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Gimme your most undersized, most dribblingiest AM please.
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Mar 4, 2022 16:38
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Mukaikubo posted:If you have the Emissary on your side you'll never lose another big game! Alas, Bajorans aren't considered home-grown players
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Mar 5, 2022 02:12
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Season 2 - Preseason Okay, there is a very limited number of things we have to do this offseason. 1) Fill the bleeding hole in the squad at Goalkeeper 2) get a new striker that ideally moves Adeyemi to rotation option or right wing, 3) three ward off the legion of vultures that is coming for my guys with minimum fee release clauses and guys who want to move to bigger clubs 4) Sign replacements for any casualties of the transfer market. How much money do you think I'm to spend on that?  Obviously at striker, there is only one target, so we'll come back to him in a second as the goalie situation is more trifficult (sic)  First up, the reinforcements. Moriba and Camavinga are the best midfielder prospects in the game, and Renan is an exciting young left back/central defender who can cover for the angry Canadian when he misses 4 games via suspensions as well as late in games when we want someone more defensively solid in for the converted winger.  Goalie is a complex situation. I go show my interest in my preferred man. Showing interest helps makes them more willing to sign to your club but also drives up the play time + salary expectation (making them your top target also says they are going to be top man) and its important to do if you're willing to make them a star player. If the club was bigger and better, we could potentially destabilize him at PSG by repeatedly soliciting him to come to Newcastle. This would drive down his transfer value sharply, but the club isn't big enough yet. As a result, I will need to pay whatever absurd price PSG wants.  Haaland similarly cannot be destabilized, but his contract is running down so Dortmund are going to move him on for a much more 'reasonable' sum of money. So we want to show intrest  Given I cannot destablise Donnarumma, there are three realistic possibilities. AS shown here, I can give PSG (owned by noted slave state Qatar) a bananas sum of money for Donarumma. Secondly, I could sign PSGs aging veteran goalie Navas who Donarumma has replaced, is very good, is about to retire, and is very cheap as a stop gap solution. The last option is pick up one 'cheaper' established goalies floating around with limited upside who would only cost me 20-40 million. As it transpires, I discover a cool crash bug where if you offer someone a contract and they decide to retire between you offering them the contract and them accepting the contract it hard locks the game and you cannot progress! After filing a bug report with SI I give up on plan B & C  For two hundred and thirty five million pounds we get our man. This is the single biggest deal in football history. This is more than most entire leagues spend on transfers in a season. This single transfer is equal to 25% of non-Newcastle spending on transfers in the premier league. Its a dumb deal and my board is extremely mad about how much money we are giving the slavers, but whatever, I am firmly in gently caress it mode at this point  I forgot to screenshot Haaland's deal, but we go in with a big contract (including a match highest earner clause which automatically increases his salary so he's always the equal highest earner at the club), and for 'only' a one hundred and thirty million pound transfer deal. Bargin! This absolute hammers the budget and I don't have much more room for action unless we make some sales. Which I absolutely do not want to do.  My assistant manager gets offered a gig at Man City but turns them down.  Pep gets fired from Man City, Klopp takes the job, and Pep gets his old job in the space of about a week.  Having lost both of their goalies, PSG are panic signing goalies and I am glad to gently caress off dubravka  NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. There is no warning for this: Milan just comes in and BOOM, gone. As it turns out Reyna is the most expendable member of the squad, but he is our primary corner taker and turned out 20 assists last season, so he will be missed.  I think the newspapers don't realise that we've signed Haaland. I don't understand why he isn't here.  Wait but.. what?  This news item inspires me - I really like Fofana, he's one of the best CBs in the game and I suddenly have money..  Oh hey! At the same time, Arsenal comes in for Sule (who wants to leave to a bigger club) in a deal that makes us a healthy profit. Sule is very good but he's not essential to my back line so I'm happy to let him go.  And pick up Fofana instead for for a piddling one hundred and twenty million. He's noticable upgrade on Sule, though is he worth twice as much money? Sure, whatever, what do I care.  Given the depature of Reyna I need a new backup winger. Yusif Demir here has been tossed by Barcacelona in real life after making 9 appearances for them, but for the pissant sum 13 million I'm happy to pick him up. Total transfer Spending: Four Hundred and ninety eight million pounds Didn't quite crest 500. I still have a big wack in the bank, but there is nothing I really want or need at the moment, so I will hold onto it with a view to making some value signings later in the season. With that, let's check in on the goons.  Lynneth here is a high profile young centreback in the Manchester united youth system, and is one of the most highly regarded 16 year old defenders in world football. Being worth 15-20 million quid at age 16 is a good sign, but not yet capped for Germany.  Frankenfreak is laboring in much more obscure circumstances in Toulouse's youth team in the 2nd division of french football, but they have big upside, a great personality and the attributes to be an out and out winger, but the foot/playing side combination might make them a great inverted winger in the modern style. I'd expect them to play a lot of football for Algeria over their career. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 12:00 on Mar 5, 2022 |
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Mar 5, 2022 11:53
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For the goonining, can I be a goalie? I don’t really care where.
