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La Resurrección – 4
WE ARE BACK. La Resurrección – the revival of notorious fallen giants Deportivo La Coruña, where we are about to embark on our fourth season at the helm having been promoted in Season 1 before finishing 11th and 3rd respectively in La Liga – be sure to catch up on the first three installments here if you haven’t already. When we last left off, we had somehow managed to sh*thouse our way to a 3rd place finish in La Liga, largely thanks to 24 league goals by €6.75m signing Cameron Archer, along with a few big individual performances from the likes of Luca Lipani and Junior Kroupi. I had spoken on the 5 Star Potential podcast about our dilemma with Lipani – a season long loan from Sassuolo, he was one of our star players and we absolutely needed to activate his €16m permanent option or risk him returning to Italy and seeing his value skyrocket on arrival (already €21m – €28m by the time the season finished). The problem? Our board only gave us €8m to fund our newly-gained Champions League status, with a side that has already overachieved as it is – drastic times call for drastic measures, and considering we operate a Buy Low, Sell High policy here in Galicia, it was time for some wheeling-and-dealing to be done 🛞. Bought for €4.5 million from Hamburg last summer, his 14 assists attracted a €15 million bid from Premier League outfit Leeds Utd, and given we were about three days from Lipani’s loan deal expiring, we had no choice but to accept. A midfield wonderkid who we originally signed from FC Lorient for €11 million just 18 months ago, his 14 goals and 6 assists attracted an all out bidding war between the likes of Chelsea, Juventus and Bayern with the German Champions eventually winning his signature for a fee of €55 million – WE ARE OFFICIALLY RICH PEOPLE. €70 million made in transfers, 100% of which goes straight into our transfer budget and all of which will be needed to build a side capable of competing in the European Champions League for the first time since 2004 – let’s have some fun 🚀. My favourite player of FM24 so far. 5 goals, 7 assists and a 7.38 average rating across all 38 of our league games last season playing in a Carrilero role – we simply had to make his loan signing permanent and €16.25m is exceptional value considering his price literally doubled after we signed him. We badly needed some pace and explosivity on the right side of our front three, and the former Man City and Wolves man comes in for €5.5m from Ajax in what could be a shrewd piece of business at just 23-years-old. Needing some competition for Gianluca Busio at the base of our three-man midfield, we found more good value in the signing of versatile Ryan Flamingo who can play as a Centre-Back or Defensive Midfielder as needed – a great name also, it would be rude not to. Having lost Mikelbrancis, a right-back was badly needed – our search became quite specific, someone who can play both as a wing-back going forward as well as tucking in as a centre-half if and when needed. Our scouts established that 26-year-old Harry Clarke was our best option without breaking the bank, we’ll give him a chance and see if he can match his predecessor’s exploits. This was a big one..our biggest transfer so far in fact. I know we said we operate a Buy Low, Sell High model, but this guy has the potential to be a €100m player in the near future therefore €26m could turn out to be fantastic value for money in hindsight; we badly needed to replace the quality and creativity of Junior Kroupi in midfield, Rego should give us exactly that and at just 22 has all the makings of a star player. We also add winger Adrian Gomez (€5.5m from Athletic Club) and midfielder Jason Knight (Free Transfer) to bolster our squad depth, and with 6 signings made we are ready to embark on Season 4 at Deportivo La Coruña. Squad List 2026/2027 Goalkeepers: Max Weiß, Kauã Santos. Defenders: Koni De Winter, Harry Clarke, Jon Pacheco, Niko Vukančić, Liam Kitching, Alessio Buttaro. Midfielders: Gianluca Busio, Luca Lupani, Ryan Flamingo, Jason Knight, João Rego, Joel Ndala, Luka Stojković, Carlos Borges, Adrián Pérez, Tomas Handel. Forwards: Cameron Archer, Gaetano Oristanio, Guillermo. We couldn’t have asked for too much more in terms of the first half of our league campaign. Barring defeats away to Real Madrid and Valencia, we went pretty much unbeaten and the new permanent midfield partnership of Luca Lipani and Joao Rego looks as good as almost any side in the league bar the obvious two – by the time we reach the end of December, we find ourselves in 4th position after 17 games played, things going far more smoothly than expected! We were handed a relatively tough draw with the likes of Liverpool, Arsenal, Inter Milan and Napoli all in our path alongside Club Brugge, Hoffenheim, Dinamo Zagreb and FC Kobenhavn. One feels you’d need to beat at least one of those big 4 to stand a chance at qualifying.. And that’s what we did! We somehow managed to travel to the Emirates and turn over Arsenal in their own back yard, and that along with wins against Brugge and Kobenhavn plus draws with Zagreb and Hofffenheim meant we finished in 20th place in the new Champions League League Phase (love saying that), and after we lost our final league game with defeat to Napoli, who did we go and get in the Knockout Playoff Draw? Well, Napoli of course 🤷. There’s only so much one can do against a side boasting Victor Osimhen, Romelu Lukaku and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia in FM24, and though we held them to a respectable 1-1 draw in Naples, they were simply too much for us in the second leg as we capitulated to a 3-0 defeat at home – so ends our return to Champions League football for the first time in 20 years as a club, we’ve had a taste of the big time and would very much like to be here again next season…. For the fourth season in a row we were told of an “excellent” group of players coming through and a real “golden generation” for the club in our annual youth intake; at this point, our Head of Youth Development has mastered the art of copy and paste every year, get that man a pay rise. However, when the list actually came through – dare I say it, we may have finally found our first ever true wonderkid in FM24 – arise, Francisco Valeiro, who apart from standing a measly 5’3″ in height looks like he could well go on to be a world-class wing-back in-game. I mean, look at those attributes 😍. Early exits from the Champions League and Copa Del Rey meant we only had to worry about league matters for our end of season run-in, a good thing too seeing as January and February were an absolute train wreck: The big difference between this season and last season is that we’ve had to become far less reliant on Cameron Archer’s goals; this time last season he had bagged 17 in the league, however by the end of February he had only scored 8 goals (11 in all competitions) which meant that the likes of Lipani, Rego, Stojkovic and Ndala were far more heavily relied upon – not that this is a good thing, but what a difference a prolific striker makes. 25 games in and we have dropped to 7th place in the league – not ideal at all, our Champions League dreams fading rapidly before our eyes. My concern at Archer’s lack of goals led to a slightly panicked January loan signing in the form of Max Moerstedt from Hoffenheim – a 6’5″ meaty striker with great physical attributes and at least one eye for goal. He did very little until a point where we randomly brought him on as a 90th minute substitute against Atletico Madrid, wherein he decided it was time to make a name for himself by scoring a 7 minute hat-trick from the Inside Forward (Left) role – make that make sense? He followed that up with a late winner against Espanyol, and though he did next to f*ck all for the remainder of the season – those two games will forever make him a cult hero at Estadio Municipal de Riazor. Three wins in March were followed up by a disappointing run in April, and as we entered May and the final few games of the season, we faced the inevitable realisation that Champions League football was officially out of our reach – Atletico Madrid’s two games in hand surely enough to ward off any late advances. Three games left to seal 5th place in the league which overall is a fine achievement for a squad of our age and quality. 5th place it is! A place in the Europa League which is arguably far more suitable for a squad of our quality, age and depth especially given our Buy Low, Sell High model and our realistic ability to compete with the biggest fish in Europe. If we can make a few more positive additions to the squad and with a little bit of luck, maybe we can even go on and win the f*cking thing?! Champions League it is then!!! Forget all that Europa League nonsense – Deportivo are BIG TIME ONCE MORE and we march on to the biggest club competition in world football for a second season running 😂. See you there 👌. Feel free to share any thoughts, comments or questions below! 👇👇 We keep on waiting patiently for FM25…
