Club
Season 0: Episode: 0
The Part Where We Talk about the Fiddly Bits
“If you can’t learn to do it well, at least learn to enjoy doing it badly.”—despair.com
Welcome to Devotion to Promotion! In these digital boxes I’ll be posting my FM20 adventures as Zilla Blitz, an inexperienced 20-year nobody who has decided to enter the world of football management rather than attempt to, you know, actually play football himself. I’ll start off with no coaching badges, no job, and a smattering of Sunday League playing experience. With this haughty resume, I’ll thrust myself on the football world, grovel for any job I can get, and have a grand old time managing teams in the British Isles.
Wait, will there be a challenge of sorts involved?
Why yes, two challenges in fact. I will aim to start my first job in the spring of 2020 with a newly promoted Vanarama South or North team and take that one team to the top of the football world. Doing so would qualify me for the Dafuge Challenge. Given my recent success with FM19, however, I can say with all confidence that my odds of achieving the Dafuge Challenge are slim at best. So when that turns out badly, I’ll shift my career into an attempt to clear the British and Irish Steel Challenge, which aims to win the 50 leagues and competitions available to Irish, Northern Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and British teams, using only players of British or Irish nationality. You might be thinking, “Wait, isn’t that even harder than a Dafuge Challenge?” To answer that, I’d say, “Yes.” I’d also point out that I have not claimed to be all that intelligent. Onward!
However, my priority is fun, so if the official challenges get tedious, my life will morph into a pure journeyman adventure through Europe, questing with interesting teams in interesting places, and living the life of a wandering manager.
Will any house rules govern your career?
I’m glad you asked, because there are a few. I’m not interested in false greatness, and feel that stories with ups and downs are more interesting than stories of just up. To that, I’m not looking for any advantages. Attribute masking is on, of course. I won’t be downloading killer tactics, no editing the database, no watching videos to learn of hidden wonderkids, no save scumming to get better results. In short, what happens happens, and if that means I spend 20 years stuck in the Vanarama South League, so be it. I hear the bars are pretty good at some of those clubs.
How often will you be posting?
In addition to managing digital football players, I’ve got a real job and real family, so I’ll be moving at a modest pace. The goals is shortly daily updates five days a week, each update covering roughly a month of one season. That’ll be 10 updates to a season, 2 seasons played in a month of real world time. That’s a pace I can keep up. I’ll start shortly after FM20 releases on November 19.
Anything else to know?
I’m creating a Lets Play video series for this career and will post details as they come together.
What’s next?
Waiting for the official release on this Tuesday, November 22. Fingers crossed that the next update will have my career underway with job offers from some newly promoted teams in the Vanarama regional leagues.
"Moving at a modest pace...five updates a week".
Good job you're not going hell for leather then (gets visions of earth going backward, like an old Star Trek episode).
I look forward to reading this.
Bonne chance Godzilla Blitz! The Dafuge challenge is so great.
When I tried it I always found the first season the most difficult of the ones in the lower leagues; starting off without the scouting structure in place (yes, I still relied on scouts because I'm not sifting through players one-by-one manually).
For the ignorant amongst us, what is the Dafuge challenge ?
That might have just been patched - my game was updated this morning (UK time) and now I've just had another 280mb patch.
EDIT - Just booted it up for the first time...."AAARRGHHH, MY EYES, THOSE BADGES", sorry, not swapped in all my mods yet.
Aaaanndd...City have no players with 1 determination. Not even John Stones.
Right, I seem to remember last year that moving all my kits etc folders did the trick. Off I go, I can't start like this
Personally I'd go for Nuneaton Borough for that spare £4.5k in the salary budget. Then trawl the loan list to find a handful of players who'll help gain a foothold in the division.
But their fans sound mean so perhaps they deserve to get relegated anyway!
Ashton United - how can you not love a ground with the Sid Sykes Stand? You can almost see the flat caps and smell the Deep Heat from here.
I may be too late, but +1 for Ashton United. East Thurrock and Nuneaton Borough are a bit too far south for my taste.
Nuneaton Borough.
1) better salary for you (tied with ET) - look out for #1 man, no else is going to!
2) more team budget - p sure that is important in soccer
3) hey at least there is some transfer budget - i think that is important in soccer?
4) lowly goals - just staying up will be totes awesome
5) can make fans eat their laughs
Uhh... what is that bear doing? Does this thread need to be labelled NSFW?
Roke wrote:Uhh... what is that bear doing? Does this thread need to be labelled NSFW?
Hahahah! EXACTLY!
If I pick them, we might need a better, custom, safe for kiddies logo.
I'd like to change my vote to Nuneaton Borough because I think that logo's hilarious and I had only looked up where the teams were located when I did my vote.
DEAR LORD WE CAN SEE YOUR FACE
Looks like you're on track to stay up!
Club
We’ve yet to have a week with less than two matches.
After a few (real) years of playing mostly PL teams in FM18 and 19, I'd forgotten how hectic the schedule is in the lower leagues. It makes for some interesting/desperate decisions of course, so it's a fun challenge trying to manage the situation with a small squad with no depth in the U23s or U18s.
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