. 

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31 minutes ago, withnail316 said:

Ah, Örebro SK! I've had two spells there, and would go as far as saying going to a game there is on my bucket list.

Interesting signing policy, Jimbo. How about South Americans etc who are already playing in the Nordic nations though, does that change anything?

My own limits were applied by age group rather than nationality (simply as a way to increase the homegrown talent pool) but I do like this idea of yours. 

I'm definitely going to watch a HK game in Iceland at 1 point. 

As for my signing policy, I keep thinking about it, (even after the post), but no, I don't think I'm going to relax it at all. I've got loads of Brazilians based in Brazil interested in signing for me and what I was thinking was that I would sign then, loan them out, (not playing them), and then sell them for a profit, but no. No non Nordics is the rule and I'm sticking to it. 

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New signings. Apr 2028

I've been thinking about how I would show new signings, (or at least significant new signings), and I wanted to do something a little different rather than just showing their full profile. 

I signed 5 players on a free, (the DoF signed the player for a fee before I changed his delegated tasks and he's rubbish so I'm not going to bother show him). 

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The DoF did manage to bring in 3 decent loan players, (when I had decided I wasn't going to use incoming loans). The reason I changed my mind and accepted the deals, (the DoF is tasked with finding players but I'm responsible for negotiating deals and contracts), is that we are going to be playing in Europe this season and the squad was really stretched last season even without Europe. 

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I then signed 2 players for fees after the board stepped in and sold our youngster. 

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I'm not sure what I think about announcing player arrivals in this way, but I'm going to stick with it for a while. Feel free to let me know what you think. 

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Apr 2028.

Swedish Premier Division. We started appallingly and it was my fault. I don't care about pre-season so I didn't manage or even look at the game results, but what is important is that the players I intend to start the season with are played enough during pre-season that they are fit for the 1st league game. This wasn't even nearly the case and that, added to the fact that we had a tough start anyway meant that it's no great surprise that we came seriously unstuck early on.

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Schylström.

We have only played the opening month, but he has already scored more goals than he did in the whole of last season, and last season he was our top goal-scorer. :lol: He might be doing the business for me, but my plan is to sell him as soon as I get a decent offer in, replace him with someone else and then also sell them as soon as I get a decent offer. I need to make some money and I think the easiest way to do that is to take advantage of the large number of goals we are scoring. Schylström is contracted until the end of next season so with any luck he will fill his boots this season and then play for someone else next season. I've got quite a few strikers at the club who can step into his place and in particular 2x 5.0 teenagers who are not quite ready right now. 

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May 2028.

Swedish Premier Division. Striker Schylström notched his 2nd hat-trick of the season to bring him to 13 goals in 11 games this season. He's valued at £800,000 but nobody is interested at the moment. I don't really want to sell him before I work out how competitive we can be in Europe, but if the money is reasonable, (and I'm not being greedy), then  I will do everything I can to get the deal done. 

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Youth Intake Preview. Jun 2028.

I had stopped posting these, but in light of the issues I am having with the level of the facilities constantly changing, I thought it might be a good idea to keep an eye on it. 

So by the sounds of it we are going to get a good right winger and little else. 

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[Edit]

Interestingly, our Youth Recruitment is back up to Exceptional. 

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Edited by Jimbokav1971
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Player sold. Jun 2028.

Brorsson is our best centre-half, one of our best players, and he's also our captain, but he's 29 years old and has 18 months left on his contract and is our most valuable player at £825,000. We're still £1.5M in the red and I simply can't afford to see he value diminish  or for him to leave on a free so I have decided to cash in on him. We will miss him in Europe, (or more likely in the league because I still think that's what I will prioritise), but either way we will be weaker without him. 

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We're still in the red to the tune of £779,270 but we've put a hell of a dent in our debt what with this sale and the earlier sale of (25) Pauly *. The selling isn't over, not by a long way, but these are the early steps in making us so financially secure that the board will let me decide who to sell and when. 

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[Edit]

It's a good job that I sold Brorsson because (27a) Sjöberg (2027) * is attracting interest from the likes of GIF Sundsvall and København.  who have come in with a £750,000 bid that the board have managed to reject. 

