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FM 2014 is on sale on Steam again, this time it's only $17.
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Mar 4, 2014 14:37
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Damnit I'm low on cash again thanks to other cool things. They time these sales badly!   Uhmmm manager, its game time, not lunchtime. Man, he hasn't quite been the same since he started moonlighting as a kart driver. 
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Mar 4, 2014 16:38
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Could somebody get me a copy of FM2014 on Steam in exchange for something else in the rough 20$ price range? It's not available in Germany because of licensing issues, and I'd really like it. My Steam ID is the same as my name here.
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Mar 4, 2014 16:46
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A Tartan Tory posted:
Not quite. He's not in very good shape, though. If Tackleford's owner wasn't very patient he'd have long since been fired. quote:give Glasgow Rangers a Scottish Wonderkid Striker with the best (but still realistic) stats possible so that Scotland and them can go on to glory Done. But I named him Scott Scott, after the striker that took Scotland to the World Cup quarterfinals in my FM13 game.  He's going to be really good, he's only 16 right now.
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Mar 4, 2014 17:07
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(Sternly) A pity we can't set aside some money in the budget for a Luca Brasi type gentleman to accompany Scott into meetings with these increasingly annoying and petulant spoilt brats. Grand job on the promotion, son, here's to conquering the Championship!
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Mar 4, 2014 17:07
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CACB , 3 promotions in 4 years is insane. You can have all the toys you want as long as you keep performing like this.
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Mar 4, 2014 21:07
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habeasdorkus posted:Not quite. He's not in very good shape, though. If Tackleford's owner wasn't very patient he'd have long since been fired. Scott Scott, the best Scot to ever come out of Scotland.  Good luck in the Championship!
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Mar 4, 2014 21:40
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Epilogue: The price of doing business. May 6, 2018-June 9, 2018 Hey guys, I'm in the Hall of Fame!  To be fair, it's not hard to get into the hall of fame for the United States, we aren't known as a nation of brilliant football managers.  As befits the conquering heros, both Bailey and Mujkic are in the final League One team of the week.  Mujkic is not impressed by our promotion and refuses to negotiate a new deal. We might be able to keep him for a couple years, £10m is a goodly chunk of change to drop on a player who's never played above League One.  Well, they put up less of a fight than I expected. Good to see. Also, we've got two new directors who need naming. First two people who have not yet been board members to ask get named.  I'm just trying to get them off payroll so we can save a month's salary, but no luck.  Take that, Tackleford! I will steal all your useful staff!  Nice to have that up to fourteen, now I won't have to monkey with things the next time I request additional scouts.  Back to back promotions will do that.  Not a single decline amongst our players, the only question was who improved most. An advantage of running a club where the oldest player is a grizzled 26.  It occurs to me that one reason I'm seeing only bad reactions here is because we're finishing seasons on a high note, and thus players moral can only go down.  I'm expecting to have to give some players more time off, we were pretty tuckered by the end of the season and a lot of players have international commitments.  And we have our twelve scouts. Time to start scouring Europe!  I'm going to completely rejigger our scouting system.  Richard Boulding keeps his assignment of scouting our upcoming opposition. The scout on this task can't scout any other competitions, but if they have a high tactical knowledge score they can provide useful advice as to what your opponents are weak or strong against (e.g. focusing on attacking movement, or defensive set pieces). Boulding has a tactical knowledge of 13, making him the best of anyone on our staff. I really need to get around to hiring my own Jogi Löw at some point, perhaps this off-season.  Scouts can cover one competition and also scout one region or country. I prefer to have them focus on a region, where they'll move from country to country looking at talent. We've got four regions we can scout now. We had previously been limited to the UK and Ireland (England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales), but now we can also search Southern Europe (mainly Spain, Italy, and Portugal), Scandinavia (exactly who you'd think), Central Europe (Germany, France, and the low countries), and Eastern Europe (including Turkey and extending all the way out to Kazakhstan). I'm not going to spend much time looking at Eastern Europe as a region because we're mainly looking for EU citizens that won't need work permits to play for us.  I also prefer to set a fairly simple heuristic for when they should file reports on players they find, if the player would have at least a three star rating for my current senior team, or if they're under 22 and have four star or better potential. This avoids getting a ton of reports on players that aren't good enough to be worth wading through. It also means that I can basically set up the scouting program once and then leave it for ages as it'll still be a good setup even as our team improves. Which is nice, since it's a bit of a hassle if you're making major changes. You can also delegate the task to your chief scout, but I'm a micromanager.  Four scouts are assigned to the UK and Ireland, three to Central and Southern Europe, and one each to Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. This should start paying dividends quickly.  We've got our friendlies arranged already, starting with local lads Garden Village and Castell Alun before jaunting over to the Netherlands to try our hands against Ajax and PSV. We've also got that friendly against Swansea that was part of the Michael Upson deal, and then Tackleford is paying us to come in and wreck them just before the season starts. Altogether we should make about £400,000 from these matches.  