Football Manager Series Catch-All

davet010 wrote:

England -...or maybe Chester.

My hometown club! Well, technically Wrexham is closer but as I'm not Welsh i'm not allowed to support them...

Brazil lower divisions are right there

Watched BM play Freiburg in the Bundesliga on TV just now, and there was a little thread of connections to my managerial decisions there...

Plea, who I sold because he couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo - misses 2 chances then gets sent off.

Ginter, who I sold because he was always losing his opponent - switches off at a free kick and Freiburg score their goal.

I don't recognise any of the other players from when I took (take?) over in 2024.

Plea was a really promising prospect in real life until a pair of knee injuries. Really a shame.

So I've moved onto a Red Star FC save after abandoning Spain because of their BS 3rd division. Using the same 4-4-2 I've used in my last two saves with a bit of tweaking along the way. Never thought I"d be a 4-4-2 guy in FM again (the last time was FM06) but the way I'm set up is just so satisfying.

First season in the Champpionnat National I cruised to the title thanks to my 5th-highest wage budget. Things were going so well I had matches on "only commentary." and did my customary vacation between matches.

Second season in Ligue 2 my wingers were my two top scorers and we managed to get through the promotion playoffs (which is pretty neat in France) to get to League One well ahead of schedule. Didn't think we'd get there, our attacking play in the first half of the season was so poor, but I managed to bring in a couple strikers on loan and things worked out.

Just finished my Ligue 1 season... and we won 4 matches and finished bottom with a -50 GD. I vacationed after we fell 10 points behind 18th place in February. Not surprising given our wage bill was half the next lowest spending team and we only had 3 players of "Decent Player in League one" standard and everyone else was below that. Did finish 3rd in the league in possession% which was nice, and we had a really good midfield but our strikers sucked and defenders weren't good enough (and my two good CB seemed to hate each other).

Mandate from the board for our season back in Ligue 2 is to merely finish midtable, which tells you how little of a chance we had.

Season 10 is in the books, with Borussia limping over the line to win the title by 4 points from the Forces of Evil. As with last season, Bayern suffered an unexpected loss to put us out of sight, so that was nice. Losing to our rivals 1FC Koln in the cup final wasn't quite so nice, but we were well outplayed - I suspect party time had lasted well into the previous week.

Only disappointment was a 2-1 loss to Chelsea in the CL semi-final - we were 1-0 up from the home leg, but I rested our new ML (£80m from Spurs in Jan) for the league game, and his ex-wonderkid replacement decided he didn't fancy playing the full game so got sent off after 60 mins when we were only 1-0 down. We would have played City in the final as well, which I think would have put the cap on my career. As it turned out, they beat Chelsea 1-0, then celebrated by sacking the manager the day after. They then offered me the interview (again), but when the previous coach won 2 Carabao Cups, the Europa League and the CL in his 2 seasons, you might start to think that expectations are a little high..

So, what next? Well, I've got some new wonderkids, and a new AML who I signed from Marseilles for a bargain £80m (don't worry, the previous £80m AML can also play on the right - in fact he's slightly better there). Arsenal have just put Phil Foden on the list, so I offered £35m plus my current AMR, Harvey Elliott, who is valued at £60m. Apparently Arsenal will accept either £80m or £68m plus Harvey, so I guess Phil is staying put. My Board are now blocking every non-German bid I put in, so I've had to tweak my scouting assignments. Still, if tapping up German wonderkids was good enough for Bayern for 40 years, then let's see how I go on.

Of course, I might just unofficially retire with my haul of medals, and start afresh. I really am thinking about Chester - I'll just need to have a look if they are in the SI database, which I think goes down to tier 6 in England, or whether I'll need to find a mod with even lower tiers.

Wrapped up the 2022/23 season in my Red Star save, and we coasted to the league title to win promotion back to Ligue 1.

More notable is we had a takeover happen. They haven't pumped much money into the club ( and our "future stadium plans" is still "searching for a site") but hopefully they'll get the new stadium built sometime. My big complaint is they went out and spent £1.4m on a central midfielder who's merely okay, I could have done a lot better putting that towards Bosman wages.

Expectations for next season are merely "Battle bravely against relegation", so I shouldn't get sacked. Life as a yo-yo club hasn't been too bad.

davet010 wrote:

Of course, I might just unofficially retire with my haul of medals, and start afresh. I really am thinking about Chester - I'll just need to have a look if they are in the SI database, which I think goes down to tier 6 in England, or whether I'll need to find a mod with even lower tiers.