Edited by Jimbokav1971
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14 minutes ago, abulezz said:

The detail and analysis you go into in your write-ups are astounding.  Once again, excellent save. 

Thanks @abulezzTo be honest I try to keep the updates brief most of the time now and it's really only when I go off on a tangent that I tend to develop longer posts, (like I did recently with the Youth Intake one). 

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European debut. Jul 2028.

Swedish Premier Division. We should have beaten Degerfors, but both Kalmar and Hammarby absolutely battered us before we found our mojo again against Göteborg. We seem to have the sign over them since I took over. That's 17 goals in 17 games for Schylström and includes 3 hat-tricks. 

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EURO Cup II. When I saw who we had drawn, (currently 2nd in the Finnish Premier League). I thought there was a real chance that we wouldn't progress. For this reason I went stronger in the Cup and weaker in the league. We may have taken a couple of spankings in the league, but we progressed in the Cup. Next up is Lokomotiv Moscow who I hope might be slightly easier if anything. 

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We're still in the red to the tune of £800,000 but there have been rumours of a £1,7M bid from one of the big Scandi clubs for (27a) Sjöberg (2027) *, who is getting arsey about signing a new contract and wants to move on. 

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Edited by Jimbokav1971
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15 hours ago, Gum said:

If you want a REAL challenge, how about you sign a youngster from the Faroe Islands and try to develop him regardless of his ability? 😁

You will not be surprised in the slightest to know that I have been on the lookout for any Faroese youngsters and of course I will be signing them if I can find someone suitable. :cool:

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9 hours ago, Thebaker said:

Good progress as ever, not surprised the youth preview is pretty negative. I imagine the higher the status of club, the more negative it appears as it is all relative to your existing (better) squad.

Yeah, but I plan on doing something about that as soon as I can. Maybe I'm just being greedy. 

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1 hour ago, rodesire said:

I would be much more wary of Lokomotiv than any Finnish side tbh

You have to remember that "Nordicland" Nations are all active structures. Russia not active. I guess we will see shortly. My perception might also be clouded by the fact that I managed Mariehamn at the back end of FM19 and they were decent. (Granted it was 2052 or something). 😂

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3 hours ago, rodesire said:

I would be much more wary of Lokomotiv than any Finnish side tbh

They have a Japanese striker valued at £6.75M. 

Our whole club is worth, (not the squad but the club itself), is only valued at..... Oh. Didn't it used to tell us how much the club was worth on Club Info - General, (or somewhere like that?) :kriss:

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2 hours ago, Jimbokav1971 said:

They have a Japanese striker valued at £6.75M. 

Our whole club is worth, (not the squad but the club itself), is only valued at..... Oh. Didn't it used to tell us how much the club was worth on Club Info - General, (or somewhere like that?) :kriss:

Not for at least two editions now on default skin. Used to be a thing, yeah

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Aug 2028

Swedish Premier Division. We may well be down in 10th place after only 2 wins and 4 losses in our last 6 games, but our focus has obviously been qualifying for the group stages in Europe and we have 3 games in hand on 5 of the teams above us. 

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EURO Cup II. We aren't actually a counter-attacking side in the standard definition, but after drawing both home legs, we won both ties by winning away, (which is a bit of a surprise to me). £2.62M is a HUGE amount of money to us at this stage of the save and it's a big deal for Swedish clubs in general. Fellow Swedes Malmo are also in the Group Stage, (Group B against German, French and Belgian opposition), after getting to the Semi-Final of the EURO Cup last season. As far as I'm concerned, everything from now on is a bonus. It was all about getting to the Group Stage and earning the money for me this season. 

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This is a decent group. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was certainly a better quality group than this. There are German, French, Italian & Dutch teams in other groups, (but interestingly no English clubs), and we get Ukrainian, Czech and Slovenian opposition. That will do me nicely thanks very much. :cool:

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Swedish Cup. I again bought home advantage, (it's silly not to when you make money out of it too), and then still weakened the squad despite what happened last season. It worked out in the end, but it wasn't easy. 

