Derrubando Os Três Grandes: Santa Clara, an FM 23 Story, Part 4

Our form is…Confusing at times.

I think it is safe to say we over performed last season. A 5^th Place finish was well above expectations, but part of me is left wondering what sort of form we are going to fall back to this year: Scrappy fighters clawing draws from teams we should be losing too and wins from teams we should be drawing to? Is the European Stage going to be too bright for the squad, sending us back to the beach for an early vacation? It doesn’t help that our finances are…well, odd. I still only get 10% of any transfers, and despite the fact we are in a good place financially, the board seems reticent to actually spend any of it right away. Part of that I can under stand, and while I am reasonably sure I wouldn’t put the club into penury, at the same time it’s a little more than galling to see the balance we have and the boards lack of desire in putting some of it to good use.

The Loan Market is still broken (This was pre patch, it’s less broken now), and while we had some money to spend, we either couldn’t afford the salaries of the players willing to transfer in, or we couldn’t afford their transfer fee’s. And we lost out on more than one player because our club rep isn’t good enough to beat out similar clubs in different leagues.

That meant we spent an inordinate amount of time scouting free agents, and holding out until deadline day to get a deal or three.

I, like a numpty, was so involved with the save I forgot to take screenshots as I signed them, so the screenshots here are from later in the season, and you can see how good they were/weren’t.

**You spend a lot of time looking for ways to not spend a lot of money in some saves…**

Raul Asencio is a versatile attacking player, capable of both wings and the striker position. The worst thing I can say about him is that he’s not a defender, but considering what and where he plays, that’s not a problem.

Andre Castro I brought in a defensive depth. Sure at 36 he’s old, but per club rules he only signed a 12 month contract. Sure, he’s not as physically gifted as he used to be, but his technical’s are good enough to make up for any shortcomings he might have, and as you can see, he did a good job for us this season before retiring.

Libasse Ngom I brought on as depth at striker. The scouts say he’s a good Premier player, and I think he can do a job off the bench for us. That said, while there isn’t anything outstandingly bad about him, part of me can’t help think that he’s one of those “looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane” sort of players. He had a great career in Senegal, 39 goals in 68 games, but Portugal is a step up.

Eddie Roper comes from the Portland Timbers Academy. There are some things to like, his teamwork, his positioning, the fact he stays back at all times, but he does have holes in his game: vision, off the ball, and apparently an injury worry as well. But he’s young enough that I think with some playing time and training, he can be a solid contributor.

Lala I brought in because he can play the backline and he has potential, but he could also be lost in the shuffle.

Justin DeGrange is one of those intriguing youth players who comes across as one of two things:

A youth player who with training, game time and coaching will develop into a very good player
A player who is already at or close to his potential.

Hope for A, prepare for B.

Joseph Kwabena I think could be a very good player in the future. I brought him on as wingback depth, but can also see him getting time up top as an attacking mid. His passing skills and quickness are already above average, and I think he could be a player who tops out in the 140 Ability range.

Mateus Ludke comes in as our new WB( R). I am hoping he can be part of a rotation, he’s the primary option this year, and while we aren’t going to be able to exercise the optional contract clause for him,

Victor Boniface comes to us on loan from Union SG. He’s an intriguing player, but I think the injury woes are new to him this year. Not sure I am a fan of the “attempt’s overhead kicks” playing style, but I believe he is good enough to stand in the box and occupy a couple of defenders. Part of me would like to purchase him, but Union is asking for close to 10M for him, and I don’t see the board giving us that sort of money anytime soon.

Lino Sousa I brought in to play WB(L). He is one of those “Solid but Unspectacular players that every teams has and needs, and as long as he does a credible job for us this season without making too many mistakes, I’ll be happy.

I needed a backup keeper, Diego Marino was willing to come in and be a backup. At the ends of the day, just another guy, but I am curious about a keeper who “Dwells On the Ball”…how exactly does that happen?

Papa Cheik Diop, the Senegalese International, had left Lyon for Aris in the Greek Superleague, but was not getting any playing time. Aris released him after two seasons, and I think he was happy to come to Santa Clara and be a full time starter. He’s another solid player, one I expect who’s may contributions on the filed will go unnoticed.

On the out’s, I think the only player of consequence was Roberto Valente. He had a good first season with us (32 Apps, 10 goals, 4 assists and a 7.11 rating, but fell off in the second season (18 Apps, 2 goals, 3 Assists and a 6.91 rating). When I went to sign him to a new contract, he wanted star player money, and a highest match clause.

No. No. Hell to the No. I listed him, and Slavia Prague snapped him up for 2.2 Million. For a guy we brought in on a free, I am OK with that.

We got the season off on the right foot. A decent preseason, followed by wins against Derry City and Zilinia was very nice. I really thought Real Hispalis had our number, but a good first game at home gave us the 2 goal buffer we needed to see things thru. In fact, our only stumble was against Leiria in the League Cup game, as we had to go to penalties to beat them.

September reminded me we were still a team with faults. Nacional is not the strongest squad, but they handled us quite easily. Portimonense has a very strong squad, and Porto is of course Porto. In the Europa Conference though I was happy to beat a solid St. Gallen squad, and holding Pogon to a draw was also a good result. Our defense was stout in that match, as Pogon had 22 shots but only 3 on target.

Losing to Benfica, even 5-0, is expected these days. This season they sold 129M in players (Gouveia, Aursnes, Silva, and Enzo Fernandez), but then turned around and spent 101M on Jonathan Burkhardt, Nketiah, Maitland-Niles, Esteve and Lyanco. Holding the to 5 is probably a good job really. Losing to Rio Ave though, in extra time no less, was a gut punch. In European football, wins against Mura and St. Mirren were nice, but Bodo/Glimt (The 6-0 slayers of AS Roma in the real world) absolutely bossed us. That score could have been a lot worse. Beating Radnicki was very nice, and I was looking at going into January on a high note, losing to Porto turned that into maybe a B-Flat…

For the most part, we were beating the teams we were supposed to be beating, but drawing to relegation bound Ferreira and losing to relegation bound Estoril in back to back games was frustrating. Making it to the Knockout Rounds of the Conference LEague was nice, and we did what we needed to do against St. Gallen, again, but 7 games in 29 days was really starting to take it’s toll on the squad. Niggling injuries kept cropping up, keeping players from performing at their best, and it was only a matter of time before we ran out of steam.

**The Seasons Injuries, at least the Major ones…**

March and April are months I would like to forget. Making the round of 16 was great, and the money was nice too, but AA Gent showed us how far a gap there is between us and the bigger squads. The second game they played a pretty rotated side, and still had twice as many shots ands shots on target as we did. Sure it took two late goals for them to win, but more important was the fact we couldn’t stop them from scoring two late goals. Benfica crushed us 7-2, and while beating Sporting was a highlight, they played a lot of their 2nd stringers. Three losses took us out of European contention, and although we finished the season strong, and where we were supposed to finish, I will admit to being disappointed.

Our Youth Intake, in GIF Format:

Seriously, it was horrible.

Yes, it was that bad. We didn’t sign any of them. In fact, my two best youth prospects this year were ones I found scouting…

**The Good News: A Team of Solid Players. The Bad News: A Team of Solid Players**

Raul Ascenio led us with 12 goals, Paulo Henrique had 9 assists. Boniface was underwhelming at best in my opinion, and the one player I had a lot of hope for, Bojan Dmitovic, spent most of the season nursing various injuries (see above). The other issue is that two of our better contributors, Luan and Oscar Barreto, are getting older, and were noticeably different players at the end of the season, while Castro announced his retirement. Oddly enough, I think he had the most well rounded season out of everyone, and when you consider Diop is the only player who had a rating above 7.0, the fact we did as well as we did speaks volumes.

The club still has issues though. FOr the moment, my share of transfers is capped at 10%. They don;t want to spend any money on an affiliate, finaces are tight enough I refused creating a B Squad, and our budget next year is not great:

**Believe me, we looked in ALL the couches**

The good news is we do have some up and coming youngsters, the club did improve the training and youth facilities, and the money from our European adventures has the club comfortably out of the fear of debt and into a decent semblance of financial security. Why they won’t give me more to spend, I am not sure, but until we are able to start spending money, toppling Os Três Grandes is going to be a bit harder. And I am OK with that. Next season, the aim is European Football again, and I think we have a good chance of getting there.

“Verjemi mi, brat, to imam”

So, with regards to my Santa Clara series, I am a little bit ahead of where I am in the blog. By about two years.

But recently, something happened that I feel compelled to share, if only because I can hear the anger and cry of the players, coaches, fans, announcers, and surrounding region of Moreirense. I imagine them calling for my head, for dishonoring the game, for not playing football the way it was meant to be played, but yet another voice in my head (it’s OK, this one was already here, it’s the ones that show up uninvited you have to worry about) says there are players, coaches, pundits and fans of the game who appreciate what happened on the pitch that night.

