The TF365 FM Renaissance Thread

[Guest]

So as you know, I had complained about how the FM forum is dead, and I partly blame that on not having a big enough user base that cba to click on several threads. That novelty has worn off, it also encourages longer posting and not all of us are Sirbalon-like.

So I have taken the initiative to create a universal FM thread in an attempt to revive it. Given the staff decided to ignore my plea, I'll let a single thread within this big forum do it's job and see if it makes any difference.

Just for the record, do not feel hesitant to make shorter updates. Those can be just as good as longer ones and it saves a lot of time and your own patience. It's up to you how you'd like to post but I'm here to debate with anyone and help the revival of the FM Forum.

So lets get this rolling.

@Stan @Dan @RandoEFC @Smiley Culture @nudge

[Guest]

I am in 2114 right now

I have reached 6 finals (2 CCC and 4 CL) and sadly have lost all of them. I will admit my first and last final runs were kind of flukes and we were far behind the winner in that sense (Kaizer Chiefs and Bloem Celtic)

Haven't had a good player since Rajesh Mahua either sadly, but I seem to be getting on OK at the moment.

[nudge]

I barely have time to play; only turn it on maybe every 3-4 months or so... My latest save is Kaiserslautern; managed to get them back to 1. Bundesliga and I think I'm 5th in the league now with 6 matches left in the season. Oh and I'm still on FM17. 

[Guest]

Just now, nudge said:

I barely have time to play; only turn it on maybe every 3-4 months or so... My latest save is Kaiserslautern; managed to get them back to 1. Bundesliga and I think I'm 5th in the league now with 6 matches left in the season. Oh and I'm still on FM17. 

Must be the FM 17 forum  Dan is also on 17.

I will say, that match engine was much better than the current one...

[nudge]

2 minutes ago, Grizzly21 said:

Must be the FM 17 forum  Dan is also on 17.

I will say, that match engine was much better than the current one...

For me it's simply not worth getting a new one every year considering how little time I spend playing. I just get a new transfer update from sortitoutsi every time I start a new save and that gets the work done for me.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, nudge said:

For me it's simply not worth getting a new one every year considering how little time I spend playing. I just get a new transfer update from sortitoutsi every time I start a new save and that gets the work done for me.

I don't blame you, it's also harder to run every single time. They try to improve the graphics more than the ME, when the graphics are alright as it is.

I know it's good to keep improving upon technology but we shouldn't transition so quickly.

[nudge]

1 minute ago, Grizzly21 said:

I don't blame you, it's also harder to run every single time. They try to improve the graphics more than the ME, when the graphics are alright as it is.

I know it's good to keep improving upon technology but we shouldn't transition so quickly.

Graphics? I only ever play in 2D mode anyway  

[Guest]

Had a bit of a scare as San Pedro got a last minute winner in the first leg to beat me 2-1. They proceeded to open the scoring in the second leg, but Maketha scored a hattrick afterwards and we won the game. Back into CL groups.

This is our group

I will be very disappointed if we don't top it.

[Guest]

Just scraped it.

And we got the team I most wanted! I am hoping to knock out the tougher teams first. Bring it on Kaizer.

[Guest]

Intake time! Mostly high potential project players, but I got 1 stand out

Certainly the best to come through in the last 20 years.

[Guest]

Well, we were going to go through, we were up 4-1.

My players make 2 errors at the back including a header to the centre with an open forward and they put it to 4-3. You can pretty much guess what happened from there.

[Stan]

I just don't play it as much Brian. 

I don't have the time to play like I used to and if I did, I don't have the time to do the updates, in depth or not. 

Also, we didn't ignore your plea so less of that. You just didn't like that we didn't agree to your suggestion. 

[tlr]

I used to be a semi-regular in these parts way back when, sadly I just don't have the time these days to commit to it. My most recent was effort was FM17 I think and I maybe played about 12 hours on it in total 

[Guest]

Played another season overnight, spoiler I got fucked out in semi's by Kaizer Chiefs.

No good intakes either, so here is my CL group for this year

[Guest]

Went out in groups this year. We desperately need a striker in my intake, we really struggle to create goals. Half the time my players just shoot from Narnia.

