Football Manager

[mack]

Started a new game.

 

FC United Manchester.

 

Currently in the Conference (aka Blue Square Premier aka Division 5).

 

Going okay

 

Just found this random regenerated player who doesn't appear to have been created at a club!

[JackDoff]

Started a new game.FC United Manchester.Currently in the Conference (aka Blue Square Premier aka Division 5).Going okay :)Just found this random regenerated player who doesn't appear to have been created at a club!

Is this a PC game only or can you get it for PS4? cos I'm stuck playing Witcher 3 n I need a change! GT Sport isn't out yet either ffs!!!

[mack]

PC only.

 

I suppose there is a similar thing in FIFA probably.

[mack]

My game so far has gone:

2012/13 - 6th Division North - 12th

13/14 - 6th Division North - 12th again

14/15 - 6th Division North - Winners (promotion)

15/16 - 5th Division - 6th (1 point from promotion play-off spots)

16/17 - 5th Division - 4th place (lost promotion play-off semi-final on penalties)

18/19 - 5th Division - Winners (promotion)

19/20 - League 2 - 4th Place, won promotion play-off.

 

A back to back promotion to take us into League 1, was not expecting that at all, we cruised to an upper midtable spot but went on a huge late run losing one 1 game in our last 15, ended up just missing out on automatic promotion but destroyed Gateshead 8-1 on aggregate in the semi-final, then beat Ebbsfleet 2-0 in the play-off final.

 

Will be an interesting next season.

[DinoPresinger]

Still play FM 2011 occasionally. Not sure if I'll get 2018. 7 years is probably a big enough gap that O can justify the purchase

[mack]

Haven't played in a while but the last week or so I've gone back.

Our first season in League 1 went great, we finished in the play-offs but lost the final. Not too big a deal.

After 8 games in season 2020/21 we're in 1st with 22 points and a game in hand on 2nd placed Barnsley.

Two major signings have helped us, bought in a welsh 22 year old Right Winger who is insanely quick and really good for this level. He's probably really worth mid-table Championship level material at worst. He's got a high free kick rating and the shoots FK with power preferred move and he's smashed in a couple howitzers. Second one was a 21yo scottish central defender from Rangers with great potential. 

I still have the 15 year old regen from the first post on this page, obviously he's older, just turned 19. So far he's scored 71 league goals in 129 appearances. He's had top EPL clubs like City, Chelsea, United interested but he's recently got a new 4 year contract and setting his price to £100 million has kept people away.

We've also gone on an amazing cup run in the League Cup. First round smashed another League 1 side, 2nd round we beat EPL team Swansea 4-1, 3rd round we just beat Championship Peterborough in a ridiculous game.

[mack]

Lost 1-0 against Manchester City in the FA Cup. 92nd minute, City play a long ball, my central defender goes back, and instead of booting it out for a throw in, he takes control, loses it to Dzeko, and then fouls him in the area for a red card & penalty that Dzeko scores.    

[theguyyouwishyouwere]

so do you actually control the players during the game or do you just do the manager stuff?

[mack]

You just do the manager stuff. Which comes in handy when something goes wrong, it's not your own fault.

[mack]

So long Klopp.

[mack]

Season 2020/21 is in the books, and we're going up to the Championship.

We started well until suffering a horrid dip around round 10 which saw us drop as far as 7th, but stabilised, and made a late push (helped in part by having games in hand) that saw us win the League 1 title by 3 points over Nottingham Forest.

Had two good cup runs. League Cup we made it to the 4th Round, beating EPL side Swansea in Round 2, then Championship Peterborough in Round 3. Got smashed 4-0 by Manchester City though. FA Cup went all the way to the 6th round, beating EPL Huddersfield in Round 3, then Chelsea in Round 4, QPR (who won Promotion to the EPL this season) in Round 5 before losing 3-0 to Manchester United in the 6th round.

The ground needs to be upgraded to all seater for the Championship so that means we will play at Gigg Lane which has an 11k capacity compared to our clubs 6,000, for the first half of the season. That should mean we get some really good revenue out of the pre-season and big early games.

Bobby Kirk scored 27 goals in the league, putting him up at 91 goals in 158 league games, helped out by attacking midfielder Des Dowling who got 22 assists and player of the season for the league. I also signed a Scottish central defender who managed to get sent off 4 times, missing I think 11 games through suspension. Scored 8 goals at set pieces though so he's good. The two new wingers I bought in were great, scoring 27 goals between them.

