Football Manager 2024

[Pyfish+]

10 hours ago, Tommy said:

I think this is the first time (that I can remember) that I had a player with a 10.0 rating at the end of a match. 

I've had it a couple of times in my current save but I think it's a bugged save because every single game it's stupidly high scoring so it's easier for players to grab 10.0 rating if they're banging in hattricks.

[MUFC]

Is this game any good on the ps5?

[MUFC]

[Tommy]

"Would have prefered to stay on the bench" after you sub in a player is a bit overused, isn't it?

[Dan+]

On 15/05/2024 at 20:53, Tommy said:

"Would have prefered to stay on the bench" after you sub in a player is a bit overused, isn't it?

Yeah it's a nonsense. Often from the same twats who moan I don't play them as well.

[Dave]

The interactions with players are pretty poor. You know if you've been promoted whatever you say about aims for next season will be wrong. Then there's the team leaders who say: "Play him or lose him! It's your job at stake!" when your 36 year old third choice Goalie is unhappy about playing time. 

If there was a stripped down version without this nonsense like FM Touch was I'd probably play that to remove some of these features that are not up to scratch.

[Smiley Culture]

Loads of time till the new one comes out, so plenty of time to get stuck into a new save. 

 

Académica de Coimbra

 

Back in 2012, Académica made it to the final of the Taça de Portugal for only the fifth time, for the first time since 1969 and had the chance to lift the trophy for the first time since 1939. They were facing Sporting, one of Portugal's "Big Three", on that day so it wouldn't have been particularly pessimistic to say that the 73 year wait for a trophy might go on a little longer, however, after four minutes Marinho scored what turned out to be the only goal of the game. Wild celebrations ensued and European Football for the following season was confirmed. Atletico Madrid, Viktoria Plzen and Hapoel Tel-Aviv were the opponents at the Group Stage and despite an impressive 2-0 win over Atleti, 'Briosa' finished third and failed to qualify for the knockout stages. Since that jubilant day back in 2012, life hasn't been too good to Portugal's oldest club. Relegation from the top flight in 2016 was soon followed by relegation to Portugal's third tier in 2022, finishing twenty points from safety. 

Portugal's oldest club languishing in the third tier, a weird league format and promotion system, a 29,744 all-seater stadium built for Euro 2004 and youth and training facilities ranked as "Great" and this is very much something I can get my teeth into for a bit of fun.

Portuguese Third Division - The third tier is split into two sections, a Northern and a Southern section, made up of ten teams each. You play the other nine teams in your region home and away and after eighteen games, the league splits. The top four from each region goes into the Championship Group and the bottom six from each section goes into their own Relegation Group, where you then play everyone in your group home and away. The top two in the Championship Group goes up automatically and third go into a play-off with a team from the bottom end of the second tier. Hopefully I won't find out but the bottom two of the Relegation Group goes down to the fourth tier of Portuguese Football.

 

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Finances are pretty good upon starting, which is not usually the case with some big clubs in lower leagues. £901,685 is in the bank, which is a nice surprise, and the projection predicts a profit come the end of the season, which is even better. Being a little greedy and seeing a potential profit, I couldn't help but arrange for a money spinner of a home friendly against FC Porto, to go with the home friendly against Braga, who are an affiliate club.

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The playing squad is reasonable for the level. It's definitely workable. There's very few real standout players but it should be enough to challenge at the top end of the table. Nwankwo Obiaro is a 31 year-old Nigerian international centre midfielder who will boss this level despite his age. Having played in his homeland, Spain, Italy, Romania and Greece before discovering a love of Sagres and Pastel de Nata, he'll lead this team. I've no plans to make any signings, the squad size and depth is sufficient for now and I don't think I need to do much. Lucas Henrique has left as quickly as he joined the club. He's a number 10 and I'm going to be playing a 4-4-2 and he simply didn't fit and he's returned to Brazil's third division, for a fee of £950 that may rise to £1,300 and has shaved £350 per week from the wage bill. 

We're predicted to finish 5th but that is a list of all the twenty teams at this level. I'm quietly confident we can do slightly better.

[Whiskey]

Academica have no place in the third tier, their a pretty solid second tier outfit in truth. Should be looking for promotion in season one and then seeing what comes beyond.

Obviously biased, but I do love Portugal for an FM save.

[Dan+]

Having an absolute belter of a save here in Czech Republic. I'll do a proper review of it. Could be on the cusp of something pretty outrageous.

[Dan+]

On 15/11/2024 at 03:50, Dan said:

Having an absolute belter of a save here in Czech Republic. I'll do a proper review of it. Could be on the cusp of something pretty outrageous.