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Mar 6, 2022 03:50
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i could go in as a central defender at a random level of football
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Mar 6, 2022 05:06
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Really loving watching so much cash get slung around. I’ll be a Livorno striker, if you’re running the Italian leagues
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Mar 6, 2022 06:12
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Captain Foo posted:i could go in as a central defender at a random level of football Because I was never really intending on this being a very long term save I don't have many lower leagues loaded - I have mostly top leagues and a few 2nd divisions loaded. As a result, anyone going in is going as a prospect in the youth system of a biggish team. Season 2 - August 2022 I slightly mis-ended the last post (whoops), so I actually swap Fofana for Sule and lose Reyena after the first few of these games.. but not really a big deal.  Season 2 kicks off with a pretty tough schedule - all of these teams are probably going to end up in the top half, while Chelsea and Man City are going for european places.  Brighton are first up and we are narrow favourites playing away according to the bookies, but this uses team rep and probably underestimates our true talent level with the new acquisitons.  gently caress me that's not a good start. It was so promising with Haaland and Adeyemi opening up the ledger with a great connection, but after that porous defense and lackluster finishing cost us the game. This isn't a tactical familiarity issue or anything, the team and the tactic are very similar to last year. Its very close on xG, so I feel like we should have got a point at least. Also worrying: This is the poorest quality opposition we have this month. I tell the team what I think of them in the dressing room and hope for a better showing next time.  Next up Leicester at home. They've won their opening games of the season and are looking hot.  Now thats more like it. Everything works and our advantage finally tells in the second half. Given our knowledge of future events the central role Reyna played in literally 100% of the goals we created is a concerning sign though.  Next up, Chelsa away at Stamford Bridge. Despite them having they home advantage they have a new manager so are hopefully trying to figure out a new system, and the mixed record (3-1-1) says we might be able to exploit that  We are pretty lucky to bag all three points here, and again Reyna is instrumental in our chances created.  Champions league group stage draw. What a draw for us, Napoli are not as good as the top shelf English teams, and Salzburg and Shaktar are on the level with mediocre/bad Premier league teams. We will be favourites to top the group. This also introduces a new issue: due to the fact that the Qatar slave state is hosting the world cup in the middle of the loving season, the schedule is going to be absolutely insane if we stick around in all the cups and champions league. ABSOLUTELY INSANE. Expect some long updates.  Next up, Man City away. Klopp has taken the helm from Liverpool, and they are in decent form to start the season.  When Sterling put the 2nd away, I was cursing how much money I had given Donnarumma to be a donkey, and the awful start to the season. However, Haaland was determined not to go down easily and hit back in the first half. Then we were hammering away with chances applenty before the dam finally broken late in the second half with Bellingham, Reyna and St Maximin providing the spark. Very important win.  Standings at the end of the first month - you can see everyone has had a chaotic start to the season with 5 teams tied on 9 points after 4 games.  The transfer window closes revealing the true insanity - because the spending from the end last season 'counts' as happening in this transfer window, we have spend 776 million quid, vs a total spending for the rest of the premier league combined of 814 million.  However, as the excellent Soccernomics would suggest wages spending is probably more important than transfer spending, and we are a bit off the pace of the big 4 here. This is mostly a product of our very young squad agreeing to lower inital contracts to start, and we will have to spend more in this area this season as people demand new contracts to reflect their importance as a starter on a potential premier league titlist. Lastly, the new goons:  Niftybottle is a young goalie for the biggest club in Germany. Excellent personality (though perfectionist means they can be a bit aggro) and the long runway a goalie has to develop is a good combination. Being almost 2 meters tall is also very important. Already playing for the german national team at the u19s level is also a great sign.  CaptainFoo is a bit older than everyone else we've seen so far, but is a good prospect coming out of River Plate, a noted FM prospect hotspot. Again, an excellent personality should help him develop and bag a transfer to europe somewhere in a couple of years. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 06:36 on Mar 6, 2022 |
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Mar 6, 2022 06:23
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Alikchi posted:Really loving watching so much cash get slung around. I’ll be a Livorno striker, if you’re running the Italian leagues I do have the italian leagues loaded, but not that far down. That said, none of those players are going to end the league, so I could either do one of their actual players, or an italian striker of some description.
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Mar 6, 2022 06:28
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I do have the italian leagues loaded, but not that far down. That said, none of those players are going to end the league, so I could either do one of their actual players, or an italian striker of some description. Latter sounds good!
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Mar 6, 2022 07:47
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I'll be some Portuguese prospect if that's cool!
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Mar 6, 2022 09:31
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please make me gibraltars next, best, hope.
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Mar 6, 2022 13:35
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Put me in, coach, wherever you like.