Already have 3 new players lined up, a young keeper, a Belgian central defender from Barca that I'll retrain as a defensive midfielder, and a Brazilian central midfielder from Manchester City who came from their youth setup and thus has an English passport. Need at least another right midfielder, and 2 strikers. I'm also looking at potentially getting a right fullback. Some of those will likely be loan signings. I can finally scout in Europe which opens up a lot of potential options for new players.

[mack]

I've been looking for an additional striker all through pre-season, didn't find one, had to use numerous loan signings to get a sub striker.

I'm a few games into the regular season, and since I'm allowed to sign a bunch of scouts (16 lol) and can now scout Europe, I decided to sign a new scout who has knowledge of Spain, Italy, France (Southern Europe) to make it easier to scout those countries. I found a good one with above average scouting for potential and current ability and was cheap enough that he'd join my team.

So the first thing a new scout does is give you a scout report. Normally they are pretty basic and I just skip over them, but this one I took a look at. And see the top player on the list is a 20 year old Spanish striker who just left Real Madrid and couldn't get a gig at Mallorca for some reason. Despite him scoring 15 goals in 37 games in the Spanish second division. He's also rated as 4 star currently ability, about as good as Bobby Kirk, but with 5 star potential which means he could end up one of the best players in the world. I get my best scout (who is also my assistant manager) to double check on him. I figure he's not going to sign a contract, and his initial request is stupid, with massive bonuses for promotion, yearly wage rises. Annoying.

I can offer him £325k per year (the maximum the board will offer as I'm near my salary budget limit), another £100k worth of playing/goal bonuses, and what is practically a guaranteed wage rise by another £100k after he plays just 5 games. The kicker is his greedy agent, so I bump up his agent fee to the maximum of £160k and he accepts. He's already worth £1.6 million. If he gets more game time and training, his core stats could make a huge leap and he could be worth 10's of millions.

All from signing a cheap new scout. 

edit - In his second game he scored a goal then got a bad injury and is out for 2 months

[StringerBellend]

8 hours ago, mack said:

I've been looking for an additional striker all through pre-season, didn't find one, had to use numerous loan signings to get a sub striker.

 

So the first thing a new scout does is give you a scout report. Normally they are pretty basic and I just skip over them, but this one I took a look at. And see the top player on the list is a 20 year old Spanish striker who just left Real Madrid and couldn't get a gig at Mallorca for some reason. Despite him scoring 15 goals in 37 games in the Spanish second division. He's also rated as

Where have I seen that before? 

You have the game set to Popa mode don't you

[JackDoff]

Is Football Manager or something equivalent available on PS4?

[mack]

I think PES has a management mode?

[mack]

I've finished my first season in the Championship. Quite late in the season we were pushing towards automatic promotion if not winning the trophy, but had some horror injuries (one of my starting midfielders did an ACL, he'll still be out till close to next season starting) and it really stopped our momentum. In the end we finished 5th, and went into the play-offs. We cruised past Reading with a 5-3 aggregate win (after a 4-0 first leg), but played horribly in the final against Newcastle.

Despite taking an early lead through an own goal from a corner, we were dominated in terms of shots, and our attack couldn't string passes together. Newcastle had 14 shots to our 4, our big attacking weapons Dowling & Kirk were AWOL, Dowling in particular was dreadful, rating a 5.9 vs the rest of the side at generic 6.9 ratings. We lost 2-1. Our cup runs were bad, lost our 2nd League Cup game to Derby, then straight out of the FA Cup in the 3rd round with a big loss to Manchester City.

I was finally able to get the board to cut down our junior coaching (which has been costing us £2.4 million a season), all it does is improve the ability of the 14/15/16 year old new players, and if you have a season where all of your new regen players are crap (like this season) you've just wasted several million pounds that you could have spent on a good player.

We have £1.9 in the bank heading into the off-season, it will probably drop down to £1.3 by pre-season, will be looking to arrange some good friendlies to make us some cash.

On the squad front our expanded European scouting network will be paying dividends, I have another cadre of high quality youth prospects coming in, 6 players. Three Spaniards, two Frenchmen and 1 Scot. This goes along with the 8 players that joined us in the January transfer window that included 4 Germans. I will probably have less reliance on loan players next season, although as always, I will be on the hunt for good players I don't have to pay for.

[mack]

Had one of the weirdest FM moments in a recent match.