So, what exactly did happen?

This happened:

We lost. Because after 14 minutes in the game I was down 2 players. And for 76 minutes, I tiki-taka’d the hell out of them. In fact, if Paulo Alves doesn’t wake up in the middle of the night on occasion in a cold sweat, I would be surprised. So, how did we do it?

Since I first started playing FM, I have been a 2 striker tactic sort of player. My 4231 always morphs into a 424, or a 343, or a 4312, there’s a 3412 formation I really like as well, but this year, when perusing the SI forums, I cam across this post:

https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/568403-viktor-maslovs-tactical-principles-predecessor-to-tiki-taka-continued-in-the-teamworkrate-philosophy-twr/

I don’t know a lot about the history of the sport, it’s something I am working on, but I was intrigued by the ideas in the post, and so I decided to use it in my blog save. It has led to some…interesting results, but at the end of the day I am liking it, and may try it in another save or two if I get the chance and don’t have 2 strikers on the squad.

This was what the team looked like at the end of the game

Perez went off on a double yellow, Inocencio came on to replace him and I took off Armoa. Three minutes later, Paredes went off on a straight red, I took Terceros off and Kwarbena came on. Then I pulled the lines back and set the tactic to Defensive.

With the exception of lowering the instances in which we trigger press, I kept the instructions the same:

At half time, we were pretty much stuck on our side of the pitch. But we we moving well, and defending well, the only downside being when we did lose the ball, the home team didn’t have to do much to get into scoring position, but we had obviously flustered them, because all of their shots, except one from inside the box, were missed.

The Second half, was more of the same

Final passing stats at the end of the game for Santa Clara:

Hero of the game: Gašper Lukač. The kicker? The 18 year old Slovenian U21 International only played 76 minutes…

He’s currently 3 star current/ 5 star potential. I love him because not only does he play short simple passes, his decision making, technique, anticipation and first touch offset the lower passing. He’s fast and agile enough to get to where he needs to be, is a solid defender, and he’s not the flashiest, becase he doesn’t need to be. I suspect this game, when he saw Paredes get sent off after a two footed lunge in front of the ref, he set his jaw, and said “Verjemi mi, brat, to imam.”

Having watched the entirety of the game, because how could you not really, he moved around the midfield, received the ball, and almost immediately kicked it to the most reasonably open player. I’ll be honest, I am not sure what Alves was doing, if he sent a player or two to man mark and/or press Lukač they didn’t do their job’s. And some of them are not the most technically gifted either, van den Berk in particular has a pretty low Passing, but he had the second most on the club this match.

I think this is one of a few games I am going to go back and study, if only to see and learn how the team moved and interacted with each other. Player positioning and how they move the ball hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind when watching games. But this game and a couple of others, plus my desire to get a little more into the weeds on such things, means I will probably be watching this one quite a bit. I’ll get some stuff wrong of course, at the end of the day the glasses just make me look smart.

Like a lot of FM Managers, I have a few favorite players across FM. Viktor Kolarev from FM17, Hans Kremer in FM18, Ryan Bates in FM20, but I can say without a doubt, for FM23, not matter what my later saves bring, I will always imagine…

Do I throw this or not…is the debate I am currently having with myself. Alvares getting sent off on a double yellow 11 minutes in may have been the result of an over eager referee, but the only person to blames for the two feet first hard tackle that left Luis ‘seeing sound and hearing color’ for a few minutes was walking down the tunnel. He apologized as he walked by, but it was hollow. He knew it, I knew it. I also knew the only thing more hollow than his apology was going to be his bank account when I fined him two weeks salary because of it. If I could fine him more, I would. I look at the bottle of water in my hand, flipping it a few times, and decided that it’s just was not worth it. I look off to the side, and see Kwabena still warming up, while Wesley Carvalho, my solid and steady assistant manager looked at me with a shrug and “No idea boss” gaze. I gathered my thoughts, and turned towards the pitch to yell for Magnus to come over. The captain nods but gets pulled aside by the ref for a moment.

I hate parking my car on the street, now I have to park the damned bus and all I have is an econoline van…I am not a happy coach…

“Hej, Trener.”

I look up, it’s Gaspar. I have a hard time pronouncing his name, I wish I knew why, I call him ‘Gaz” but I can tell he’s not a fan of it. I think he has a hard time pronouncing mine as well, because he always says “Hey, Trener.” Hey Coach. Everyone else on the team is ‘bratec’, which means brother, but the way he says it, you know he’s saying ‘Bro.’ Bro, pass it here; Hey Bro, go there.

He standing on the sidelines, looking up into the stands, listening to the catcalls of the crowd as they heap amusement and abusement on us for our current predicament. I really like this kid. It was his performances in the U21 Internationals that convinced me to spend money to scout him, and after getting those reports back signing him was an easy call. Since he has arrived he’s been nothing but outstanding for me. This is his first full year as a starter, and while I expect great things, I also don’t want to put to much to soon on this young mans shoulders.

He looks at the crowd, looks at me, and over at the opposing coach, Alves, who is smirking at us. Gaspar looks back at me, and it takes everything in my power to not step back. I’ve seen that look before, I’ve given it more than a few times in my life, and I’ve been on the receiving end of it more than once as well. It’s the look that says “You have gone and made me mad and now you must pay…” Gaspar looks back over at Paulo, and then hocks an impressive amount of spittle near the man, and looks back at me before Paulo even reacts. Gaspar raises both his hands to me, as if in apology, then says “Hej, trener, verjemi mi, bratec, to imam…”

Kwabena chooses that moment to finish warming up, and runs onto the field, Gaspar a few steps behind him and yelling for Magnus and those closest to him to come over.

Paulo steps outside of his area to get close enough to me without breaking the rules. “O que ele disse, Thierry?” he asks. I flip the water bottle in my hand, and look at the former Portuguese International. I don’t know him all that well, but that smirk he gave me earlier has put him on the wrong side of OK for me, at least for the remaining 76 minutes of the match.

“Ele disse que você fodeu com o Paulo. Pegue uma caneta e um pouco de papel, você está prestes a começar a estudar…” I laugh at him, move back into my area, and motion Wes over to tell him to be prepared to take a lot of notes, because he and the analysts are going to earn their money.

IN THE SHADOW OF GIANTS

Part One

Football, despite it immense worldwide popularity, is still very much a regional sport in terms of fan support, often times in some neighborhoods as to which side of the street you live on. A club can be many things to many people, but no matter what size it is, at it’s heart it is something that will pull a community, be it big or small, to it. But as with all things sports, while you have your big teams, with an international presence and top league success, you also have your smaller teams that have their core supporters, and whether or not these teams have tens of fans or thousands of fans, they are not as well known as their neighbors. Maybe in the past they have had success, maybe they are a new team reborn from the ashes of an older team, but for the better part of their history, they have been playing in the shadow of their bigger and maybe more successful neighbors. In this post, were going to look at a few teams in the base database you can play right now without any additional league downloads. The question is, can you take them up the pyramid, and dethrone those teams. Can you get them out of the Shadows of the Giants, and lead them to Glory?

Queen’s Park

Rangers and Celtic have long dominated football in Glasgow and Scotland, but Queen’s Park has a history as long and rich as their neighbors. A Founding Member of the Scottish Football Association in 1873, they became known for their proclivity to “pass” the ball from one player to the other instead of dribbling like like all their contemporaries. A 5-0 victory over Wanderers in 1875 made headlines throughout England, and soon more teams were passing the ball.

Their best years were between the First and Second World Wars, they spent time in the top flight in the early 50’s and were relegated after only two years, which started a long slow decline. A brief respite in the 80’s saw them climb back to League Two, until falling back to the Third Tier, and into Amateur status.

The club has a fine reputation for developing youth players, and it was the loss of many of these players without compensation that prompted the club to turn professional in 2019. Success followed this move, and promotions from League Two to League One culminating in a return to the Championship in 2023 have set Queen’s Park up nicely.

At the start of the 2022/23 season, the Spiders find themselves in good shape, with solid Finances, Good Youth Facilities, Great Training Facilities, and Average Youth Recruitment and adequate Academy coaching. The only issue they have is a ground to play on, I believe currently they are groundsharing with Ochilview in the real world, FM has them playing at Lesser Hampden, which is their training round. In previous years they have also ground shared at Falkirk and Firhill.

But the Table is set, can you take control of Queen’s Park, and knock Rangers and Celtic down a peg or three?