La Resurrección – 3
Three blogs in 3 weeks shows you how much I am enjoying this save! We are having a lovely old time in Spain having survived our first season back in La Liga, finishing 11th in the league albeit some 60 points behind winners Barcelona who stormed to a title win without really signing anyone which is an achievement in itself – as was Arsenal successfully defending their title to make it back-to-back Premier League wins in this universe; who knew Youssef En-Nesyri was the answer to all their problems 🤷♂️. Bayern and PSG did the same, while Unai Emery’s Inter Milan side are again champions of Serie A. Buy Low, Sell High Back in Spain though and we have a lot of work to do. As mentioned on Episode 378 of the 5 Star Potential podcast, we have a “Buy Low, Sell High” policy in place for the foreseeable future while we build up the club’s infrastructure and financial position, so we focus on really smart recruitment, relatively low-cost signings and bargain hunting in the hope of unearthing some gems who will either forge a long-term career at Deportivo, or of course be sold on for profit which we will in turn reinvest in the club. Before we get to that though – we have a problem. Having splurged all of our budget in the January window last season, we had two key players come to within 18 months of their contracts ending, and rather than engage in a conversation about it like normal adult humans they both kicked off and decided they want to “explore other options” at the end of their respective deals. Other options?? You can sign up or sign out lads. You may remember in our first season we signed a relatively random 6’4″ 22-year-old goalkeeper for €1.5m from the obscurities of Slavia Sofia in the Bulgarian league, and such were Svetoslav Vutsov‘s performances and development that Bayern Munich came calling, landing in with a €12m fee plus a 50% sell on clause on any profit they make on him going forward. DEAL 🤝. Luca Connell is the other player kicking off – similarly we bought him for €1.5m at the beginning of the save two seasons ago, and he might hopefully fetch a decent price with a few newly promoted PL clubs taking an interest. That means we have a ton of money to spend (around €20 million), some key positions to fill and a much deeper squad to build ahead of the new season – you know what time it is 😎. Goalkeeper Our mission is simple – replace a 6’4″ stopper without breaking the bank, bringing in someone relatively cheap who will either be our #1 for seasons to come, or who will bring us in a tidy profit in a year or two’s time. We identify two top targets and because I couldn’t decide which one to go for, in the end we signed them both – welcome to Deportivo Max Weiß who arrives from Karlsruhe for €2m, and Kauã Santos who signs from Eintracht Frankfurt for €1.5m. BARGAINS. Defence By this point we only really have one first-choice Centre-Back in the squad in the form of half-Irish half-Spanish Anselmo Garcia MacNulty, so we need to bring in at least two who again represent good value, sell-on potential and most importantly are good enough to face the likes of Mbappé and Lewandowski this season to name a few. Koni De Winter is a €2m signing from Lazio, an absolute bargain for a player of his age and quality, and he is joined by Jon Pacheco (also €2m) from Eintracht Frankfurt, who interestingly is a Basque national and therefore may be of interest to Athletic Club down the line due to their Basque-only transfer policy. MAKE MONEY MONEY MAKE MONEY MONEY MONEY 🤘. We’ve been having good fun with Inverted Full-Backs during this save also, and with no competition or back-up on either side we bite the bullet and bring in both a left and a right-sided defender; Alessio Buttaro signs from Palermo for €1.3m, and we keep the Irish dream alive in Galicia with the arrival of Liam Kitching who joins from Wolves for €3.5m ☘️. Midfield With Luca Connell looking likely to leave the club, we need to bring in a top quality midfielder who can take us to the next level in terms of creativity, ball progression, press resistance – all of the above. The dream is to sign a highly mobile, athletic, physical yet technical player with a tall frame and who will literally get us up the pitch in possession and make things happen – ideally playing as a Segundo Volante or a Carrilero of sorts – making runs, arriving late, finding key passes etc. This one takes slightly longer but in the end I think we have found ourselves a superstar – Luca Lipani joins from Sassuolo initially on a season-long loan but with a €15.75m optional fee which hopefully we will be able to afford next summer if the season goes well. I really, really, really like this player. With our captain Nuke Mfulu not getting any younger, we also need to start thinking about succession in that DM role, someone who can protect the back four but also contribute in possession and attacking phases. A lot of options out there, but in the end we drop €6m on a player who I have previously profiled for our Wonderkid Watch series on 5StarPotential.com – welcome to Deportivo Gianluca Busio who signs from Venezia on a 4-year deal 🇺🇸. Forwards With the likes of Cameron Archer and Junior Kroupi to call upon, I think our lone striker role is covered – it’s on the wings where we need an injection of quality and hopefully goals having disappointed in that area last season. We did add Irishman Armstrong Oko-Flex in January last season, but he needs both company and competition so we again hit up the bargain basement – Luka Stojković signs from Dinamo Zagreb for €2.7m, while we also bring in talented youngster Joel Ndala on a free transfer after his contract ended up at Man City; that boy can RUN 🏃💨. It’s early days but I can’t help but feel we’ve done some serious business in this window – €21m spent on 10 players, in an ideal world and if we were to sell them all later down the line, I’d hope we will scoop well over €100m collectively for these lads and that’s if we sell any at all! I’m having a tremendous time here 😄. Player Club Fee Max Weiß Karlsruhe €2,000,000 Kauã Santos Eintracht Frankfurt €1,500,000 Koni De Winter Lazio €2,000,000 Jon Pacheco Eintracht Frankfurt €2,000,000 Alessio Buttaro Palermo €1,300,000 Liam Kitching Wolves €3,500,000 Luca Lipani Sassuolo Loan (€15.75m option) Gianluca Busio Venezia €6,000,000 Luka Stojković Dinamo Zagreb €2,700,000 Joel Ndala Man City Free Transfer Total €21,000,000 There’s only one thing to say: Season 3 And cook we did… We got off to a good start against Alavés, but immediately (and disappointingly) dropped points away to newly promoted Racing Santander and at home to Valencia. Very early days but in both of those games I became less and less convinced by our 4-2-3-1 tactic which we have persevered since gaining promotion in our first season – it is often said that when teams are promoted, it’s very difficult to maintain the same tactic and playing style (see Vincent Kompany at Burnley or Russell Martin at Southampton). So at the flip of a hat we changed over to a 4-3-3 and in particular we changed 3 key roles in the team: The results were far better than I expected… Bar a blip away to Osasuna and excluding defeats away to Barcelona and Real Madrid (they just don’t count anymore, 7-1 ffs) – we beat almost every team in front of us, the highlight beating Atlético Madrid 4-2 away in the Metropolitano and as you can see, it very quickly became the Cameron Archer show as he brought his goal tally to 13 goals by the end of December 😮. That role change has suited Archer far beyond what I could have imagined which becomes particularly evident when we compare his stats for this season (so far) compared to last season after he joined in January: Stat This Season (so far) Last Season Games Started 14 13 Goals 13 4 XG 7.59 4.41 Sprints per 90 10.06 6.69 Shots on Target % 69% 57% Minutes Per Goal 96 296 Average Rating 7.40 6.7 Deep Lying Forward > Advanced Forward Cameron Archer – Season on Season Comparison Archer’s on fire doesn’t even begin to cover it – not only do his goals rocket us up to 3rd place as we move into January 2026, they also put him in rather esteemed company here in La Liga 🔥🔥 Can Deportivo keep this up? The question on everyone’s minds in Northwest Spain and beyond; Deportivo La Coruña – fallen giants, forgotten men, laughing stock (for Celta Vigo fans at least) – on course for a Champions League place? Surely not… We lose Archer for pretty much all of January which forces us to move Kroupi up top where he has been largely ineffective for us so far (been bossing it as a CM on Attack duty though). Losing Archer has a massive impact as we drop 7 points in the league and get ourselves knocked out of the Copa Del Rey at the hands of Eibar – FUCK. It’s usually at this point that we end up knee deep in a slump and tumble down the league during the business end of a season – we’ve all been there in FM. But not for Cameron Archer. Oh no. The 25-year-old returns from injury and picks up right where he left off, scoring 4 goals in February as we win 6 on the bounce and despite another defeat to Barcelona (during which he casually bags a brace), by the end of March we have suddenly opened up a 9 point gap between ourselves in 3rd and Atlético Madrid in 4th, who as you can see have stormed up the league compared to the earlier table above. With 4 Champions League places up for grabs in La Liga, surely it’s ours to lose?! Deja-Vu For the third season running, we were told exactly what we wanted to hear in the earlier Youth Intake Preview. GOLDEN GENERATION. EXCELLENT INTAKE. TERRIFIC GROUP OF PLAYERS. Fast-forward to April and needless to say it’s not as impressive as we were led to believe – Marco Antonio the stand-out youth prospect, promising but unlikely to be a world-beater; so far only Guillermo from our Season 1 intake looks good enough to get close to our first-team, over to you Marco. Showtime 🍿 7 games. 