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Interlude: Firing on all cylinders. January 1, 2018   These are the numbers of a good team. We've got a number of dangerous players, the best of whom comprise our starting midfield. Our attackers are pretty good at getting their shots on target, and between Holland, Simpson, and Bailey our central midfield is good at not giving away possession with poor passes. Our defense could be a bit better, Tench and Smissen are not as good this season as they were last year, and Todd hasn't made the impact he's capable of yet. But Lewis and Poole have been a solid centerback pairing for us, neither have made a mistake leading to a goal thus far.  We are a very young team, we started the season at an average of almost exactly 22 years old. Our lads are big, averaging six feet tall and almost 170 pounds.  We make the fewest mistakes in the league, important for a team that plays a very direct style. Our first touch and passing are pretty bad team-wide, though it's better when you look at our midfield.  Higgs has gotten very good, he's one of the best keepers in the league now.  He's assisted by a quick and strong defense that has pretty good technical ability, the one thing they aren't that good at is heading the ball where they want it to go.  Our midfield is above average, and has stamina to burn that makes them more effective than their counterparts in the late minutes of a game.  Our attack is nothing special when it comes to finishing, but it's blazing fast, has great anticipation, and can get on the end of a cross with no problem. It's best defeated by being kept at long range and taking advantage of their poor off the ball movement.  All of that gives us the best attack in the league. We're scoring over two goals a game, and other than Blackpool no one is close to our proficiency.  It's not just that we're the highest scoring team in the league, it's that we're scoring in every single game. It means we have a fighting chance to take points against any team.  A solid portion of our goals come from set pieces, lead by twelve goals from corners.  Another few come from indirect free kicks.  And Justin Bailey's free kick goal gives us a total of sixteen goals from set pieces, to go with our thirty-six from open play.  Our defense isn't on the same level as our offense. It's still one of the best in the league, though.  We're allowing an above average amount of goals from corners, I still haven't found a way to plug this hole.  We also allow too many goals from indirect free kicks.  Along with the indirect free kick and corner kick goals, we've given up eleven of our twenty-seven goals from set pieces. Only conceding sixteen goals from open play is pretty great, but allowing eleven set piece goals is most definitely not.  We are not a blood and guts squad, I could probably turn up our tackling some without hurting the team.  Our payroll sits almost exactly where it was last season. If we're promoted we'll almost certainly have the lowest payroll in the league.  That low payroll is required by our fairly low average attendance. It's up almost 200% from when we were in the Skrill Premier, but it's still well below the standard for this league, and is tiny compared to the Championship and Premier League average attendance.  We haven't had to sell off any key players, which puts us in better shape than many League One teams. Holding onto our young talent means that we get to watch them blossom for us, and they sure have blossomed.  It would be nice for one of our players to win a golden boot. Given how great our attack has been this year it's entirely possible that Harrison can pull it off.  No surprise here. The record for assists in League One is 18, Bailey is on pace to demolish it. Mujkic has been the difference-maker that I expected him to be, he's got six goals to go with his seven assists.  Bailey and Coulson are tied for eighth with three Man of the Match awards each. Through 24 league games those four players have won the award in 14 matches.  Mark Holland has been great as a midfield destroyer. He's seldom made a bad challenge, and he wins the ball all game long to put us back on the attack.  Mujkic is happy to run down the sideline past opponents.  Simpson is 25th in distance covered. Our game is all about uptempo play, and it's not just this stat that proves it.  We have three midfielders with great work rates. Mujkic is constantly moving at about five and a half miles per hour, or an eleven minute mile pace for the entire game.  Higgs hasn't been spectacular, but he's still tied for second in shutouts. As I've said, I might complain about our defense but it has still been pretty good.  Harrison likes to try and beat the offside's trap, and doesn't always succeed. He's our only player who has been caught offside more than ten times, and given how many breakaways he creates I'm not going to change his style of play.  As you'd expect from the player with the most assists in the league, he's high on the “key passes” leaderboard.  Stuart Lewis is tied for 16th, not tied for 10th as indicated by the screenshot. None of our defenders show up in the “Key Tackles” or “Key Interceptions,” which is probably due to my focus on keeping our form and not letting our defenders get caught out of position.  Well that's just pretty. Four of our players are in the top 25, and it's clear that our midfield is a menace on the pitch.  As for me? I'm the only “untouchable” manager in the entire world.