Pro Vercelli

Before the rise of Juventus in the 30’s, Torino in the 50’s, and Juventus again, Pro Vercelli was the reigning team in the region, winning seven titles between 1908 and 1922. Since their last title though, they have see Juventus and Torino win a combined 36 League titles, 14 Coppa Italia’s, and 9 Supercoppa’s. After being relegated from Serie A in 1935 and Serie B in 1948, they bounced back and forth between Serie C and Serie D. In the early 2000’s they slowly climbed their way back up the Italian pyramid, culminating in a promotion to Serie B in 2012, 64 years after their last appearance there.

Their stay did not last long though, as they were relegated back down to Serie C the next season.

I think Le Bianche Casacche are well positioned to make a comeback. While the 5500 seat Silvio Piola stadium is old, the club had Good Youth Facilities, Good Training Facilities, and Average youth Recruitment and Academy coaching. They are financially solid, and with some judicious signing and youth development, could be back in Serie A within a few years. The question then, is how long will it take to dethrone Juventus and Torino, to become the Prince of Piedmont, and ultimately the Kings of Italy?

Calcio Lecco 1912

If a team from Piedmont isn’t winning the Serie A Title, chances are high a team from Lombardy is. Home to AC Milan, Inter Milan, and Atalanta, Lombardy is well represented in the top flight of Italian football. However, 31 miles north of Milan, Calcio Lecco 1912 have been toiling in lower table mediocrity for decades. They had a brief period of success post World War Two, reaching Serie A for a brief stay, then falling back to Serie B for a few years, then spending most of the latter half of the 20^th Century bouncing between Serie C and D.

This lack of success has meant the club has not been able to invest in itself over the decades, and a result has Basic Youth Facilities, Below Average Training Facilities, Fairly Basic Youth Recruiting and Average Academy coaching. While financially solid, their bank balances certainly aren’t as high as Vercelli’s, and the shadows cast by the other teams in Lombardy may be bigger, but will just make beating them with I Blucelesti sweeter.

FC Ingolstadt 04

Bavaria has dominated German football. FC Bayern has won 30 Bundesliga titles, Nurnberg has won 9, SpVgg Greuther Furth has won 3, even TSV 1860 Munich has won a title. In the shadows of these clubs, ESV Ingolstadt and MTV Ingolstadt played mostly in the RegionalLiga, with brief periods of success followed by a rapid fall. Both MTV and ESV achieved promotion to the 2 Bundesliga in the late 70’s, and both were relegated the next season. As the years continued both teams struggled, and in 2004 ESV was facing insolvency. To avoid having to shut the team down, the two teams merged in 2004, and became FC Ingolstadt 04.

After the merger, things began to improve for the club. Promotion out of the RegionalLiga came quickly, and they reached 2.Bundesliga, but after falling back to 3.Liga in 2013, they returned to the 2.Bundesliga, and clinched the tile and promotion to the Bundesliga in 2015. A surprising 11^th place midtable finish in the 2015/16 season gave fans hope, but the next season they were relegated back down to the 2.Bundesliga, and then relegated again down to 3.Liga in 2018. Since then they have bounced back and forth the lower leagues, and start 2023 in 3.Liga.

However, they have had a taste of success, and while toppling the Kings of Bavaria (and Germany) isn’t going to be an easy task, Ingolstadt have a solid foundation to build on. Audi Sportpark is a modern 15000 seat stadium, and the team has Good training facilities as well. Average Youth facilities and Average academy coaching are not bad, but having Fairly Basic Youth Recruiting means building from within may be a harder task. Financially they are in good shape, and while they don’t start the season with a transfer budget, they also do not have any debt, and are among the favorites to be promoted. Getting Die Schanzer back to the Bundesliga and respectability might not take a long time, but beating the likes of Bayern and Nurnberg consistently will..

FC Roskilde

Denmark maybe one of the smaller countries in Europe population wise, but the quality of players and clubs within its borders cannot be denied. While FC Kobenhavn have won quite a few of the 3Superliga trophies the past years, other team like Brondby, Mitjyelland, Aab and Nordsjaelland have also won titles. With that in mind, of the clubs you can play right away on this list in Football Manager 23 FC Roskilde might just have the hardest task at coming out of the shadows, because not only are there quite a few being cast, but Roskilde is a club fighting for its own reputation.

The club was formed in 2004 by a merger of three local squads, Roskilde Boldklub 1906, Svorerslev Boldklun and Himmelev-Veddelev Boldklubbe, and has played in the lower leagues of the Dutch Pyramid since. They set a Danish record for consecutive win, in 2014 with 20, and looked to be making positive steps forward when the teams head coach accused his players of match fixing in 2019. After an investigation was inconclusive, he departed the club, but the effects of the accusation have remained.

FC Roskilde has a lot to overcome if it wants knock the rest of the Superliga down. Below Average Training Facilities, Basic Youth Facilities, Average Academy coaching and Failry Basic Youth Recruiting means the club will have to do a lot Facility wise, and as a Semi-Professional club starting out, while not in debt their finances are not in the best shape either. It may be awhile before the Eagles can fly high enough to topple the Lions, the Ulvene, the Tigrene and the Drengene fra Vestegnen.

There are a great many football clubs out there with great stories already written, and great many more with stories waiting to be told. In the next chapter of this series, we will take a look at five more clubs, mostly from “Smaller” leagues, that you take over and try to lead the to glory while knocking off their bigger rivals along the way.

Thanks for Reading!

FM Jellico

Derrubando Os Três Grandes: Santa Clara, an FM 23 Story, Part 3

Punching Above our Weight Class

This season was all about survival. Which meant trying to be as active as we could in the transfer market and improving the squad on a limited budget. My previous post sort of tells the story of how that went, but at the end of the day (weekend really, I spent a long time on the transfer window) I was pretty sure I had improved the squad. I was reasonably sure I hadn’t made it worse, but the FM Gods are a fickle bunch…

First, the outs:

Costina played in 2 games for us, and was very forgettable in both. At 32 years old, he wasn’t a starter anymore, or even a primary backup, so letting him go on a free was not a hard decision to fight. Anderson Carvalho was in the same boat, and he went to Lugano on a free. Kyosuke Tagawa was actually already on his way out the door when I took over, it just took a year for it to happen. I knew holding onto Kennedy Boateng was going to be an issue. It became a bigger issue when he came to me in the offseason wanting a new contract, that would make him the highest paid player on the squad with a salary match clause. When I looked at his season, 27 games played, 1 goal, 1 POM and a 7.02 rating, I said no, made him what I thought was a reasonable offer, and he liked it so much he went to Bordeaux for 2.1 Million…

Patrick, Italo, and Martin Maia all went out on loan, and Sønderjysk picked up Patrick’s optional fee at the end of the season, and I wasn’t really upset by that, at all.

Released player wise, Marco retired, Andre Mesquita, Rodolfo Cardoso and Messias all left on frees. I didn’t try too hard to stop them…

The In’s was a bit of work. OK, it was a lot of work, especially with the behind the scenes stuff going on with the loan market. But when the summer transfer closed, I was pretty sure we had done some “very good business”.

As an aside, these are player profile screenshots from the middle of the season. I had to delete and reinstall my copy of the game, and when I did that it also reset the hotkey I had set up for screenshots. Which I did not notice until about the January transfer window. There are days when I wonder if this is the 21st Century I was promised…

Lucas Paes was brought in for depth at the Keeper position. At the time I signed him, I think he was the best available keeper on a Free, the ‘Hatyes Big Games’ and a few other thing’s showed me why, but believe me, there were worse options available to me.

Luan was brought in to be a backup, but he did end up starting a respectable amount of games for us. A little bit older, I thought that was offset by his Playing Style abilities, and from an attribute point of view, aside from the low Bravery he’s a solid enough player.

Eray Comert was easily one of the best signings this season. The Swiss International, by way of Valencia and Seattle, made the DM position his own, and had a very good season.

I signed Samuel Telles to be part of the M(C) and DM rotation. Another one of the “Good, but not great players” he also had a solid season for us.

Vítor Gonçalves was supposed to be a depth signing, one of those players who you would be OK starting a handful of games and coming off the bench in most cases. Instead his versatility and solid attributes meant he started 30 games for us. His physicals fell off a little bit at the end of the year though, which is slightly concerning.

Erdal Rakip was out one big money spend, and I actually have some experience with him from my Youtube save last season with Vardar. I kept trying to sign him, he kept saying no. I guess he likes the sun and sand of the beaches as opposed to Skopje, and that’s OK. Rakip is a versatile player, who I wanted to play M(C) more often than not. the 4 star CA, 4 Star PA was probably a steal at 245K, but he wanted out of Malmö because he had been relegated to the bench. I got 30 solid starts out of him, with 1 goal, 4 assists and a player of the match, and that I think is 245K well spent.

Leandro Miguel is a youth keeper with some potential. I brought him on board to see if I can’t help his development along, and maybe make some money on the back end.