7 games to not make a balls of it and bring Deportivo La Coruña back into the promised land of the Champions League Group Stages for the first time in over 20 years. Let’s f*cking do this 🚀. Despite Diego Simeone’s best attempt to spoil the party, 3 consecutive wins against Betis, Espanyol and Real Sociedad are enough to seal the deal as are Cameron Archer’s 4 goals during the same period; DEPORTIVO ARE BACK IN THE BIG TIME!! 🥳🎉🥳🎉🥳🎉🥳🎉🥳 An outrageous achievement, completely unexpected and though we finished some 27 points behind Real Madrid and 30 behind champions Barcelona (again!), take nothing away from what this group of misfit low-cost outcasts have achieved. Archer finishes on 24 goals for the season – an absolute bargain considering we only paid €6.25m to bring him in, now…
La Resurrección – 2
Welcome back to Galicia – it’s a grand place, you will be very happy here 😎 If you haven’t listened to Episode 377 of the 5 Star Potential Podcast or haven’t yet caught up on Part 1 of this series, click those links before reading on – this save has been 🔥🔥🔥 so far. Where Were We When we last left off, we had managed to blag our way into a playoff spot and overcame both Tenerife and Racing Santander to successfully gain promotion back to the top tier of Spain for the mighty Deportivo La Coruña after a crazy and eventful season which saw us go on an 11-game winning streak which ultimately resulted in our return to La Liga. Even though we are in no way ready in terms of financial muscle, squad depth, infrastructure and indeed player quality – the board are delighted, though the measly €8 million transfer budget they provided won’t go very far at this level; remember we will now be going up against the Mbappé’s and Bellingham’s of Real Madrid, the Yamal’s and Lewandowski’s of Barcelona and the Griezmann’s and Alvarez’s of Atlético Madrid. €8 million – ever bring a knife to a gun-fight? With a media-predicted finish of 20th (i.e. rock bottom), bookmakers and journalists alike are convinced we go straight back down by the end of our second season at Estadio Riazor (assuming yours truly will still be here to tell the tale). We’ll show them right? Transfer Time 🔁 A hell of a lot of work to do here so let’s get straight to it. No fewer than 10 players leave the club after their contracts expired, most notably club stalwart and ex-Arsenal player Lucas Perez who at 36 just won’t cut it in La Liga this season – no time for sentiment around here. That means we have a whole bunch of recruitment to tend to in terms of adding quality and depth to somehow prepare ourselves for top flight football next season. In terms of saleable assets – we are quite limited. Mario Sorrano had been first-choice however is quite an average forward when compared to La Liga standards; Villareal didn’t think so though as they fork out €4m for his signature, bringing our total transfer budget to €12m+ for the season ahead – that we can work with 👐. Charlie Patino is another who attracted a lot of interest in the summer including newly promoted Burnley, however if we can get our business done without selling him then he will definitely play a part this season. Of course – it would be foolish to splurge half that budget on one player right? Welcome to Deportivo La Coruña Junior Kroupi!!! A player who I had spotted once or twice before in FM24 but had never really looked closely at – we are talking definite wonderkid potential, only 19 and despite him being linked with the likes of Spurs, Inter and Dortmund we move early (4th of July to be precise) and agree an €11m fee with French side Lorient, paying 50% up front to secure the talented forward’s signature who at the very least should fetch us a serious profit down the line as part of our Buy Low, Sell High strategy in this save. What a way to kick off the new transfer window!! 🚀 Speaking of wonderkids – I have already told you of my desire for a bit of nostalgia and narrative in this save, and when a former wonderkid (FM16 perhaps?) popped up in that lovely free agent list, I couldn’t resist. Franciso “Chico” Geraldes arrives on a free transfer having impressed against us in both games against Eldense last season. There’s nothing better than signing a pair of young talented full-backs permanently right? Channelling Eddie Howe’s masterstroke of signing Tino Livramento and Lewis Hall, we try to replicate this with the signings of 21-year-old Frenchman William Mikelbrencis (pronounced “who the f*ck knows”) for €4m from Hamburg SV, along with 23-year-old Croat Niko Vukančić for a bargain €325k from FC Erzgebirge Aue in the German Third Tier. We also add a bunch of loan signings to the group; centre-back Tarek Buchmann from Bayern, winger Ilyas Chaira from Girona, forward Samuele Mulattieri from Sassuolo and of course a statutory Irish signing in the form of midfielder Joe Hodge from Wolves ☘️. Suddenly our once depleted squad is looking a LOT healthier given our financial limitations – whether it’s good enough for La Liga? You’ll have to read on to find out. Season 2 Death, taxes and newly promoted teams getting drawn against the league champions in your opening fixture…… Great fun coming up against a Real Madrid side who have since spent upwards of €130m adding the likes of Goncalo Inacio, Alex Grimaldo and Karim Konaté to their already star-studded side. Fortunately we bounce back with a 2-1 win at home to Real Betis, and from there it’s a lot of the same stuff as last season which is fine considering we are now a league above – lose to Girona, beat Real Sociedad, lose to Atlético Madrid, draw with Sevilla, lose to Valencia, beat Villareal – a complete rollercoaster of form which I guess comes as standard when you are newly promoted and are embedding 8 new players into a squad. That kind of form summarises the first half of our season, no real shock results or giant killings though a 6-game unbeaten run in November gives us a kick up the league and by the end of 2024 we find ourselves in 10th place in the league..not too shabby at all 🙌. We enter January 2025, what you might expect to be a nice quiet time of year post-Christmas and with us casually enjoying mid-table La Liga life etc.. We couldn’t have been more wrong…. 💥 Bomb drop #1 – Bouldini injured AGAIN. That man picks up more knocks than the door at Halloween – a quick look at his injury history tells us he has had no fewer than 7 types of injury since we started the save, effectively the Moroccan Callum Wilson which no-one needs to be dealing with. Onto the transfer list he goes, Espanyol seem interested… 💥 Bomb drop #2 – we get a tasty €4m offer for fringe player David Mella from Lyon, he’s only made a handful of substitute appearances so we might as well take the cash and run. Merci Lyon!! 🤌 💥 Bomb drop #3 – the board find a late sense of Christmas spirit and out of nowhere offer us the opportunity to increase our transfer budget; naturally we say yes, but keep your hats on – it goes from €2m to €4m with a little bit of wiggle room, I’m sure we’ll find a use for it. 