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Finances. This is a HUGE advancement for us. We may not have a huge transfer budget, but it's a big step in the right direction. While we are far from set financially yet, it does at least give us a little breathing space and mean that we are at least a little less likely to have to flog our brightest prospects. 

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4 hours ago, rodesire said:

that financial boost looks immense.  Should give you at least a couple years of runway

Yeah. We need income from somewhere and if it wasn't from here then I would have had to sell players to top our balance up. I don't mind selling players such as striker Schylström who I think is 26 years old now and has scored 21 goals this season in approx 24 games I think. His value has almost doubled in the year I have been at the club and I think that although he is the best striker at the club, we have a number of players who would score goals playing in his position. The idea is that he scores goals, his value rises and we sell him. We replace him with another player who scores goal, his value rises and we sell him, we replace him with another.... rinse and repeat. 

I've got a couple of young strikers who I would be less keen to sell, but these are probably going to be used sparingly just to help them develop rather than just thrown in to start every game. who has already started to attract 

What I don't want to do however is be forced to sell the likes of (27a) Sjöberg (2027) *, who has already started to attract the attention of others and was rumoured to be leaving for a £1.7M fee. It's vital that I keep players like him at the club at least until such time as I can get some use out of them, get their CA up so I can demand a higher fee, and THEN whack a big old 50% clause into the deal for good measure. Once I start getting that sort of control over the out-going transfers we will be set, (but we are a little way away yet I think). Other players? Happy to just sell them on to keep the money coming in at the moment

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I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I am starting to get a sneaking little suspicion that all is not well with FM20. :(

Don't get me wrong, the game is stable and I've had no crashes, but things don't seem quite right either.

I've been a little surprised by some of my Youth Intakes and to be honest it's all a bit of a lottery to a certain extent so it's hard to make a snap judgement, but some of you might remember, that even as far back as when I was managing my 1st club AFK Linköping, I commented that the very 1st intake of the save was better than I was expecting, (and let's be honest, I've looked at a few youth intakes in my time). The reason I was surprised was because the club had Basic Youth Recruitment, Poor Youth Facilities and Fairly Basic Junior Coaching. I think we can all agree that's not a great set-up. 

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And although I was surprised, it was a new game and I was excited so what the hell, let's just sign the players, press continue and move on to the next one and see what happens there. 

The 2nd intake sort of quietened the questions in my head a little, because it wasn't a great intake at all. 

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Basically, I wasn't happy that we have a rubbish intake, but at the same time I was happy that it was as rubbish as I should expect it to be if that makes sense. 

Then we had the offers from the big Swedish clubs and luckily I smelled a rat there, before the 3rd intake arrived and put my mind even more at ease. 

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The 4th intake only served to confirm that everything was well with the World and we were getting exactly the sort of rubbish that we should expect with facilities like that. 

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After that I jumped ship to Åtvidabergs FF and didn't last long enough to see an intake, but I hadn't been at IK Oddevold very long at all when we got this intake. 

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Reading this back now, I even said that I was "hopeful" of a decent intake, so the fact that this was a good one isn't a bolt out of the blue, but the quality was still a little surprising. 

Anyway, I thought it might be good so let's push these doubts to the back of my mind and plough on. 

In the next intake the PA's look decent, but the CA appears poor and that sort of does tally with the facilities at that time which was average coaching but basic recruitment. 

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I will tell you though, there was something nagging at me even back then. I didn't know what, but there was some sort of doubt there. 

Then I moved on to FK Karlskrona

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Now I think it's important to point out at this stage that I haven't just been surprised by how poor the intakes have been. I've been surprised sometimes by how poor and at other times by how good. And I'm basing this opinion and expectation based on what has gone before and the facilities at each club, (and I'd like to think I have a reasonable grasp of what;s what). 

Ahead of the 2026 intake I was really excited and really hoped/expected a decent one. 

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So now I've had intakes that were a little better and then a lot better at a club, and now intakes that are worse and a lot worse at another club. That could be seen to be pretty average and quite realistic and that might be a pretty fair description of the situation, but I still had something gnawing at me. Some doubt. I wish I knew what the sub levels were exactly so I could understand what was going on. I remember thinking that to myself time and time again. 