We need to convert our standing room only seats into actual seats as per the rules of the Championship. It'll run us a fair amount, but nothing we can't afford. I was hoping that our landlords would pay for it, but I guess I can't have everything. If this were the US, we'd just threaten to move to another city until they built us a brand new stadium.  Work also gets underway on the improvements to the Tom Cannon Memorial Youth Barn.  Tottenham continues to lowball us for Todd. We'll be selling for 5.5 million pounds or above.  And now Todd's agent wants to squeeze us for some cash. Tough luck, you're under contract for two years at 600 pounds a week.  I'm getting headhunted! Maybe if it were a better league and a better club...  Show the world what you've got, Meteor. /slapass.  There are no winners when Chelsea plays Man City for the FA Cup. It's merely which oligarch from a repressive society you support for plowing untold million's into your club.  AU Daniel Levy is as much a penny-pincher as he is in real life. I'm in no rush to sell Todd, the transfer window hasn't even opened yet and I'm determined to get what we deserve for him.  That's not a bad chunk of change, though still nothing like what we'll see in the higher divisions.  But the high league bonus means we pay out the majority of it.  Chesterfield had a man sent off just before halftime and still beat Bournemouth. They get promoted after never having been higher than fifth all season. I hate playoffs.  That's great, so long as you don't bust up his leg or something like that.  Mujkic fully deserves this. I told you guys he was going to be amazing.  I also fully deserve this. I told you guys I was going to be amazing.  As predicted Bailey and Mujkic both make the team of the year. I'm very happy to see Stewart Lewis join them, I wasn't sure if he'd make the first team or if he'd just miss out.  Of course, now that we're going up a level it's going to be no mean feat to create a competitive team with one of the smallest wage budgets in the league. Note that this is ordered by players who want the least amount of money. If we were still at £42k/wk I'd have a very hard time strengthening the team at all, and merely staying up for a season would likely be the only accomplishment I could manage. The Championship is where money starts getting tossed around, they regularly buy and sell players for over a million pounds, and the biggest teams have wage budgets that make Sunderland and Tackleford look downright skinflint.  Our players also want to get paid, and for some reason I can't offer better than £4,500 a week despite having £66,000/wk available in the wage budget. I'm going to be waiting until December to renegotiate contracts, I want to see how we're doing before giving big raises to players who might not be able to handle this level of play.  The silver lining to all this is that we got another big shot in the arm to our reputation, meaning we can now sign players whose agents would have pretended that we didn't exist less than eighteen months ago. Our reputation is actually higher now than two clubs, Queens Park Rangers and Brentford, that actually played in the Premier League last year.  I should probably get around to doing this, huh?  Having twelve scouts allows me to get reports on a lot of players, though they're not as effective at their scouting assignments when also giving me reports on players I've asked for. Scouts compile one to four reports a day, depending upon their determination/motivation/discipline stats. I don't know what the exact breakdown is, or if all three of those play a role in their work ethic, but it's safe to say that a scout with 15's across the board in those stats will get more done than one with 5's.  I need to remember that on June 30th Sampdoria's players return from loan so I can jump on any of them that could be useful.  I set myself a reminder note. You can set reminder notes for all sorts of things, one of my favorite uses is when I'm a megabastard club myself setting a reminder to charm the pants off of a great player at another club each month so that he grows to like me and will demand a transfer when I make an offer for him.  I also often make reminders for various nation's youth intake days so that I don't accidentally miss them. They're set to go off once a year, so I don't have to make new ones.  Hmm. Intriguing. I hadn't considered selling Harrison, but he is in the last year of his deal and he is about to get quite expensive. Given that we don't have a replacement for him, I doubt I'll sell unless they blow me over.  Who took out a loan?! We had plenty of money to pay for the improvements out of pocket! Now we're going to be paying this thing off for 10 damned years.  I can't give these two away. They're only earning £875 between the two of them, so it's not a major issue, but given that we just took out a gigantic bank loan I want to keep the finances well in line.  That's not an auspicious tuneup for the World Cup.  Neither is that.  I didn't expect Shirra to gain much technically from Bailey, but any mental gains are all to the good.  I also don't expect to see many of these. But I'll put up video if it occurs.  Take that, Tax Man! Capital improvements are deductible, we're going to amortize the hell out of them!  That's a big lift from last year's £200,000. We're up to over 27,000 dues paying members. I bet we have some soccer hipsters starting to pay attention to us, talking about our good youth system and how we're the third oldest pro club in the world, and how they're ordering Mujkic jerseys so that when he's playing for Barcelona they can wear their Wrexham kit and go to the bar to brag about how they knew him coming up.   And we're finally getting some better sponsors. Good job on locking these down, Sky Shadowing. Though I wish they weren't for quite so long, we'll be in continental competitions before we can renegotiate them. This also makes the decision to take out a loan look even worse, we're back up to £1.4m in the bank right now.  It's that time again. We've currently got 20 players on the first team signed for the coming year with the promotions of Tony Holt, Scott Shirra, and Adrian Read from the youth squad. One of those, Todd, is likely to be gone in a couple months. We need at least one fullback, striker, centerback, and keeper. It's time to play Pawn Stars, the game. I'll give you 10 bucks for that four star wingback. Can't go any higher, honest.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:22
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I clearly should be directing. Gooo football! Get a homerun!