Gonçalo Figueiredo I brought in for striker depth. The good news is there’s nothing really bad about him as a striker. The bad news is there’s nothing really good about him as a striker. But then, as a guy who came in on a free, if he ends up with a couple of spot starts and off the bench appearances, I won’t be too upset by that. I hope.

Thomas Antunes is the D(L) version of Figueiredo, but with bigger holes in his skillset. He’s still young enough to try and get some decent training in, and maybe some of those skills can come up, but if the crossing and first touch don’t get into the high single digits, he can forget about trying to be a D(L).

I know I haven’t talked about my formation much, I am working on another post about it, going into the numbers more, but at the end of the day, it’s a modified Swiss Bolt, a 5-2-3 with a DM. Hi Tempo, short passing, with some PI’s that I rarely use, but it’s been an effective formation for us. Except when it hasn’t been of course.

I’ll be doing a post on this later. It’s not my typical style, but I am having fun with it.

The season started off pretty well:

Famalicão beating us at home was annoying, we were doing a really good job of controlling the game until Olmes Garcia scored 2 in 10 minutes. The Moreirense was one of the few games where we didn’t have at least as many shots as our opponent, but we fell apart in the final third. Losing to Porto was sort of expected, but losing by three was not. Our xG this match was 1.25, but again we fell short in the final third. That said, scoring 9 in the next 2 games while only conceding 2 was very nice.

We got lucky against Estoril, I will be the first to admit that, but there are times when you don’t complain too loudly either, and this was one of them. What this run og games showed me is that on the whole, we are a better squad than last season, because I am very sure that if last seasons squad was playing, we would have lost at home against Farense, and drawn with Estoril and Feirense. In fact I was quite proud of the fact the number of draws we had was down. Would I prefer to have some of those losses be draws? Sure, who wouldn’t, but by the time the January transfer window opened, we were fighting for a top 6 spot in the league.

Bojan Dmitrović. I don’t know why FK Željezničar let him go on a free. But he has International Caps already, no real weaknesses in his game for the position he plays, he’s 2 1/2 star current, 5 star potential? Even if after 5 years of training he doesn’t get to 5 stars, I am sure I can turn around and sell him for at least the 22M his current minimum value is. He did get some starts over the course of the season, and he didn’t make too many mistakes. He didn’t have a lot of highlights either, but at this point thats about all you can ask for.

The Summer loan market was a mess. The winter market less so, the number of outrageous monthly fees and like was down, and good players were willing to move, and teams were willing to let them go without charging a ransom. Nemanja Ilić from Partizan and Kerem Kalafat from Beşiktaş were both solid contributors. Ilić had 5 goals, 4 assists and 2 POM’s in 18 games for us at AM(L), AM(R) and a couple of appearances at M(C), but Partizan didn’t want to let him come back for the next season. Kalafat was a solid contributor at the WB(R) and I would have picked up his option if I had the 450K to spend, but alas, we’re still digging around the couches for transfer monies.

Sidnei Tavares was the only other player we spent money to get. a M(C)/DM, he has some attributes that I do like, his Passing skills are very nice, as are his Ball Control skills, and for a person who I wanted to be a bench player, he filled that role capably.

Sabino Gamboa, Carlos Dinas, and Nico Seiler are all youngsters I brought in to help fill in some spots on the U19 squad. If they ever see first team playing time its because I struck gold with them (unlikely), or we’ve been relegated and I have no other options.

I would bet that if we were playing with last seasons squad, the games against Gil Vicente, Braga, Chaves and Vitoria would have been draws or losses. Benfica beat us fair and square, Sporting scored two early, and again our lackluster performance up top did us in. Porto was Porto, I suspect its going to be a minute before we can do anything against them. But with all the wins we had crept up to 5th place, and were fighting for 4th. Our Youth Intake was embarrassing, with one mediocre player worthy of a contract. I shan’t be posting it, lest you recoil in sock and horror at it’s brute ugliness….

We did get lucky in some of these games. the Ilic goal against Maritomo was nice, as was the Marcos brace against Farense. We came back to draw Braga, which on paper looks like an accomplishment, except they were having an offseason and finished mid table. I didn’t realize we were still in the Cup until I saw the Semi Final Second Leg announcement and we thumped Torreense, meaning we were going to face Benfica in the final. Drawing Gil Vicente clinched us European football, we could do no worse than 5th in the League, but the last month of the season was the proverbial ‘Bridge to Far’.

The draw against Vitoria made our job that much harder, and while the win at Sporting was nice, they had a solid lock on 3rd place and played a rotated side against us, so I am not counting it as beating Sporting. Benfica hammered us to clinch 2nd, and then two weeks later hammered us again to win the Cup. But we finished in 5th Place, European Football! And I am quite happy with that.

The Três Grandes are still the Três Grandes though, and while we were competitive, there is still a very wide gap between us and them.

Our finances are improving though, but at this point I still count not losing a lot of money as a victory. The clubs reward for our fine season of play was a new contract, and a tiny transfer budget of 203K and a payroll of 79K, which isn’t that much more than we are paying now.

Squad wise though, we have some issues. Quintilla is leaving on a free. He wanted Star Player Money, and as much as I like him, and his 10 assists, I can’t afford to pay him that, not if I want to improve the club. We need help in our front Three, I think it speaks volumes that Ilic came in the January transfer window and had the best all around performance of the attackers, and while Mohebi had some nice games for us, he wasted too many opportunities in games as well. Sure, on paper 14 goals, 4 assists and 4 POM’s is nice, but when you consider the next highest scorer was Valente playing CM, and our primary attacking mids had 9 between them, it’s a minor miracle we won as many games as we did. If we want to challenge for better European football, we need to get better up top, but given our budget constraints and the wackiness that is the loan market…that’s an iffy proposition.

So we go into the offseason on a high note, and a well deserved one I think because despite the teams shortcomings, we did very well. A nice cup run would go a long way to improving our finances, that or a sugar daddy takeover, but without some improvements to the squad, we may find ourselves fighting it out in midtable, or worse.

That said, the first brick of the foundation has been set. Hopefully we don’t need to build the Great Wall to topple the Três Grandes.

Thanks for Reading!

FM_Jellico

My Dentist is going to be able to send his kid to college after all…

I knew one of my current saves was going to be more of a challenge. A relegated club, not the strongest financially, competing in a very good league, with several bigger clubs ahead of it. I like those types of saves, there’s something to be said about bringing one (or more) of the teams that have dominated the league for so long back down to earth.

And then inside the game, you have new challenges to overcome as well.

However, this version of FM, I have been surprised by the one area I was not expecting to be surprised by, which has caused me to work harder in this save than any other save I have done.

And that area is the Loan Market of Transfer Window.

Now, before I continue let me say first and foremost, the mechanics of the loan market/transfer window are not broken. What is broken though, is the economics of it.

Like all markets, the transfer window consists of buyers and sellers. A Sellers market is when a club has a player (say…Endrick) whom everyone wants, and they can drive up the price, and get the most bang for their Buck/Euro/Pound. A Buyers market is one in which Team Meh puts Joe Average out there for loan, and noone wants him until the last day of the window, and the only offer a team gets is the best offer, so if the club wants Joe Average to go out on loan, that’s the offer they are going to take. Right?

Transfers in FM23 make no economic sense to me. Young players on good teams are listed for loan, and then the team wants 175K a month when they play, 350K a month when they don’t play, 100% of their salary covered, and Oh Yeah, here’s a 33.5 million optional future transfer fee and 750K for when you when your Nations Cup tournament. And it seems like it is like that for 95% of the players you look at out there.

Now, I will admit, Santa Clara’s financial situation is not the best. While our finances are secure, we don’t make a lot of money. My budget surplus is about 1.9 million Euro’s, my yearly expenditures thus far have been covered by competition and TV monies. But I only get 10% of the transfers and my payroll is the lowest in the Primeira. My scouting is Portugal only, and I have turned down creating a B squad and a competition U19 squad because I cannot afford the staffing for it. Its a challenge, one I look forward to overcoming.

That in mind, a lot of my loan attempts are going to be looking for player’s who’s clubs are not going to want outrageous salary demands, or high monthly payments, preferably no monthly payments. But it seems any young player loan listed by a team who’s in the top two divisions of their country has the starting point of the negotiations somewhere near Oberon.

For the astronomically challenged, that is one of the moons of Uranus.

Now admit it, you giggled a little-+ there….

Now, there is a point of view put forward that says loans made by a club take into account the requesting teams finances. To which I say that is a Blivet, if not Two Blivets worth of Bad Information not grounded in objective fact.

Case in point:

Meet Giorgi Abuashvili, AKA the less capable Georgian Khvarradonna.