💥 Bomb drop #4 – sorry Charlie Patino, we just couldn’t say no… Suddenly we find ourselves IN THE MONEYYY!! €20 million big ones plus whatever we can bring in for Bouldini if he can hobble his way through a medical somewhere – there’s only one thing for it, it’s time to go shopping.. One small step… We definitely need some more flair, more width and a bit more directness in our play – sure, all this inverting and cutting inside is fun, but every now again you need a player to just run at a defence and make something happen. If you can find one who is an ex-Arsenal academy graduate, who is Irish and who has the greatest name in the history of football – well, all the better for it 😄. Welcome Armstrong Oko-Flex who arrives from FC Zurich for €5.5m 💪. There’s no point stopping there right? Keep the Irish coming – we somewhat break the bank for the 6-month loan of Andrew Omobamidele from Nottingham forest, which costs us €1.7m in fees as well as covering 80% of his €42,000 per week wages. We desperately need to shut up shop at the back and he should slot in nicely alongside fellow compatriot Anselmo Garcia MacNulty ☘️☘️ . What to do with this chunk of cash we have left…the aforementioned Bouldini injury problems are a real issue, we can’t depend on him anymore and Kroupi isn’t really built for the lone striker role. We need someone athletic, someone quick, explosive with a cool head and most importantly someone who can finish…all for hopefully less than €10 million right? Bienvenido Cameron Archer – €6.25m from Southampton who for some reason decide he is surplus to requirements after they avoided relegation last season on goal difference 🤷. Espanyol eventually arrive in with a €5m offer for Bouldini, however the chief rejects their terms and decides he’d rather be injury prone in Galicia over Catalonia. We do however add talented young playmaker Tom Bischof on loan from Hoffenheim to cover the gap left by Patino, and suddenly we are feeling a lot more positive about the latter half of our second season at Deportivo La Coruna..NOTHING CAN STOP US NOW. Deja-Vu We just had to say it… Svetoslav Vutsov, one of the unsung heroes of this save so far having signed for €1.5m last season and now valued over €10m goes and breaks his collarbone, effectively ruling him out for most of the rest of the season. This is an absolute DISASTER, not only because he is a key player for us (even if we have conceded a shed-load of goals this season) but also because our backup keeper Eric Puerto is significantly rubbish – this may be a problem seeing as we still have the likes of Barcelona and Atlético Madrid ahead of us 🤦. I’d love to tell you that everything fell into place, that we went on another 11-game winning streak and stormed our way into a European place. I’d love to tell you that our new signings absolutely terrorised La Liga and Cameron Archer is now a superstar in Spain. I’d love to tell you we didn’t get knocked out of the Copa Del Rey Second Round against Real Oviedo. I’d love to tell you that our predicted “Golden Generation” Youth Intake turned out that way rather than a handful of relatively average youth players, none of whom are even Irish 😔. I’d even love to tell you that we managed to hold on to a Top 10 finish… Sadly we did none of those things!!! Though Archer scored a penalty on his debut in a 3-1 win over Girona, he only manages 4 goals in 15 odd games, and the same goes for Oko-Flex who picks up a goal and 3 assists in 10 starts; surprisingly Ilyas Chaira is the pick of the lot, 8 goals and 6 assists in all competitions puts him behind our top scorer for the season Junior Kroupi who racks up 10 goals for the season along with 4 assists – overall, a distinctly average campaign and some poor results in the latter stages mean that we drop to 11th place overall in our first season back in La Liga; of course, having been predicted to finish last we will absolutely take it and the board are over the moon, but I can’t help but feel disappointed – no standout games, no promising individual performance, in fact nothing of note to get the juices flowing bar an absolute flurry of transfer activity. Maybe I’m expecting too much? Junior Problems We need to talk about Junior Kroupi. We signed him for €11m in total with €5.5m paid up front and the rest spread over 3 annual installments; by the end of his first season he is worth €32m-€48m 😮. …
La Resurrección – I
July 30th 2024 – the last time I properly played Football Manager…. To put that in context – it’s been almost 3 months since I have played this year’s rendition from Sports Interactive (an attempted Regionnaire save at South Shields which I streamed live over on Twitch), and over 6 months since I actually blogged one of my saves with the last installment of Allsvenskan or Nothing in Sweden before that save faded away into obscurity (it was fun while it lasted though). I’m not exactly sure what has gone wrong this year – whether it be my work-in-progress transition into real-life sports journalism, or a set of highly challenging personal/family circumstances which I won’t go into here; for some reason I ran out of steam earlier than usual this cycle however the recent announcement that FM25 will be delayed until March 2025 has definitely revived my appetite to start a new save, so that’s exactly what we did. I’ll be honest – I hadn’t at all planned to blog or do any content around this save (aside from occasional updates on the 5 Star Potential podcast), however so far it has been so enjoyable and so eventful that I couldn’t resist popping open WordPress and getting back on the blogging horse (that and my annual subscription auto-renewed so, might as well use it now). My original mission was quite simple – to find a save which would help me fall in love with Football Manager again; no major stipulations, no extreme limitations, no exhaustive admin work required..just a save that I could sink myself into and hopefully get hooked on immediately. In doing so, I had a quick think about some of my favourite past FM saves – Angers in FM21 where we focused on homegrown and youth in France, Greuther Fürth in FM20 where we had a strong Irish influence over proceedings in Germany, Tenerife in FM19 which was my first foray into Football Manager blogging…I wanted to combine all of that with an element of narrative/nostalgia and in doing so we find ourselves in Western Spain at Estadio Riazor, home of well-known fallen giants Deportivo La Coruña. Now I’m not going to go into all of the history and ignominy of Deportivo – I’m sure most of you are are somewhat informed on their notorious fall from grace over the past two decades, having been La Liga Champions in the 99/00 season, Champions League Semi-Finalists in 03/04 and subsequently declining all the way to the third tier of Spanish football following relegation to Segunda Division B in 2020. The days of Noureddine Naybet, Diego Tristan, Fran, Djalminha and Roy Makaay are long gone and since Deportivo last won La Liga, only four teams have been crowned champions, a disastrous 24-year period that has seen “Os brancoazuis” (The Blue and Whites) fall into relative obscurity while their former rivals in Madrid and Catalonia have thrived and dominated Spanish football thereafter. The Plan We are going to keep things relatively simple this time round; no save rules or limitations, no overly strict transfer policy and certainly no Regionnaire restrictions to contend with (don’t worry, the Regionnaire will return in FM25 😉); instead, we enter Estadio Riazor with only a few simple save objectives: WIth a Media Prediction of 11th ahead of the new season (interesting as Deportivo have only just been promoted back into La Liga 2), we won’t hold too many high expectations for our first season in charge. As you can probably tell – all of the above was mainly to get me back into playing and enjoying Football Manager again, focusing on bargains, nostalgia, making money and having an irrational Irish bias wherever we go..if there’s an opportunity to echo previous enjoyable saves of yesteryear then you better believe I’ll do it. Actually now that we mention it… Two of our first signings in the door are players I have very fond memories of in recent versions of FM gone by; Mohamed-Ali Cho (who was excellent for us at Angers in FM21) signs on a season-long loan from Nice, and he is joined by Irishman Luca Connell who arrives for €1.1m (50% up front) from Barnsley after he was excellent for us at Greuther Fürth in FM20. I’m also quite pleased with the signing of centre-back Anselmo Garcia Mac Nulty from PEC Zwolle for €1.1m (50% up front)..born in Seville to a Spanish father and Irish mother, what more could we possibly ask for? 😁 The squad we inherit is relatively unremarkable however youngsters like Yeremay Hernández (aka Peke) and David Mella give us some hope for the future alongside veteran Lucas Pérez (formerly of Arsenal fame). Speaking of Arsenal, I was also surprised to find former highly-rated academy player Charlie Patino on the Deportivo books after made a real-life permanent move to Spain in the summer following a loan spell at Blackpool 🤷. Needless to say we also load up on Irish staff members in our quest to have the Irish take over and of course develop an Irish newgen through the Deportivo youth academy which in itself will need work if we are to see any real talent coming through each season. We bring in an Irish Assistant Manager, HOYD, Coaches, Physios and a Scout just for good measure – will this have an impact on our Youth Intake? Only time will tell…☘️ Season 1 Disaster strikes not once but twice in our opening fixture as we lose 3-1 away to Real Oviedo; firstly our talisman Lucas Pérez comes off injured in the first half, and he is later followed by our Brazilian goalkeeper Helton Leite (who looks plenty good for this level). Two key players injured in our first league game? WE ARE BACK 🔥🔥. Wouldn’t you know it – our first choice goalkeeper does his ACL in the opening game of the season and is ruled out for 5-8 months. YOU CAN NOT BE SERIOUS 🤣. In the absence of any quality second choice stopper, we do the only thing one can do in this instance….spend €1.5m (50% up front) on a 6’4″ Bulgarian goalkeeper from the depths of the Bulgarian First League in the hope that he will become an absolute worldie between the posts. You’d do the same