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Mar 6, 2022 14:09
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ItohRespectArmy posted:please make me gibraltars next, best, hope. You're already in the game! Keep a close eye on West Ham until they sell you. Everyone else, I've got your requests and will action them. Season 2 - September  The task ahead - you can already see the number of games a month is escalating and will only get more crazy from here. I'm basically constantly rotating the squad to try and manage fatigue as we have 22 premier league football players and will be playing ¬60 competitive matches this season (assuming we do well, 38 league , 10 champions league, 5 carabao cup, 6 FA cup) plus whatever my players are doing internationally so fatigue management will be a big issue.  First up: Liverpool at home. These guys are the defending title holders, the best team in the league and it would be nice to take 3 points here if we're are mount a strong title challenge here.  And we absolutely spank them - they only get 2 shots away! Everyone just plays great football, Donnarumma is outstanding in his command of the area and grabbing corners etc before they are threatening with a shot, and the midfield is dominant.  I forgot to take a screenshot of West Brom pre-match, so let's check in with Sesko who's out on loan for Lille. He's absolutely carving up Ligue Un Uber Eats with a very hot start.  Another easy three goals despite worse team performance overall. Reyna is making a lot happen for the team and will be a big adjustment without him.  Our first match against European competition! Would be gret to get on the front foot with a win as we should be the best team in the group, but this is our first european match with the club for like 20 years so there will be some nerves. They have bought James Tarkowski so I'm looking forward to another disasterous outing from him against us.  They drop him! Extremely funny  We are all over them, but we just cannot convert our chances, which makes me worried about the Reyna depature. Donnarumma probably shouldn't have let that late equaliser through. I am very disappointed to only come away with 1 point and tell the team so.  A chance to bounce back against blackburn - they've just been promoted and despite the early overperformance are not really ready for his level.  Lol. I'm trying a different formation to get Adeyemi and Haaland on the pitch at the same time while getting some value out of Musiala. Once Pickering gets sent off with two cards in 5 minutes we just demolish them with constant pressure.  5 goals propels him towards his goal bonuses. Yes I'm paying him more than 125 grand a goal when you factor in all his bonuses, so that win cost the club 500k in bonuses for Haaland alone.  I'm not sure who the worst team in the group is, but we should be easily beating RB Salzburg from the Austrian League.  I play a rotated sided and we have their number despite a poor performance from the midfield. I start a process of tweaking the midfield roles, wingers and centre forward roles from here to see how I can make the attacking engine work a bit more smoothly while giving things a bit more defensive stability.  I forgot the Tottenham pre-match, so have the league table ahead of the spurs game. I rotate the squad expecting a cake walk.  I mean, I'm mad, but we basically lost because Kane had one of the greatest games I've ever seen in FM.  A perfect hattrick from Kane and Son deserved more than the 7.3 too I reckon. I weep.  Last game for the month against Shakhtar. I'm looking for a bit of a bounce back after the Spurs debacle,  Very strong performance anchored by our centre backs. Shakhtar get a lot of shots away but they are mostly poor quality long shots from outside the box (~0.06 per shot). They are struggling to get the ball into the box as they cannot meaningfully challenge Fofana and Milenkovic physically and constantly lose aerial battles from attempted crosses or in corners. In contrast we generate a steady stream of decent opportunities by working the ball into the box (~0.10 XG per shot). With the fact we shoot 5 times as often and our shots are 66% higher quality, unsurprisingly we score a bunch of goals and shut them out. It's a big issue for players transitioning into the Premier league how much more athletic the players are compared to wherever they came from. Yaya Toure is one of the best midfielders ever, and who played in a variety of European leagues before coming to the Premier League to play for Manchester City. In interviews mentioned that he struggled with the adjustment - in Spain (still a top 5 league!) he said it felt like he had 10 seconds on the ball after receiving a pass before the opposition was on-top of him. In the premier league it was more like 3 seconds before a defender is initating physical contact with a view to dispossessing him. Shakhtar Donetsk are the best team in the Ukraine and while they play in the champions league regularly, playing against one of the best centre backs in the premier league in Fofana is a massive massive step up in competition.  Champions league group at the end of month. We are looking pretty good as Napoli has dropped points against Salzburg. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Mar 7, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2022 05:13
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:It's a big issue for players transitioning into the Premier league how much more athletic the players are compared to wherever they came from. Yaya Toure is one of the best midfielders ever, and who played in a variety of European leagues before coming to the Premier League to play for Manchester City. In interviews mentioned that he struggled with the adjustment - in Spain (still a top 5 league!) he said it felt like he had 10 seconds on the ball after receiving a pass before the opposition was on-top of him. In the premier league it was more like 3 seconds before a defender is initating physical contact with a view to dispossessing him. Shakhtar Donetsk are the best team in the Ukraine and while they play in the champions league regularly, playing against one of the best centre backs in the premier league in Fofana is a massive massive step up in competition. Taking that into account, what are the, for lack of a better word, best leagues in the Football world? Or is there no singular metric and you gotta go by a bunch of different scales?
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Mar 7, 2022 12:45
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Lynneth posted:Taking that into account, what are the, for lack of a better word, best leagues in the Football world? Or is there no singular metric and you gotta go by a bunch of different scales? the top 5 are pretty unquestionable, in order 1: The English Premier League 2: :La Liga in Spain 3: the Bundesliga in Germany 4: Serie A in Italy and 5: Ligue 1 in France. Past these five, it's a lot more complicated and a lot more based on "this league has a really good team this season who's singlehandedly bringing their league up" but the top 5 in europe pretty much are the top 5 in the world. Now, the problem is that these 5 leagues are absolutely not even remotely even leagues. The top 3 teams in spain, the top 3 teams in germany, the top 3 teams in italy and the top 2 teams in france are absolutely as good as any team in england, but the 20th best team in england is frankly better than almost any other team past the top 10 in any other league because of the difference in TV deals and money spent EDIT: To go into some detail, in my current game, I'm playing as Feyenoord in the dutch league, a league that's (depending on the season/teams) usually somewhere in the range of the 6th-10th best league in the world. My team won 100% of league games played and had every single game televised, and we combined for about 30 million dollars in combined TV revenue/prize money for the last season. Next season IRL, the team that will come in last in the premier league will be guaranteed 143 million dollars in TV rights for just existing in the premier league. I can win every single game, win 3 straight champion's leagues, and I'm still making a fifth of what the worst premier league team in england makes for simply existing TheFlyingLlama fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Mar 7, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2022 13:09