[Dan+]

Probably not a bad idea as I feel like while I'm still going my saves, I'm missing something by not sharing it as I usually get a good story out of things.

So here's mine.

I started a save on here a couple of months ago called 'Leicester with a twist' and what this was, basically, was an FM17 save which I'd holidayed to the start of the 2019/20 season so we were starting at the right time, obviously some things aren't the same as real life (for example Jadon Sancho is about a Championship level player) but it's better than starting well into the past. I saved this database so that any save I start in future I'm just going to go from this one. I've made it clear a few tmes that FM18 and FM19 are just a bit too much for me now sadly. There's too much on them to the pont I don't even feel like it's my fault if it goes wrong or my credit if it goes right.

Basically the Leicester save was a standard Leicester save. I can go to nearly any team on the game, I am convinced, and make a real fist of it, make them a noticeably better side. Leicester, nearly every time, is a fucking disaster. I don't know if I subconsciously change my methods because it's my own club and I've got particular biases that I wouldn't hold managing other clubs, but frequently I come well short with Leicester. I had a nicely backed, well equipped Leicester side that should be comfortable in the league shipping obscene amounts of goals and fighting relegation, eventually giving in when I was given an 8 points from 5 games target when I had a very tricky run of games coming up. It just never quite goes to plan at Leicester and I felt I needed to move on.

So I loaded up the database again and decided it was time for a move to Italy. A strong league in Europe that I haven't ventured to for a while, but I wanted a decent-ish club with potential, but also one in quite a situation to sort. This combination took me to Genoa. They were in the Serie B following a 2017/18 relegation and 2018/19 saw them go from absolutely walking the league to somehow contriving to finish 4th following a couple of significant player sales in January. Although they were title favourites, there's still a challenge here and there's a rebuild to be done. It's quite a fitting one given the English roots of the club. The more it goes on, the more this save just makes sense.

Genoa CFC   I Rossoblu

Season 1 (2019/20) - We absolutely cakewalked the league to the point I was basically planning for the Serie A by about October. Although I did expect this to be the case, you have still got to put in the groundwork. I went with a 3-1-4-2 formation as my primary tactic, bringing in a few English based loanees and utilising the squad I had in place, with the key players being Oscar Hiljemark, Leonardo Morosini and Giuseppe Panico. Hiljemark is a Swedish midfielder and a name a few will already be familiar with I'd imagine, he's probably like a less temperamental Joey Barton type of player - basically he's too good to be pissing around in Serie B and a good player to have at the spine of the team. Morosini was a versastile player who could play in midfield or as a striker, and I primarily used him as a false 9. Panico was a 22 year old pacey striker yet to be given his senior debut, ridiculously, but I thought he looked good and I wanted him starting, and he delivered me over 20 goals as we picked up just under 100 points. Only 3 defeats all season, only one failure to win at home all season and the best attack and best defence, 2nd place a whole 27 points behind us. We had no business at that level and we showed it.

 

Season 2 (2020/21) - Naturally the aim really is survival but I think with the way we so comprehensively battered the Serie B, I didn't really want any risk that we'd go down and I think that's realistic. I mean we were predicted to finish 15th. We clearly had the players. I brought in the likes of Bryan Cristante, Nicolas Fazzi and Leonardo Bonazzoli to build around the 3-1-4-2 tactic of last season.

We started superbly and were 2nd in the league after 6 manic games which saw us have the best attack and worst defence in the league - a 4-5 win at Fiorentina was the highlight of these results. The problem however was obvious and it's one that always seems to happen for teams like this - they can't maintain the goals but they can absolutely maintain the inept defending, and the frequency we started to ship 4/5 in games was an utter embarrassment. We'd go to somewhere like Cagliari or Bologna and I'd be surprised if we kept it to under 3. I didn't really sign enough versatile players so I was basically stuck playing 3 at the back, and this lead to a run of me switching through formations almost by the game - a slippery slope which I got pretty wrong. Despite a scare around February time where we won 1 game in 12, a significant tactical switch to 4-3-1-2 seemed to really change our fortunes and we ended up surviving pretty comfortably - 15th ironically, meaning both seasons I'd finished exactly where I was predicted. Bonazzoli the outstanding signing of the season, very controversially joined me on a free from arch rivals Sampdoria and ended up not far off winning the Serie A golden boot. We finished the season conceding 79 goals which is the highest total by any team on my entire save in the Serie A so far.