At Santa Clara, he would be very good, amongst the best players at the club. My Scout and my coaches say he’s 4 star current, 4 star potential player. His versatility makes him even more useful to me, and his wage is within my range as well. If Porto want me to cover 100% of his wage, I can. Last season he was on loan, at Le Havre:

I would expect to pay more than that, seeing as how he’s still young, played very well, and Porto is looking to get him playing time.

So I made an Inquiry, and about fell out of my chair when Porto’s starting offer came back:

What in the wide wide world of sports is going on here? This offer is 120,000% more than what he went out on loan for last year. That is not a typo. And I am sorry, while 3 goals, 6 assists and a POM in 31 games is pretty good, it’s not in the range to drive his asking price up that much. IMO of course, feel free to disagree and tell me why.

“But Jellico, you can negotiate them down,” I hear some of you say.

No. No you can’t. I tried, multiple times. With multiple players, over the course of six hours. I was grinding my teeth so much Household Six offered to go get me the mouthpiece my son wears when playing soccer. At one point she thought I broke a tooth because I hit the keyboard in frustration, but that was when another player at another clubs offer was 97K a month starting fee. For a 29 year old winger who hadn’t played more than 4 games a season the past four seasons.

So I played the waiting game, and the last day of the transfer window, went back to Porto to see if they would come down on their offer. This is what they said with 16 hours left in the window:

The €600 was the most the club would let me pay. But Porto still wanted 20K a month for him. And as far as I could tell, there were no other clubs interested in loaning him, in fact he stayed at Porto, and is playing for the B Squad. They musty not have been that interested in loaning him out…

I don’t know, maybe the transfer window has always been like this, and I just never noticed it.

I will say one thing though, I am positive the bidding club doesn’t give a tinkers dam about your finances when you make a loan offer.

Case in point, this is Giorgi from my other save, at Saint Etienne, and at that club my finances are in way better shape, much more so than at Santa Clara.

I haven’t fully scouted him, but I think it’s safe to say he’s close to the same player in my ASSE save as he is my Santa Clara save.

And yet the offers are pretty similar…

Look, I get economics is the art of explaining to tomorrows crowd why the predictions made yesterday didn’t come true today, but what’s happening in the FM23 transfer market with regards to loans is just…weird.

What am I missing here? Other than a peaceful night of sleep because my jaw is sore…

Derrubando Os Três Grandes: Santa Clara, an FM 23 Story, Part 2

The 1st Season: Fighting, Clawing, Scraping.

So, we have a mic of screenshots here, the dark ones are from the Statman skin, the light ones from the Mustermann skin, both available on the SI forums. They are both brilliant IMO, and well worth a look!

The season did not get off to a good start. Luckily everyone’s expectations were low enough that it didn’t really matter, but as a coach, it was frustrating.

With the world cup being played, there was going to be a decent winter break, and I for one was thankful, because of the first 20 games we played, we won 6, drew 6, and lost 8, which at first glance seems respectable, but when three of the wins come in cup competitions against lesser opponents, it really does open your eyes a little (OK, maybe a lot) as to how poorly we were doing.

There were some “Expected Losses”, losing 3-1 to Sporting was one of them. Losing to Porto as well, despite the fact they were up 2-0 after 17 minutes, Fabio Cardoso getting sent off and a straight red in 25^th minute gave me a glimmer a hope that being a man up, we could do something. Instead Eustachio scored in the 35^th minute, and they defended really well the rest of the match. Draws against Arouca and Casa Pia, who were both bottom of the table at that point, were frustrating, as was losing to Boavista in the League Cup Quarter final, only to turn around six days later and beat them 4 -0 had me reaching for the scotch.

But we had a process, and I wanted to stick to it, and so after we beat Boavista 4-0, I went back and looked at the Fall games, and other than the 3-1 losses to Porto and Sporting, the only other multi goal loss we had was against Portimonense, and that was 2-0. Against Maritomo we were a man down after the 27^th minute, and it took a PK for them to score. Arouca clawed the draw back in the 82^nd minute, Casa Pia on a PK in the 85^th, we drew with Benfica after scoring in the 67^th minute, Braga beat us in the 88^th minute, Rio Ave fell apart the second half but we fell short a goal. The more I looked at it, the more I realized we weren’t really getting outplayed, we just weren’t making the most of our chances, and I was hoping the 4-0 against Boavista was a sign of things to come. The other part of me said I was being delusional, but that voice in my head wasn’t invited in and was kicked out short order. Trust in the process, I kept reminding myself. The Process being: Hang on for dear life and don’t get relegated.

So we went into the January transfer window, maybe not with optimism, but cautious optimism. To be honest I suspect most of the backroom staff were trying to figure out how Uruguay, who beat Brazil 1-0 in the 2^nd Round, Spain 1-0 in the Quarters, and Argentina on Penalties in the Semi’s, beat France 2-1 in the Finals.

And South Korea beat Argentina to take 3rd place. Somewhere Messi weeps…

Those of us who figured that out were spending out time trying to figure out how South Korea beat Argentina 2-0 to take 3^rd Place. We helped our finances by selling Andrezinho to Valerenga for 100K, and Tassano to Legia for 250K before January. Victor Bobsin left for Empoli and a 1.6M Euro deal, Allano went to Cuiba for 525K, Rildo went to Goias for the same amount in February, Ricardo Fernandes went to Fakel for 42K in April, and Adriano went to Nice for 750K in the summer transfer window. The only real loss was Bobsin, the others were older players who while decent, were not irreplaceable. That said, when I did when to strengthen the squad, I couldn’t bring anyone in, because I didn’t wages to pay for those players who were even considering it, and don’;’t even get me started on loans this version of FM, they are all the way befuckled IMO.

So we hunkered down, trained as best we could, and tried to get the new year off to a good start.

I couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to 2023.

A 4-0 win at Estoril, beating Gil Vicente 2-0 at home, beating Chaves 2-1, beating Vizela 1-0, getting our revenge against MRT by beating them 2-1, when January ended we were 5-0, with 11 goals for and 2 against, and climbing the table

Well earned draws against Famalicao and Sporting were very nice, but then Vitoria thumped us 3-0, and a back and forth 5-3 at Porto closed out February.

March was quiet, as we beat Arouca and Pacos de Ferreira, and then April was…frenetic. Our youth intake was pretty solid all things considered, with Michael Santos and Gervasio Cymbron both 4 ½ star potential candidates. Players who’s contracts were expiring were still wanting too much money, and I was pulling out what was left of my hair over some of the negotiations. Games wise, beating Casa Pia was expected, as they were bottom of the table, but only by one goal was disconcerting. Portimonense held us off in a 2-1 loss, we beat Rio Ave 2-0, and Benfica beat us easily 3-1. However, a week later, we beat Braga 1-0, and with 4 games left, we were in 6^th place, fighting for European football.

The Two best Youth Intake Prospects, and climbing our way above mid table

Then we crapped the bed. Boavista, who were in a relegation battle, shut us out 3-0. We beat Estoril, 2-1, ensuring their relegation battle with Boavista would continue, but a Victor Carvalho goal gave Gil Vicente the 1-0 victory. Against Chaves we had nothing to lose, 6^th place was our spot, and with a 1-0 draw we waited for 5^th Place Braga to beat 11^th Place Famalicao in the Portuguese Cup, therefore pushing a Euro Conference spot to us in 6^th place, and instead they lost 2-0, and we lost out on European football, with a final record of 14-8-12, with 53 goals for and 50 goals against, on 50 points, only 32 behind League Champs Porto.

A look at the Year end statistics will tell you all you need to know about the team though, and to be honest it was both better and worse than I expected. In an 18 team league, finishing 6^th in the Offensive Statistical categories is very good, finishing 13^th in the defensive ones, not so much. We gave up to many draws and close losses, and finishing last in the league for shutout certainly didn’t help either.

From a League Statistic point of view, we were solid:

And yet, at the end of the day, it’s mostly a façade.

Seriously, Do Not Look!

As with almost every club in the Primeira, we had a lot of loan players. While the ones here had some very good performances, Matheus Babi was our leading goal scorer for example, none of them are coming back. Replacing them is going to be hard, because despite overachieving this season, and finishing in the black, the teams finances are shakier than a Lebanese Belly Dancer. Our transfer budget is only 154K, our allowable payroll is just 1K higher than what we are paying now, and that’s before the players I try to bring in on loan clubs start asking me to pay 100% of their salary and huge monthly fees. Our scouting is at a bare minimum, I turned down the opportunity to create a B squad because we can’t afford it, and none of the facilities are getting upgraded.

Times like these I remind myself “Custer Had a Plan too…”

Then the last day of the season came this bit of news:

And I still haven’t gotten my Endrick Signature.

Thanks for Reading!