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Flying Llama is absolutely spot on. The 6th league is probably Portugal which I mention for later. The only thing I'd add is that Football performance generally tracks to wages paid, and due to European competition the various leagues play against each often enough that we can establish the more wages (not transfers) => better team thing broadly holds true across the world. With that said here is a list of the top 115 wage bills pre corona virus: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/ok250r/oc_european_clubs_wage_bills_201920/ A number of interesting details here: extremely bad premier league teams like Burnley who are notoriously tight-fisted are spending more than all but 4 French teams, and more than any Portuguese team. Middling teams in the second division of English football (Middlesbrough) are spendingu more than mid table French clubs (Nates). Even worse, since those figures were published the French TV deal has imploded, meaning French clubs have had to cut wage bills significantly! International leagues are a joke by comparison, the MLS wage cap is 4.2 million USD pa, you have players who are exempt who might double or triple that but realistically an MLS team couldn't survive in the English 2nd division. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 13:56 on Mar 7, 2022 |
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Mar 7, 2022 13:30
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That's mildly ridiculous. Why is so much more TV money being thrown around in the Premier League? (Also I'm sad the Bundesliga is only 3rd behind Spain)
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Mar 7, 2022 20:35
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Lynneth posted:That's mildly ridiculous. Why is so much more TV money being thrown around in the Premier League? This is a multi billion dollar question that the guys running La Liga would love to know the answer to so the chances of me knowing the answer is pretty low but my opinion is free so here you go. I think though that it's a cumulative result of lucky timing and decisions the Premier league clubs took when setting up the Premier league and the TV deal in the early 90s that have compounded over the intervening 30 years: 1) The premier league deal splits the money almost equally between the clubs, whereas in Germany and Spain the revenue share is very unequal. This makes the league relatively more competitive (although it is hardly super competitive) 2) The original deal with BskyB was very smartly negotiated and BskyB was also very reliant on the deal as the tent pole of their business, which caused the Murdoch media empire to massively push the premier league brand. 2a) there was a massive investment hapoening in pay TV just as the premier league was founded and the rights so the initial auction of rights was hotly contested as it was seen as important to establish a differentiator in the UK pay TV market. 3) English as a language just has more global reach than German/french/Spanish (this is very debatable) and the game has more domestic penetration in the UK than the other big 5 (again, super debatable) 3) the relatively equal revenue share and high starting point of the BskyB deal -> higher quality competition -> attracting better players - > more value in TV rights as the games are better to watch - > the league rights continue to be worth more money. There are also warning signs that this cycle is being broken by the arrival of sportswashing creating a less competitive league: in 2019 that value of the domestic rights package actually dropped in absolute terms. The continued ridiculous growth in international revenue more than offset this but it is an interest point.
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Mar 7, 2022 21:50
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I'd add to that the fact that some premier league teams (especially Man U) are global brands which also draws attention and revenue. Its weird about competitiveness though, because its only in the last decade or so that there seems to have been more genuine competition at the top, coinciding with the (relative) decline of Man U.
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Mar 7, 2022 23:32
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Namtab posted:I'd add to that the fact that some premier league teams (especially Man U) are global brands which also draws attention and revenue. Yeah my analysis there could be very, very, very bad so add salt.
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Mar 7, 2022 23:34
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Season 2 - October Schedule craziness continues to build - 7 games this month. Buckle in. The two figures covered up by the prompt are Shakhtar Donesk again and Leeds in the league  Haaland likes me which is great for keeping him at the club long term.  Brentford are on the bottom of the table and we will beat them with a rotated squad.  We pound them, but its never truly comfortable. We should have scored more and were probably lucky to keep a clean sheet.  Victory is not without cost  I forgot the Aston Villa's cup game preview screenshot, so have a view of our very red finance dashboard. Our financial rating has detoriatedly sharply from 'rich' to 'okay'. Maybe I can generate financial problems?  We don't play very well but we generate a lot of chances and the combined efforts of Madueke (who draws the penalty) Fofana and Donnarumma bail us out of it.  Southampton are in Europe due to winning the carabao cup last year and are struggling with the match load. We have more squad depth, higher quality players and are in form.  We overrun them completely - we are 3:0 up even before they get a red card. Davies whiffs the penalty to get his hat trick, everyone plays well and we win.  Rematch vs Shaktar in the Ukraine. Should be an easy win even with the B team starting.  Mbabu is supposed to be at right back here, and he;'s an inverted wing back so I am expecting him to tuck into the half spaces, but he's gone crazy here  There isn't really much to say here: Our B team completely outclasses their A team, and they cannot get a shot on target while we tear them to pieces.  Champions league group stage. One more win secures us qualification at the top of the group which is important for seeding into the next round.  Next up, Leeds! After a big challenge last season they've fallen away to the mid table this season.  Leeds are better than Shakhtar, in that they actually get a shot away, but we are in our groove and they fold posing minimal threat.  League table! We blast to the top, and check out that goal difference. We are absolutely rolling and scoring a ton of goals.  Next game is against red bull Salzburg. Despite a win locking up top of the table we will get a second change against Napoli so I rotate the team. I forgot the match preview screen, so enjoy this screenshot of Moriba slamming home an absolute banger. This is how Moriba scores 100% of his goals... and he's quite a consistent goal threat. He has excellent technique and 'shoots with power' and just slams them at the goal from here. Also worth noting how effective our overload is - we have more players in the box than they do and Moriba could also pick out a pass to any of the bodies piling into the box infront of him.  I was EXTREMELY mad when they scored first... but, uh, I don't think I needed to worry. Look at this beautiful Adeyemi tap in with his right from Mbabu for his PERFECT HAT-TRICK, where a player scores 3 goals: one with his left foot, his right foot and his head.  The scoreline is flattering to our xG, but our chance creation is good and our finishing is clinical.  I forget the preview for out next match against Fulham, so enjoy our Carabao cup draw. Fulham are flopping about in the mid table, and we are going to play a good team, so this should be a win as we are in form.  This is.. not a great outcome. We should have won but TWO guys get stretchered off, multiple guys get goals disallowed, its all bad.  gently caress me. Still, despite that awful result in the last game, we have the champions league group stitched up, the league is going pretty well and we are in the title hunt, the squad is firing and morale is good. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 8, 2022 01:55
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this mf'er
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Mar 8, 2022 01:56
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karmicknight posted:this mf'er What! New Goons at the end of Season 1 - Bonus update I went back to the end of season 1 and added the remaining goons.  Alikchi is a very promising young striker playing for a somewhat unfortunate club, but at 15 they look sensational. Expect to see them featuring for the Italian national youth teams soon  Average Lettuce is a promising portugese striker for Benfica. Again, I'd expect to see them making appearances for the Portuguese national team soon.  Leraika is the highest valued youth prospect in the game. Being english, tall, having high potential and a good personality rates to make them a very expensive player for someone. (I will fix the name next update) I'll post a goon update at the end of each season. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 02:57 on Mar 8, 2022 |
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Mar 8, 2022 02:11
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I'm a luxury.... ....few can afford
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Mar 8, 2022 02:23
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:What! writing/posting an update during Ligue (G)Une Uber Eats.