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Mar 4, 2014 22:25
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habeasdorkus posted:Also, we've got two new directors who need naming. First two people who have not yet been board members to ask get named. Pick me! I promise to engage in whatever financial improprieties are necessary to bring us to the top - wait, I meant investment back there.
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Mar 4, 2014 22:26
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Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2017-2018 May 31, 2018 Who's up? Who's down? Did anyone even come close to Barca or Real Madrid in La Liga, or Bayern Munich in the Bundesliga? I can answer those questions!  With Chesterfield joining us in League Two there's at least one team we should be able to manhandle in the Championship. We may or may not be better than Sunderland, they're quite rich despite their two years in League One. It really shows the relative equality in talent between Leagues One and Two that not a single team promoted last year was relegated back to League Two. Oh, and congratulations on a midtable finish, Tackleford. /chortle.  Aston Villa goes right back up, unsurprisingly. Crystal Palace also goes back up. In real life Crystal Palace are somewhat famous recently for getting promoted repeatedly but never lasting more than a single season in the Premier League. As it stands right now in real life they're three points from the drop, so this might be the time where they get to enjoy more than a Premier League cameo. The Canaries are the third team to go up, so they don't have to play against their former feeder team that they never lent players to. Sheffield Wednesday, Leicester, and Charleton all drop, meaning that if we somehow managed back to back to back promotions we'd never have a chance of seeing them in league play. More likely is the scenario where we'll spend two years in the Championship and one of them will win promotion from League One next year. At least Sheffield United will be around, so I can talk about them and Wednesday.  The Mancunian megabastards battled each other all the way down to the wire for the title, with City beating out United on the very last day of the season. Meanwhile Swansea is playing in the Champion's League, and Liverpool is pathetic. Nottingham Forest, Queens Park Rangers, and Brentford will all be our opponents in the Championship next year.  Barcelona got tired of losing the title, I see. Shaun Davies, that Welsh maestro, had the fourth best average rating in La Liga, but no one could touch the incomparable Argentinian, Joaquin Morales. On the other end of the table Mallorca is relegated for the third time in six years, and Levante ends their seven year run in the top flight.  Juventus wins, again. Fiorentina was the only club to come close. At least Roma topped those Lazio fascists. Will there be any surprises this year, or will the megabastards win a clean sweep?  Mein Gott im himmel! FC Bayern is down! FC Bayern is down! They don't even qualify for the Champion's League next year! Meanwhile it's Dortmund who takes the title. Frankfurt avoids relegation by the skin of their teeth, winning the relegation playoff by a 2-1 aggregate score.  Le France is boring as always, with no one challenging PSG for the title. It pleases me that they always crap out in the Champion's League, without winning there no one will take PSG seriously as a great club regardless of how many league titles they pile up.  Benfica snatches the title from Sporting on the very last day in Portugal. Meanwhile, Academica got a huge cash infusion last year, but has somehow already spent it and gotten nothing for it. I'm wondering if the owner just gave it all to himself as a dividend, which if so is really too bad. Next time ask for a sheik to take over the club, Camoes.  Ajax and PSV finished atop the table in the Eredivise, the two have combined to win seven of the last eight league titles. We get to take a trip to Holland to see how tough they really are in a little over a month. I wouldn't put money on us.  Celtic maintain their death lock on the Scottish Premier League, while Rangers are most of the way back to where they used to be. Trouncing the league and getting to the knockout stage of the Champion's League is about the best Celtic can hope for, given how underpowered they are in comparison to their continental competition. Also, up the Thistle! I have some friends who would be gleeful about Partick Thistle's run of success these past few years, even knowing it only occurred in a video game.  Barcelona was knocked out of the Champion's League in the group stage, it appears. No wonder they had a chip on their shoulder about winning La Liga. Arsenal takes home the best trophy any supporter of a North London team can realistically hope for.   What I said about PSG and Celtic? Forget it. I never said it. I don't care if you scroll up and it's still there. PSG beats Celtic to win the Champion's League. That's something you'll only witness in Football Manager. What's really crazy is that virtually none of the perennial powers even made it to the quarterfinals. No Spanish teams, no Italian teams, only one English team and the two German teams were knocked out in the quarterfinals. That's crazytown, and made me check to see if I was accidentally looking at the Europa League.  Across the ocean Club America had a rough season. I didn't notice, but they haven't won a title since 2013. The denizens of the Azteca must be pretty feisty at this point, they can be awful at the best of times.  Meanwhile the Chicago Fire are unbeaten in MLS. Thanks to the “Americanized” nature of MLS the winner could be any one of the eight teems that make the playoffs, right now only Columbus looks like they've got no prayer of making it. I'm a bit disappointed that MLS hasn't added Beckham's Miami franchise, but I guess adding franchises might be difficult for the game mid-stream.  The season's just begun in Brazil, where Palmeiras seek their third title in four years.  Over in Argentina the season has ended, with Velez and Boca Juniors facing off in a final won by Velez on penalty kicks.  Lastly, in the Copa Libertadores, South America's equivalent to the Champion's League, they're approaching the semi-finals and it's an all Brazilian affair. And in the next update, the 2018 World Cup in Russia! This game is very realistic. Just like in real life FIFA doesn't care one whit if Russia is invading their neighbors so long as the bribes get paid on time. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 01:46 on May 3, 2014 |
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Mar 4, 2014 22:38
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Celtic in a Champions League final? Hahahaha. If you think England winning a World Cup was insane, well that just topped it!