Nice job. Chester sounds like a good, new challenge. Doesn't seem to be much more you can do at Gladbach.

So, here I am at Chester...the school chair behind the Ikea desk is a nice touch.

My squad is, how should I put this, sh1te. Except for the goalkeepers, who are really sh1te. Apart from the one we sent out on loan to Mossley, for some reason.

I'm two friendlies in, a 2-2 draw vs Accrington (not getting too excited, most of Accies players were wearing squad numbers more usually associated with American Football), and a 5-3 win against Dalbeattie Star, who have no info and therefore must be below tier 6. So I'm a bit bemused as to why my suggestion that we'll need to play better in the real season demotivated half of the team. I'm guessing it's because they are semi-professional...I just wish they'd use the 'professional' part while they are here, rather than when they are plastering walls or whatever.

I've got 4 players rated at 5 stars. They must either be using the 20 star measurement grid, or else they are using a bag of cement as the benchmark. Certainly 20kg of Blue Circle's finest would be quicker over the ground than my CB. And control a ball better.

Tactically - tiki-taka, I think. Nah, just kidding, we're going with wing play, assuming I can find anyone who can actually play WM. On either side.

I nipped up the road to see Pep, to see whether he'd send me any of their u-23 or u-18s, adding helpfully that some of them will probably live closer to our ground than the Etihad. Let's just say that he wasn't keen on the idea, and leave it at that.

According to my bio, I played for England 64 times and scored 23 goals. I wonder if I can beat Stanley Matthews' record...

In my Red Star save back in Ligue 1 for the 2023/34 season, predicted to finish 20th and... we cruise to a 10th-place finish plus getting to the quarterfinal of the Coupe de France. Our board finally started building a new stadium, to be completed in 2026. The midfielder I complained about my board signing last summer is actually my best player, so I should shut my mouth once in a while.

I've begun my customary wheeler-dealer...ing. Buying and selling players not so much because it improves my team (though it usually does), but because there's value to be found that can be extracted a later date. I'm still mostly powered by Bosmans.

Sold our starting right-back for £10.75m (I should probably be using Euros, eh)? We're also down to one ex-Newcastle player, Yannick Touré, with me selling Rolando Aarons and Jacob Murphy this summer.

With my transfer dealings (other than loaning out extras) pretty much done it seems we're predicted to finish 17th this season. I expect to easily outperform that.

Roke wrote:

With my transfer dealings (other than loaning out extras) pretty much done it seems we're predicted to finish 17th this season. I expect to easily outperform that.

Guess how many points I got from my first 9 matches in the season last night:

Spoiler:

2

Pride goeth before a fall

Lord, I tried to get back into this today, but we just went 0-1-2 over three games, with opposition GKs playing an average of a 7.4 and us outshooting the opposition 58-19 (over those three games, we had 9 CCCs, the opposition had 2). My tolerance for getting FM'd in the same damn way (their goalies stop everything, they score on absolute thunderbolt no-stopping it shots) is wearing profoundly thin.

I actually did my first reload in ages on that last one, after we lost to Aston Villa on 30-yard thunderbolts from their Right Back and youth team midfielder, but David Soria stopped three separate clean-through one-on-one chances. If anything, I think GK reflexes are massively overpowered in FM, and I still think they've artificially made strikers horrible at finishing one-on-ones to prevent scores from becoming unrealistic.

A super weird thing I have noticed is how BAD the AI is at reacting to a new tactic, and how that converts to more goals. Like, it's not simply that they're unprepared and haven't "scouted you," your strikers are literally 10x more capable (I pulled out a brand-new tactic on Lyon in the CL once and hammered them 8-0), as opposed to the 2nd or 3rd time the AI faces the tactic when, in my experience, suddenly the opposition GK becomes f*cking Spiderman. You might still dominate, but suddenly, the goals just won't go in.

Eh, whatever, I'm venting now.

I feel you, Pred. I'm still struggling in my Red Star save right now.

I expected us to be a bit worse at the back because I replaced all of my starting defenders (and they're quite young), but I kept my starting midfield (except for one guy I panic-bought after losing my first 5) and forwards intact and they just aren't scoring anywhere near as much as last season. We're 18th on January 1st.

Every time I think I'm out they pull me back in...

A friend just gifted me FM2020 so I guess it's time to start a new LLM game with my good old Blyth Spartans.

Prozac wrote:

Every time I think I'm out they pull me back in...

