AND we managed to qualify for the Europa League playoffs (sure, we went 3-2-3, but 11 points gets you in!)
Favorable draws and all, but... uh.....
(This is the single greatest run I've ever had at a club in FM, ever.)
Helldivers 2 smashed a massive democracy-shaped hole in my playing time, but I have been slowly progressing through my journeyman save. There's no way I could get to sleep after spending an hour running for my life on a bug planet, so I usually play one or two games of FM an evening to calm down.
Then I end up shouting energetically at my tiny pixel players instead.
Timely then, that the games I played last night might finally have given me full control over the destination of the Japanese title this season.
Never mind the madness in Nagoya, Kashima losing away to C-Osaka means that even if they beat me in Kashima in two weeks I'll still have a four point buffer.
Kashima and Shonan are the two defeats on my record this year. I also lost the Super Cup to Kashima and got knocked out of the first round of the FA Cup equivalent by Shonan. So I don't really want to see either of those teams again this year.
Home Grown rules are pretty strict in Japan - in league games you have to have five players in the matchday squad who were trained for three years at the club before they turned 20.
This means you can turn foreigners into "HGC" players if you buy them in young enough and I do have some nice Japanese youth players coming through, but right now I'm finding ther HGC rules harder than the "5+1" foreigner rule.
As a result, I'm using the money from consistent Asian Champions League qualification to just pluck promising young Japanese players off any teams that are mid-table and below. In three seasons I'll be swimming in home grown players and the rest of the league will be in tatters.
/Evil laugh.
Video: How a Video Game You’ve Never Played Changed the Biggest Sport on Earth.
I can't just embed the youtube video because doing so is blocked by the French Farmers League, which is great.
Never mind the madness in Nagoya, Kashima losing away to C-Osaka means that even if they beat me in Kashima in two weeks I'll still have a four point buffer.
Kashima did beat me, 1-0. Then they beat me 2-1 in the League Cup Final too.
That league defeat and a 2-2 away to Iwata put the pressure back on us to have to win games to seal the title, but then Iwata came to my rescue as they drew 1-1 with Kashima the same week we scraped a 1-0 victory away at soon-to-be-relegated Shimazu.
As a result, when we won the "Tama River Clasico" against Kawasaki Frontale it guaranteed us the Championship, even though Kashima battered Shimazu 4-0.
Including the two cup competitions, Kashima beat us four times this season, but finished two points behind us in the league, as Tokyo FC win their first ever J1 Championship.
UPDATE:
Just had the most astonishing game of my FM life.
Playing Trabzonspor, we went down 3-0 in 30 minutes. Told the team the game was done at the half, we came out, immediately scored 1.
Made some subs, then at 61 and 62 minutes, scored to tie it. Amazing. I don't think I've ever come back from 3-0 down before.
My turn now. Slight, bottle-throwing aneurism at half time, followed by mass substitutions on the hour. Followed by...
Cha actually hit the post twice too, or he could have had five goals in a 35 minute cameo.
Away goals still count double in the Asian Champions League, so I'm likely to still have trouble in the second leg, but at least it's not 0-3 trouble.
I won the second leg of that Champions League game 4-2, with Ji-Seong Cha scoring another hattrick. Pathum were probably sick of him.
I then made a remarkable run all the way to the Champions League final where I ran into Al-Ittihad... and suffered about the most one-sided 3-1 defeat imaginable. I really wasn't in it.
So then the following year I made the Champions League final again. And got Al-Ittihad again.
They're paying Emile Smith-Rowe a base wage of eighty-six million Dollars a year.
I made a very aggressive attacking tactic, but then chickened out right before the game and went back to a much safer shell. The first leg was at home and I didn't want to go too crazy and potentially just lose the tie right there and then, so caution won out.
Then I conceded a goal on 11 minutes, so said "screw it" and switched to the bananas balls-out strategy and...
I just have to avoid a six-nil defeat in the return leg and losing on away goals.
The upside to playing in Turkey is, with some smart transfers, it's not that hard to win a title.
So, it's the summer of 2027, and thanks to Galatasaray, Fenerbache and Besiktas having shit seasons, we just pulled off a league and cup double.
This is supposed to be a journeyman game though, and despite the fact that I now haev three trophies under my belt, including an astonishing Europa League triumph, I can't get a job anywhere decent.
No PL clubs will take me, and I've only gotten two interviews, from Freiburg and Empoli.