For the 2027 intake I had had enough and I was going to fully dissect everything and some of yuo might remember a quite detailed post on page 5 with a couple of tables. 

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I was at a 4th club now and still things didn't seem right. 

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Then I started to see that something wasn't quite right with the facilities. (It was obviously playing on my mind because there is not an awful lot of reason to be on that page very often for a club you are already at. You already know what your facilities are, (or do you). 

So basically my facilities had been showing 1 thing and were now showing something else with no message and no explanation. 

So off to the bugs forum I went. 

@DazRTaylorcommented that it's something he had noticed too, (and that it reverted back), but surprisingly I didn't get an official comment for 4 days, (and yes I know the full game has been released but I was still surprised). Anyway SI told me that it was just a "display" issue, but that they were looking into it. 

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The problem is though that I had another intake yesterday, (2028), and again it was poor. REALLY poor. It was so poor it put me off playing and I haven't yet done the naming and signing stuff that I normally do and I haven't posted the intake in here, (and I always do that because youth intake day is the best day of the FM year and even when it's rubbish, it's another day nearer the next intake day, (which is bound to be better). So lat night I was peeved and the whole thing was playing on my mind a bit. 

So when I got in today and saw the SI message I realised that the full game was out which also meant that the in game editor was out too. Well brilliant. I don;t have to guess anymore and I don't have to rely on anyone else. I can just find out for myself what's going on. I can make a list of all the levels 1-20 and maybe that will shed some light on the why my Exceptional Youth Recruitment is producing such rubbish. ("Dross" was the word I had used before). 

So here are our facilities in game. 

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And here are our facilities in the in game editor. 

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So Exceptional Youth Recruitment equates to level 10 out of 20 levels? 

Average Youth Facilities equates to level 10 out of 20 levels. 

Good Junior Coaching equates to level 10 out of 20 levels. 

wtf is going on with that? :eek: That just doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make any sense at all. :idiot:

I have quite a methodical brain in that I generally think things through in a structured way, especially when I don't understand things and I certainly didn't, (and still don't), understand this. I look for answers though so what I did was look at other clubs and see if I could work out what the wording was for all 20 levels of Youth Recruitment and go from there. I dropped down a couple of division and looked there for the lowest end of the scale. That's when things got REALLY confusing. 

Our old rivals FC Linköping City were someone I looked at. Average Youth Recruitment

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Let's see what Average Youth Recruitment means in the in game editor.

Average Youth Recruitment is level 4. 

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4 out of 20 for average? Ok, that's lower than I was expecting but let's see what the others say. 

Grebbestads IF were another club that I looked at. 

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Fairly Basic Youth recruitment. Let's see what that relates to in terms of levels. 

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It equates to level 4.......... :herman:

Hang on. That can't be right. FC Linköping City had level 4 Youth Recruitment and theirs was listed as Average. How can Average and Fairly Basic both equate to the same level? 

The main reason I picked the Örebro SK job, (in fact the main reason I picked most of the jobs in this save so far), is because of their facilities. It turns out that what I think are/were their facilities might not have been their facilities and I have absolutely now way of finding out. I'm not even sure that I trust the in game editor because I don't really use it except for stuff like this. I knew something was wrong, but I just didn't know what. I still don't know if I'm honest, but whatever is wrong seems pretty significant. 

Let me give you 1 last comparison before I go, (in fact I'm going to give you a few for some food for thought). Here is the table that I created last week. 

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Here is the in game editor translation of their facilities. 

Malmo. Exceptional Youth Recruitment = Level 20. 

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Hammarby. Exceptional Youth Recruitment = Level 20. 

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BK Häcken. Exceptional Youth Recruitment = Level 16. 

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IFK Norrköping FK. Exceptional Youth Recruitment = level 17.

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Örebro SK. Exceptional Youth Recruitment = level 10. 

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6 minutes ago, rodesire said:

wow, that looks game breaking.