A friend just gifted me FM2020 so I guess it's time to start a new LLM game with my good old Blyth Spartans.

Nice! Let us know how it goes.

I'm back on my Newcastle bullsh*t again. Started a new save a while back where I didn't let myself buy anyone in the first transfer window so I wouldn't just buy the likes of Viktor Fischer again. Would have disabled the first transfer window but I wanted to be able to unload some deadwood.

I've given up on my Chester save - I only got 6 games into the season (and we were 2nd, on 4-1-1), but I didn't really feel any connection with it, and the players were awful. I think that SI really did a good job simulating the horrendous standard.

So, I needed something else to rekindle my FM20. Then I was flicking through the football news on Sunday, and it came to me.....resurrecting Hamburg SV. One of the fallen giants of European football, now condemned to a 3rd season in 2.Bundesliga. Needed a point at home (to the team in 10th) in the last game to get to the relegation/promotion playoff, had 71% possession...and got battered 1-5.

The last game in the Bundesliga after 55 years ended up like this. This is not how to be remembered.

IMAGE(https://akm-img-a-in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/images/story/201805/2018-05-12T164330Z_1256534473_RC131BB4F440_RTRMADP_3_SOCCER-GERMANY-HSV-BMG.png?CGOMp2Jhv9TNZnXnDNsK1alcq.RaZ4KX)

So it's time for some new(ish) blood. Time to restart the massive stadium clock which showed the minutes since the last relegation, and to get the dinosaur dancing again. Or at least off his fat arse.

IMAGE(https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/60b94b9b9eaf1e3715e23c60f071f856/pah-44541534.jpg)

FC Arrogant, we're coming for you. Not just yet, but soon. Ish.

Is there a tutorial on video or text format that is generally suggested? So much of the media surrounding this series is clickbait trash or rehash. I'm particularly interested in creating a team and building it over time.

What about Germany draws you to managing them so much Dave? Is it just taking down Bayern?

Kronen wrote:

Is there a tutorial on video or text format that is generally suggested? So much of the media surrounding this series is clickbait trash or rehash. I'm particularly interested in creating a team and building it over time.

You're right about that. I felt like I was watching Fifa FUT videos when I was looking around for something to explain the training system to me. I thought this dude was okay though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keX3...

I just find Germany a little more open than, say, Spain / Italy, and with more interesting teams down in BL2 or 3. In my last game, where I'd finished season 11, BM have tended to drop off a little even when I wasn't helping them, whereas PSG won Ligue.1 every year, Juventus won every year bar one and La Liga went between the usual suspects. I obviously can't manage any other English league team than City, and I've done Scotland to death over the last few years, both with Celtic and a couple of saves with Rangers when they were down in Div 3.

Plus, who doesn't love grinding the Fat Jailbird's face into the dirt by beating them 4-1 and assuring yourself of your 3rd straight title. I'd even left a pair of handcuffs on his seat to remind him of his holiday at the German taxpayer's expense, as well as a brown envelope for Der Kaiser.

Video wise, I'd recommend stuff from Work the Space or FM Scout for things on training, tactics, custom views etc. If you want series to watch of games played, then our very own Zilla Blitz is doing one taking a team through the English Leagues, Doctorbenjy FM is doing one where he's trying to win trophies in the 5 major European leagues in a 20 year window, and GoldenFM did a series in FM19 where he created a club to see how far he could take it - the first couple of episodes went through creation, if I remember correctly.

Just saw an epic FMing.

Blyth, Vanarama North side Vs. Fulham, Sky Bet Championship team.

FA Cup 3rd round.

first leg, Blyth scraped a 1-1 draw away.

Second leg was televised at home and went 3-3 at the end of extra time and Blyth took it on penalties.

I'm managing Blyth

70k in TV revenue and 130K for getting to 4th round for a 6th flight part time team is kinda crazy.

And I've just had one.

Preseason in my new Hamburg save.

First game of our Austrian tour. SV Worgl (Tyrolean league...exactly) vs Hamburg.

Shots : 2 - 30
On target : 1(yes, wait for it) - 8
Corners : 0 -12
Possession : 32 - 68

Score...1-0

Although, in fairness, this isn't a million miles away from the rest of our preseason form, where we've been beaten 1-0 by Middlesbrough and somehow won 2-1 against some other Austrian regional team.

We're second favourites to go up, and one of my strikers is 2-1 to win the golden boot. He's played 4 games and not scored yet. There's more chance of the dinosaur scoring...

