European Dreams…Because Conference League is still Europe
After a 3 Month delay, I blame missed payments to contractors, the new Stadium is finally open.
It’s a lovely stadium, there’s room for growth in the future, I couldn’t be happier with it. I also couldn’t be happier with the board, who waited until we were financially stable enough to pay for the thing. Unlike my board in my FM23 save…
Looks can be deceiving:
This looks impressive, until you realize as a Youth Only squad, at least 16-17 of our players are getting playing time here, and then there are all the players we have let go to other squads in country.
Transfer wise, it was a quiet year. I alluded to it in my previous post on the save, this and the next few years are going to be interesting in terms of player we move and player we keep. The two are not mutually exclusive, because I know in the future there will be player we want to keep but can’t.
We are at the point now where players who aren’t going to be on the squad I am more than happy to sell to teams in Country, especially if they can help the squad. There are no real surprises here, although I had Radu graded pretty high in the Class of ’27, his true colors soon revealed him to be middling at best.
As I expected/feared, who to let go and who to keep has been turning into quite the guessing game, especially with regards to squad death. It’s one thing to have a dearth of 5 Star PA players, its another when they are all in the same positions. As an example
Rotariu was my first choice to be the keeper of the future. He’s averaged about 8 starts a season, but I killed his development when I sent him on loan to CSM Deva and he started all of 11 games. Last year he started 13 and allowed 22 but had 5 shutouts. This year he had 15 starts and allowed 17 with 6 shutouts. He still has room to improve, but Vasiliu and Alexandru already have better GK related attributes, and of those two Alexandru is the better option, for now. But what if Alexandru is close to topping out? Can I afford to play Vasiliu? Rotariu isn’t going to get appreciably better IMO, but we need to balance giving the youngsters playing time while doing moderately well in the league. Luckily, there are loan options available, and I sent Alexandru out. The good news was that he was Hermannstadt’s starting keeper all season, with 29 games played, allowing 56 with 4 shutouts and 2 POM’s. It wasn’t enough to keep them from the drop, but if you were to see his defense, you would understand why he went out with two stars and came back with three. Barbu we will talk about more later, he’s from this years intake, but it looks like next year it’s going to be Tiberius as the First Choice, with Rotariu as the backup, if he stays.
This is just the keepers though. It’s becoming a fun problem to have in other positions, and it really does force you to spend some time looking at how players have developed over the season. In the past, with the Spreadsheet, that was easier to do. Attribute-less, its a lot more diving into data, and I like that, its one of the reasons I switched to the skin.
We started the season off on the right foot:
Our only Liga I loss happened at Sepsi, although to be honest we should have lost at Petrolul Ploiești, but the we also should have won at Craivoa and Arad. Hlinca has really improved since he started getting regular playing time:
Remember, 1-7 is Red, 8-12 is Orange, 13-16 is Blue and 17+ is green.
As we can see, he started out as a player who was at best near the top of Average, and now he is solidly Good, especially with the improvements in both his Physical and Attacking Attributes. He’s probably one of the better forwards in Romania, and considering he’s homegrown, that’s saying quite a bit, especially when you consider other teams are bringing in players like this:
On a FREE. From Cercle Brugge. But I digress…
One of the areas I was hoping to improve this year was in the Cup. The past couple of seasons we have either been left on the outside looking in or just blowing it, October is a pretty congested month, but one of the newer benefits we have is a decent amount of depth, so I feel more comfortable rotating the side against the lower league teams.
Another good run of games for us, including some very good wins against Dinamo, revenge against Petrolul Ploiești, and some questionable defense against Botoșani. In our Cup group we finished in 1st place on 11 points, which is quite good considering we we have finished in the past.
Our Cup ambitions came to a crashing halt against Craiova.
I went on the attack at the start of the second half, and we broke thru in the 62nd and equalized in the 77th minute, but before I could even set the instructions to protect the lead they scored. I swear I saw all my pixel players just sag on themselves.
We were flying high. The problem is Farul, Rapid Bucaresti and Cluj are all flying a little bit higher, but we entered the split in the Playoff Group. But before we got down to those games, the Youths arrived.
I have to remember this is ‘their’ definition of a ‘Golden Generation’. There are really, unless I am wrong, Four players to look at
Barbu, as we saw above, joins an already deep pool of Keepers. I think he’s one of those players whose ‘On The Cusp’ in a lot of attributes, where his GK Reactions are at least an 8, but I think they are closer to 12. Getting him playing time will be interesting, we need to get another affiliate, but I am willing to give him a shot.
Sergiu Fieraru. I am not sure why, but something tells me that Fieraru is not going to get much better than this. But that I mean he’s probably around a 80 CA player, and is going to top out at 90-95 no matter how much training or game time he gets. That said he’s a solid player, but I don’t have high hopes for him, especially if we want to grow as a club domestically.
I think Alexandru Dumitrache could be better than Fieraru, but the ‘Unambitious’ (Seriously WTF is up with this?) and the number of people in front of him is going to hamper him playing striker. What I may need to do is spend some time looking at training him and Fieraru in other positions. The good news is they are both already decent wingers as well.
Rareş Florea is the best of the rest, and I think he’s the opposite of Barbu, and all his orange attributes are probably 8 or 9. He has good First Touch, and Work Rate, but that’s about it. He’s going to really need ti improve the next few years on the II squad and on loan if he wants s shot at the starting XI someday.
All in All, a very ‘Middling’ Golden Generation.
We did a respectable job in the Playoff group, but as I mentioned before Farul was too far ahead to overcome. However, a 3 way race for 2nd Place developed, but our last two games kept us in 4th place overall on 55 points, while Bucharesti had 56 and Cluj had 57.
However…
Farul Constanţa won the Cupa României Betano, meaning the UEL 3rd Qualifying Round Match went to Cluj, and the UECL slots shifted down, meaning we are playing in Europe, starting in the 2nd Qualifying Round.
European. Football.
We will probably crash and burn but still, it’s a positive step forward for sure.
We had several very good performances, and more than a few of the youngsters are really stepping up.
Hlinca led the league with 25 goals. Matiş had a solid season, but it’s quite obvious he’s starting to fall off. Marincu had a solid season as well, but the first two surprises are Voicu (Class of ’26) and Vágó (Class of ’29) had very good seasons. That Voicu was primarily a bench player and was able to put those numbers up was very good to see. Neagu (Class of ’28) also had a solid season.
In a bit of surprise news:
And in some unexpected news:
Sure, the one save I am doing a Youth only save the board goes out, without my asking, and finds a senior affiliate who’s not really an affiliate for us…FML…
That said: EUROPEAN FOOTBALL!!! The next building block of many we need to to win it all. But I was quite happy with the season, it was already a success before we backdoored our way into the UECL.
Now how do I fix these Youth Intakes…
THE FOOTBALL MANAGER BLOG OF FM_JELLICO 