Dan / FM17 (SQUAD UPDATE) / Shrewsbury Town

[Dan+]

Summer 2017 (2018 if we're being picky)

It's tough to know what to want going into this season. I suppose the natural reaction is to want to go one better and get promoted, but realistically that's a very big ask. Predicted 24th last year and finished 6th, a prediction that's taken into account based on your level of players. Ours were still only deemed 19th going into this season and with that in mind you can't go too overboard with expectations, regardless of what we did. We all agreed midtable would be good.

The biggest loss to us, naturally was going to be our loan players. Ben Godfrey, Ebou Edams, and most crucially Carlton Morris would all return to Norwich after their loans here. Godfrey was a tidy player who could play in a few positions, but didn't really start too often (mainly starts through Ogogo being suspended). Adams is garbage and Morris, as we know, was massive. But don't forget, I'm playing the moneyball system. When I get players in, I want them to grow in value during their time here. That can happen immediately, or gradually over time. For that reason, I want players tied down permanently rather than on loan, and with an increase in my wage budget, I found some handy targets. I looked abroad. I wanted variation. This is how my summer went, chronologically.

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OUT - Owain Jones (Huddersfield, £450k) - He didn't truly want to be here. A good, young prospect, but considering he couldn't get in my side regularly I couldn't really turn down that kind of money, and piss him off even more in the process. A nice £450k profit in a year for very little. A great bit of moneyball.

IN - Jordan Marshall (Queen of the South, free) - 20 year old English left back who had been on loan at Luton last season, posting a high average rating in the process. I agreed this one right back in January and felt he'd likely get in my side over Junior Brown or Mat Sadler. This position had been a weak link.

IN - Tevin Ihrig (Mainz, free) - 22 year old left sided centre half. A typical limited centre half, but quite a good one, and quite young too, on fairly low wages. No brainer.

IN - Marcos Costly (Mainz, free) - 20 year old right back who can play on the left too, quite attack minded and again, fairly low wages. A good competitor for Joe Riley.

IN - Ilir Azemi (free) - This is my gamble signing. 25 year old Kosovo striker, brought in on trial simply on the basis I looked through national teams squads and he happened to be quite a good player. He's a target man with a pretty good all-round game. Released by Greuther Furth.

OUT - Frank van der Struijk (free) - I decided I'd let him go after he wouldn't drop his wage demands. He's a steady player but not worth £3k a week at his age. He later joined League Two Crawley.

IN - Kieran O'Hara (free) - Back-up goalkeeper. Steady. Peanuts wages.

OUT - Louis Dodds (Luton Town, £12.5k) - Had no real use for him. I preferred Leitch-Smith and he was on a relatively big wage.

IN - Leonardo Candellone (free) - This is a very interesting one. 20 year old Italian target man released by Torino. Poor stats for determination, but quite good technically. He had plenty of interest so I was surprised to get him on such small wages.

OUT - Aristote Nsiala (Walsall, £31k) - Absolutely great stuff fleecing our main rivals for £30k for this clown. I signed him at AFC Fylde and he was shite at that level so god knows what Walsall are thinking.

IN - Daoud Bousbiba (FC Eindhoven, free) - Moroccan/Dutch winger aged 21, fairly low wages again, and good enough to force Whalley out of the side I'd say.

 

My squad looked like...

GK - MacGillivray, O'Hara*
RD - Riley, Costly*
CD - Lancashire, McGivern, Ihrig*, Jules
LD - Brown, Sadler, Marshall*
CDM/CM - Ogogo, Nolan, Payne, Morris
CAM - Gijzen, Leitch-Smith
RW/LW - Cole, Whalley, Bousbiba*
ST - Azemi*, Candellone*, Payne, John-Lewis

 

My first XI going into the season was...

MacGillivray
Riley - Lancashire - Ihrig - Marshall
Nolan - Ogogo
Cole - Gijzen - Whalley
Azemi

Subs: Costly, McGivern, Jules, Payne, Leitch-Smith, Bousbiba, Candellone

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I thought my summer was done. I actually failed to sign a single player from England other than O'Hara, but I'd scouted these players and felt that they would prove to be bargains. My season got underway.

We kicked off with a 1-0 loss at Bury, coming in the 91st minute. An absolute nightmare opening day, but we didn't play badly by any means. We were then knocked out of the League Cup at League Two Swindon before drawing 0-0 at home to Doncaster. We got our act together though with another 1-2 victory at Rochdale and a 2-0 win over newly promoted Mansfield, though went on to suffer another 1-0 loss at Peterborough (though that's a tricky game and we played well). The performances aren't bad, the results are a shame. But it's early days.