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Mar 4, 2014 22:47
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Just remember the 2004 CL final. And poor pumas, they shouldn't be relegated.
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Mar 4, 2014 23:17
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It's beginning to look like Tackleford's impatience with their manager was the best thing to happen to Wales since the evolution of the sheep.
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Mar 5, 2014 02:20
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N00ba the Hutt posted:It's beginning to look like Tackleford's impatience with their manager was the best thing to happen to Wales since the evolution of the sheep. What about Swansea, finishing in fourth is a very good result.
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Mar 5, 2014 02:42
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I'll take a board spot.
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Mar 5, 2014 02:52
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I'm echoing the sentiment that I know nothing about soccer, but love this LP because of the sports management. Also you're destroying the world of soccer with your team of youngsters. I also put my name forward to be on the board.
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Mar 5, 2014 03:35
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benzine posted:What about Swansea, finishing in fourth is a very good result. Yeah, a Champion's League spot is great no matter what league your in. That goes double for the Premier League, which is the deepest league by far even if their best teams don't quite match up with Real Madrid/Barca/Bayern right now. Between this and Wales being in the World Cup and advancing to the Euro semifinals it's a golden age for them. And don't forget Cardiff, which has been a regular Premier League squad for years now and won the FA Cup a couple years ago.
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Mar 5, 2014 03:42
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If there are spots left on the board, I wouldn't mind
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Mar 5, 2014 03:52
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Man what happened in Munich? Did they put Hoeneß in jail so everything went haywire? Thats quite the grim finish although it happened once in a while. And HSV playing Champions League? Not any time soon I think unless this is bizarro world. Still thats the charm of FM games. Too bad you can't get your hands on it in germany due to the drat inferior FIFA manager having the license. Not that I was ever great at these...
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Mar 5, 2014 04:28
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If you think the German league results were odd, just wait until you see the World Cup. Multiple deeply weird things happened in the group stage.
habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 05:05
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Good to see the Baggies getting a decent result in the Prem. What's their side looking like in 2018? Specifically, how has Saido Berahino shaped up, even if he's not at West Brom anymore?
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Mar 5, 2014 05:21
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Just finished catching up on the thread the last few days. Thank you so much for doing this glory to Wrexham and the American Jose Mourinho.
LionYeti fucked around with this message at 08:36 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 05:27
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blakout posted:Just finished catching up on the thread the last few days. Thank you so much for doing this glory to wrexham and the American Jose Mourinho. I eagerly await his war of words with alt-universe Mourinho. Actually, that's a request: who is alt-Mourinho and how's he doing?
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Mar 5, 2014 08:05
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whowhatwhere posted:I eagerly await his war of words with alt-universe Mourinho.
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Mar 5, 2014 08:09
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habeasdorkus posted:If you think the German league results were odd, just wait until you see the World Cup. Multiple deeply weird things happened in the group stage. It's not "weird" until Scotland wins the World Cup. 
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Mar 5, 2014 11:27
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International football has always been a bit odd in FM. In my current game not only did England win the euros, but Gabby Agbonlahor won the golden boot.
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Mar 5, 2014 11:34
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Could you post the League 2 table too please?
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Mar 5, 2014 12:00
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I'd like to put my hand in the ring for a shot at the board.
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Mar 5, 2014 12:11
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Tithin Melias posted:I'd like to put my hand in the ring for a shot at the board. I too would like to arrange a boxing match with Sky Shadowing about the embezzlement issue.