The team had broken down the right flank, cut back inside and fired in a shot. The ball bobbled around near the goal-line, in the scramble the opposition central defender managed to smash it away from goal, but hit it right into Dowling my attacking midfielder, and it rebounded straight into the goal. Celebrations were cut short however, when the goal was disallowed.

Apparently Dowling, in the confusion of trying to get to the ball, had according to the referee, dived in an effort to win a penalty, which is a foul, hence the defender smashing the ball into his face then back into goal was ruled out and Dowling was given a yellow card for simulation.

[theguyyouwishyouwere]

[mack]

Alrightly then, Season 2022/23 is in the books, and FC United have reached the promised land! We are the Champions of the Championship!

After a pretty dismal start, losing on the first day, then getting thrashed 5-0 by Burnley on the 3rd matchday, I thought we would be lucky to make the playoffs. However we quickly stabilised, headed up into the play-off positions, then automatic promotion, then were 1st by Christmas and never gave that spot up. We were helped by our two mid-season rivals Watford & Burnley dropping like rocks in the new year, they were 1st & 2nd in Round 22 but finished the season in 6th & 7th. Blackburn were consistent and eventually joined us in the automatic promotion spots. The last quarter of the season was a drawfest, the last dozen or so games were split between draws & wins, but we had more than enough points, finishing 1st on 96 points, winning promotion with I think 6 rounds to go, then the Championship with 3 left. Blackburn 2nd on 84.

Kirk was once again the key figure, he'll be Captain Kirk next season, but this season he scored 32 goals and got 12 assists (mostly from corners) rated a 7.42 average. Dowling picked up 14 assists and 12 goals and also a 7.42 rating.

The bad news is that Dowling is leaving next year, alongside my key central defender Martin Thorne, who has been a beast from corners, along with really solid defensive work. They both came into the last year of their contracts, and I wasn't even close to having enough salary budget to re-sign them. I may have let Dowling leave anyway as he is now 28 years old. Thorne is 25. On the plus side, I managed to get Derby to give me £650k to sign him, and Dowling I got £250k for, with teams wanting the chance to sign them before the usual contract rundown period opens a couple weeks before the new season starts.

I managed to find a really good defensive midfielder who was superby until he got badly hurt and missed the end of the season. I also have a replacement for Dowling incoming, a Brazilian attacking midfielder who should be twice as good as Dowling. I'll need a new central defender and probably a second choice defensive midfielder.

I will have the same issue with Kirk next year. His contract worth £275k a season (plus bonuses) runs out at the end of next year. To sign a new deal he wants £2.4 million a season plus another £500k in sign-on fees, plus what could be another £400k in bonuses. This is more than my entire current budget. I may try to sell him simply because there's not much chance I can keep him, my second choice striker should be able to step up, and I can probably find just as talented youth strikers to develop. He's valued at £5.75m but could be worth up to £20+ on the market.

We upgraded our stadium to be 8,500 seats, but that should be up to 10k with another planned upgrade. Training facilities should get improved as well.

It's going to be interesting.

[mack]

2023/24 is done, we survived quite well in our first Premier League season. We finished 10th out of 20.

First off I managed to re-sign Kirk, he went through a dip in form, I also managed to do a "sign a new contract or I'll transfer list you" after getting an updated budget. He's our most valuable player, at £8.25m. My second striker Illyas Yilmaz developed really well, he managed to get a better rating than Kirk did, as they kept swapping the starting role, scored 25 goals between them in the league.

League Cup run was decent, made it to the 4th round then lost to Derby, FA Cup we drew Manchester City in our first game and got demolished 4-1.

Pre-season I bought in the usual raft of free transfer players & loans. One paid transfer, the third in our history, £2.2m for Oliver Revell, a 23 year old English attacking midfielder, who I intended on training into a right winger, but due to some injuries to my starting attacking mid Pinga, he played in the hole, scoring 4 goals, 5 assists, 2 motm awards and rated 7.46 for the season. He'll start on the right wing this season but I may put him back in the middle if required. In January I managed to sell a decent but poorly performing right winger to Almeria for £4.5, as well as clearing out some deadwood from the past few years for salary budget reason. End of the season I sold a fullback for £3.3m. That helped our finances considerably.

Our league campaign started quite well, but the middle of the year we were getting hammered, and slipped into the relegation zone with an 8 game streak without winning (and only drawing twice).