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Mar 8, 2022 03:56
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karmicknight posted:Ligue (G)Une Uber Eats.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:02
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frankenfreak posted:Have you finally stressed it enough? I wish I had thought of that joke at some point before that post, so yes.
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Mar 8, 2022 19:11
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Season 2 - November A short month as the Qatari slave state is holding the world cup as FIFA is not a corrupt institution in anyway way.  Napoli up away. We've already got the group stitched up so I am going to play a rotated team.  I'm going to do a tactics post on this, but I'm experimenting with the formation. At the same time, we have a new match engine update which changes how wingers behave. The Short answer is I'm telling Haaland to drop deeper (the guy with the blind hair in the middle of the front 5) and to have the wingers cut inside). This provides a nice look at our attacking formation - there is the front 5 of the wingers, the two central midfielders, the striker dropping deeper. The wing back on the side with the ball is tucking in, in the middle is the defensive midfielder ahead of the two central defenders, and in the right corner close to the camera is the other wing back who's hanging back a bit while Trippier is forward.  Mbabu gets stretchered off at the end of the game after I've made my third sub so we end up conceding a consolation goal at the 90thing minute due to being down to 10 men, but I'd stopped pressing by that point to try and preserve peoples legs.  Next up Manchester United - a big match as its the 2nd vs 3rd battle and we are playing away at Old Trafford.  We come out on fire racking up corners in the first 20 minutes, keep them totally pressed in and generate some quality chances culminating in Fofana scoring on the 8th corner.  And that's all that happens - we sit back a bit in the second half and they cannot generate any more chances while we have them under pressure in their own half. Their central defenders do an incredible job to stop us converting more possession into shots but that doesn't help when you cannot shoot, let alone score. It's a testimony to how far the club has come that we can play mediocrely and still prevent Man U from doing anything at Old Trafford for an entire half.  And that puts us back on top of the table: Though Chelsea has a game in hand.  Or not - Thanks Leeds!  Adeyemi learns some moves off his teachers.  Board still loves me other than I am spending to much money... though funny bug here. Highest achievement stated is qualifying for the Europa league, but we qualified for the champions leaguie.  Players called up for the world cup.  At home vs Wolves, should be an easy win.  We execute on our aggressive vertical football game plan for two quality goals and they get 3 shots away all match. Munoz at striker is a guy from our u23's team who's on loan from some Mexican club. Munoz is in the game so Haaland can have a holiday and Adeyemi can rest his legs a bit. The squad was not big to begin with and we are depleted with injuries and fatigue due to the compressed schedule.  Wait, what?  Turns out Klopp has got fired at Man City after 3 months! Absolute carnage in the premier league managerial stakes. Maybe should have waited until after the next game to give them time to find a new manager during the world cup.  Next up Burnley at home. We've talked about Burnley in the economics post - they are a good football team, but we spend more than twice as much on wages.  Munoz scores a premier league goal! That's one to tell his kids about, and now he will never be seen again. The game isn't a classic: Burnley tries to defend in a low block and we repeatedly pick them apart. Willock has a great game and reminds me that I should play him more.  With that, we're on an international break until Christmas. Next update will be a review with data of how we've done so far, a tactics update and the Boxing day game against Arsenal.  gently caress Qatar and gently caress FIFA! Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 05:56 on Mar 9, 2022 |
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Mar 9, 2022 05:51
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Good job Munoz
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Mar 10, 2022 01:49
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Season 2 - December update, stats and tactics Going to be a lot of images in this one.  We only have one competitive match for December due to the world cup.  The board wants me to spend more money, lol.  gently caress FIFA/Qatar  This is when I notice what you'd already noticed about Mbappe's minimum fee release clause.  While we wait for the game, lets have a look at our statistic performance in the game's data hub. As you can see offensively and defensively we are very solid, but this barely scratches the surface of why we're so good. Our xG goals per game and Goals per game are very, very high by football standards. Its almost perfectly in line which says that we are not elite at finishing, but we are creating tons of chances: Liverpool in real life is scoring 2.63 goals per game on an xG of 2.5. On the defensive end the difference between Conceded per game and expected goals conceded per game is a mix of luck, and Donnarumma being very good. But why are we conceding so few goals and creating so many chances? It's releated to our playing staff and our tactics, so lets dig into it.  Another view of goals scored vs goals allowed. You can 'goals allowed' wise, we are just in line with the good premier league teams with Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U, Everton. Take a moment to admire Pep's Liverpool team and their extreme stinginess. But with that said explaining why we are good needs to touch on that outlier number of goals scored.  As I noted before its not a result of excellent finishing - our expected chances align perfectly with our expected goals so its not Haaland's sweet left foot that is creating these goals, the average premier league striker would score the same number of goals from the same positions.  