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Mar 5, 2014 13:35
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JT Jag posted:How many coaches has Chelsea gone through in the game so far? Only two! They sacked Mourinho last year, he's landed at Liverpool. Mourinho had three second place finishes and a title, so he was pretty successful even if Chelsea pulled a Moyes and finished sixth last year. They've hired some Ukrainian newbie for their new manager, he doesn't have any history before 2015 so I can't tell who he's supposed to be. Coached at Metalist, then Lorient, then six months at Athletic before Chelsea came calling. mfcrocker posted:Could you post the League 2 table too please? Sorry, I've been turning off the leagues as I advance through them so I reduce the amount of players the game needs to keep track of. That also lets me do things like get more detailed simulations from more countries, now that we can scout Europe I've turned on most of the top leagues from minor countries like Croatia and Austria while removing the lower leagues in the British Isles. That means I won't have Tackleford being fully simmed this year as I've turned off League One. Walsall, Tranmere, and Carlisle all got promoted last year. If there's a particular team you're interested in I can find out how they did. dadgummit posted:Good to see the Baggies getting a decent result in the Prem. What's their side looking like in 2018? Specifically, how has Saido Berahino shaped up, even if he's not at West Brom anymore? West Brom actually got relegated in 2015, but popped right back up the next year. Berahino now goes by Ian McLean (names are based on primary nationality, he's English first and then Burundian), and didn't play for the Baggies, getting loaned out twice to Brighton. West Brom sold him to Watford for 2.1m, and he provided them with 14 goals in the Premier League. Then they sold him to Newcastle for 4.5m, where he's been for the last two years. West Brom does have Stuart Mair, the wonderkid I found when I was at Tackleford and that Tackleford, like the fools they are, sold for 1.3m. He's 20 now and turning into a legitimate star. He's probably a year away from deserving starting 11 time in the Premier League. Maybe I should try loaning him. Fake edit: Nope, they're using him on their first team. Darn. Real edit: Hey, this thread went gold! Yay! I feel so accomplished. Now I just need to figure out who didn't give the thread five stars and hunt them down in revenge  Or, go back and re-edit some of the earlier updates to make them easier to read.
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Mar 5, 2014 13:42
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Volume Six: The Big(ger) Leagues. Prologue: Everyone wants our players. June 9, 2018-July 1, 2018 Congrats to our new board members, Obliterati and Galaga Galaxian. Enjoy your complementary luxury booths and here's your keys to the team petty cash safe.  The window opens with Newcastle trying to lowball us for Todd. I will not sell him for a penny less than £5.5m, if he stays with us another year all that means is that he gets better and becomes worth even more money when we finally do sell him.  We finalize our youth transfers from the spring, and two of these four are potential players for our first team. Stacy Newman Midfielder  Newman is a physically talented kid who needs a lot of work on his mental game. He won't be seeing first team action absent a disaster until that positioning score markedly improves. If he follows the timetable of our other youth recruits you can expect him to start showing up on the bench or in limited action in a couple years. Also, his mom has got it going on. Doug Harley Left Winger  It's good for Harley that he's quite the footballing talent, because by God he's ugly. He's also very, very raw. Just about everything needs improvements, but he's no worse than players like Upson were when they joined us, and Upson turned into £2m. There's no reason Harley can't do so as well, why he couldn't eventually become a backup on the left wing. No one else will ever be our first choice for starting left wing until Mujkic is gone, and I'm going to push that day off for as long as humanly possible.  That's not going to get the job done, scousers.  This I'll need to consider. Read's got a year left on his contract, but he's already highly rated. He did zilch when given the chance to show his stuff last year, though, and he's looking like our third option at striker. If I can find someone who I think can replace him I'll make the deal. In the meantime I order my personal assistant to stall, and he tells them I'm in the bathroom "or something" until the next week. You can generally stall for a week or two, or longer, but the other side can put a deadline on your decision. It's best to use that time to solicit other offers for the player, and hopefully touch off a bidding war.   New goalkeeping coaches! Now all of our first team coaches have a four star rating in their training category. I generally re-sign our under 18 staff, it's hard to find four star coaches who are both willing and able to do youth work.  I'm being offered more for Read, who's not as good as Harrison. This is an easy pass.   If someone wants Mujkic, they're going to have to trigger his release clause. Todd, on the other hand, I'll listen to offers.  We've gotten more unsolicited offers for our players in the first ten days of the transfer window than the game to this point combined. Tench has a year left on his contract, and only managed a 6.8 average rating in League One. We're already looking for new fullbacks and thus I have no problem selling him off. I've got a number of irons in the fire, I'm hoping that I can introduce some of them soon.    Is Piers Morgan back in the UK? Is he hacking voicemails again? I got them to bump up the amount they were willing to pay into the seven figures. Swansea now has two of our former striker prodigies.  So close, Arsenal! I immediately make them a counteroffer.  This is not nearly as good an offer as the one that I took for Tench, and we do need someone to play fullback this year.  That I'm not selling you doesn't mean you get a new contract, Smissen.  Tench earns us £750k, which I immediately put to use chasing a 20 year old fullback from Huddersfield.  Arsenal are uninterested in negotiating for Todd, flatly rejecting my offer to sell for £6m.  We've sourced a new backup keeper. Ross Love Goalkeeper  The young man with the feathered hair should be an adequate backup, and should also improve on his currently middling stats. He'd have been an OK player in League One, and he's a major step up from the irascible Tom Taylor in both personality and stats, but Higgs has improved by leaps and bounds since taking over the starting job and is a clear first choice between the pipes.  