After some tactical tinkering, I came up with a variation on our usual 4-4-1-1 formation, a rigid counter-attacking formation, set the defensive line deep, playing wide and quickly. The attack & midfield are set to close down intensively, put in hard tackles (hopefully not getting sent off). The end-result being hopefully turnovers, quickly pushing up the field, and finding our wingers, attacking mid and striker making diagonal runs in behind the defence along with crosses if in a good position.

The second half of the season was better, we went on a 7 game unbeaten run (with 6 victories), including beating Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City. City won the league, as United choked on the final day. They won the FA cup on penalties, then played Newcastle away, losing 1-0 in a dreadfully poor game while City smashed Swansea 4-1.

By the end of the season we had about £21 million in the bank. Which I promptly spent, down to about £45k. Stadium upgrade to 11k, upgrading our training & youth facilities, signing new staff and then incoming transfers, these cost I think 8 million in total, and the board also paid off the entirety of our new stadium loan. We are now making £800,000 a season in sponsorships, but really it's the TV money that brings in the bacon, last season we made £50 million on that alone.

I bought in 10 players. a couple of loans, 3 players on free transfers to bulk up the squad depth, 1 promising youth defender who I sent on loan, and then 4 first team transfers to 

Tsvetelin Nachev from Krasnodar for £4.7 million, a very pace classic left winger. Bram Hoogendoorn, a Dutch central defender, absolutely towers in the air, and has a bit of potential improvement in him, costing £3.2 from Twente. Ruben Spaggiari from Inter for £6m, 18 year old Italian right fullback, physical stats are incredible and has the potential to be a world class player, I had tried to sign a Brazilian but he failed his work permit appeal. The last signing was Martijn Van Dijk, a 21 year old Dutch attacking midfielder/striker, who will be retrained as a winger as a backup to Oliver Revell.

My best transfer however was getting rid of my right midfielder Kevin Jones. He just wasn't good enough for the Premier League and I would have kept him as a backup, except that his contract included a "match highest earner" clause. I'd signed him back in League 1 and he'd performed brilliantly to help us get promoted, then survive the Championship, but he fell off in the 3rd season where we got promoted from the Championship, and obviously not great in the Premier League. The problem was that clause saw him go from the highest earner in the team at about £350,000 a season, all the way to over £1.3 million. Which was stupidly high. I sent out a transfer offer to let him go for free, and Aston Villa signed him up. Got nothing for him, but saved a couple million over 2 years on his wages, got room in my budget back, and got a better replacement.

It will be interesting to see how this side does now. They are unquestionably better than last year, but most teams don't play as openly against you in the second season, so it could be tougher. I wouldn't mind winning the League Cup though. I personally won the Manager of the Year award as well for finishing 10th instead of last as the media predicted.

One last thing, after England lost to Germany 1-0 in the final of the Euros the manager retired. I applied, then got laughed off. And they chose Gareth Southgate. 

[mack]

On 08/07/2017 at 3:08 PM, mack said:

I wouldn't mind winning the League Cup though.

Our first major trophy!

It was like Barca vs Chelsea in the 11/12 CL except I didn't have John Terry to get disgraced. City play this stupid narrow, attacking 4-2-3-1 (they have 2 central defenders, then 3 central attacking midfielders and a striker) and it's such a pain to deal with. In defence I had to tuck in my wingers to cover their left & right attacking mids, got my striker & attacking mid marking their central midfielders. All with man marking so at times I had my whole team on in or around my box.

Scored from a corner, second goal a fast counter from a defensive corner. Spent 60 minutes blocking everything that came our way with 11 behind the ball. City finally scored with a free kick but that was the 94th minute of 4 minutes of stoppage time, last kick of the game.

Now I just need to secure a few more wins in the Premier League and we'll be safe. Also into the 6th round of the FA Cup so we could make a run there.

Having horror injury run as well, lost my keeper and both right fullbacks to long-term injuries, at one point I had to sign an emergency goalkeeper on loan since I had my second GK get hurt a few days after the first one.

[mack]

Season 2024/25 is in the books.

Was a good season. We quickly pushed up to mid-table in the Premier League, securing our position when our injury problems hit. It let me put in a few younger players to get experience. Finished 13th in the end. We got as high as 7th, and never dropped below 14th. Manchester United bottle the league again. On the final day Tottenham as expected smashed the barely survived relegation Southampton, United needed a win against mid-table West Ham. They lost 4-2, finishing on 80 points to Tottenhams 81. United are playing the Champions League final vs Barca as well, so they may have bottled a Treble.