I almost took the Freiburg job, but we're in the Champions League now, and Freiburg isn't. Like, yes, the league is a major step up but... continental soccer!
So now I'm in a tough place. I want out, I think I've just about achieved all that is realistic with a Turkish club. But even with my pedigree, no big PL clubs are calling me (although I suspect that's in part because I don't have a Continental Pro License yet).
Maybe one more year at Iskenderunspor, see how far we can go in the CL, and then, hopefully, a new gig in summer of 2028?
I'm just arrogant enough to think that, with my record already, a pretty decently-sized club should take a flyer on me. But I also wonder if Freiburg was pretty much "as good as it was gonna get."
Were Freiburg in the Bundesliga 1 or 2 ? If they were in the Bundesliga, I would have taken it because if you do even semi-decent, you're likely to get a move in season 2. At that point, you're getting noticed in a league with a higher rep - who knows, given FC Arrogant's nightmares in getting a new manager, you might end up in the Allianz Arena.
Bundesliga 1.
But, honestly, if i'm trying to RP this slightly, I wouldn't feel good about not following in Xabi Alonso's footsteps.
Like, it's our first-ever title, I kinda gotta stay for the first-ever CL run. Maybe, if we go back to back, I'll get an even better offer?
FM update:
Just drew Barcelona 2-2 in the first leg of our Round of 16 tie.
More importantly, however, after getting my Continental Pro license, I've gotten a new job offer, which I took:
Sevilla !
One of the great underachievers of La Liga - good luck with that !
Home sick so my wife and I binged season 1 of Ted Lasso and it gave me a hankering to fire up some LLM FM again. Haven't got the time or energy to put into it, but the thought was there.
I think that, then I remember that I don't like the bloated mess it has become, so just now googling older Championship Manager games, those were the days.
Sevilla !
One of the great underachievers of La Liga - good luck with that !
So, we started the year five games unbeaten, and then immediately lost 3-0 away to Barcelona.
But considering this team finished 12th last year, a 4-1-1 start that puts us in 4th is a pretty damn good start.
My biggest issue, thus far, is that I've got three center-backs considered starters (one is a star player), but our tactic only uses two, and two of em' don't perform well together!
Not fancy going to 3-5-2 or 3-4-3 ?
I was a 3-5-2 merchant at Iskenderunspor, it was time for a change.
Also, the tactic I had been using was just completely not going to work with Sevilla's squad. I would've had a revolt on my hands.
On a lark, I started again after having some journeyman realizations.
dejanzie, you'll be pleased to note that your post in the BG3 thread wasn't totally wrong.
Football Manager 2024 is about to be free on Epic - it unlocks tomorrow, 9/5.
I'm really waiting on that FM 25 gameplay reveal now. We're two months out from what should be the release (FM is usually a November drop).
I don't even have super-high expectations, I think the new engine is going to come with a ton of bugs and hiccups... but I'm still really curious to see what they do with it.
Pred, they put out an update just a few hours ago. Release date is being pushed back a couple of weeks, among other news.
The FM25 development cycle has been challenging for the whole team. We knew that moving the entire game to the Unity engine was going to be a complex endeavour. As we’ve gotten deeper into the process and gained learnings, it’s fair to say it’s been trickier than we originally anticipated. The entire dev team has been challenged in a myriad of new ways and are doing an incredible job in the process. I’m excited to eventually share our hard work with you but we need a little more time before we can do that.
Oh, it's gonna be so wonderfully buggy. I'm excited. I hope we get some FIFA 24-style weirdness.
I know their business model wouldn't allow it, but I'd be okay if they took the year off to really polish it and release it in 2025.
Ooooh, no early access Beta for FM 25.
Yeah, I think that if there's ever been a year to skip a FM release, this is it. All the signs so far point to this game being rough on release, which, frankly, is what I was kind of expecting.
Like, whenever a new console drops, the first Madden/2K/whatever on it is usually pretty "eh" as they get used to the new engine and new capabilities. FM 25 sounds a lot like tha tright now, like it's gonna feel half-done on release.
Looks like it's going back into the oven for a while - as in March 2025
Still, maybe I can get another save going.
Pretty neat they read my post though.
I never get to do this though, but looking at my last two posts? I f*ckin' called it.
Looking at the discourse online, this is revealing, again, that some Gamers (TM) know nothing about the industry they enjoy the fruit of and how it works.
But also, delaying a game a second time for what is now a total of 6 months, just a single week after making it available to pre-order so people will buy in is... uh... a very bad look. At least they are offering refunds though.
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