The month ended with some frustrating goings on. We lost 1-2 to Portsmouth in the Checkatrade Trophy (though I want to be out of that) but then lost right back Joe Riley to a damaged cruciate ligament, ruling him out for the season and leaving us with just one right back in Costly. Moneyball relies on excellent organisation - being the organised club I'm hoping we are, we had a replacement lined up immediately in Iraqi right back Hawbir Moustafa who'd just been released by MVV Maastricht (and would've played with Gijzen in his time there). He's actually a really decent signing I feel as he can play anywhere in defence, wing back or even holding midfield, and is a pretty solid player attributes wise.

And then something happened on deadline day - something good for us, but something timed badly. Brighton signed Ryan Woods from Brentford for £13.25mil. Brentford signed him from Shrewsbury, and Shrewsbury were to take a 20% cut of anything that he went for from Brentford. That worked out at Shrewsbury receiving £2.65mil from the deal which is a game changer for us - but with it being deadline day, we really didn't have any time to do anything. If that happens at the start of the summer, it totally changes everything. This gives us a huge leg up for the future though and while I cannot take any credit for it personally, it's a fantastic bit of business by the previous Shrewsbury regime.

While I'm at it, I also decide to take the money that my board have negotiated for the sell on fee for Connor Goldson, who also went to Brighton from Shrewsbury. Again, we were entitled to 20% of his next fee, but his value was £2.8mil and he was sitting in their reserves - so I reckon we'd probably have seen about £300k of it. My board negotiated a deal which allows us to sell the clause for £900k, and I was straight on it. He then in January moved to Swansea for £2.8mil, his value, meaning we'd have seen £560k of it, and that me taking the deal actually made us £340k.

With this money, I want us promoted by the end of next season.

[Guest]

Where is Marcos Costly from? I've only heard of the Honduran Costly.

Hope you go up this time mate.

[Dan+]

On 1/28/2018 at 18:00, Blue said:

Where is Marcos Costly from? I've only heard of the Honduran Costly.

Hope you go up this time mate.

He's a German full back. I looked at some of the youngsters being released in Europe and thought both him and Ihrig looked like good value signings. Costly is a right back but can full in on either side. Truth be told though, I don't think he's developed as well as I wanted him to.

[Dave]

How's it going this season, Dan?

[Dan+]

I'm actually in my fourth season. I've fell well behind on this. I'll stick something decent up later as I'm back off out shortly.

[Dan+]

On 2/16/2018 at 22:05, Cannabis said:

.....

I'm in a vicious circle here of going to update it, but in turn then going on the game and continuing it.

I'm actually in my fifth season now, but I won't miss a thing. It will get here. It's another good story.

[Dan+]

Lets actually do an update

In terms of updating this thread I've slipped so far behind it's unreal, it's a really vicious cycle. The date I've got to here is September 2017, when on the game I'm actually at March 2021

September was a really disappointing month and we failed to collect a win until our sixth attempt, with an unbelievable number of 1-1 draws followed eventually with a 0-1 victory at Rotherham which we took the lead in the 3rd minute and I spent the entire game expecting the inevitable, but it never came. We're sat around 14th, which is disappointing.

Despite a defeat in the Checkatrade Trophy, this sparks us into a fantastic run of form in the league as we go on to win five games on the bounce, notably thumping newcomers Exeter away and surprise strugglers Bristol City at home, with Dyon Gijzen doing the bulk of the damage with his goals from attacking midfield. It was a long-time incoming, but Ilir Azemi finally got his first goal for the club in the win over Bristol City. I hoped this would lead to a run of him scoring frequently.

Predictably it all came to a halt at Walsall in a game between two rivals both around the top of the league, but we followed it up with a classy 0-3 win at League Two (surprisingly) Oxford in the FA Cup as well as a 0-1 win at Wigan and a 4-1 win over Southend. The 0-1 win at Wigan was hopefully a sign of improvement as in the exact fixture the year before we'd gone ahead early and ended up battered, this year we held out fairly comfortably after another rapid start. The only other defeats came in the Checkatrade Trophy, meaning we were sent packing from the trophy I had absolutely no intention of doing anything in.

We then travelled to Portsmouth and were beaten, slightly worse than the 1-5 win there on my first ever game, before drawing at home with MK Dons and losing at home to Bradford, who always seem to turn us over. We won 1-4 at Bromley in the cup and bagged our place in the 3rd round again.