As mentioned above we won our first major trophy in the League Cup. We scraped past League 2 Wrexham on penalties, then beat Sunderland, Blackburn, Blackpool and Birmingham 5-1 on aggregate in the semi-final before the tactical triumph against City. The league cup has an entry slot into the 3rd round of Qualifying for what the game calls the "Euro Cup" but is actually the Europa League.

We also made the FA Cup Final which was surprise. We defeated Reading, Leeds, Chelsea (2-0, helped by a very early red card to Georgino Winjnaldum), West Brom and Swansea in the semi-final. Then got destroyed by Manchester United 4-1. After 60 minutes Kirk had a chance to pull us back to 3-1 with a penalty, but he smashed the crossbar. A minute later United scored their fourth, Joe Spence, a regen and one of the best players in the game, stole the ball from my central defender outside the box, spun around and hit a 25 yard curling rocket into the top far corner.

The start of season transfers were in the last yearly thread, and this year we didn't have a lot of movement. I only signed 1 player in the mid-season window, Antonio Martinovic, a 16 year old Croatian central defender from Dinamo for £850k. I played him a bit in the first team. If he develops right he'll be a world class defender some day. He's already pretty good as well which is nice.

I made £5 million from selling a 3rd choice central midfielder who I bought in on a free transfer at the start of the season. Signed him from Atletico, and sold him back to Valladolid 6 months later. 

My attack is very good, we scored the 6th highest amount of goals behind the big 4 plus Tottenham, but our defence is bad. We are the 6th worst defence in the league.

Our training & youth training facilities were improved, and will be improved once again. Cost for that is around £10 million total. We have also improved our junior recruitment and coaching (improving the chances of getting high ability players and making them better when they arrive).

Our stadium was expanded to 10,284, which is apparently the stadiums expansion capacity, however, upon qualifying for the Europa League, it is going to be expanded again to become up to standard for the European competition. So it's now being upgraded by another 5,529 seats to make it just about 16,000 seats. Once that's done we're going to have to wait until 2036 before we can build another stadium (the game has a hard coded 20 year waiting period between new stadiums and ours was built in-game in 2016). Even after expansion it will still be the smallest stadium in the league by a few thousand. Who knows, maybe we'll get lucky and this expansion will improve it's expansion capacity. We have £15.8 million in the bank.

I'm going to rejigger my tactics a bit, bring in a more defined set of three main tactics. One more defensive set as a 4231 with 2 DMs, my regular 4411 and an attacking 4231 that's pushed up field with the wingers swapped to let them cut inside and shoot.

There's a couple of goalkeepers I'm looking at potentially buying. I might look at another central defender. I do have 2 players coming on free transfers, a French 21 year old midfielder I'll use to improve squad depth, and a blisteringly fast Ukrainian striker who can play on the wing as well.

[mack]

Well this could get interesting.

I'm not sure I really want that to happen though, it kinda hurts the idea of building up the team organically into a big club.

Especially considering the team I'm playing, that would never happen in real life.

[mack]

2025/26 Done. Average season although we did beat our highest finish in the league.

First up, that tycoon takeover collapsed, as did a second potential collapse by another member of the board. It's probable some new takeover bid will occur shortly.

Finished 8th in the league, outside European qualification. Manchester United finally managed to not bottle the league and won by 3 points.

After winning the League Cup last season we were placed into the Europa League 4th Round Qualifier, and were drawn against Rangers. After an hour we are 4-1 up. Game ends 4-3. Not good. Second leg Rangers are 3-1 on the night, 6-5 on aggregate with an away goals advantage. Bobby Kirk steps up. Smashes home a goal in the 69th minute. It's now 6-6. but we're going out on away goals. Time ebbs and flows away, right down to the last minute. Rangers keeper makes a hurried clearance after a tackle sees the ball roll to him, my fullback intercepts, plays a 1-2 with my defensive midfield playmaker, and he fires in a ball to the edge of the box, Kirk makes a run off the shoulder, beats the tackle, then slams it home at the near post to score a 7-6 winner at 92:19 on the clock.

We finished top of our Europa League group with Dynamo Kiev, Spartak Moscow & OFK Beograd (a very eastern Europeans set of opponents), demolished Frankfurt 6-1 on aggregate in the 1st KO Round before falling to Paris Saint-Germain 1-1 on away goals, the 2nd leg was dreadful, 4 shots only, and only 2 on target.