Hands off my Billy Goat! Or, at the very least, double the amount of money you're offering me.  Our European scouting starts paying off as I find an affordable left back from Croatia. I'm not sure that northern Wales is really an upgrade over living in Croatia, though. He might find himself disappointed in that respect. Dinko Mejasic Left Back  Check out those technical skills. This miniature Balkan wonder is only 19, and he's already got 11's or better in many categories, topped by a 15 in passing. He needs to get his marking attribute up, but as I said he's still only 19. He's also got speed to burn, which should help make up for any mistakes he makes. His only weakness is on the mental side of the game, but that's an area that increases naturally through experience, of which he's going to have every chance at. He doesn't speak English yet, but already has basic knowledge of three non-native languages indicating an ability to learn. Mujkic also speaks basic Croatian, so there's at least one person on the team that he'll be able to have some conversation with before he learns English.  The World Cup starts with hosts Russia drawing with minnows Costa Rica. That makes me happy even though I know it's a video game. Anything to watch the hosts get embarrassed, and I'd be saying that regardless of the current kerfuffle in Ukraine.  Oh, I'm not done coming for him yet. He's got the potential to be a rock of our Premier League club. I've offered £450k and £600k, and I'm willing to go up to a cool million for him.  Now I'm done. But I'll have my eye on him for the next year, if they can't re-sign him I'm going to be all about swooping in.  Spain's really come down in the world if they're drawing with Algeria.  Stop horning in on my potential signings, jerks.  We sign another teenager for the first team, this time a Dane. Dan Troelsen Defensive Midfielder  The Dane is already fluent in three languages, Danish, German, and English, at the age of 18. That speaks well for his adaptability. Though he's got a long way before he's considered smarter than a box of rocks on the pitch he's got excellent attributes for his age. My only concern about him is his low determination stat, but he's got so much else going for him that it's only a passing concern. He's also going to need to get stronger to play his role as a defensive midfielder in our style of play.  Soon the Dane will be a seamless part of my Lower League Voltron.  Our captain is reaching the limits of his potential. It's unlikely that he's capable of playing a part in the Premier League, but I'm willing to see how he does in the Championship for now.  Wow, I don't even want to imagine what it cost Al-Thani to buy that result.  Everyone returns from their vacations healthy and fit, just as I hoped for.  I'm happy to listen to suggestions about additional players. It's how I found out about Mujkic. Most of the time it's not helpful, but it takes just a click of a button to put their suggestions into action.  You're not telling me anything I don't know about the youth system. Who do you think brought in all those players? The youth fairy?  Wait, so asking them how they're doing is a way to make them happy? Does this also work on real people?  Parma just got relegated to Serie B. They have one of the most exciting teen strikers I've ever seen, the imperiously named Marco Valerio Cirelli. Each time I refuse an interview or offer it makes the Wrexham faithful love me more, whereas if I were to show interest at the job they'd get mad at me for not being loyal. If I weren't so dedicated to Wrexam I might have taken that interview, even though they would be offering me much, much more money. Ahem.  Uh oh, is he going to be one of those guys who's always getting hurt on international duty? I swear there's a specific stat for “healthy as a horse while at the club but turns to tissue paper when playing international matches.”  Closer, but not good enough. Moreover, I don't want to be trading away too many first team players at once.  The Dane made Harper obsolete. Harper's six years older, worse, and getting paid more. Bailey, Holland, Simpson, Troelsen, Shirra, and Holt should be plenty of depth for the three midfield spots, and we've got a couple youth in the system that can fill in if need be. I'm still looking for a striker, a centerback, and a fullback, though.  Hey, does anyone else want to bid on Parsons? Yes? Then bid already. He must feel like the prettiest belle at the ball.  Wales had 29 shots to Iran's 2. Ouch.  That's it for the USA this World Cup. Fire Jurgen Klinsmann! Hire Scott Brown!  We're getting pipped for players by friggin' Partick Thistle!?  Maybe Peterborough thinks that if they ask me enough times I'll screw up and accidentally say yes.  (horrible french accent)Oui, Monseigneur Vaillant. Welcome to Wales. I trust you will have no trouble with the language, non?  Quelle horreur. It is ok, these savages can't speak proper American either.(/horrible french accent) Jean-Michel Vaillant Centerback  I'm paying him more than I'd like, but Vaillant's signing means that Todd's departure won't leave a hole in the squad. He can also play right back, which is very useful. Ioan Peters was our only player on the senior team that was fully adept at the position since the Tench sale. The big issue will be how quickly he can pick up English, as it will affect his ability to blend into the team until he does. Learning languages is based on players adaptability score, something we can't see. If they have a poor score it can take them over a year to pick up just the basics of the language whereas highly adaptable players who play in several different nations end their careers speaking half a dozen languages fluently. It can be quite frustrating, I once had a very good Portuguese attacking midfielder who didn't learn a lick of English over the course of two years, making it impossible for me to use him as the locus of our attack.  What. Did Qatar pay SI under the table to make them not horrible in FM? Because this is a joke.  Tom Pym is my second choice for a striker after Parsons, but he's much more expensive and not as good. Tom Pym Striker  There's a lot to like about Pym, starting with a 17 Long Shots score that will play great with our high tempo, bludgeon the ball style of play. The fact that he's a big ol' bruiser only makes things better, he'll be able to wreak havoc in the opponent's area, and have the ups to put his head on just about any cross less than ten feet off the ground. He's the archetypal target man, able to hold up play and a giant of a target for crosses into the box, but with absolutely no flair. Paul Williams says he can improve a lot, and I trust an rear end Man with an 18 at judging potential. His arrival means we're not as reliant on the whims and whimsies of Billy the Kid for our goalscoring.  