right? What followed was a consistent spell of inconsistency and mid-table mediocrity; despite two defeats in our opening two fixtures, striker Mohammed Bouldini started like a house on fire with 6 goals in 6 games, quickly rising to the top of the goalscorer charts before inevitably being ruled out for 6 weeks in September and October, young loanee Jovan Zivkovic taking his place but not with the same killer instinct up top; we attempt to deploy Mo-Ali Cho in his so-called preferred Advanced Forward role but he also proves largely ineffective despite the best protests of newly hired Nice manager Gennaro Gattuso who as we know is as rational as they come..by the end of December we sit in 10th place, with the highlight being a 1-0 victory over La Liga side Sevilla in the first round of the Copa del Rey. Overall despite all of the inconsistency from a results perspective, our 4-2-3-1 shape looks good, when we are good we are very good and in most games we are statistically on par with our opponents – just lacking goals when it counts and conceding either early or late on in games. While it was tempting to try a new tactic or tweak the various roles and instructions deployed, this manager couldn’t help but feel that things were about to click and if so, we could go on a very good run in the second half of the season. Unfortunately my early hopes were scuppered by the fact that our star striker and main goal threat Bouldini headed off to AFCON with Morocco for 5 weeks, which definitely hindered our efforts to hit the ground running in January – that said, we went on a pretty good run in the Copa del Rey, smashing both Levante and Villareal before exiting at the hands of Atletico Madrid in the Last 16. As you can see above, bar that 3-1 defeat away to Albacete and our cup elimination, we went unbeaten in 6 in the league but disappointingly drew four home games against relatively mediocre opposition. WE ARE CLOSE, I CAN FEEL IT!! Naturally we then lost to Granada at the beginning of March, however this in turn proved to be a catalyst of sorts… The stuff Football Manager dreams are made of. I had always thought we would click eventually but never like this – ELEVEN WINS IN A ROW including seven clean sheets see us rocket up the league from 10th straight into the Playoff spots, and by the end of May we find ourselves in 3rd place in the league, too far behind leaders Almeria and Sporting Gijon who are in a two-way battle to win the division and gain automatic promotion, but in excellent shape and form to gain the most unlikely of promotions in our first season at the helm of Deportivo. Bouldini, Mo-Ali Cho, Jovan Zivkovic, even Anselmo Garcia Mac Nulty finds his scoring boots as we look to finish the season with a bang in the West of Spain. It’s far too soon for us to return to La Liga both financially and in terms of squad quality, but hey – if it’s going we will surely take it and figure out the rest later..right? La Liga 2 Playoff Round 1 Tenerife vs Deportivo La Coruña I mentioned this was a save all about narrative and nostalgia, and wouldn’t you know it we draw Tenerife in the first playoff round, the side who I managed back in 2018 when I first started blogging about Football Manager. I was feeling confident, very confident in fact…that was until a particular news item in my inbox caught my attention informing me that three of my players had been called up for international duty and would be travelling to Germany for Euro 2024… Somehow Bulgaria manage to qualify and our young giant keeper Svetoslav Vutsov whom we signed on a whim has now claimed the #1 jersey for his country; if that wasn’t bad enough, for some bizarre reason Mohamed-Ali Cho‘s form in the second half of the season led to him racking up 12 goals and 12 assists and this convinces France manager Didier Deschamps to include him in his final 26-man squad alongside Mssrs. Mbappé, Griezmann and Dembelé…IT’S THE SECOND TIER OF SPAIN DIDIER, TU FAIS QUOI?! Young Austrian Jovan Zivkovic also gets a call up after he netted 12 goals for us last season, meaning we go into the playoffs missing three key players including two of our best XI..needless to say neither Tenerife or Santander have any representation at the Euros 🤦. In spite of this ridiculous turn of events and despite us taking an early lead in the first leg, we lose 3-2 away in the Canary Islands but thankfully we make amends in the return leg as Mac Nulty bags his 7th goal of the season – he’s been a demon from set pieces, the man loves a back post header and we hope he will be good enough for La Liga next season if we get there…🙏 La Liga 2 Playoff Round 2 Racing Santander vs Deportivo La Coruña 3rd placed Deportivo against 4th placed Racing Santander for a place in La Liga and a return to the bright light’s of Spain’s footballing top table. 6 years since Deportivo were last in the top tier in Spain, 12 years since Santander last played a La Liga game – both teams having been relegated to the 3rd…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotboll (Ep. 5)
Life has changed a lot for AIK Manager Patrik Maddsson these past few years. Before taking the reins at AIK Fotboll in early 2023, he could stroll down the streets of Stockholm without a care in the world, completely unrecognisable and living as normal a life as anyone in the Swedish capital. Fast forward to 2026 and things have changed drastically; three consecutive Allsvenskan titles, one Svenska Cupen trophy, back-to-back qualification from the Champions League Group Stages and a new wave of superstars gracing the 50,000 seater Friends Arena. Safe to say we are not in Kansas anymore, and while other big European clubs have taken note with the likes of Lazio, Brighton and Eintracht Frankfurt all rumoured to have offered Maddsson their respective vacant manager positions, the Swede remains fully committed to AIK’s mission to restore Swedish football to glory both in Europe and on a global scale. You have to admire his confidence I guess… Welcome back!! Though you may have listened to updates on this save via the 5 Star Potential podcast, it’s time we returned to normal business here on the blog and bring you a full Season 4 update where a sh*tload has happened since we spoke last. Let’s start with some brief transfer news – at the end of my last post I spoke about how healthy our finances were with a €14m transfer budget, and though our squad was extremely healthy (at least in terms of the Swedish league standard), we had two key positions in which we wanted to strengthen, namely on the right side of the field where we could do more depth and extra competition at both right-back and right-wing to compete with Valgeir Fridriksson and Noah Jean Holm respectively. First in the door was a familiar face at least for AIK Gnaget fans – the return of Sweden international full-back Joe Mendes for a fee of €6m from Braga after he made a real-life move to Portugal back in January 2023. Ahead of him where we usually deploy an Inverted-Winger or Inside-Forward – after a long time searching, scouting and ultimately scouring through a host of European leagues, we identified the perfect candidate who somehow found himself playing second-tier football in Portugal which meant that attracting him to AIK wasn’t actually a problem; the only issue is that we would need to wait for his contract to end in July 2026 (our season starts in April), however looking at his attributes he will be worth the wait as I firmly believe that Joao Marques could become one of the best players in the Swedish Allsvenskan – absolute 🔥🔥. In the meantime, we still need a backup to at least cover on that right-hand side, and as is the standard here at AIK we again opt for a Swedish signing in the form of Aaron Stoch Rydell (FC Nordsjælland – €2.2m) who will be a decent option when needed at this level. In terms of player sales – our main outgoings were Oscar Pettersson who departed to Salernitana for €3m, along with Emil Højlund who made the move to Norway and Odds BK for €1m. Season 4 🚀 Our new season starts well. After turning down multiple bids for him during the summer, we are ready for another barnstorming season for our starboy Jonah Kusi-Asare, however before we even kick a ball we receive the news that he will miss the first 5-6 weeks of the season which doesn’t sound too bad initially but in actual fact equates to around 10 league games in Sweden, a third of all our league games!! As we play with a lone striker up top, I had never really been too fussed in terms of the quality of our backup strikers – however given that Ioannis Pittas also picked up a 2 month injury back in February, that meant we would start the season with 19-year-old Noel Sergel up front, a player whom we had pretty much overlooked up to this point despite scoring 23 goals for our reserve squad which overall isn’t much when you consider the competition at that level. As the saying goes, one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity – this was certainly the case for Sergel, who not only scores a brace on his league debut for AIK, but goes on to score 14 goals