Transfer business is now fast and furious. BM decided that Sven Ulreich (GK) was surplus to requirements, so I've snapped him up for £3m because he was light years ahead of what we already had. I'm now playing the loan market to find a striker who can actually finish, I'm sure there were some wonderkids hiding out in the depths of the Italian league.

EDIT - The Bundesliga authorities have turned down my attempts to register Hermann the Dinosaur as a Big Saurus Up Front, pointing out that he isn't actually human. My protestations that this didn't seem to matter when they allowed Lothar Matthaus to play cut no ice.

I'm starting the season with two on-loan 19 year old CBs (Beyer from Borussia, who I sold in an alternate reality, and Garcia from City), an 18 year old DM from Man U (James Garner, who usually goes on to have a good career), and a FW (Lukas Hinterseer) who has appeased the registration authorities by being human. Although he has spent most of the time in our summer friendlies sunning himself on rocks, rather than, y'know, scoring goals.

So after getting all that TV revenue and prize money I went to my board. I had spent the first 3/4 of the season about 2k over my wage budget (spending about 7k instead of the 5k budget).

The board loved everything I was doing except controlling the wage budget.

I asked them to increase the wage budget and they refused because of my history of being unable to control the budget.

So... I asked them to increase the transfer budget. They said they'd LOVE to increase my transfer budget.

I immediately dumped the new transfer budget into wages and all of a sudden the Shrewd Spender achievement is unlocked

Soooo...my FW who I compared to a lazy lizard. Scores in our first 5 games in a row, all of which we win. Guess I am the great motivator.

And you know when you make one of those transfer deals where your finger hovers over the 'confirm' button for ages? I offered AC Milan £3.3m for 33 year old Lucas Biglia, who was listed. He wanted 120k per week (no one else is on more than 60k), so I ummd and aahhhd for a while, then signed him up and put him at the base of our midfield triangle. He's running the show every week, with quality dead ball delivery and an obvious experienced presence. Only lasts about 75-80 mins, but at the moment we're ahead at that point so I swap him out for our 20 yr old BWM and job's a good un.

There's a long way to go, but there's some cautious optimism.

davet010 wrote:

Soooo...my FW who I compared to a lazy lizard. Scores in our first 5 games in a row, all of which we win. Guess I am the great motivator.

Make that 10 games in a row. It's a good job he's scoring, because no one else is - the next best player has 2, and he's now out for 4 months.

We're 8-1-0 though. Hinterseer now reminds me a little of Jamie Vardy, some taps in then in our last game away to Regensburg (5th) we were 1-0 down in the 85th minute, then he ran on to a chip over the defence wide on the right hand side of the box and lashed it past the keeper while I was still wondering who he was going to centre it to.

2.Bundesliga seems quite easy on the players from a fitness perspective - there's only 34 games in the league and one cup competition. I'm currently cycling players in and out of playing for the u-19s to keep them fit.

So now that I'm reading a lot again I'm not playing as much FM. I do have a Union Berlin save going.

Except after failing to last past January in 3 saves with different tactics and transfers I decided to start a new save, Holiday Man my way through the first season, and then add my self to manage the now relegated Union.

Fuelled by Bosmans we finished 2nd in 2.Bundesliga in my first season. At the winter break in my 2nd season we were 2nd in the Bundesliga with 33 points from 16 matches. I'm pretty pleased.

Using a slightly modified version of my Queen's Park 4-4-2. If the inverted wingback would only invert when the ball.crossed halfway it would be perfect.

So my 2022/23 season was frustrating. My strikers didn't score for about three-fifths of it but we ended up finishing 11th and winning the Europa Conference League.

2023/24, however, was something special. IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdVV3vQWsAE9hc0?format=png&name=large)

Won away at Bayern on the last day of the season to clinch it.

(scans down BL table for FC Arrogant...)

14th !! What sort of brave and wonderful world is this?

Congrats on winning the BL by 2024, by the way. Are you ready for the CL, or is there some heavy work to be done over summer ?

davet010 wrote:

(scans down BL table for FC Arrogant...)

14th !! What sort of brave and wonderful world is this?

I tend to be in my own bubble when playing FM, not paying much attention to what goes on around me but I did take a closer look last night. Their league finishes are:

2019/20: 2nd
2020/21: 3rd
2021/22: 1st (and the German Cup for a double)
2022/23: 9th
2023/24: 14th

Marco Rose is the only manager they've had last over a year (1 year, 215 days) and he was the dude who won the double.