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Feb 28, 2014 00:55
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| # ? May 30, 2024 12:55 |
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I wonder how much money the Tackleford management guys are embezzling given their budget:performance ratio. Anyway, how much of this extreme minutia is required to play this game semi-competently on a casual level? I mean, it's fun to read, but the idea of plowing through all these spreadsheets while making decisions is deterring me from picking it up.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:11
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Oh hey, I completely forgot we're in the same league as Uncle Barry's Leyton Orient! I hope we're going to beat the crap out of them the next time around, too.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:12
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Just dropping in to say that, as someone generally utterly indifferent to Sportball, I have found this LP to be enthralling. Also, I've learned more from reading it than I have in two and a half years of living with diehard Villa/Spurs fans, so that's something too. At this rate I'll end up buying the drat game and ruining my already record-low productivity even more.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:23
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Why does our attendance suck so bad? Is our stadium just unable to hold a crowd? And yeah, watching Mark Sanchez eat a face full of butt was one of the best things to happen to NFL Football in years. I still chuckle every time it comes to mind.
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Feb 28, 2014 01:28
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steinrokkan posted:I wonder how much money the Tackleford management guys are embezzling given their budget:performance ratio. The Classic mode is supposed to be much simpler, you basically set your lineup and go. It's a game with a pretty high learning curve, and there's a bunch of minor stuff I don't touch on in the updates (monthly meetings with my staff to get their advice, scheduling friendlies during the offseason, paging through tons of players in our knowledge base to see if there's any worthwhile signings). Lower League Manager is much more intensive a game than just picking up a game as Barcelona where you already have one of the best teams in the world and more money than Croesus. ETA: Our stadium has a max capacity of 15,000. We're not getting more people because we've only just gotten back to League One this year after a half decade spent in the Skrill Premier sapping supporter's willingness to come out to see the team. We're also located in a small city, in an area of the country without a ton of people. When we've seen 10,000 people or more coming for a game we've basically been seeing one in ten of the surrounding population show up for a match. If we can sell out our stadium things will be pretty good, but I don't think we'll ever be able to draw more than 20k or so. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 01:44 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 01:31
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Let's be honest with ourselves here. Wrexham is a small Welsh town of some 45,000 souls. Maybe 60k if you really stretch the town limits, a generous 120k or so for the whole county. We should never realistically see huge crowds. A sellout of our 15k seat stadium would be a full third of the town showing up for the game.
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Feb 28, 2014 05:24
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yeah, it's not coincidence that the most successful teams tend to be from the larger cities where they can take advantage of a larger potential supporter base. People also tend to support the really successful teams purely because they are successful, hence the labelling of many Manchester United fans as 'Glory Hunters' (though that may well change if the team don't get their poo poo together soon). Of course we'll be hoping to take advantage of this when we're winning the Premiership and the F.A Cup and playing in Europe, which we could easily be doing in 3-4 seasons time if we get the right signings and increase our revenue appropriately.
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Feb 28, 2014 05:31
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Things are going great. Definitely push for promotion this year and have a consolidation year next.
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Feb 28, 2014 06:00
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You guys aren't thinking big enough. When we win the Champions League three times in a row, we're going to have legions of glory hunters coming to our sold out games every week!
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Feb 28, 2014 06:07
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 Emergency Board MeetingWe just got an offer of £5.25m from Tottenham for Chris Todd.  It's such a big offer that I feel I need to bring it before the board before making a decision. The deal also contains a 25% profit from next sale clause, and that Tottenham will play a friendly with us for free (so, about £100k more). They'll also loan Todd back to us until the end of the season so we won't be missing him for our promotion run.  Tottenham isn't the only club interested in Todd, if we wanted to we could probably pump up his price by a good amount by bringing more clubs into a bidding war. We don't have to sell. Todd is under contract for another two years after this one. But we had turnover of only £5m last season in total, this would be a huge cash infusion for us. So the options are as follows. A) Sell Todd. Get Money. B) Negotiate. Bring other clubs into the bidding war, and get every last penny possible for our wonderkid. If the negotiations fall apart we're still left with a great player. C) Keep Todd. We're going to be in the Premier League by the time his contract is up, and if he's worth over £5 million now he'll be worth even more later. I'm in the midst of playing the January window, game date is January 20th, so this vote will only be open for the next six hours, until 2 PM EST. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 15:06 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 15:03
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Whoa, that is serious money. B: Negotiate. That money is facility upgrades and new players all round! See how much you can push them.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:06
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SELL, use funds to clone Bailey
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Feb 28, 2014 15:06
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A/B: Sell to the highest bidder. Lets have this conversation about Todd rather than Mujkic.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:10
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Negotiate! e: Try to get as much money as you can for him, but make sure that loanback clause is in there!