Darn tootin' we have. Our reputation is now at about 5900, of a maximum 10000. When I took over the team it was around 3000.  Australia clearly isn't planning on making it to the late rounds of the World Cup, those matches take place while it's still going on.  One last look back at the brilliant comet that was our 2017-2018 season.  Ok, one more look back. Did anyone doubt that Bailey was going to win this award again?  I do think they're trying to set up a rivalry between us and Sunderland. I think I'll be playing that up. What's the difference between Mark Bowman and a chamberpot? Mark Bowman's the one that's constantly full of crap.   I'm aiming low because I think we're in for a tough season. I'm hoping for top half, but if we can merely get to mid-table we'll be well placed to make the leap next year to the Premier League. Also, I already have my wage budget from y'all, so it doesn't really matter what the game sets as I immediately edit it back to what you chose.  That's nearly half of our entire gross income from last year. It's about six times as much as we got from League One TV rights. And this is, I believe, a mere tenth what Premier League teams get in TV rights cash.  Poole is about as good as he's going to get. If we don't end up selling Todd, which seems possible given that the sharks have stopped circling him and no one is willing to go above the Arsenal offer, we'll have five centerbacks. If they offer us a goodly sum, I'll be selling high.  Our total wages bump up slightly as only four first team players get raises (Harrison, Shirra, Mujkic, and Gorman), and of them only Gorman and Mujkic see much real increase.  Nope, not interested in that friendly.  Or that one.  Or that... wait. No, I'm very interested in having the reigning champions of Europe come visit us for free. We should pack the stadium, and won't owe PSG a nickel of the revenue.  The dream is dead, or at least mortally wounded. Wales needs Croatia to thrash Iran while beating Egypt. It's almost assured that they're going home early. At Garden Village, June 25, 2018 Friendly  v Wrexham_ Preview Match Analysis-2.png) Our first friendly is against the local lads at Garden Village. It's going to be painless. Starting Formation: 4-5-1 Attack. Starting 11: Higgs, Peters, Todd, Lewis, Smissen, Simpson (c), Holland, Bailey, Rainey, Gorman, Harrison. Subs: Rogers, Kemp, Rush, Poole, Curran, Newman, Holt, Shirra, Walley, Harley, Coulson, Eden. We're ahead after 2 minutes. We're ahead by three after 10 minutes. We're ahead by 5 at the half. Our first team is clearly ready to rock and roll, at least against the local ragamuffins. Our youth don't look so bad either, scoring twice in the second half on our way to a victory where our opponents couldn't manage a shot. We'll take them out for beer after the game to thank them for being part of our powder puff opening schedule. Man of the Match: Stewart Lewis.  v Wrexham_ Stats Match Stats-2.png)  v Wrexham_ Stats Player Ratings-2.png) Garden Village 0-7 Wrexham   Yeah yeah, I'll get around to it. I'm much more likely to listen to a player asking for higher wages than their agent. I like my players, I hate their agents.  If you're going to go down, you might as well go down swinging. Scoring five against Greece is impressive given their habit of playing an ugly, negative game with few goals. The US scored eight goals in their three World Cup games, which is impressive. They allowed ten, which is not.  Harrison becomes our second player to be earning more than Mujkic. Meteor should have been willing to talk contracts, he'd easily have mega dineiro. In order to offer such big contracts I've temporarily switched most of our transfer budget into the wage budget, which allows me to offer larger contracts to players. It's useful, but be careful if you use it as the change is locked in so long as any contract or transfer offers are on the table as you won't be able to offer different contracts/transfers if you don't have enough in your budget.  I wasn't banking on Wales to make it out of their group, but to miss out on the knockout round based upon goal differential with Iran? Ouch. This is a weird, weird World Cup.  Let's talk about how weird. There's nothing too bizarre in the first three groups. Group C is a bit off with Switzerland finishing ahead of Spain, and Costa Rica just achieved a minor miracle in getting past Russia. (Haha, Russia). But those are things that are plausible outcomes. South Korea made it to the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup, after all.  This is where things get nuts. Germany not making it through the group of death is one thing, but finishing with only one point? And Uruguay not advancing from a group in which Qatar of all nations wins every game. Qatar? Seriously? Are they importing slaves to play for their football teams as well as build the World Cup 2022 stadiums? And that's not even the most bananas thing. Look at Group F. That's proud Brazil, in a group of Morocco, Romania, and Ireland, getting knocked out in the first round. Incroyable.  It doesn't get any less topsy-turvy in the last two groups, where Norway advances but Mexico doesn't, and Egypt is sent home without a single point while Iran moves on. It's possible some of these nations have had the same type of renaissance as Wales has had, but at least Wales was starting with an all-world player when the game began.  Thankfully, order is likely to be restored in the knockout round. Each of the upstarts faces a much better team that could realistically make it to the quarterfinals in a normal year. But if Qatar beats Spain, I'm saying check everyone's bank transfers and ransack their houses for evidence. Both ingame and at SI.  Back in the club football world, we're shaping up well. We could still use another fullback, but beyond that I'm only going to be seeking talent that is either capable of lasting us until we hit the top half of the Premier League or that would be a tangible upgrade over our current players. Our youth pipeline is paying off now, we're able to fill multiple backup positions on the team with young players who came from our U18 squad, and we've got plenty of budget, both transfer and wage, to spend if I come across anyone really special. 