But it IS related to Haaland - Haaland is getting into position for an absurd number of chances every game, the guy distantly trailing behind him is Romalu Lukaku. So why is Haaland getting so many chances? Well, some of it is that he's very good, but some of it is the system.  He's the tactic I was mostly playing for the first half of the season. You can see our wide players are playing as traditional wingers who focus on staying out wide and putting in crosses.  Here is a football pitch which I've drawn some extra lines on - you can split the pitch into 5, L/R wide areas, L/R half spaces and the central area. Our traditional wingers try and run wide and deep and get the ball to the touch line and then launch in a cross. Our guys playing wide are very fast and very good dribblers of the ball so sometimes they get in behind the defence. Additionally, because Haaland is a very big, very fast and very physical lad, he's an ideal target to be crossing the ball to, and his advance forward role has him constantly trying to run off the last man to recieve a cross. He's hard for centrebacks to contain because for the most part the guys who can keep up with his explosive pace cannot then outmatch him physically and in the air, and the guys that can match him in the air cannot keep up with his quick sprints.  And you can see we attempt a lot of crosses per game reflecting this cross centric approach. Our kids are good at crossing, but lol at Chelsea here.  This emphasis on traditional wingers trying to run it wide is also picked up in our dribbling numbers. Again, we are not nearly as good at dribbling as the best dribblers and we lose it often - but we try by far the most dribbles.  And because Haaland is so perfect as a target for this sort of thing, we are doing exceptionally well at generating large volumes of high quality chances for him.. and only him. Adeyemi is less than half as effective as him in this role, PLUS it's not really bringing our wingers into the game, or using them to their best effect.  Let's go back to this diagram. In a traditional wingers model, wingers want to get to the area circled in red, and then slam a cross into the box, onto men running into the box. This has a couple of elements A) Dribbling wide like that is physically easier (so I am told, I am a fat goon), when your foot matches the side you are dribbling 'towards.' so a traditional right winger wants a good right foot. B) Crosses want big athletic men arriving late into the box, moving forward, and facing goal. This is important as the individual needs the momentum to run onto the crossed ball and then kick / head it goalwards. If you're moving into space when you recieve the ball its much easier to get your header going the right direction. C) This has fallen out of favour with good teams a bit, because its easier to defend. Ive marked where defenders will try and stand in purple. You can see the winger is almost entirely boxed on when he tries to cross. Behind him he has the sideline. On his right he has the byline. Infront of him he has two opposition players. You're also highly vulnerable to being pressed you progress the ball as the sideline limits the number of directions you can pass in Now, this is all fine anyway if you have very fast dribbly boys you can elude the defenders, and a big Haaland shaped dude in the middle, but its not the ideal use of our personnel. Why is this the case? Well other than the fact Haaland cannot play every minute of every game, my wingers have the wrong foot-ness for this! Madueke, my main right winger is left footed. Adeyemi who can also play right wing.. is left footed. My main left winger Musiala... is right footed! St Maximin who's his back up is also right footed! Additionally, all these guys are high quality finishers with technique who can do well in the box, and not just be pace and crossing merchants so I want to change the system to get more out of them. What would that look like? Well, the basic idea is the wingers get into the half spaces instead of the wide areas.  Either they come in running into to the box and make a shorter pass to runners coming in from the middle.  Or they come in from the wide space into the half space and then receive it from a central passer. Why is this preferable? Well, it physically puts people close to the goal! This seems obvious, but putting more people and the ball closer to the goal is better. Its also harder to press us as a guy cutting inside has more options where he can pass the ball, particularly if the fullback overlapping him. (example overlapping run in pink)  For this to work we need: A) You want the Winger to be 'opposite' footed because its more natural to receive the ball from a pass onto your foot closer to the middle of the pitch when you are cutting inside, and its easier to dribble from the outside in if your natural foot is closer to the middle of the pitch. B) You're switching a bit from progressing the ball very wide and hitting a cross to men running in the box to instead having runners coming wide to the middle. Whereas before the wingers needed to arrive first so they could cross to the runners, now the guys centrally with the ball need to arrive after the wingers have started cutting in. This changes the nature of the game the CF wants to play. Before, you wanted the CF to run off the shoulder of the last man, but now you want him to drop into the channels between the defensive lines (channels shown on the diagram below)  And you want both the CFs and IFs to move into the channels between players:  The reason is this will draw defenders out of position and create space for your attacking players to cut in. For example:  This picture is rather confusing, but you can see if Haaland moves into the space between the channels (run marked in red) either the CB has to move forward, or the CM has to drop back (the Pink lines). This creates space in one of the two pink areas (the pink circles), that either creates a big gap in the defensive back 4 that Musiala or Trippier can run into (the yellow lines) or means Moriba (man circled in yellow) isn't marked at all This sort of dominio effect is EXCELLENT at disrupting offenses and creating space that can be run into. C) The wingers have the technical ability to actually do things in the box with the ball. D) The centre forward now needs the ability to hold up play and be a play maker instead of a pure scoring threat. One quick note: The reason you want to make these diagonal passes rather than straight vertical passes