 

Season 3 (2021/22) - I felt like the season was going to be totally fucked up by an ongoing takeover that I wanted sorting. The owner had wanted out the entire time I'd been there and May saw a takeover bid from an English woman (the English influence is just getting too much) and it would run all the way into July, much to my annoyance as it put me under a transfer embargo. Luckily the deal fell through before my targets went elsewhere and I managed to get some players in. Notably Ezequiel Ponce, Joao Carvalho and the only significant money deal was £4.8mil for Czech 18 year old left back Radek Tomasek. I've been very careful with my money but he's a potentially top class player so I couldn't let it pass. I kept the 4-3-1-2 formation and we ended up having a staggeringly good season. I often find this on FM - it all just clicks into place one season and things really take off. Faltering Juventus and AC Milan opened the door up for the unlikeliest title bid since.... an Italian managing in England that I seem to recall. It's true. There was a point when I thought we actually might win the league. We did have a tricky last couple of months though and defeats to Juventus at home, and a gutting 3-0 defeat to AC Milan (where we dominated the game) put paid to that and it ended, surprise surprise, with Juve's 800th straight league title. We did however manage to secure 3rd place which was totally unprecedented and has lifted us to another level as a club - the likes of Ponce and in-particular full backs Saul and Diogo Dalot really carrying the team. The most astounding difference was the defence - we went from shipping 79 goals to just 28 which is frankly a miracle. The 4-3-1-2 formation was an amazing success, better than I could've possibly imagined.

[Guest]

Lets see Radek Tomasek @Dan

Great season with Genoa by the way!

[Bluebird Hewitt]

19 hours ago, nudge said:

For me it's simply not worth getting a new one every year considering how little time I spend playing. I just get a new transfer update from sortitoutsi every time I start a new save and that gets the work done for me.

I tend to get the mobile version. It's obviously far more stripped back, but you can usually blitz through a season much quicker. 

[nudge]

4 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

I tend to get the mobile version. It's obviously far more stripped back, but you can usually blitz through a season much quicker. 

I tried the mobile version a long time ago (FM12 I think?) and while it was quite fun, it felt way too simplified. I like full immersion that the PC version offers too much to be satisfied with the lack of details and features on the mobile one  Mind you I'm not aware how much it has changed since then though.

[Bluebird Hewitt]

3 minutes ago, nudge said:

I tried the mobile version a long time ago (FM12 I think?) and while it was quite fun, it felt way too simplified. I like full immersion that the PC version offers too much to be satisfied with the lack of details and features on the mobile one  Mind you I'm not aware how much it has changed since then though.

Thought about the Touch version on tablets? 

Bit of a half way house in that it's stripped back a bit but still has a decent amount of what's on the PC version. Think @The Palace Fan plays the Touch version. 

[nudge]

1 minute ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Thought about the Touch version on tablets? 

Bit of a half way house in that it's stripped back a bit but still has a decent amount of what's on the PC version. Think @The Palace Fan plays the Touch version. 

That's a good idea but I don't own a tablet and have no plans to get one either; I have no use for it... Will just stick with my fm17 on the laptop  

[Dave]

The touch version is practically a smoother running version of FM16 which was great.

[Dan+]

@Grizzly21 Transfers, and some selected re-gens.

 

Serrao in-particular is just an outrageous bargain. Portugal is fucking ridiculous.

[Guest]

Serrao is unbelievable. The other 3 players are quite good but the Portuguese bloke is something else. 

[Guest]

Well, it is here that I officially admit defeat to the youth only challenge. I'm in 2117 and have reached 6 continental finals, losing them all. I'm satisfied with that.

Why am I giving up? It's mostly just because I don't get good intakes anymore like I used to. I've tried to optimize it with HOYD and whatnot but it makes fuck all difference. 

The save is not over though, I will start buying players from here on. So its time for my 2nd challenge: the African god squad!