FM20 - A Useless Australian trying not to ruin Asian Football Clubs

[jeaku14]

This career is an attempt to recreate a somewhat realistic version of myself venturing out from Australia as an amateur, unlicensed manager:

 The available leagues loaded would all in Asia, obviously given the geographical proximity and all... There were a couple I didn't add, Indonesia and India off the top of my head, for no particular reason other than I didn't fancy them. I started the game in January 2020, hoping there'd be a few jobs knocking about. 

 

My goals are:

1. To win stuff as quickly as possible to build my reputation.

2. Getting my coaching licenses as quickly as possible. 

3. Eventually get to a club big enough to win the Asian Champions League.

4. I would also love to be able to go back to my home team - Sydney FC - and win the A-League with them if that opportunity ever becomes available.

 

Getting my First Job 

 

I applied for all jobs available, and immediately got two interviews from teams in the Singapore Premier League.

Both offered me jobs weirdly almost straight away, and Home United were the clear favourite.

A small transfer budget, but a transfer budget nonetheless! I also assumed that this would mean they might be willing to fund my licenses.

I liked the ambitious target of winning the league every year forever, and hoped that implied that they had a decent enough squad capable of winning something. 

They finished second last year, but haven't won the league since 2003!!! Suddenly the targets of immediately winning the league forever was a little more sobering.

The squad looked like this when I took over:

You can only have two foreigners in the Singaporean league, and Home already had two Australians! Isaka Cernak is the best player at the club, while Puflett is the second or third best. He scored a great goal in real life on debut which you can see at the end of the video here:

Cernak looks like this in the game:

 

I was hoping for a little more, tbh.... That finishing stat of 4 is just woeful. But hopefully he is as good as his 5-star rating suggests and I can build the team around him and Ollie. 

Maybe the most convincing factor for Home United though was that they were already in the Asian Champions League! Yes, only the qualifiers. But I don't know how these things work! Maybe I'll be able to get straight in? With only three (or so?) days to prepare for the first qualifier, I was ready to get stuck in...

 

[jeaku14]

Asian Champions League Qualifier 1 vs. Persija

So a few days before I'd taken over, Home United had scraped past Persija, an Indonesian club.

Our supposedly best player Isaka Cernak got an extremely worrying match rating of 6.0, while Ollie, the other Australian got injured and will be out for the next 6 weeks. Meet Ollie, the most out and out poacher you'll see. 

In less alarming news, it was fortunately our other quality striker, Song, who scored both goals and won it in extra time. He is South Korean but has Singaporean nationality, so he's allowed to be stay. He's probably our best player tbh, if that composure stat of 5 doesn't stop him too much. 

Anyway, winning this game set up the next clash in the qualifiers, where I took over.
 

Asian Champions League Qualifier 2 vs. Hai Phong (Vietnam)

So we were favourites for this game, which was a relief to see as I genuinely do not have a clue how the Singaporean clubs stack up against the Vietnamese clubs, or many others for that matter...

I also found out on this screen that the next match would be against Suwon, a team I'd heard of and no doubt would be strong favourites should we get through it.

After only a couple of days in the job, I hadn't spent enough time probably looking at what we actually had in the squad... It wasn't pretty. 

With Ollie out, we only had one good striker, so Song would be leading the line alone. We also don't have a LB, and our 2 best CB's are 2-stars... So you could say the back line was a bit of a weakness. We did have a defensive left winger, and a couple of decent DM's, so in they went to cover our gaps. Providing our extremely weird first ever 11 of:

 

Ah yes, the old Positive 2-3-2-3 DM Wide Asymmetric ST (CR) - Custom. 

Fortunately, it worked, and we ran out 3-0 winners thanks to two early Isaka goals, also providing the assist for the other goal by Song.. Isaka ended up with a rating of 9.1!!

I was stoked with this, I genuinely have no idea whether this is a good result or not. The odds is the only indicator I really have. But you'd think such a huge country as Indonesia would have reasonably strong football teams as compared to those from Singapore. I really don't know.

Nonetheless, an incredible start, which took us through to the next game against Suwon..