FM_Jellico

Derrubando Os Três Grandes: Santa Clara, an FM 23 Story

PART 1

I have not been playing Football Manager that long, since FM17 really, but in that time I have managed to play quite a few teams in quite a few countries. But one country I have yet to manage in is Portugal. This year I wanted to do more on the blog, and thought taking a club that has not had a lot of success in the first tier of its countries football pyramid could be fun, and Santa Clara fits the bill perfectly. And that’s before I found out some of the issues it has.

Portuguese football has long been dominated by the “Big Three”: Benfica, Porto, and Sporting CP. Between them they have won all but two of the Primera Liga Titles, and our goal is to take them down a peg, or three, or more.

I am going to err on the side of previous good fortune and luck, and have recreated Thierry Davout as head coach. My first big save was with USL Dunkerque in FM17, and Thierry Davout was the man who led us to glory for 20 seasons. This time around, I am hoping he provides more of the same.

The ski I am using at the moment is the excellent Statman skin, created by _Ben_ on the SI forums. For those of us who are a bit more Data Driven, this skin displays a lot of information we would normally have to hunt for in the data hub. You can download it here: Statman 23 It is one on many great new skins being created this year, and I suspect we will see a few more during this save.

Historically speaking, Santa Clara is the most successful club on the Azores Islands, and are the westernmost top flight club in Europe. The spent one year in the Primeira Liga in 1998-99, but were relegated the next season. They were promoted again in 2001, but were relegated again in 2003, and spent the next 15 year’s in the 2nd Tier, before being promoted again at the end of the 2018 season. The 202-2021 season saw them finish 6th, while reaching the corner finals of the Taça de Portugal. This season a poor start saw Mario Silva leave the club, and on 11/23/2022, Thierry Davout took over. What did he find? Well, things could be going better.

While for the moment the club is in the black, financially speaking they are Insecure, and more importantly are currently overspending on their wage budget by about 15K Euros. The club is paying off a 5M Euro loan, it will drop off the books in 2025.

This means a few things:

Terminating the contracts of those staff members who don’t meet our criteria is going to be impossible for this season, because we won’t be able to offer the wages we need to to bring in better people.
If we can mutually terminate contracts of those staff members who for the moment are “extra” we will.
Cutting back where we are spending money, which as you can see was already done by the time we arrived. For the moment we are scouting Portugal. It’s all we can afford to scout, and as my scouting department for the moment consists of a Scout and Chief Scout.
Doing what we can to avoid relegation. At the moment we currently sit 14th in the Primeira.

The Good News, such as it is, is that we only have 2 games until the World Cup Winter Break, and then the transfer window, and looking at the squad there is opportunities to sell players and make some money.

The Squad

The Good News: We have a solid Squad. Average age is 24.8 years old, the team as a whole has an overall Determined personality, and there is a decent amount of depth at each position.

The Bad News: We have a solid Squad, 7 of our contributing players are in on loan, and while we have some quality players, there is a distinct lack of youth development going on. No, seriously I have one 16 y/o and on 19 y/o on the roster. My U19 squad is nonexistent, and the U23 squad has 5 players on it.

Keepers

Gabriel Batista is going to be my 1st Choice Keeper for now. 2 1/2 star Current Ability, 3 1/2 Star Potential Ability, the 24 y/o comes from Flamengo, but is not having the best season so far, with 15 goals allowed in 10 games with just 1 shutout, and a 6.32 rating

Marco has been with the club for 6 seasons, but at 35 y/o his best days are most likely behind him. In 4 appearances this year he’s allowed 7 goals with just 1 shutout, for a paltry 6.15 rating. Compared to the other keeps on the squad he’s 3 star current and potential ability, but if his past game performances and and indicator, he won’t have that 3rd star for long.

Ricardo Fernandes has 7 appearances for the club last season, but the game does not have any numbers for that. at 2 1/2 start current and potential ability, at best he is probably a spot starter,

Center Backs

This is the second thinnest position at the club. While we have other defenders who can play D(C), Kennedy Boateng and Paulo Eduardo are the only two who play this role naturally.

Boateng, a 25 y/o from Togo had 9 Caps for the International Squad, is your prototypical D(C), tall, strong, with very good jumping and capable heading. The 3 star current, 3 1/2 star potential back is defensively solid, I am hoping to get him to contribute more on the set piece side of the ball now.

Paulo Eduardo is one of the good youth players we have. At 20 y/o, the 3 star current, 4 star potential player is almost as good as Boateng. A Free pickup from Cruzeiro, he has the makings of one of those defenders whop is going to have a long, solid career.

Right Backs

Diogo Calila is currently listed and wanted, but I am going to take him off the transfer list. This year the formations I am using tend to have wingbacks in them, and Calila is a solid wingback. At 24 y/o, the 3 start current, 3 star potential ability player has few weaknesses in his attributes, but nothing really stands out either.

Pierre Sanga is the other right Wingback on the squad, but at 32 y/o the 3 star current and potential ability player isn’t as good technically as Calila is. He’s coming off a broken jaw suffered in training, I hope that is not a sign of things to come.

Tomás Domingos can play wingback, but he’d prefer to play in his natural fullback position. At 3 star Current, 4 star potential the 23 y/o is the best defender we have from a technical point of view, and probably from a mental point of view as well. He’s one of the best crossers on the team, so chances are likely he and Calila will split starting duties for the rest of the season.

Left Backs

While Paulo Henrique can play Wingback, Xavi Quntilla is better at it.

Quintilla is going to be on the sidelines until January though, a twisted ankle has the 4 star current 26 y/o in the physios office. Quintilla can also play D(C) quite well, and I expect him to get game time at both. At 5’9″ he is not the most physical of defenders, but he more than makes up for any deficiens there with his very good Mental and Technical attributes.

Paulo Henrique is also 26 years old, and with better overall physical and Technical attributes, the 3 1/2 star current, 4 star potential player will most likely be the starter, with Quintilla starting at D(C) next to Boateng.

20 y/o Ítalo has 4 star potential, and I am hoping to get him enough spot starts and off the bench appearances to help him reach that. That he can also play D(C) means he will have more opportunities to do that.

Defensive Midfielders

Victor Bobsin is a 22 y/o Brazilian who could be a stalwart for the club for years to come, if other clubs don’t notice how well he is doing and come to snap him up first. the 4 star current, 4 1/2 star potential has no real weaknesses from an attribute point of view, a 7 FIN being his lowest number, and his Work Rate, Passing, Technique and First Touch make him an ideal facilitator, the pivot from defense to offense. If he does as well as I think he can, it could be a problem holding onto him.

Adriano is a 23 y/o, 3 star current, 4 star potential player who has caught the eye of Panathinaikos, and the clubs financial position means we might not be able to hold onto him. Which would be a shame, as a less capable version of Bobsin I would have no problems starting him if I had to at either DM or M(C). Hopefully he will still be here after the transfer window.

Midfielders

One of our stronger positions in the squad, until you look a closer and realize the best one is 32 years old and the next two best are in a loan. The good news is we have a few players who can play M(C), but these five are the primary ones.

Oscar Barreto is more accomplished at M(R) and the Attacking midfield positions, but he will be a backup for the M(C)’s and AM’s more often than not. The 29 y/o is 3 star current and potential ability, is solid physically, mentally, and the skill specific technical attributes are good as well. Maybe not the start he was back in the day at Millonarios and La Equidad, but he is a capable, versatile bench player, and you can never have enough of those.

Anderson Carvalho has been the midfield General for Os Açoreanos going on 5 years now, but how much longer the 32 y/o is going to stay at 4 start current and potential ability remains to be seen. He’s a BWM of the truest sort, Brave, Aggressive, with excellent teamwork and work rate, and a capable defender if need be. He’s not one who is going to be scoring a lot of goals, or making a lot of assists, but I suspect many a scoring sequence will start with his right foot.

Pedro Bicalho has the making to become the next Anderson Carvalho, at 21 y/o the 3 star current, 4 1/’2 star potential player has the potential to become a very good CM. Currently on loan from Palmerias (I wonder if he could get me Endrick’s signature) he might be out of our price range in the transfer window, but I am going to do what I can to get him back on loan next season.

Bruno Jordão is also in Santa Clara on loan from Wolves. At 24 y/o, the 3 1/2 star current, 4 star potential player has been solid off the bench for Santa Clara, and I suspect that is a role he will continue to have going forward, given his positional versatility. The only thing that does worry me is his injury proneness, but I find if you start worrying about that too much, thats when they get hurt.

Rodrigo Valente in a natural AM(C) but I don’t use that in my formations at the moment. He is a very good M(C) though, and I think the 21 y/o 2 1/2 star current, 5 star potential player can have quite a good future there as a CM. He’s been languishing on the bench so far, but I aim to remedy that.