League Cup lost in the 5th round to Manchester City after we beat Huddersfield & Derby.

FA Cup out in the 4th round 2-1 vs Liverpool, after beating West Brom in the 3rd round.

The Premier League we started off incredibly well, we were first after 6 but subsequent losses to United, Arsenal & Liverpool put us down in the 6th-8th region, and our second half of the season was terrible although I did use the last 10 or so games (after getting KO'd from the Europa League) to blood new youth players. 8th place not too bad.

Bobby Kirk scored 37 goals in all competitions, my central defender Bram Hoogendoorn scored 14 from set pieces and another few players chipped in with half a dozen. Oliver Revell (my MR & 2nd AMC) & Pinga (starting AMC) had 30 assists between themselves. I've re-signed the majority of my best current players and the youth prospects for another 5 seasons until the end of 2031.

Incoming transfers, I concentrated on youth prospects. Although I did spend £7.5 million on Manninen the goalkeeper I mentioned last post, I spent another £21.5 million on 7 players aged 18 or younger (about £3 million average cost) who will become club or nation trained to help with eventual European competition selection. I bought in a new AMC from Tottenham, left winger from Madrid, a fullback & a defensive midfielder from Stuttgart, a Chilean central defender and a goalkeeper from Dortmund. The crown of these is Aslan Erodgan, a German/Turkish striker (who can also play as a winger cutting inside from the left like Mark Bridge) from Stuttgart who I bought in on loan with a £5 million buy clause, and after taking a look at him, bought him.

Selling transfers, I continued my shrewd sales. I actually made £3 million on just loan fees on top of saving those wages, without damaging our first team squad. In addition I sold a rotation defensive midfielder for £6.5 million to Getafe, and my 2nd choice fullback to Osasuna for £5 million, along with a unwanted goalkeeper to Lyon for £1.8 million.

I mentioned earlier about the stadium expansion capacity that I hoped it would improve, and it has. Having expanded to over 16,000 seats this season, it will now be expanded again by another 8,293 seats, which will take us to around 25,000. That is probably as far as I can get, but that is still a lot bigger than I had thought it would. That will actually make our stadium bigger than Swansea, and about the same as West Brom & Huddersfield. The training & youth facilities are being upgraded again. All of these together is costing around £19 million. 

The new window will see 4 more players leave. My 2nd choice keeper (having bought in Manninen and the young GKs) to Sunderland for £7.75m, the Ukranian striker didn't work out but I sold him for £11.25 million to Dortmund, my 4th choice central defender to Siena for £4.4 million, and a young striker from my youth squad who doesn't have enough potential to Huddersfield for £525k. There are a couple of big future sale/profit clauses that I might be able to get a sell out for and make even more cash. We will start the season with about £14 million in the bank (about £15 million of these transfers will be paid monthly over the next 2 years).

We are continuing down the path of financial prudence, I don't really need to make huge purchases now, and will continue to find good youth players so I have them and they don't move to the big European clubs, and maybe the occasional superstar when the chance to pick them up for good value arises. I have 8 senior international players in my squad and another 7 with youth caps. The 2026 World Cup is ongoing, perhaps I'll find an international team to manage as well after.

Obviously, the next goal is to finish top 6 or even top 4, and qualify for Europe. Getting into the Champions League group stage is the next big financial & reputation bump. 

[Kizza]

Going good Mack,

I've just re-started my 50 year transfer embargo save. Fun times ahead.

[mack]

That's interesting. So youth players only or free transfers as well?

[JackDoff]

17 hours ago, mack said:

2025/26 Done. Average season although we did beat our highest finish in the league.

First up, that tycoon takeover collapsed, as did a second potential collapse by another member of the board. It's probable some new takeover bid will occur shortly.

Finished 8th in the league, outside European qualification. Manchester United finally managed to not bottle the league and won by 3 points.

After winning the League Cup last season we were placed into the Europa League 4th Round Qualifier, and were drawn against Rangers. After an hour we are 4-1 up. Game ends 4-3. Not good. Second leg Rangers are 3-1 on the night, 6-5 on aggregate with an away goals advantage. Bobby Kirk steps up. Smashes home a goal in the 69th minute. It's now 6-6. but we're going out on away goals. Time ebbs and flows away, right down to the last minute. Rangers keeper makes a hurried clearance after a tackle sees the ball roll to him, my fullback intercepts, plays a 1-2 with my defensive midfield playmaker, and he fires in a ball to the edge of the box, Kirk makes a run off the shoulder, beats the tackle, then slams it home at the near post to score a 7-6 winner at 92:19 on the clock.