We then faced what I thought was a banana skin at AFC Wimbledon but we ran out amazingly 0-6 winners. We started strongly and Wimbledon just collapsed as we ripped them to bits. We could've had more than 6. They were disgraceful and we were superb.

In classic FM style this was followed up with the worst run of the season as we took just one point from four games. The defence went to pot and the FA Cup run was ended at Premier League Middlesbrough, a side amazingly instigated by Iker Muniain. How on earth has he ended up there?

 

January assessment

We come into January sitting around 8th in the table, but we have a bit of money to spend and there are absolutely positions we need to improve upon. I think the forwards have been disappointing in terms of goals, but I'm going to keep faith in them because I think Azemi's not actually played that badly. The issue is that Carlton Morris used to score loads and we've lost his goals with little replacement, even if Gijzen, Nolan and Cole are all still scoring.

I decided to go in and buy Newcastle winger Alex Gilliead for £190k. Transfer listed, 21 years old and a solid, pacey winger for this level. He's good enough to walk into our team and I'm convinced we've landed for him for less than he's worth.

I also find that Jordan Marshall's been a big disappointment, and that Junior Brown and Mat Sadler are both absolutely rubbish. I sign Leicester's Callum Elder for a club record £300k. It's a lot for us to pay for a left back, but he's got good enough attributes to be steady in the Championship I feel.

Finally, I feel like we need a calming influence in midfield. We need someone who can hold onto the ball and play a big part in helping us see out games, because we throw so many points away. In comes Partick Thistle midfielder Stuart Bannigan for £130k.

 

Back to the football (The 'disaster' is in here)

As previously alluded to, we throw away far too many points from winning positions and it's costing us. We go away to Blackpool, who we're better than, and go 0-3 up with just 5 minutes left on the clock, but Blackpool get one back, then another... surely they can't.... they don't. But they aren't far off. I was relieved to win, but feel like we've not really achieved anything and that we still need to improve our ability to see out games. We should never ever have come close to drawing that.

We then take on Bolton at home. Bolton have under-achieved and are in pretty horrible form, but I'm always a bit cautious when it comes to sides like this because I know they have the ability in their side to turn it around. Bannigan makes his debut and we're off to an absolute flyer as he nets in the 3rd minute. Leitch-Smith doubles this on 6 minutes and Larnell Cole adds another in the 12th minute. It's complete humiliation for a Bolton side in freefall. Gilliead adds a 4th and we go into the break 4-0 up, probably the best half of the season. Keep it going I tell them.

Bolton come out in the second half kicking towards the away end that just booed them off but give them something to cheer early on when Will Buckley scores, before Darren Pratley adds another shortly after. I don't like this one bit. After what happened in the recent games against Bury, Peterborough and Blackpool, I was getting a bit worried. They were all over us and we had no answer. Where the hell is Bannigan? Shortly after, Tyler Roberts adds a 3rd for Bolton. There's still 25 to play. My heart sinks at the 3rd. There's long enough for them to humiliate us. It comes with ten minutes left. We're at panic stations all over the pitch and a failure to clear a ball into the box leads to Adam Le Fondre prodding home. It's a total embarrassment on our behalf, an absolute disgrace. We then start to get a bit into the game and look like we could win it after all, until Stuart Bannigan picks up his second yellow as we enter injury time. The resulting free kick sees Pratley line one up from 30 yards, he hits it straight at the wall but Jack Payne turns his back and the deflection trickles into the net. It's the ultimate humiliation. A complete disaster and a day that'll live in the memory of Shrewsbury fans forever. The day Shrewsbury were 4-0 up at home to the most out of form side in the league and left empty handed. An absolute, inexplicable catastrophe. The worst result I have ever suffered on Football Manager.

We go away to Plymouth next week. I've had some bad defeats, but that one is just impossible to take. How the hell do you ever recover from that. How on earth do you have any confidence in a side who can throw away a lead like that? What was funny is we went away here, and were 1-4 up by half time. We'd totally battered them on the break. They were so bad defensively it was borderline suspicious. We saw it out and ran out 2-6 winners against a side who were top of the league when they won here in September, who were now in the bottom half and had conceded about 70 goals!

We know where the net is, and you have to admire the number of goals our midfielders get, with Nolan, Cole and Gijzen all nearing 10 goals, and Gilliead with 3 in his opening 5 games. Leitch-Smith's in form, but Azemi still seems to struggle to find the net. Candellone, unfortunately, looks like a risk that's going to backfire. He looks very much in the talented but doesn't have the drive category.

We sit around 7th going into February.

To be continued.

[Dan+]

I really need to give this a few updates. Hassle me.