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Feb 28, 2014 15:11
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B. Negotiate... but not too hard. We still want to sell, just not without a bit of haggling. Don't try to drive it up when it seems problems might arise.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:11
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TheMcD posted:B. Negotiate... but not too hard. We still want to sell, just not without a bit of haggling. Don't try to drive it up when it seems problems might arise. Feel the same way. Negotiate but don't push too hard.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:15
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B. Negotiate, get at least 6 million for him.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:15
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B) but focus on closing a deal.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:16
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If motherfuckers wanna poach our players you better believe we're gonna milk 'em for all they're worth!
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Feb 28, 2014 15:27
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B i think, especially if selling Todd would give us enough cash that we could happily ignore any offers for other players like Harrison, Bailey or Mujkic. we'll have to spend a chunk of it buying a replacement and maybe one or two other centrebacks as our defense has been a bit leaky but we should be left with a really nice chunk of change with which to upgrade our facilities with.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:32
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TheMcD posted:B. Negotiate... but not too hard. We still want to sell, just not without a bit of haggling. Don't try to drive it up when it seems problems might arise. Do this. Be smart about it.
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Feb 28, 2014 15:34
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TheMcD posted:B. Negotiate... but not too hard. We still want to sell, just not without a bit of haggling. Don't try to drive it up when it seems problems might arise. This.
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Feb 28, 2014 16:08
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A Sell Todd. Glory glory Tottenh... er, I mean, this represents a prudent bit of business for the club. I will not confirm the existence of an alleged 'North London Mafia' on the Wrexham board, that's just idle hearsay from a few fringe supporter groups.
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Feb 28, 2014 16:49
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Closing the voting. I went with option B but they got scared off when I increased the terms even a smidgen and no one else wanted in for more than Tottenham had offered. On the other hand: 
habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 17:32
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B. Negotiate. Sell him to the highest bidder and use the money to mine for more diamonds in the rough.
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Feb 28, 2014 17:32
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Chapter the Seventh: Swooping isn't all bad. January 1, 2018-February 1, 2018 I don't have many plans to change up the team during the transfer window. If we can find a very good fullback I'm willing to drop some cash on him, and we have a couple of backups that I'd like to move, but I don't want to mess with success.  You stay the hell away from my Meteor.  Vote early, vote often.  Sky Shadowing is unstoppable. Though he is the guy who counted the votes.  The changes in our tactics means we lose a little familiarity with them. At Preston North End, January 6, 2018 League One  We've been on a crazy hot streak, not losing in the last eight matches. Preston has moved themselves up to eighth on the league table, which means they'll be a challenge. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter Starting 11: Higgs, Tench, Todd, Lewis, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Coulson, Mujkic, Harrison. Subs: Taylor, Peters, Curran, Price, Gorman, Rainey, Baker. More Premier League coaches slumming it in the stands to watch Chris Todd, this time it's Everton. Preston takes an early lead, but a classic Harrison breakaway levels it. Shortly after halftime Harrison takes an injury he can't run off, which could be a huge problem if it turns out to be a serious injury. Sinclair puts us on top with a goal from a corner, but Coulson misses a sitter that would have put the game out of reach. Our defense is dodgy towards the conclusion, but we hold on to win again. We're atop the table, but Sunderland has two games in hand. Man of the Match: Mark Holland   Preston 1-2 Wrexham  Harrison's injury is a minor one, he'll be back in no time. That's a good thing, as losing him would be a real blow to our offense.  Holland gets recognition for bossing the midfield.  Justin Bailey, lower league superstar. At Leyton Orient, January 13, 2018 League One  Leyton Orient is not having a good time in League One, they haven't won in five games and are near the relegation zone. Naturally we're going to screw this up after having beaten Preston. It won't help that Harrison isn't quite back to full health. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter Starting 11: Higgs, Tench, Poole, Lewis, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Rainey, Mujkic, Read. Subs: Taylor, Thomas, Curran, Price, Gorman, Coulson, Baker. Mujkic gets us off on a flyer in less than a minute. Leyton Orient has the advantage throughout the rest of the first half, but we're the ones on the scoreboard. Yohan Netala, our previous loanee, is playing for Leyton Orient and scores in the second half. Holland gives us back the lead in the 70th minute, but Leyton Orient manage a late equalizer. It looks like a draw, but in the final minute of regulation Leyton Orient gifts us three points with an own goal. Not how I'd prefer to win the game, but I certainly won't begrudge the luck. Man of the Match: Stuart Simpson.   Leyton Orient 2-3 Wrexham  How do they not come to me with this? Have they seen the job I've done with youth?  Well, I've never seen that before. I move his personal focus training up to “heavy” but I'm not sure that will be enough to satisfy him. Holy cow that's a lot of money. I've submitted it to an emergency board vote. The result was an order to negotiate with Tottenham, and see if anyone was willing to one-up their offer to us. vs. Mansfield, January 20, 2018 League One  We've won seven games in a row. That's awesome. It makes us a big scalp for other teams to pick off, that's not so awesome. Mansfield is on the edge of the promotion playoffs, and they're going to be looking to take us down a peg. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack Starting 11: Higgs, Tench, Todd, Poole, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Coulson, Mujkic, Harrison. Subs: Rogers, Thomas, Lewis, Price, Gorman, Rainey, Baker. We look good, real good. Tons of pressure from the start, and we're not letting up. That pressure gets to Mansfield in the 25th minute in the form of an own goal. It's disappointing, then, to go up into halftime only up by one. We lose that lead almost from the word go, and rack up yellow cards like candy as our players get a bit techy. Meteor settles us down in the 63rd minute with a goal, and we regain control of the match. The five yellow cards we pick up double our total for the year, but no one gets two and it doesn't have a bearing on the result. Our winning streak is now up to eight games, and with Sunderland losing we're now atop the table on goal differential. Man of the Match: Mateo Mujkic.   Wrexham 2-1 Mansfield  Good to have him back. Our captain has been pretty great in the box to box midfielder role, so having him able to move up from defensive midfielder if/when Bailey or Holland are tired makes us more flexible.  Tottenham won't give us a dime over £5.5m after initially being receptive to a £6.3m deal, and I can't get anyone else to join the bidding war. When I asked for £6 million they cancel the offer. Looks like we're keeping Todd.  Doesn't change that we're gonna get paid. Upson is probably not going to be better than Harrison, and we also have Read in our youth program. vs. Chesterfield, January 27, 2018 League One  Another game against a good team. Chesterfield is fifth in the league. We're going to lose eventually, it's just a question of when. If we can win the next two matches, though, a ten game winning streak is really impressive. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack Starting 11: Higgs, Tench, Todd, Lewis, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Coulson, Mujkic, Harrison. Subs: Rogers, Thomas, Curran, Harper, Gorman, Rainey, Price. It's a drab first half. No goals, not even any good scoring chances. We're in control of the game, but not doing anything with it. That continues in the second half, and our best chance to win the game goes begging when Michael Coulson misses a wide open net from mere feet away. Not only is our winning streak over, but so is our twenty game scoring streak. Sunderland predictably wins, and we're back down to second place.   Wrexham 0-0 Chesterfield Still waiting on that Upson deal to wrap up. At Fleetwood, January 30, 2018 League One  Are we going to win, or are we going to fall into a swoon that threatens our promotion hopes? I don't know! Let's find out. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Counter Starting 11: Higgs, Peters, Todd, Poole, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Rainey, Mujkic, Harrison. Subs: Rogers, Thomas, Curran, Harper, Price, Gorman, Baker. Fleetwood scores goals at the start of both halves. We've played wretched, disjointed football for the first 45 minutes, and I'm forced to throw us entirely onto the attack. William Harrison scores a mind-bending goal in the 67th minute, but no matter how pretty it was it still only counts for one. Our unbeaten streak is looking like it's over, until Ryan Gorman finally does something worth mentioning with a goal late in stoppage time to pull us level. We escape with the draw, and it was an excellent show of character for the team to not give up after going down by two. It still means we fall further behind Sunderland, they're now four points up on us. Man of the Match: William Harrison.   Fleetwood 2-2 Wrexham  Well, that's too bad. Just like our players are starting to draw attention our coaches will be pinched from us by higher division teams.  Or not. Yay, loyalty.   