is it generally requires you to turn your back to goal to receive a vertical pass. For example, if you pass the ball straight 'forward' the reciving player will need to turn around and face back towards the passer to recieve the ball. Now they have no momentum, and need to turn around and do something very clever to beat their defender. This is Extremely Bad. How does this impact our tactical direction Our general attacking strategy is called 'vertical tiki taka.' We want to progress the ball very rapidly up the pitch with a series of diagonal passes so the pass recipient can run onto the pass, and either make another quick pass, dribble or take a shot. This lets us create a metric buttload of chances - because the second we get the ball we are scrabbling up the pitch as fast as we can, but results in less possession, because we are trying to get up the pitch so quickly and make lots of attacking moves our guys need to read the game very quickly so the don't make a mistake (lol we turn it over a ton). We want to weaponise our pace to prevent the opposition from regrouping and hoping to catch them with a quick counter attack, and even if that doesn't work we want a lot of people running into the box for a fast attacking move and a shot.  This gives us something like this. You can see not a great deal has changed at the back or the with the instructions. The big changes are in the front 3. The two wingers are now 'inside forwards' who are trying to play a bit more narrowly, cut in the half spaces from the wide areas on their opposite foot and do things around the box. This doesn't mean they won't ever go wide, but when they do we've turned on low crosses to try and get them to play low 'cut back' crosses to our centre mids and forward dropping deep. Haaland has changed from a purely attacking role or leading the line and being the target for these crosses to a more supportive role. The CF: Complete forward, will drop much deeper into the midfield to collect the ball, and try and make clever progressive passes. However, a complete forward also has the tactical latitude to also switch gears to the more physical advance forward role and lead the line. When someone else is playing striker who isn't a dominant physical weapon in the same way as Haaland is, I will change the role of the striker to a 'false 9.' The false 9 is called that because they don't play like a traditional advance forward, and instead will drop back collect the ball and operate more like a traditional passing hub, and late runs into the box to receive short passes from the winger. The architypical example of a False 9 in real life is Harry Kane (don't talk to me about Messi)  What about the Defensive end? We are pretty solid defensively, but there are a few interesting pieces here A) We don't block often B) We make a lot of interceptions C) WE TACKLE LIKE CRAZY  But the overall defence isn't a big outlier (lol Liverpool) So why the low blocks, and high interceptions and tackles? Its because of the speed of our players and the high press we play. Because we defensively push up the pitch we try and engage the enemy well away from our goal and closer to theirs. These has two big advantages A) When we get the ball back, we are closer to their goal. This means we need to take less offensive actions to get a shot away, which reduces the chances of something going wrong. B) We keep them away from our goal. The downside of this is your defenders are pushed miles up the pitch which creates this huge area of empty space behind them - that is partly inaccessible due to the offside trap. Opponents will be trying to exploit that with quick runs off the shoulder of our defenders into that space, with either long balls over the top of our defence that their forward runs onto or with runners in the wide areas. This is why Fofana and Araujo have been an absolute lynch pins of the defence - they (particularly Fofana) are very fast and most opponents cannot turn on the jets and get away from him, and if someone DOES get past us they are fast enough to chase them. Back to the season!  Our young players continue to impress.  Liverpool have been unlucky this season. Their defence is outstanding.  England win the world cup and get a bunch of knighthoods.  Guys come back from the world cup tired so I give them a holiday.  The youth intake exists.  I feel sorry for these guys - they are in the division below the division below the division below us, but we'll probably sell out the stadium so they will clear a couple of million bucks out of the back of it as we split gate receipts with them.  Ugh. These guys are one of the best teams in Europe, its a tough draw.  Finally Arsenal. As the graphs above show, they are in the top tier of teams, but don't reach out level offensively.  He says, as they nearly beat us while matching our chances created. On the upside, the new tactic is working - Musiala scores a nice goal on a little through ball from Tripper who was in the central areas.  We're still top! Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 07:19 on Mar 10, 2022 |
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Mar 10, 2022 05:02
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England win the world cup? Sickening. E - also, that is a hella nice breakdown of your tactical plans. Kudos.
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Mar 10, 2022 09:50
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:
Benfica?!  Just kidding, that's fine. He has the same height and weight as me, so that's a good pick!
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Mar 10, 2022 10:02
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Habeas dorkus coming in clutch for England there
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Mar 10, 2022 15:50
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Eyyy, FCB. My favourite club.
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Mar 10, 2022 18:36
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TitanG posted:Habeas dorkus coming in clutch for England there You gotta assume that after he scored both the equaliser and the winning pen there would have absolutely been scenes at pubs around the nation.
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Mar 11, 2022 00:40
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I'm just that. damned. good.  e: also, that's SIR Habeas Dorkus to all of you peasants.