in 12 games including 3 hat-tricks, surprisingly keeping a returning Jonah out of the side and helping us to go top of the league with 12 games played. WHERE DID THIS LAD COME FROM 😅. June arrives and it’s World Cup time, the 2026 tournament held across USA, Canada and Mexico which largely passes without incident; Ireland fail to qualify, England suffer an embarassing 1-0 Quarter Final defeat to Tunisia and France reclaim the Jules Rimet trophy after a 4-2 victory over Germany thanks to goals from Mbappé, Kolo Muani and Thuram (2). Sweden make it to the knockout stage but are beaten 3-1 by Croatia, and much to our annoyance manager Janne Andersson keeps his job for what the Swedish FA deem to be a successful performance at this year’s tournament (we’ll see about that). The Vultures Close in 😡 As the season ends in most of the other European leagues and despite the fact that our friend Janne Andersson overlooked Jonah Kusi-Asare for that Swedish World Cup squad, the inevitable flood of offers start to arrive for his signature and this time, they aren’t joking around. Bids of €25 million land in from the likes of PSG and Man Utd, and we start to reach a point where it’s ultimately decision time in terms of Jonah’s future and the fate of this save: is it time to cash in on our starboy before he or our board force our hand? Is there life after Jonah? Think about what we could do with all that cash…. In the end, Dortmund are the club who agree to match our terms – a €40 million fee UP FRONT along with 40% of any future profit should they sell him on (which is quite likely as per the Dortmund model). They literally make us an offer we can’t refuse, and after 3.5 seasons of gushing over my favourite wonderkid in this year’s game, Jonah and AIK are no more and he moves on to pastures new in Germany where we hope he can help Dortmund improve on their 3rd place finish last season. The Stakes Are Raised 🔥 It was around this time that while recording an episode of the podcast, our good friend Doop made an altogether outrageous statement; that he would win a Champions League with his non-league Cirencester Town before I would win one with AIK. I mean – I know the guy plays a lot of FM, and at a much faster pace than me, but surely not right? We discussed this at length on Episode 341, particularly how I fear that this save may become a bit stale if we are to keep winning the league each year and simply go from season to season waiting for the Champions League to start, which can be particularly long considering our league season runs from February to November and then our CL run usually takes us up to January (further if we manage to advance past the knockout stages). That said, I do want to maintain as much realism as possible in terms of signings and maintaining our focus on elevating Swedish football – so we find ourselves in a bit of a dilemma.. With a ridiculous €60 odd million to spend – we have some decisions to make. While the obvious area to focus on is replacing Jonah, we quickly realise that there aren’t really any Swedish strikers who come even close to his quality; outside of Sweden, the top “Slightly Interested” strikers include the likes of Georginio Rutter, Fabio Silva, Luka Jovic and Adam Idah (not to mention an ageing Callum Wilson) however wages among other things will likely prevent us from attempting to sign any of these; also, Noel Sergel surely has earned his chance to replace Jonah, right? Therefore we move our focus in a different direction – our new mission will be to sign quality players, but only ones that are relatively realistic in terms of transfer fee, salary and players who would realistically be interested in a move to AIK. The results are interesting.. We make not one but two top tier signings in Turkish AMC Can Uzun (FC Nürnberg – €8m) and a player whom I have longed to sign in FM who originated at Barcelona’s La Masia academy Mika Marmol, a left-sided centre-back who arrives from Las Palmas for €8.75m. While both are arguably far too good for Swedish League level, both arrive from clubs who are in the second tier of their respective leagues and therefore it’s understandable that they are interested in playing Champions League football for the mighty AIK 💪💪. We also add a backup striker in the form of Deniz Gül (Udinese – €2.3m), a young Swedish international who remarkably managed to get in that World Cup squad ahead of Jonah even though there is simply no comparison 🤷♂️. 4th Time’s a Charm? We’ve bolstered our squad, we have a striker on fire and I still absolutely love a pair of double mezzalas in midfield. The only downside so far is that we had a REALLY poor Youth Intake, but we might talk about that in my next blog post. After blitzing our way through the Champions League qualifiers with big victories over Latvian champions Riga, Norwegian champs Tromsø and Israeli winners Maccabi Tel Aviv (during which Noel Sergel scores a calm 7 goals), we simply cannot be stopped. Any fears we held over the absence of Jonah quickly start to vanish – even when Sergel started to slow down in the league, the likes of Ayari, Ryddell, Edin Persson, Marques, Okkels, Uzun, Andresen and Gustavo Sá all collectively chipped in as we went unbeaten for the rest of the season and won 13/14 league games, wrapping up the league with 4 games to go and sealing our 4th consecutive Allsvenskan title. YOU’LL NEVER SING THAT 🥳🥳🥳🥳. We rotate for our final two games and lose both, but nonetheless Sergel finishes as the league’s top scorer with 19 goals, 29 for the season overall which is most impressive considering he had VERY big boots to fill (I mean, Jonah is 6’5″ so they must be); it’s crazy really, he wins pretty much every award available yet I am still thinking about who I can replace him with in the next window! #FMThings By now you may be wondering how Jonah is getting on at Dortmund as they kicked off their new season in September; don’t worry, as the FM Narrative Gods would have it – well, see for yourself… Champions League 3.0 WE ARE GOING TO DORTMUND FOR THE JONAH DERBY!!! You couldn’t write it, although he hasn’t yet scored for his new club and remains an understudy for the likes of Sebastian Haller and Youssoufa Moukoko, it will be all to play for on November 4th as Jonah prepares to face his old team in a fixture for which both clubs will be raring to go; in the meantime we have games against Young Boys, Genk and Roma to contend not to mention looking ahead to Benfica and Arsenal at the end of our campaign.. Things don’t go too well..a really poor defeat at home to Swiss champions Young Boys is followed up by a late 1-1 draw away to Genk in Belgium, and an 83rd minute goal isn’t enough to get us back…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotboll (Ep. 4)
Stockholm, Sweden – Thursday 20th March 2025. A well-dressed middle-aged man sits aboard a Stockholm metro train carriage, taking the relatively short journey from his 11th floor penthouse apartment over to AIK Fotboll’s newly renovated Karlberg IP training ground for what will be his first training session since being eliminated from the Champions League 2nd Round Knockout Playoff at the hands of Brighton & Hove Albion. “Obviously the boys are disappointed” AIK Manager Patrik Maddsson thinks to himself, “but look how far we have come; back-to-back league titles; wins over Man Utd and AC Milan in the Champions League; the first Swedish club to qualify from the group stages in 30 years….“ He opens his newspaper to reveal a 4-page segment on one player and one player alone. “The future of Swedish Football“; “Watch out Isak“; “If Zlatan is God, here is the Messiah“. Some big headlines, who writes this stuff? Nonetheless, one cannot shy away from what 17-year-old Jonah Kusi-Asare achieved last season, Allsvenskan Top Scorer as well as finding the net against the likes of Barcelona, Dortmund, Man Utd, AC Milan and Bayer Leverkusen..the cat is well and truly out of the bag, it won’t be long before clubs come calling… He turns the page, and his mix of pride and apprehension are reaffirmed instantaneously with a clear and simple headline: “The “Swedish Benteke” – what the hell does that mean?!” Regardless, Jonah has officially been thrust among the most exciting talents in Europe – listed as the 8th best wonderkid in world football keeping company with the likes of Semih Kilicsoy, Lamine Yamal, Mathys Tel and Endrick; “Gonna be some carnage when the European transfer window opens” predicts Maddsson, “let’s just hope his mum hides his passport…” Welcome back to Allsvenskan or Nothing!!! You are here for the 5th installment of this FM24 blog series, which means if you have missed or cannot remember any of the previous episodes then it might be worth jumping back here and catching up! Otherwise we crack on with what will be a full overview of Season 3 at the helm of AIK Fotboll as we look to resurrect Swedish football by making AIK the dominant force of the Allsvenskan, not to mention challenging in Europe and overall, raising the profile and standings of Swedish football back to where it once sat many many years ago. When