 

Edited December 9, 2019 by jeaku14

[deltablue]

Nice formation

[jeaku14]

16 hours ago, deltablue said:

Nice formation

 

Haha, thanks very much, it only got weirder...

Asian Champions League Qualifier 3 vs. Suwon Samsung Bluewings (South Korea)

I really hope I get to manage the team I was playing one day, what a name! The Bluewings....

I wasn't expecting much against the Bluewings, given their three-star reputation compared to my one star. And especially as Song had got himself injured mid-week alongside Ollie, leaving me with only my third choice-striker.

I slightly tweaked my asymmetric 2-3-2-3 for this game as a result, giving me this: 

Now 3-1-3-3 DM Wide, obviously.

How'd it go? Pretty much as expected..

They had Aussie striker Taggart up front and we couldn't cope with him. We did hold them to only 1-0 until extra time then they snuck away with it.

I can't really complain, I wasn't expecting much out of it. 

I had no idea what happened next, and what I'm loving about this save is that it is full of surprises, I genuinely never know what's going to happen next. All of a sudden I was drawn into the Asian Confederations Cup, alongside teams from Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. Cool, okay!

[jeaku14]

Mid-Season update:

I feel like saves that are just really successful are often really boring to share, and I really wasn't expecting this one to be so. But it kind of has been to be honest. After drawing two of the first three games against the 1st and 3rd favourites (Tampines and Niigata)_, I basically won the rest of my games and already have established a fairly decent lead in the league.

 

I managed to buy in one of the few Singaporean LWB's prior to the season starting, and he's been absolutely brilliant, having the second most assists in the league after Ollie. 

But really, it's all about Isaka... I've played him as an Inverted winger on the left flank, or a winger on the left flank, leaving him free with plenty of space and support from the wing backs. I expected him to provide the creativity and work rate in the side, given his finishing stat of only four. But he just keeps scoring. And if his finishing was better he could've scored even more. So many one-on-ones....

The other teams all seem to be fairly evenly matched and keep taking points off one another which means there hasn't really been a single team challenging me at the top either. 

I guess the board were right to expect us to win! Isaka, Ollie and Song seem to be just on another level to the rest of the league. A lucky first team to fall into. The board have also allowed me to study for my first license, so things are going well all round really....

The Confederations cup also seems to have put us into a fairly easy group, we've almost qualified from the group stage (only top team goes through), then we'll see what happens after that!

Edited December 10, 2019 by jeaku14

[jeaku14]

Season 1 Review - Home United

Okay so I blitzed through the season. Not for a lack of games, there was plenty. I was just enjoying myself too much! 

The competitions I were in just kept on going and changing direction, and we kept doing extremely well (though the season didn't end quite as I might have hoped!). I think I'll do a quick review of each competition, show a couple of our best players and some awards, then talk about what's next..

Singaporean Premier League - Winners

So originally when I signed for Home United, I saw that it was the 34th ranked competition, which I thought wasn't so bad for a smaller Asian League! I probably should have looked a bit more carefully though, it's the 34th ranked Asian league. Yep. It's not quite as prestigious as I first thought.

We did end up winning it, and after our start to the season it would have been a major ****-up if we hadn't done...

We played teams of 16 year olds towards the end of the season as we had much more important games in other comps, so the table probably looks closer than the challenge ever felt. 

Singapore League Cup - Winners

We actually got pretty lucky in this competition, with Adam Swandi coming in to the team to score winners in extra time in both the semi final and the final. He was behind Isaka, Song and Ollie getting into the first XI for most of the season, but whenever he snuck into the team he played very well.

Singapore Cup - Runners Up

This was by far the most disappointing aspect of the end of the season that I mentioned earlier. Young Lions, who beat us in the final, were bottom for most of the season...

We were slightly unlucky - as you can see: 

Still though, we played poorly, and should've done better in this game....

Asian Confederations Cup - Runners Up

I still have no idea how we should expect to go in a competition like this, if anyone does know please let tell me!

This cup was great fun, with knockout rounds, multiple finals leading to the actualy grand final that we lost to a very good North-Korean side (?).

To be updated....