I won't go into huge depth as there's just too much, but basically I've changed my method of playing and this is why I keep ending up in slightly odd countries. Of the European countries you can access without downloading, I had managed in 14 of them before this game was released, and to my memory had won 11 of the top divisions. A mate of mine had a bit of an idea while picking his own save, and I've sort of copied it and taken it to another level. Go on the wheel of names site, enter every country you have not managed in and let the wheel pick your team for you. This way you are guaranteed to manage in a new league.

So I'd landed on Sweden and Croatia before. I'd landed IK Brage of the 2nd tier of Sweden and Varazdin of the top tier of Croatia. It took me 4 and 3 years respectively to become champions. Brage was a really big achievement and we won it against the odds. Varazdin, well I thought it would take longer to overhaul Dinamo Zagreb, but I did also start with the sixth best team in the country. So I created a new rule for the next spin - you must avoid the top tier.

Czech Republic was the next country spun. In-fact, it was during this that I decided I would go for the lower leagues, because I landed on Slavia Prague and this would've made it a bit too easy. I landed a team called Vysocina Jihlava, predicted to finish 7th in the second tier.

There's quite a lot, so I'll do this in two parts.

---

Season One (2023/24 - Predicted to finish 7th in 2nd tier)

Predicted to maybe have an outside push of promotion but in real life had finished 13th out of 16. I take over a squad with a very bizarre imbalance, hardly any wide players in any position so I'm forced to improvise. We make numerous loan and free signings, make a brilliant start to life in the second tier if not a little chaotic, not losing until our thirteenth game of the season and scoring plenty. We hit a very rough patch mid-season and title favourites Brno take top spot from us, but we find a second wind, change my tactics from a chaotic 4-2-3-1 to a more solid 4-3-3 and we start winning again. We take the title, and automatic promotion with a game to spare. Success in our first year. I'm offered an interview by Mlada Boleslav who have just finished 4th in the top tier. I politely decline.

 

Season Two (2024/25 - Predicted to finish 16th in 1st tier)

We're the only team to get promoted. Czech Republic's system has 1-3 teams get promoted, where the teams who finish 2nd and 3rd get to face off the teams 2nd and 3rd bottom of the top tier in a two legged play-off, with obvious benefits to the top tier team it would turn out, so it was pretty crucial I'd topped the league. We'd been given a fairly generous wage budget that was in line with the teams towards the bottom of the league, but not actually far off them. With loads of out contract I went for nuclear overhaul and built a team almost entirely around my 4-3-3 from last season, thinking that playing expansively in the top tier would be suicide. What panned out was quite remarkable, as we won 6 of our first 7 games (four of them 1-0). We had arrived. We tail off somewhat but still collect huge scalp victories over the likes of Slavia Prague and Viktoria Plzen. We defy the odds and finish 6th in the league. The Czech top tier system splits into three where the top 6 battle for the title & Europe, the middle 4 have a play-off to get a final spot to have a pop at the team who finish 5th to get their European place, the bottom 6 fight to survive. We remarkably win 3 of our 5 games and end up taking 4th spot with the last kick of the season ahead of Hradec Kralove. Jihalava are going to Europe. I'm offered an interview by Viktoria Plzen. I take the interview, am offered the job. I massively ponder over it. This would be a substantial step up while not being a complete cheat, and there's still a bit of a job to overhaul the Prague teams. But I've come so far so quickly that I decide to stick with Jihlava.

 

Season Three (2025/26 - Predicted to finish 13th in 1st tier & in Europa Conference League 2nd round qualifying)

We make no mistake in our European debut, despatching Lithuanian Suduva Marijampole 7-1 on aggregate, but we're given a nasty tie in the third qualifying round and are knocked out by Shakhtar Donetsk who beat us 2-0 in both games. It's annoying that we haven't really managed to get anything to show for our effort bar the memories of losing to a bit of a falling heavyweight, and our finances weren't really given much of a lift by this either (Jihlava's support is genuinely horrendous). We have a poorer season in the league, but we pick up a lot towards the end and bizarrely finish 4th in the regular season despite a lesser points tally than the one I got the year before that landed me 6th place. We develop an uncanny knack of scoring late goals - netting eight decisive goals in injury time in just thirty league games. We have a couple of nice looking youngsters coming through and we move back to a slightly more expansive style of play despite some of our limitations, and we don't really pay a price for it. We grow into the season and end up repeating the 4th placed finish meaning it's another crack at the Conference League. Our finances are still pretty shit and we don't have a load in terms of sellable assets. 