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Mar 5, 2014 17:44
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Wow, there are a lot of big names in that Championship.
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Mar 5, 2014 18:49
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Galaga Galaxian posted:So the Meteor doesn't want to move to a bigger team still, does he? Yeah as complicated and sophisticated FM is. It's still "just" a simulation. The in game players don't think as a real person would: "This guy got the club back to back promotions, and he thinks I'm the most important player" is probably something a real Mujkic would weigh against moving to a bigger club. In the game it looks more like this: Players have a hidden stat ambition and clubs have a stat called fame (or something like that) and the players with high ambition will just want to be in clubs with higher fame.
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Mar 5, 2014 19:03
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A Tartan Tory posted:Wow, there are a lot of big names in that Championship. I make that 16 sides that have played Premier League football. Also, 'New White Hart Lane'? That's the Naming Rights Stadium, I'll have you know!
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Mar 5, 2014 19:20
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FailAtMagic posted:Yeah as complicated and sophisticated FM is. It's still "just" a simulation. There's also the whole thing about being able to play in European competitions. Mujkic is already considered a "leading Premier League winger" by my coaches and scouts- that makes him at the very least a rotation option for teams that are aiming at the top four each year. He would fit right in at Arsenal or Chelsea, and they'd pay him at least ten times as much as he's earning right now. Meanwhile we've earned three promotions in three years, but we're still only in the Championship and probably four years away from challenging for a Europa League spot, much less a Champion's League one. Football is littered with clubs that have brief spells of success before knuckling under to the financial realities of big time football. Mujkic isn't unhappy, he's slightly concerned that we won't be able to achieve his ambitions and I won't bring in players to reach those ambitions. He's signed through the next three years, so it's not like his contract is up soon, the main reason I wanted to extend him was so that I could keep increasing his release clause and make it less likely that someone triggers it. Also, we often see players in real life choose to go to a bigger club where they're a squad player rather than to the club where they'd be starting 11. I find it pretty realistic. I think a lot of them might have an inflated sense of their own worth.
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Mar 5, 2014 19:48
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habeasdorkus posted:
 I had a feeling this would happen, but I don't like sheiks in my club . I just hope they invested in youth or something.
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Mar 5, 2014 19:58
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habeasdorkus posted:Also, we often see players in real life choose to go to a bigger club where they're a squad player rather than to the club where they'd be starting 11. I find it pretty realistic. I think a lot of them might have an inflated sense of their own worth. *cough*Scott Sinclair*cough*
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Mar 5, 2014 20:03
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habeasdorkus posted:There's also the whole thing about being able to play in European competitions. Mujkic is already considered a "leading Premier League winger" by my coaches and scouts- that makes him at the very least a rotation option for teams that are aiming at the top four each year. He would fit right in at Arsenal or Chelsea, and they'd pay him at least ten times as much as he's earning right now. Meanwhile we've earned three promotions in three years, but we're still only in the Championship and probably four years away from challenging for a Europa League spot, much less a Champion's League one. Football is littered with clubs that have brief spells of success before knuckling under to the financial realities of big time football. There's another thing that comes into play in real life: footballers, much like other athletes, have a really short career. Two decades, tops. Plus, a lot of them come from less-than-wealthy homes. So, imagine you're a young promising star, being seduced with promises of fame and fortune in top-level clubs. You're gonna get thrice the money you're being paid at your current club, hell, maybe more. You'd like not only to support yourself financially, but your parents and grandparents and siblings and right now that big fancy mansion is looking tempting. Okay, maybe the club you're at right now could become a new continental force, but who's to say they're not gonna stall at their current level for two, three, five years? What if you never get calls from Chelsea or Arsenal again? Five years is a quarter of your career, you know. If you already have a bit of an ego - and a lot of footballers do - you might start pushing for a transfer. Even if you are a rotation or reserve player at first, you could carve your spot in the main squad if you work hard enough. It beats languishing in a club where no one else's in your level. Short version: footballers are complex human beings with complex emotions and motivations.
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Mar 5, 2014 20:28
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Dias posted:
Except for Wayne Rooney and John Terry.
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Mar 5, 2014 22:41
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