Their transfer business doesn't look too great to me. Between 20/21 and 20/22 they spent big fees on Coutinho €95m (who I just signed on a Bosman for 2 years), Ruben Neves €64m, Ivan Perisic €20m, Antony Martial €61m, Malcolm €32m and Benjamin Henrichs €35m with only Neves really working out as a good starter-calibre player.

After missing out on Europe in 2022/23 there was a massive exodus of their prime-age players. Looking at their squad right now, they still have plenty of high-value guys and should be better but most of them are 27-29. If they don't get back into the Champions League in a few years things are going to get really interesting.

Congrats on winning the BL by 2024, by the way. Are you ready for the CL, or is there some heavy work to be done over summer ?

I think we'll be fine with the Champions League football, I'll be doing my usual 1st XI/2nd XI split between league and cups to load manage. The Europa League and Europa League/Conference league in our past couple seasons boosted our coefficient and made me have a bigger squad. Not expecting to get out of the group stage, but hopefully we can finish 3rd and play in the Europa knockout stages.

Of course we were only given a £13m transfer budget and £1m/week wage budget so I had to sell off a bunch of surplus players, most of which were bought cheaply and loaned out over the past couple season (last season we signed 17 players in the summer window)

Roke wrote:

So my 2022/23 season was frustrating. My strikers didn't score for about three-fifths of it but we ended up finishing 11th and winning the Europa Conference League.

That sounds like what my strikers do too. I don't think I've had one guy have a good solid season. Had some great half seasons though.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Roke wrote:

So my 2022/23 season was frustrating. My strikers didn't score for about three-fifths of it but we ended up finishing 11th and winning the Europa Conference League.

That sounds like what my strikers do too. I don't think I've had one guy have a good solid season. Had some great half seasons though. :)

Yeah, my main goal-scorer is Rhian Brewster. He's been top scorer in the Bundesliga twice and 3rd another time but sometimes you just get a prolonged dry spell. Had him on loan for 4-and-one-match seasons going back to my first season in 2.Bundesliga and only brought him permanently in the summer window of 2024/25 season.

My board are quite stingy with the wage budget and transfer funds but I asked them to sign him permanently and they spent €33m on Brewster and then €30m on a wonderkid leftback in January when I requested they sign him.

Oh, and Bayern Munich finished 11th in 2024/25. You hate to see it.

And season 1 of my Hamburg save is in the books. We went up as champions, 9 points ahead of Stuttgart and Bochum. We stumbled after the winter break, my main striker deciding that scoring 15 goals before Xmas meant he'd done his bit for the year, and he ended up with only 20. I only signed one of my 4 loanees in the end (for £25m) just before the end of the season...and he proceeded to break his leg in preseason. Luckily enough, a versatile player that I've had in other saves (Tin Jedvaj) was put up for sale by his club for under £5m, so I've snapped him up - not bad for a player clutching a EURO winners medal with Croatia.

Now it's on to the Bundesliga. We're predicted to finish 14th, but I still think the squad needs a lot of work. I've signed a player called Herbie Kane on a Bosman from Liverpool, but there's something nagging at my mind when I look at his portrait...I've got a feeling that I had him in one of my FM19 saves, and that he collected more cards than a Las Vegas dealer. I was going to pair him with the classy Biglia and a BBM called Kinsombi, but the latter picked up 3 reds and 14 yellows last year when no one else on my team got more than 5, so I'm thinking that might not be a pairing that is going to fly in 1.BL. I also picked up an Argentinian striker called Gonzalez, who came in on June 30, dropped his bags in the foyer and announced he was off to play in the Olympics. He's back now, but not match fit and I've not seen him player, so he can park his backside in the touchline Recaros for Bayern.

And of course our first game...is away at FC Arrogant. Still, get that out of the way, and then start trying to collect enough points to stay up.

Observations from elsewhere.

- Title winners were the usual suspects. City won by 12 pts (Spurs were second), PSG, BM, Juventus, RM, Ajax etc. Liverpool won the CL on pens over City, after a 2-2 draw in which Liverpool were awarded 2 pens in 4 minutes, after being 2-0 down. Good job I wasn't actually managing City.

- Fernandinho was sold to Juventus, for £4.5m. Blimey, I'd have paid more than that if I'd known he was on offer. City then replaced him with Declan Rice, for £71m. Hmm.

- City welcomed Forest back to the Premiership. By beating them 10-1. Still, I guess things can only improve from there.