 

Season Four (2026/27 - Predicted to finish 8th in 1st tier & in Europa Conference League 2nd round qualifying)

It's gone without saying we have massively overachieved already, but at some point this needs to be converted somehow into either money or trophies. Naturally I'd prefer trophies, but money will allow us to sustain this. Our robust, physical pressing game could give anybody in this league a game and I think my strength lies in knowing how to recruit a really balanced team. You want centre halves who play out from the back, I want centre halves who win everything in the air. We're a pain of a team, a dirty side. Teams don't like facing us. We have an identity and we run with it.

I sell star player Atakan Akkaynak to Huesca for a club record £675k. Less than he's truly worth, but we are paupers and we just needed the money. My policy of signing any free agent youngster with a 5 star potential pays dividends as Brazilian right back Caio is sold to Slavia Prague for £750k without even making a senior appearance (and there's no way he's good enough for them either). We're still largely reliant on free transfers although break our transfer record to sign attacking left back Derik for £180k - a player I had success with at Varazdin. We beat Akranes of Iceland in the 2nd round despite a scare in the away game. We beat Hearts 2-0 at home and scrape through with a 2-1 loss in Edinburgh, meaning we just have the one opposition between ourselves and a Conference League group stage which would make a big financial difference to us. We defy the odds by taking Belgian Standard Liege to penalties, but we lose and the dream is over for another year.

We become draw specialists in the league and this time can only manage a 7th placed finish in the regular season. Meaning Europe wasn't dead, but we're going to have to do it the hard way. But people had to learn to not write off the pesky Jihlava by this point. We take Slovan Liberec apart in the semis and then absolutely slaughter Slovacko 6-1 at home, meaning I can rest everybody for the 2nd leg (which we lose 3-1). It's our old friends Hradec Kralove, we go away there in a one off game knowing a win steals their European place. We take the piss and beat them 1-4. Even when we flunk it, we still take that European place. We burgle another £1.1mil out of Slavia Prague for a genuinely rubbish Bolivian who the game seems to rate and all of a sudden we should be able to start buying some better players. Four seasons and so far we've done better than expected in basically all of them. But we'll come back to the story a bit later.

[RandoEFC+]

@Dan I don't know if people do it anymore but I feel like you'd enjoy this.

On one of the proper old FM games, I think it was 2017, someone in the community released a downloadable database which made basically every league in world football playable including lower leagues in England and some other weird tournaments that run across multiple countries like the Baltic States or the Gulf States.

I started a career once which I posted on the old forum using that database. I started off in Sao Tome & Principe which I'd picked at random and basically did a journeyman save that took me through Africa working my way up to leagues with a higher reputation. If I remember correctly I went from Sao Tome to Burkina Faso, Zambia and then Algeria where I managed to win a continental competition. My save fizzled out a bit when I moved to Peru but I started another one up a couple of years ago where I started in Nepal, then to the Thai Second Division, got promoted, moved to a bigger job, won the Thai League a couple of times ahead of Buriram Utd who had done 5 in a row before me, and then moved to China before getting distracted.

Those saved were massively fun. The only annoying thing is if you start in too much of a backwater league you have to deal with every player being non-contract and other teams trying to pinch them outside of the transfer window unless you keep offering them new contracts. Still would recommend seeing if there's a database download like that for the newer games.

[Dan+]

6 hours ago, RandoEFC said:

@Dan I don't know if people do it anymore but I feel like you'd enjoy this.

On one of the proper old FM games, I think it was 2017, someone in the community released a downloadable database which made basically every league in world football playable including lower leagues in England and some other weird tournaments that run across multiple countries like the Baltic States or the Gulf States.

I started a career once which I posted on the old forum using that database. I started off in Sao Tome & Principe which I'd picked at random and basically did a journeyman save that took me through Africa working my way up to leagues with a higher reputation. If I remember correctly I went from Sao Tome to Burkina Faso, Zambia and then Algeria where I managed to win a continental competition. My save fizzled out a bit when I moved to Peru but I started another one up a couple of years ago where I started in Nepal, then to the Thai Second Division, got promoted, moved to a bigger job, won the Thai League a couple of times ahead of Buriram Utd who had done 5 in a row before me, and then moved to China before getting distracted.

Those saved were massively fun. The only annoying thing is if you start in too much of a backwater league you have to deal with every player being non-contract and other teams trying to pinch them outside of the transfer window unless you keep offering them new contracts. Still would recommend seeing if there's a database download like that for the newer games.

I remember reading about that - something I'd look into for sure, although at the minute I do think I will just chip through Europe and maybe some leagues outside of it before I get onto that. To win each one in Europe would take me years anyway so it just keeps the game a bit interesting.

I actually think in terms of a youtube series it would be really good if you combined this with actually going and watching said team.