Attacking Mid’s, Left

Similar to our midfield, on paper this looks to be a position of strength, but also similar to our midfield, many of these players are here on loan.

Gabriel Silva would prefer to be an AM(C), but my formation utilizes Inside Forwards. His strong right foot, good speed, pace, technique and off the ball, augmented by his very good flair and better than average Dribbling, finishing and first touch make this 20 y/o a key bench player and starter, while his positional versatility is also a plus. Also on loan from Palmerias, the 3 star current, 4 1/2 star potential youngster could be a very good player in a few years time, hopefully for us.

Rildo is the slightly older, slightly poorer version of Silva, a high flair, high technical Inside forward whose physicals are not as good as they could have been I suspect, but the 22 y/o 3 star current, 4 star potential player has had several solid appearances off the bench this season, and I don’t think that is going to stop anytime soon.

MT is a 21 y/o Brazilian on loan from Vasco de Gama, and at 3 star current 4 1/2 star potential, his positional versatility (He plays a very good M(C) and Striker) would make him a great asset to the squad. We do have a 700K optional future fee on him, but I don’t see us being in a place financially at the end of the season to exercise that option, which means we need to get what we can out of him this year.

Costina is a 30 y/o 3 star current and potential player with too many things going against him right now. First and foremost is that he is recovering from an Achilles injury, and is going to be out the next 4 to 7 weeks. Second are his physicals, while fast and pacy, his strength, stamina and fitness leave a lot to be desired, and his positioning and work rate are not the best either. He has yet to play a game for th club this season, and I will try and move him on on the transfer window.

Filip Stevanović is a 20 y/o with a bright future ahead of him, which is probably why Man City paid Partizan 6.75M Euros to geth him. He had a decent spell at sc Heerenveen last season, and this year has been a solid contributor. I am going to get what I can out of the 3 1/2 star current, 5 star potential youngster, and with City paying Fati 54M to come to Manchester this season, I think my odds of getting him on loan again next season are good.

Attacking Mid’s, Right

It’s a good thing a lot of my attacking midfield players can play both sides, because AM(R) is probably the weakest area in the squad.

Allano is a solid player, the 27 y/o 3 1/2 current and potential Inverted Winger can also play the left side. He is one of those players who does not excel in any area in particular, but is very solid in those attributes that are best for his position.

Kyôsuke Tagawa is leaving in the January transfer window, and to be honest he won’t be missed. I have better younger options with more promise.

André Mesquita is a versatile player, and that’s about the only thing he has going for him really. 2 star current and 2 1/2 star potential ability means the 25 y/o has most likely reached his developmental limit, and he is lacking in to many areas for me to find a place for him on the squad. If he is still part of Os Açoreanos when the transfer window closes, I’ll be surprised.

Bruno Almeida is a slightly older, loan player version of André Mesquita. He’s versatile though, capable of playing all the attacking Mid and Midfield positions, which makes him a nice player to have on the bench. I wouldn’t feel comfortable having him as a full time starter though. Luckily though I won’t have to worry about it, because even if Trofense wanted us to pay an optional future fee for him, it’s not going to be 300K.

Attackers

Definitely an area of concern, I suppose I should be happy a lot of my Attacking Mid’s can also play up top, but I would prefer a dedicated striker.

Matheus Babi is that striker for me, a 25 y/o Brazilian who’s 3 1/2 star current, 4 star potential ability is respectable. On loan from Club Athletico Paranaense, I doubt we are going to be able to get him back for next season, and thats a problem.

João Marcos could be one of those players whose attributes and ability are greater than the sum total, but I doubt it. At 22 y/o the 2 star current, 3 star potential player is not as good as some of the Attacking mids I have that can also play up top.

If Messias is starting a gamne, that means we have not yet trained the Strikerless formation I am moving to as a result of injuries to my attackers.

Season Goals

I think we can finish midtable, somewhere in the 9th to 13th range, and seeing as we are currently in 14th place, I think that is well within the realm of possibility. Due to our financial constraints, we aren’t going to be able to sign new players, or staff, so we may have to play the loan market a little more in January, but we’re only allowed eight, and were at six right now.

No, this season is about survival in the Premeira, and doing well in the League Cup as well. Until the teams finances are a bit more solid, we’re going to have to play the waiting game, and I am OK doing that for now.

Next update will be after the January transfer window has closed, we will take a look at the formation I am using, and take a look at some tips and tricks I can use to get ahead in scouting without having a scouting budget.

Questions or comments, please leave them down below and I’ll answer as fast as I can. Thanks for reading!

1000 Years in the Future Experiment, this time with more Countries: Part 3, Success, Sort Of

The first attempt I was way to optimistic, I loaded 24 nations, created a coach, and went on the eternal vacation.

The game started to crash in the 2220’s, which I expected, just not that early.

Then it crashed hard in the 2300’s. And by crashing hard I mean when trying to load the save the game crashed back to the desktop. So, back the drawing board. This time 12 countries. The game started to crash in the late 2300’s, no problem. Mid 2400’s, hard crash. So I looked at the countries I had loaded, to see who the culprit might be.

England? No.

France? Non.

Germany? Unsere Fußball-Liga-Struktur ist der Inbegriff deutscher Präzision und Perfektion, schau woanders hin, du Idiot!

America? Ding Ding Ding! We have a winner, because I am pretty sure not even the MLS knows the ins and outs of its own rules are, and 400 plus years into a save I think the game broke itself trying to figure it out as well…

So I started again with 8 countries. England, France, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Chile, Portugal and Belgium.

Yes, I forgot Spain. Sorry.

In the 2500’s the game started crashing again. This was not unexpected, because at some point the video card starts throwing an error that causes the game to crash every 8-12 years, 10 being average. So I loaded the last save, renamed it, and started simming again. In the mid 2600’s, it crashed. This time with a ‘The computer is out of memory’ error, which I thought odd, because my laptop has 32GB of Ram.

So I moved the game to my PC, and simmed it when I wasn’t playing it. I wasn’t to sure about the whole RAM issue so I looked at my task manager one day, and it said FM was using 16% of my memory, and I thought “Jellico, that’s not too bad…”

The I realized in my PC i have 128GB of Ram, and 16% of that is 20GB. And that’s not including what the computer uses for its own background processes…

Anyhow, the game ran well until the 2800’s. Then it started crashing again. And the later it got, the shorter time frame between crashes. And in 2854, You can load the game, but it crashes the day after you try simming it. At least it did for me.

So, 2852 being a nice number, I asked JD, who did such a great job with last years video, if he wanted to do it again this year, he said “Yes, me and my mates at the Managers Seat would be willing to help out!” and I sent them the save file, and a week later he tell me they were chatting with Zealand about something unrelated and mentioned the save and Zealand said something to the effect of (and I am paraphrasing here, apologies if this is wrong Z) “I’d love to help with a video on that.” And a couple of discord chats and a recording session later, we were done, and Z’s editors did their usual bang up job in editing.

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EyxZYQ_W0Y

Download the save file here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/1bdg6q1r1y693jy/Lazarus_Long_-_2852.fm/file

A Big Thanks, to Zealand, his editors, JD, Stinger, Leyo and Llama for helping get this out to the masses.

Now, for some answers to questions I know will be asked:

No, I do not have Mickey Higgenson’s attributes, the game was actually running really well then and I do not have a save from when he was playing, and that’s my fault.

For those of you wondering, the is his profile page:

https://gyazo.com/fb4ccac6823e677bbcefb08ee9ce8a5c

And this is his 2814 World Cup performance.

https://gyazo.com/058a31971708306ad89e46123859d328

If you want me to look up a country or results. ask on the video or on the Reddit post I’ve made about this as well please:

https://www.reddit.com/r/footballmanagergames/comments/x6pi0q/1000_years_into_the_future_well_830_because_the/

Some notes, last years save was 6 countries at 1000 years. That Dbase was smaller than this years version of 8 countries at 830 years. It will load, you can search, but some things like transfer windows and the like will take awhile to load.

Bigger Countries that are playable will have a lost more diversity in results. Thats why Spain has been dominated by two teams, it was not playable. Smaller countries seem to have a diversity of results despite not being playable and I am not sure why…

And yes, I will do this again next year.

Thanks for Reading!

Jellico73

1000 Years in the Future Experiment, this time with more Countries: Part 2 Failure and Success

Well, when I started the second attempt at this save, I wanted to go bigger, and I did, and I think that’s what’s causing the issues the save is having now. While simming on the laptop, there were always a few crashes related to the video card, it’s a NVIDIA thing that can’t be fixed really, but I noticed it was crashing more often, then a day or two ago would crash after just a days worth of simming. So I moved the save over to the Maingear, and it ran great for about a week, processing each day didn’t take too long, and then it crashed, more than once. Which leads me to believe it’s something in the database causing the issue.