We finished top of our Europa League group with Dynamo Kiev, Spartak Moscow & OFK Beograd (a very eastern Europeans set of opponents), demolished Frankfurt 6-1 on aggregate in the 1st KO Round before falling to Paris Saint-Germain 1-1 on away goals, the 2nd leg was dreadful, 4 shots only, and only 2 on target.

League Cup lost in the 5th round to Manchester City after we beat Huddersfield & Derby.

FA Cup out in the 4th round 2-1 vs Liverpool, after beating West Brom in the 3rd round.

The Premier League we started off incredibly well, we were first after 6 but subsequent losses to United, Arsenal & Liverpool put us down in the 6th-8th region, and our second half of the season was terrible although I did use the last 10 or so games (after getting KO'd from the Europa League) to blood new youth players. 8th place not too bad.

Bobby Kirk scored 37 goals in all competitions, my central defender Bram Hoogendoorn scored 14 from set pieces and another few players chipped in with half a dozen. Oliver Revell (my MR & 2nd AMC) & Pinga (starting AMC) had 30 assists between themselves. I've re-signed the majority of my best current players and the youth prospects for another 5 seasons until the end of 2031.

Incoming transfers, I concentrated on youth prospects. Although I did spend £7.5 million on Manninen the goalkeeper I mentioned last post, I spent another £21.5 million on 7 players aged 18 or younger (about £3 million average cost) who will become club or nation trained to help with eventual European competition selection. I bought in a new AMC from Tottenham, left winger from Madrid, a fullback & a defensive midfielder from Stuttgart, a Chilean central defender and a goalkeeper from Dortmund. The crown of these is Aslan Erodgan, a German/Turkish striker (who can also play as a winger cutting inside from the left like Mark Bridge) from Stuttgart who I bought in on loan with a £5 million buy clause, and after taking a look at him, bought him.

Selling transfers, I continued my shrewd sales. I actually made £3 million on just loan fees on top of saving those wages, without damaging our first team squad. In addition I sold a rotation defensive midfielder for £6.5 million to Getafe, and my 2nd choice fullback to Osasuna for £5 million, along with a unwanted goalkeeper to Lyon for £1.8 million.

I mentioned earlier about the stadium expansion capacity that I hoped it would improve, and it has. Having expanded to over 16,000 seats this season, it will now be expanded again by another 8,293 seats, which will take us to around 25,000. That is probably as far as I can get, but that is still a lot bigger than I had thought it would. That will actually make our stadium bigger than Swansea, and about the same as West Brom & Huddersfield. The training & youth facilities are being upgraded again. All of these together is costing around £19 million. 

The new window will see 4 more players leave. My 2nd choice keeper (having bought in Manninen and the young GKs) to Sunderland for £7.75m, the Ukranian striker didn't work out but I sold him for £11.25 million to Dortmund, my 4th choice central defender to Siena for £4.4 million, and a young striker from my youth squad who doesn't have enough potential to Huddersfield for £525k. There are a couple of big future sale/profit clauses that I might be able to get a sell out for and make even more cash. We will start the season with about £14 million in the bank (about £15 million of these transfers will be paid monthly over the next 2 years).

We are continuing down the path of financial prudence, I don't really need to make huge purchases now, and will continue to find good youth players so I have them and they don't move to the big European clubs, and maybe the occasional superstar when the chance to pick them up for good value arises. I have 8 senior international players in my squad and another 7 with youth caps. The 2026 World Cup is ongoing, perhaps I'll find an international team to manage as well after.

Obviously, the next goal is to finish top 6 or even top 4, and qualify for Europe. Getting into the Champions League group stage is the next big financial & reputation bump. 

Wow Chief, you're playing in the future!   Is there hover cars?  Do all the players have shaved heads n wear long leather coats???

 

[mack]

Everything's the same but we live underwater.

[JackDoff]

2 hours ago, mack said:

Everything's the same but we live underwater.

"Under the sea, under the sea, there'll be no accusations just friendly crustaceans, under the sea"!!!

 

[Carns]

2 hours ago, JackDoff said:

"Under the sea, under the sea, there'll be no accusations just friendly crustaceans, under the sea"!!!

 

Homer, that's your solution to everything: to move under the sea. It's not going to happen!