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Mar 11, 2022 02:50
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Season 2 - January Welcome to 2023, the resumption of schedule craziness and the transfer window.  We have a lot of matches to play, and if we win the Carabao cup match we will have to play the next round of the finals as well.  Aston Villa are the next grist to the mill - they are just outside of the relegation zone and seriously struggling.  And we pile on the misery - Adeyemi opened the scoring by just robbing their CB of the ball and slotting in into the goal and we continue to look very dangerous from our attacks. Defensively is another story - our centrebacks have a holiday and don't play well. I forgot the match preview for Colchester but they are a league 2 team, we are a top shelf premier league team and they have no chance even against a rotated 11. I want to field a very rotated 11 to make sure the best XI is match fit for the game against Leicester in the Carabao cup.  They are stupendously lucky to score those two goals - the first one being scored on their first shot at the game in first half stoppage time! Despite Woodman's questionable performance everyone is playing well and we pull back ahead them after that hiccup.  Leicester are the best of the rest according to the data graphs, but we are still comfortable favorites here as I'm going to field a relatively full strength squad to make sure we win the silverware  Kind of strange we got to the same scoreline, but in very different style. We establish a very early 5-0 lead, I turn down the tempo, try shorter passes to keep possession and turn down the pressing to keep the legs fresh. This means we concede some goals but I'm not fussed because our margin is so comfortable, unlike PSG blowing it in the champions league. My IF concept is working great though, Musiala has really started firing.  Everton are desperately trying to get relegated in real life due to very poor management despite having what is on paper a decent squad and having spent a lot of money on it. The FM AI has improved things and is in contention for European places but we are still a lot better than these guys and we are at home.  Another shot of the attacking formation - you can see our wide wingers, our defensive mid forming the triangle with the CBs to give a passing outlet and the wing backs tucked inside with the midfielders to create an overload. You can see how many options Araujo has. He can pick out an easy pass to the DM, he can switch sides either over the top to the opposite winger, or by rear end to the other CB. His best option is probably run into space infront of him and see what happens though, and ideally pick out a pass to the unmarked Moriba.  A comfortable 2-0 win. It should have been more, but Haaland bricked a penalty and our forwards sucked other than Madueke who went off on a stretcher for the THIRD TIME THIS SEASON.  FUCCCKKKKKKKKK. He is injury prone. This is why injury prone sucks. Every time he gets in a groove he then immediately breaks and misses a month.  We're through to the final against Klopp's boys in sky blue. Figures out this week in real life say Man City is the biggest revenue club in the world which is 100% legit and has nothing to do with the UAE ownership. gently caress Man City.  We absolutely demolish them with clinical finishing - or really disgustingly good shooting from Moriba and Davies. Moriba scores a huge hat trick aided by a penalty and Davies should have got one, (I have no idea why the AI let Moriba take the hat trick penalty and not Davies), they don't get a shot on target all night.  Books us our first final!  West Ham are not as good as real west ham, they are out of form and are batting relegation.  Poor Obliterati is West Ham's aging backup goalie, and he is absolutely standing on his head to keep West ham in the game despite an awful performance by the rest of the team.  It's not enough and we handily beat them.  8.3 average rating by the backup! And he let through 5 goals! It's absolutely bananas - a sensational performance to 'only' let 5 goals in under the circumstances.  We are starting to pull away from the chasers now - 4 point cushion with a game in hand is nothing to sniff at.  Brighton are the next out of sorts team to be put to sword by our storming title contenders.  This probably doesn't count as put to the sword. That Moriba goal was ridiculous - it falls to him after a tackle on Adeyemi at the top of the box and he is left in space and just does what he does best. Again our forwards aren't really finishing well but 4.44 xG means I'm confident that we generating chances.  They are 2nd in the table - if we win here its going to be very hard for them to catch us.  A resounding win - another Moriba goal from defensive mid!  This is getting ridiculous so I want to talk about it. Paulinho and Willock are mostly playing against bad teams which is boosting their stats, but check our Moriba here. The only guy more in the top right than him is Bruno Fernandes who is one of the great attacking midfielders in world football playing for Manchester United. Moriba has been bouncing between defensive and central midfield - so a lot further back on the pitch than Bruno - and is still this goal scoring machine. Partly that is him getting extremely lucky because a lot of his shots are low xG long shots, but his goals are all these absolute bangers from the top of the box, often when he gets a low cut back cross from a winger or a wing back at the right edge of the box that he runs onto and he just hammers them home due to him shooting with power, having high long shots and excellent technique. He's outscoring some teams strikers and his goal scoring threat causes problems for other teams (do I really want to send someone out of the box to mark this midfielder?) and also bails us out of games where the forwards go cold. He has form for this too, check out whatever this is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoNqo7CuQBE Warning: The music on this is poo poo and earsplittingly loud, don't click that in your workplace.  Cushion is really opening up now.  Sesko is playing great in France.  I think our game against west ham broke their spirit. Obliterati decides to retire and the rest of them want out.  Other than Reyna, the vultures are starting to circle on the rest of our team.  I tell them to gently caress off, but I'm surprised they don't come in for the minimum fee release here.  Next month, another 6 point title match against the 2nd best team in the premier league. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 11, 2022 |
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Mar 11, 2022 05:36
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West Ham are massive
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Mar 11, 2022 13:30
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Well thanks Cthulhu I'm now fully addicted to this game. I even have the dinky mobile version to play when I'm away from my computer. Fiddled around with a few single seasons before starting a long term save as an unemployed loser. My first coaching job saw me lead Ghana's national team to world cup qualification before I moved to the lower Ukrainian league halfway through the season. Dragged them out of relegation zone and got my contract renewed so now I'm looking to get them promoted. What a fun game!!
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Mar 11, 2022 17:11
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| # ? May 4, 2024 21:07 |
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I just caught up on this LP. I always enjoy FM LPs, but I think my favourite ones are those where someone starts out with a tiny little semi-pro piss squad in Ramsgate and makes them competitive against All the Money In the World Ever. Financial equity in international football is so bad that it makes Major League Baseball in the States look positively communist. Much like the rest of the world the incredible imbalance is very bad for everyone but the very few giants and will continue to get worse until it collapses in on itself.
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Mar 12, 2022 04:16
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