And from my point of view, that makes sense. We’re trying to make the program do something it’s not really designed to do, and I think it reached a point here that it can’t reconcile something in the background and as a result, here we are in February of 2361. In looking at my original setup, I think I was way too ambitious and the database was to big. I am going to take a look at things this weekend, but I think I can keep the same countries, but if I put the leagues on Playable/View Only below, and reduce the size of the database as a result, we should get a better long term save, so I am going to look at that this weekend, and probably restart this again here in a week or so.

That said, adding the additional countries was a good thing, it definitely increased the diversity of results, and while in some of the bigger leagues the power teams are still winning, they aren’t nearly as dominating as they were the first time around. Where the additional countries really come into play are competition like the World Cup, the Champions League, and the Euro Cup, the results in those competitions are quite fun to look thru.

The save has been uploaded to Mediafire here: https://www.mediafire.com/file/1t7e80vdmok0wqo/Lazarus_Long_-_1000_Year_Save_Start.fm/file Have a look around, let us find out what you find. The file is 2.8Gb in size, and considering the last 1000 year save I did was 3.72Gb, well, that’s telling in and of itself. I do have attribute masking turned off, so you should be able to look at players.

Now, some screenshot’s to pique some interest:

Just and idea of some of the teams winning in the future.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for another update on the next attempt!

FM_Jellico

Scouting in Football Manager: You get out of it what you put into it, Part 2

Your team can only have so many scouts, and each of those scouts can only be in so many places thru out the year. And no matter what they are looking for, the next wonderkid, the replacement for your second winger, a backup keeper, the player database can be large enough that you will miss players. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not good either.

That said, no matter the size of your club or the size of the country your club is in, there is one free scouting tool that you can use to try and get a jump on the competition.

However, setting it up can be one of the most time consuming, infuriating things to do, but at the end of the day, it is a very good tool that can help you get the jump on many of those players who may not be “Hall of Famers”, but are in the “Hall of Very Good”.

This tool is Screen Flow.

Screen Flow can be found thru the ‘Preferences’ screen, under the Advanced Tab.

The screen, when you first enter it, is blank. You want to ensure that the ‘Visit News Screens Automatically Box’ is ticked.

When you click on ‘Select Competition’, you’ll see a list of all seven continents and the world.

Now depending on how ‘In depth’ you want your scouting to be will determine what competitions you can scout. You can ALWAYS scout any ‘International’ competition, but where screenflow comes into play is Nation scouting, however there is a…minor drawback in that you can only scout competitions in countries you have loaded.

As an example, I have a test DB that has all the players enabled, giving me a playerbase of ~439,000 players.

In this particular test, I have one countries loaded, England. If I hover over England, you will see a list of every competition you can get reports from. As a note, despite the fact I only have England selected to play, in the following screenshot Italy is showing because it hosts the Italian Youth Club International, but if you were to click on Italy, you would not see any Italian League/competition options available for reports.

A list of all the Competitions you can get reports from.

Once you have the competition you want to receive reports from identified, select it, and it will be added the ‘Main’ screen. From here, you have even more options.

My suggestion would be to use the following: Stats|Player Overview in the ‘Screen Option’, your ‘Minimum Interval’ should be N/A, ‘Scope’ I would leave on ‘On Matchdays’, and Stop Game to ‘No’, then select Add Screen, where you can enter in the next competition you want results from. When you have all the competitions you want reports from, select ‘Confirm’ at the bottom. You will get the ‘Changing Skin’ window, and then it will be back to your game.

Now, during the course of playing, when a game for a competition you have loaded has been played, a new screen will pop up. This is from my current save with Crystal Palace:

Essentially, what this screen is a report comprised of the players statistical data collected from the games played in competition up to the present in game date. I like to think of it as a manager, coach or analyst sitting down in front of their laptop and pulling up statistics from one of the many websites out there that reports results and includes data on the players form, and the Screen Flow screen is additional filtering of the results.

One of the many nice things about this screen is that under Stats, you can change the report, and the options match the options on the screenflow. The other thing that you can look at are the boxes underneath the initial window. All of these are customizable, and the good news is you can add any game statistic that FM has data for. The bad news is that you only have 8 boxes to use.

The worse news is that sometimes when you are using a skin that is not the base skin, the data boxes change, even if you go back and reset them. I am not sure why, but on some skins they do not move, and on other skins they do. One of the cool things I have found is that there are a couple of skins out there that have modified the xml controlling this view, and have made some very cool changes:

I about fell out of my chair when I saw this.

This is that same competition report from the skin I am using, and you will notice that in Average rating, DET has been added, and in Goals, FIN has been added. In this competition, David Mafoso is leading with six goals, and has a finishing of 11-17, and if we click on his name, his player panel we see he is a 16 year old striker with at least 11 FIN, 15 JUMP, and decent TEC, OTB and ACC. He’s also been capped at the under 19 level.

Not a lot of information at first, but some intriguing numbers there.

From here, if you have the ability to scout him, scout him. If not, add him to a shortlist.

For every competition you add, you will get a screen. If you have a lot of countries loaded, you can get results from a lot of competitions. In My current save with Crystal Palace, I have added every Youth International Competition, and every countries U23 and U19 major competitions, but as an example of what you can add here are the options for Brazil, and you have to scroll down to get the rest. But seriously reports from U20 State Championships? That’s cool.

There is no such thing as to many competitions to scout…

The other thing that is cool is that you can add a country, set it to view only, and then in the Screen Flow you will be able to load competitions from that country. So even if you are playing with a small database, it’s possible to add every country and set it to view only, and you can get reports from them. What this does to the player size of the database as you progress into the save I am not sure, but if like me, you are into scouting, this is a good tool to use.

Just one country playable, the rest on ‘View Only’

From the Screenflow of that save, all the countries on ‘View Only’ are eligible for reports.

While the Screen Flow doesn’t show you everything, if you set it up they way you want, and see the same name popping up in multiple categories, its a sign they may be a good player. It could also be a sign they are a mediocre player in a bad league, but you don’t know until you look.

As an example, this is Jair, one of the many Brazilian Newgens with potential. However, as good as he is Attribute wise, he was never capped at the U20 or U19 level, and has only 1 U23 Cap. However, when he was a youth player at FLA, I first saw him on a screenflow for the Brazilian U20 Cup. Then I saw him on the screenflow for the U23 National Competitions screenflow, and while he wasn’t top in any category, he was top 5. I scouted him for two weeks, liked what I saw, and put him on a shortlist, and then when the FLA U20’s won the National Championship, I scouted him fully, and liked what I saw. I made an offer for him, I was the only team at the time interested in him, and got him for 7.25M. A Good loan spell at Coventry, and then a starter this current season, he now has 5 star potential, and is valued at 22-29M.

In addition to being a scouting tool, Screenflow can also be used as a transfer tool as well. Here I am in Brazil, and have selected the Brazilian First National Division, because I don’t have the real name fix installed on this save. Once selected, you have a variety of reports you can get, and in this case I am going to select ‘News|Transfer Rumors’. Then under ‘Scope’ I am going to change the option to ‘During Transfer Window’, and the ‘Minimum Interval’ to ‘Every Three Days’. Click add screen, confirm, the skin will reload, and now, during the Brazilian transfer window, you will get various rumors and which team they are associated with. It literally is a free tool you can use to get a jump on the competition, if your willing to spend the time an energy and go down a rabbit hole or three.

As good as Screen Flow is, there is some bad news, and for some people it may be a dealbreaker.

What’s not cool is that screenflow is not a view. It cannot be saved/exported, so every time you start a new save, you have to re-enter EVERYTHING you want results for. It’s a lot of clicking, and if you are adding a lot off competitions, you will want to click ‘Confirm’ every once and a while.

And if for some reason you hit Reset, it will remove everything you have entered. EVERYTHING. which means if your like me and your wanting reports from every country and International Youth competition, you can get a bad case of cramps, if not carpal tunnel.

However, having used it in multiple saves over multiple version of FM now, I can say that it is a very good arrow in the quiver that is scouting. You get reports from competitions in regions you are not scouting, or may even have zero knowledge in. You can build and add to shortlists that will help you in the future, and while to computer is out there searching for every potential wonderkid, even though you are in League One, getting ready to join the Championship, you got a screenflow report from the Korean League, and saw the same name pop up consistently, and when the board gave you enough transfer money to make some purchases, you bought the young D(C) who will never be more than 4 stars, but was a defensive stalwart for your team for 12 years, helping you win the Prem, the Euro Cup, and the Champions League before he retired, at the bargain price of 3.5 million pounds.

I hope this was helpful, and if there are any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below, or you can tag me on twitter @FM_Jellico.

Thanks for reading, and good luck in your future scouting!