we last left off, we had just won our second consecutive league title as well as mounted quite a successful Champions League campaign which saw us advance from the new CL League Stage only to be knocked out by Brighton, so hopefully we can do one better this time with a few squad additions and now that we are another year older and wiser. Project Football 👷 Before we start, let’s talk about the project. As mentioned repeatedly, while this save is about succeeding at club level with AIK (and hopefully later at International level with Sweden) – our main aim is to elevate Swedish football through (1) Off-field Infrastructure & Facilities investment, (2) On-field performance and coefficient ranking/progression and (3) homegrown Player Development & Production. (1) Infrastructure & Facilities Investment 🛠️ It’s quite simple. You need to spend money to make money. Thankfully we have been highly successful in this area, not so much through our league titles (which earn us around €3m in prize money), but more so in our Champions League qualification and TV money which brings in around €15m to €20m in addition to the ~€2.8m one receives everytime you win a Champions League fixture. By the end of that run and our eventual exit at the hands of Brighton, our Bank Balance has increased from <€6m in Season 1 to over €40m in Season 3, while our Transfer Budget has also increased dramatically off the back of this from just over €1m in Season 1 to over €14m in Season 3. As you can see, over the past 3 seasons we have managed to bring our Youth Facilities from Good to Great, our Academy Coaching from Good to Great and our Youth Recruitment from Good to Exceptional – mainly through a combination of reinvesting revenue generated through our European performances as well as being a general thorn in the side of our board accordingly. (2) Coefficient Ranking & Progression 📈 Another essential focus area in terms of measuring success of this project is how we manage to elevate Swedish football as a whole, and until we manage to oust Janne Andersen from the international team setup, we will have to do this through our club efforts at AIK Football – namely trying to raise the club’s reputation through our domestic and continental exploits, and in turn raising the profile of the Swedish League accordingly. After two seasons we are definitely making some clear progress – moving up 267 places to 107th in the World Club rankings, while driving the Allsvenskan from 24th to 20th in the club league rankings and raising Sweden from 23rd to 20th in the Club Coefficients. (3) Player Development & Production ⚽ Progress has not been instant in terms of Swedish Wonderkid production, however we have seen two serious contenders come through in the past couple of intakes that are worth telling you about, the latter of whom is quite simply the best newgen I have produced in Football Manager for years. Robin Edin-Persson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Edin-Persson came through in our first intake with good physicals and goalscoring attributes for a wide-forward not to mention exceptional flair and determination; as he is right-footed, we began instantly training him as an Inverted-Winger Left and at 17 he has since made his first team debut and scored his first ever goal for the club. Alex Almqvist ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Almqvist came through in our most recent Youth Intake, and the moment I laid eyes on him I knew we had our first true wonderkid on our hands – in fact he is the best newgen I have had in an FM Youth Intake for years. At just 16 he is already borderline first-team material – so much so that he scored on his debut in the Swedish Cup (albeit against inferior opposition) Season 3 🚀 With a much heftier transfer budget, we bolster our Season 3 squad with no fewer than 7 signings, all the while trying to lean towards Swedish/Scandinavian players where possible as well as trying to unearth bargain signings throughout; with Oscar Højlund permanently returned to Denmark, we replace him with not one but two talented midfielders in the form of Aleksander Andresen (Stabaek – €2.7m) and Ísak Bergmann Jóhannesson (F.C. København – Loan). On the right-hand side of midfield, we add clear quality and an upgrade in the form of Noah Jean Holm (Rosenborg – €2.5m), while Bilal Hussein returns to AIK from Hertha Berlin for €700k to be a backup versatile DM/MC. Finally we bolster our defence with not one, not two but three new additions in the form of Valgeir Fridriksson (Fiorentina – Loan), Coli Saco (Napoli – €50k BARGAIN thanks to @Shrewnaldo but needs to be retrained as a CB) and the cherry on the cake, highly experienced Swedish international left-back Ludwig Augustinsson who arrives from Sevilla for a record €6.5m fee. The league started very well for us which you would have to expect given our squad depth and quality, but still – 16 games in and we were fairly dominant, only losing one game unexpectedly to IFK Varnamo and as we hit the halfway point we found ourselves two points clear of Hammarby in 2nd place. By this point Jonah has scored 10 goals in 16 games and is going from strength to strength at the Friends Arena 🔥. It’s also at this point a couple of things happened: 1. We received two offers that we couldn’t really refuse for Erik Otieno (LWB) and Anton Salétros (MC) – both €2.5m bids from Cosenza and Middlebrough respectively, so we were forced to enter the market for replacements which we signed in the form of Isak Määttä ( Groningen – €2.5m) and Yasin Ayari (Brighton – Loan), the latter of whom joins his brother Taha as part of our midfield selection quartet. 2. We signed a long-term central defensive target in the form of Atalanta’s Noah Eile (€2m), for whom we have waited 8 months for his loan spell to finish at Vicenza before being able to complete the transfer – he will become our first-choice right-sided centre-back alongside Anes Cardaklija (for whom we have received multiple bids from Juventus and Lazio since signing him for €500k last season), giving us an excellent young pair of Swedish defenders in the middle of our back line for years to come. 3. Jonah’s ridiculous form has finally been noticed on the big stage as we receive bids from Liverpool, Arsenal, Dortmund, Milan, Inter, Bayern, Man Utd and PSG to name a few! All are flatly rejected (the highest was ~€3m which is pathetic), and although he is slightly unsettled for a while, we manage to hoodwink him into extending his contract and most importantly, with NO RELEASE CLAUSE 🥳. We endure a couple of draws during this slightly unsettled period, but it doesn’t take long for our squad to gel again aided by the glorious sight of both Ayari brothers not only starting in midfield for AIK but also both getting on the scoresheet in the same game, a 4-0 drubbing of rivals Djurgardens IF 😎. Ultimately we end up being too strong for Hammarby, and with three games to spare we are confirmed as Allsvenskan winners for a third consecutive season – AIK ARE CHAMPIONS AGAIN!! 🏆🏆🏆 On to Champions League matters … 🇪🇺 After being gloriously drawn against our namesake & champions of Greece AEK in our first UECL qualifier (and comfortably beating them 8-1 over both legs), we then overcame Bulgarian champions CSKA Sofia and Serbian champions FC Partizan to take a place in the Champions League Group Stage for the second year in a row. We were given what I had thought to be a relatively kind set of league fixtures, with very winnable ties against the likes of Sparta Prague, Rangers and Union Berlin, not to mention exciting fixtures against Inter Milan & Ajax at home, my own beloved Newcastle at home and a trip away to 14-time champions Real Madrid at the Bernabeu…lowly AIK on tour or what!! We unexpectedly suffered a 2-0 defeat at home to Sparta Prague before going on to beat Rangers 2-0 at Ibrox; we then got trounced 4-1 at home to Inter Milan and Marcus Thuram, which must have kicked some life into our lads as we proceeded to absolutely batter Bayer Leverkusen 5-0 to keep our qualification hopes alive – again similar to last season (and somewhat inexplicably), our away form is far better than our home form in Europe and we were unlucky not to take all 3 points from Union Berlin who scored a 94th minute equaliser to share the spoils. That meant after 5 games, we found ourselves 19th out of the 24 teams who qualify from the CL group stage – not bad, but a few tough games ahead of us… Just as we were gearing up to welcome the giants of Newcastle to Stockholm, this popped up in our inbox..a sign perhaps? AIK vs Newcastle United, Champions League Group Stage, 10/12/2025 For some reason the most random of caretaker managers Chris Moore has Newcastle lining out in a 4-4-2, a very different looking squad despite being just three seasons deep in a world…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotboll (Ep. 3)