Leeds and Celtic also want Upson, but aren't willing to pay nearly as much as Swansea. They can take a hike. We'll also get 10% of any future transfer fee. Our bank balance just jumped from £250,000 to £2,250,000.  I was able to sell off Cian Fox, our backup backup goalkeeper, but Gavin Baker remains with us for the present. I didn't add anyone to the club.  Stop stealing my awards! I'm on a twelve game unbeaten streak!  Eleven points from five matches is a good pace, though I'm concerned that we might be approaching a slump. We've given ourselves a four point buffer on an automatic promotion spot, though Sunderland's jumped back up to a four point lock on first place after we briefly surpassed them. We also did a good bit of business in selling Upson, two million pounds is a huge amount of money for us and Upson isn't someone I was looking to as a major part of the team in the future. That also means we don't suffer from the Todd deal falling through, we still get a lot of cash while not losing someone I'm already trying to work into the starting 11.  Board Vote(Luxuriantly) I'd like to reinvest some of the money we made from the Upson sale into the team, specifically an upgrade to the Tom Cannon Memorial Youth Barn. A) We'll be able to make millions more selling future youth who get even better than Upson? Yes. B) If the Memorial Youth Barn was good enough for Upson, why should we improve it? No. Voting will close at the posting of the next update.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:23
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A, no doubt.
Obliterati fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Feb 28, 2014 |
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Feb 28, 2014 18:32
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Voting A because we all teams love to overspent on youth players they think will become good players.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:32
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I'd have taken 5.5 for Todd. Regardless, A. Better youth stuff for better youth players for more cashmoney.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:34
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A Upgrade dat barn.
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Feb 28, 2014 18:45
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UpgrAde it.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:04
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Your greed will doom us all!!!  UPGRADE
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Feb 28, 2014 19:06
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rizzen posted:I'd have taken 5.5 for Todd. Same. Still, A
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Feb 28, 2014 19:15
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A. My wine cellar and scotch cabinet are fully stocked with rare vintages from across the world, so we can go ahead and spend some of the team's money on football now.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:15
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A, of course. For money begets money, and these transfer payments will do well in building up our youth program so we can keep selling youth superstars around for top pound while we move up the ranks.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:22
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A Upgrade that badboy, we need to build some kind of taff La Masiasteinrokkan posted:I wonder how much money the Tackleford management guys are embezzling given their budget:performance ratio. Like habeusdorkus said, there is a 'classic' mode where things are a little simplified, but even on regular mode you can delegate virtually everything to your staff (although their stats might influence how well they actually do stuff). Even if you insist on being hands-on, the super fiddly stuff like training regimes and set piece instructions you only really need to do once a season. Also all the charts and tables in the interlude post are completely optional and are only there for people who really really love stats Americans FM is the greatest game ever made, it'll take over your life (in a good way) and honestly, if you can do an LP of War In The Pacific then this won't give you any trouble whatsoever.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:33
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I'd have sold Todd for 5.5m but they're the ones who bugged out of negotiations when I asked for more. There's still a lot of teams circling for Todd, and with the sale of Upson we've got plenty of cash for the time being.
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Feb 28, 2014 19:37
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habeasdorkus posted:(Luxuriantly) I'd like to reinvest some of the money we made from the Upson sale into the team, specifically an upgrade to the Tom Cannon Memorial Youth Barn. No. steinrokkan posted:Use funds to clone Bailey  
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Feb 28, 2014 19:40
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| # ? May 30, 2024 12:55 |
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Jenner posted:No.
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Feb 28, 2014 20:13
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