It does explain the poor intakes but the fact we cannot trust the descriptions is devastating :( 

I'm tired at the moment because work has been a bit mental, so I'm trying not to make too much of a knee-jerk reaction, but it's certainly not looking good. Needless to say I haven't bothered playing tonight and am out tomorrow night.

I'm not really sure what to do at the moment. There seems little point playing at the moment while it's like this. 

Part of the problem is that most of us don't revisit the facilities page very often, (because there is no need), so we don't know that it's changing. That's not the big problem though. The big problem is not that it's "changing", but that what it's showing most of the time is just plain wrong. Mine is enormously wrong. A significant problem is that I haven't seen anyone else report it, (and I have had a proper look), and SI are finding it hard to replicate. What makes it worse is that they, (SI), think at the moment is that the issue is with the display and not the actual effect of your facilities but how can that even work if we don't know what the facilities are.

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I'm not really sure what to do at this point. I feel like I've wasted my time trying to build a club that will be in a position to topple the best in Sweden, because our facilities are nowhere near as god as were advertised. I don't think the whole save has been a waste because I have at least been building my reputation. 

The problem I have at the moment is that I don't really know where to go from here or how. 

First of all I need to work out if this is an issue with all types of facilities or if it's restricted to Youth Recruitment, (which seems unlikely). 

This is what it's showing right now, (but we know that at least the Youth Recruitment is wrong). 

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And this is is what the Editor is telling me. 

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Training Facilities - Average = Level 11. 

Youth Facilities - Average = Level 10. 

Junior Coaching - Good = 10. 

I'm going to ignore Youth Recruitment here, (because I know it's wrong), and I'm going to ignore Corporate Facilities, (because I just don''t care). 

Looking at Training Facilities first, our is described as Average, so what I'm going to do is look for other random clubs with Average Training Facilities and then look to see what their rating is with the Editor. 

Athletic FC Eskilstuna have Below Average Training facilities and are rated at level 6.
GIF Sundsvall have Average Training facilities and are rated at level 10. (So this is the same description as ours, but is a different level, but is close so it could be that Average covers both 10 and 11). 
Jönköpings Södra IF have Adequate Training facilities and are rated at level 8
IF Elfsborg have Good Training facilities and are rated at level 13.
Helsingborgs IF have Good Training Facilities are rated at level 13.
Degerfors IF have Adequate Training facilities are are rated at level 8.

These are the clubs below me in the Premier Division, and initial thoughts are that this looks ok and that we now have the following "ladder". 

Training Facilities

1. 
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Below Average
7.
8. Adequate
9.
10. Average. (These levels could be wrong, but in the past a description has covered multiple levels so this might be as designed). 
11. Average.  (These levels could be wrong, but in the past a description has covered multiple levels so this might be as designed). 
12.
13. Good
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.

I will keep going with the top half of the table now and see what impact that has on the "ladder". 

BK Häcken - Great Training facilities - level 15.
IFK Norrköping FK - Great Training facilities - level 15.
IFK Göteborg - Great Training facilities - level 14. (This is lower than the previous 2 despite the same description, but it could still be right). 
Kalmar FF - Excellent Training facilities - level 16.
AIK - Superb Training facilities - level 18.
IK Sirius FK - Adequate Training facilities - level 9.
Djurgårdens IF - Great Training facilities - level 15.
Malmö FF - Superb Training facilities - level 18.
Hammarby IF - Superb Training facilities - level level 19. (This is higher than the previous 2 despite the same description, but it could still be right). 

If I add this to the existing "ladder" that I have created then it gives us this. 

Training Facilities

1. 
2.
3.
4.
5.
6. Below Average
7. (I'm guessing this is below average but I don't know)
8. Adequate
9. Adequate. 
10. Average. (These levels could be wrong, but in the past a description has covered multiple levels so this might be as designed). 
11. Average.  (These levels could be wrong, but in the past a description has covered multiple levels so this might be as designed). 
12. (I'm guessing that this is good, but I don't know)
13. Good
14. Great.
15. Great.
16. Excellent.
17. (I'm guessing this is excellent but I don't know)
18. Superb.
19. Superb.
20. Would this be state of the art? 

So initial reactions are that Training Facilities are NOT broken. 

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