Stockholm, Sweden – Thursday 1st February 2024. It’s the first day of pre-season for Swedish football clubs including league champions AIK Fotboll, whose manager Patrik Maddsson has just risen at dawn for his daily 10k run along the Söderström river with a deep sense of apprehension and pensiveness as he attempts to separate last season’s success with the challenge of the upcoming new season and the prospect of Champions League qualification if they can catch a break in the qualifying rounds. “The transfer window officially opens in two weeks and still no sign of the €2m prize money being spent – Per Nilsson assures me they are pursuing some of our identified targets but we need to get these over the line fast before others nip in and hijack a deal…damn the timing of these Champions League qualifiers as well, we’ll have half our league season done by the time we know who we’ll face and be able to reap any potential financial reward and that’s assuming we manage to overcome three two-legged qualifiers. If we can at least nab a Centre-Half and a versatile forward I’ll be happy…” His Apple watch vibrates and it’s an early morning message from U19 Manager Steve Nilsson.. “F*ck it, no more U19s football for him. 16 or not, it’s time…” Hello and welcome back! A slightly lengthy gap between blog posts for this series largely driven by Christmas and family events, however that’s no excuse and this save is very much still the mainstay of FM24 as we embark on Season 2 and a shot at Champions League football for AIK for the first time in 25 years. The timing of the Swedish League (April to November) means that we will be halfway through the season before the UCL qualifiers take place, so for now our focus is on adding quality to the squad which won us the league last season in order to handle the increased fixture schedule as well as defend the Allsvenskan league title. We mentioned our first target being a Centre-Back, mainly deviating from the repeat poor training performances and overall decline in ability of Club Captain Alexander Milošević. With our mission to produce/recruit and develop as many young Swedish players as possible in this save, we quickly identified and secured what could potentially be our first-choice centre-half for years to come. Welcome to AIK Anes Cardaklija who signs on a 4-year deal from GAIS for a €500k transfer fee. We then went on the hunt for a wide-forward to fill our Inside Forward (Left) position which was vacated by the departure of Bersant Celina who returned to home club Dijon following his loan spell. We tried to focus solely on Swedish players but in the absence of any real available quality, the standout option was Danish former FM wonderkid Jeppe Okkels who is a bargain €375k signing from Elfsborg. Our final permanent signing is significant given that we have European football to contend with this season. Defensive Midfield is a really hard position to fill at this level, particularly if limiting oneself to Swedish/Scandinavian players – having struggled to identify a suitable target, we came across an excellent signing in Charles, a Brazilian DM plying his trade at FC Midtjylland who for some reason were happy to let him go for just €500k and he should immediately become first-choice as our #6 this season with excellent all round midfield and defensive attributes for this level and the type of quality we will need to escape the Champions League qualifying rounds. Having already extended Oscar Højlund‘s loan from FC Kobenhavn (who you may remember absolutely banged as one of our double mezzalas last season), we also add youngsters Anders Hartveit Ryste on loan from Odds BK and Isak Brusberg on loan from BK Hacken, and suddenly our squad is looking mega healthy going into our second season at the helm of AIK Fotboll. Season 2 With the Swedish league starting in April, we knew that we would have roughly half our season completed before the Champions League Qualifiers commence, a long time to wait before even finding out who our first opponents would be in the Second Qualifying Round meaning we will have to overcome 3 clubs over 6 legs to gain a place in the Group Stages (or should I say the new 36-team Champions League League Stage 🙄). Being able to solely focus on domestic matters didn’t prove to be a bad thing though, by the time we reached July we found ourselves unbeaten in 16 league games, with 14 wins and our star boy Jonah racking up 14 goals to put us 7 points clear at the top of the league. I know I’ve said it plenty of times on the 5 Star Potential podcast by now, but Jonah Kusi-Asare is easily my favourite wonderkid of FM24 so far – just 15 when we started the save, and now at 16 already top scorer in the league and (spoiler alert) will go on to attract interest from Arsenal, Man Utd and Tottenham before the season is out. At 6’5″ with great physicals and ever-increasing technical and goal-scoring attributes, it’s little surprise that he is already linked with a real-life move to Bayern Munich despite having not even scored at senior level at the time of writing. Champions League Qualification Our first opponents as AIK look to reach the Champions League Group Stage for the first time since 1999? Champions of Azerbaijan Qarabağ FK, and safe to say it was an absolute two-legged belter… An 8-5 aggregate win (with two goals from our wonderboy) sent us through to the Third Qualifying Round, where we then welcomed the Champions of Cyprus Omonoia Nicosia, and despite Neil Lennon’s disastrous spell there as manager a few years back, they put up one hell of a fight and only a Ryste goal in the 2nd leg 2nd half separated both sides to see us advance to the final playoff round. Two legs away from history, a chance to compete with the biggest clubs in Europe in just our second season at lowly AIK of Sweden. Dreams of trips to the Camp Nou, San Siro, Parc Des Princes, Anfield and the Westfalenstadion are on everyone’s minds as we gear up for our final two-legged clash and this time a trip to Bern where we face Swiss Champions Young Boys. This is indeed a test… WE’VE DONE IT!!!! CHAMPIONS LEAGUE HERE WE COME!! Three goals over two legs from the boy Jonah give us a 5-3 aggregate victory to guarantee our place in the Champions League proper, and AIK fans are euphoric at the prospect of competing with Europe’s elite once again. There is absolutely no time to wait as we are swiftly presented with our League Stage fixtures, and with us being placed in Pot 4 of the draw, as someone once famously said – SH*T’S ABOUT TO GET REAL UP IN HERE!!! Did I Stutter? In and around all of these Champions League shenanigans, we began to slightly stutter in the league drawing 4 games in a row and breaking our unbeaten run with a 1-0 defeat away to rivals Hammarby. By October and with 6 games remaining, our lead was cut to just 3 points (albeit with a couple of games in hand) and despite Jonah’s goal exploits in the qualifiers, he only picked up 2 goals in 8 games as we geared up for our crucial opening CL game away to Celtic. We managed to hold Brendan Rodgers side to a 0-0 draw which felt great until we lost 2-0 away to Fenerbahçe in Turkey, and this combined with a couple of narrow 1-0 wins and another draw in the league in between meant we weren’t exactly in the best of form as we prepared for arguably the biggest fixture in recent AIK Fotboll history; welcoming Manchester United to the Friends Arena in Stockholm, after they finished 4th in the Premier League last season behind Man City, Arsenal and Chelsea 🙃. When Jonah opened the scoring on 15 minutes, all hell broke loose as a famous victory over Man Utd began to materialise in front of us. That lasted 13 minutes before Antony equalised for Man Utd, and we went in 1-1 at half-time knowing that we had a rare opportunity to inflict one of the biggest scalpings in Champions League history. Man Utd came at us hard, peppering our goal and looking likeliest to score first and crush our dreams of a famous victory..that was until our man Anton Salétros stood up over a 51st minute free-kick and did this: Absolute ecstacy for the home fans as a famous 2-1 win is recorded into our history books!! (not to mention a glorious €2.3m for the victory – more of the same please 🤌). Speaking of ecstacy….. We successfully defend the Allsvenskan title to give us back-to-back league titles, with Jonah finishing on top of the goalscorer charts with 20 goals along with a 7.37 rating, and even more positively we manage to lock him down to an extended contract with NO RELEASE CLAUSE 🥳. It feels strange that we have won the league but still have a bunch of Champions League games to play, such is life finishing the domestic campaign in November. We followed up that victory over Man Utd with a 2-2 draw away to Bayer Leverkusen, before beating Sturm Graz 1-0 at home; our last game of 2024 was another home fixture against AC Milan who still boast the likes of Rafael Leao, Theo Hernandez, Christian Pulisic and Olivier Giroud, and the game was locked in a 0-0 stalemate until the 88th minute before that man Jonah Kusi-Asare decided to do this while we were live streaming over on Twitch: We’ve slayed Man Utd and AC Milan, held Celtic and Leverkusen to a draw and with two games remaining (only Barcelona and Dortmund sure), we have a very realistic chance of qualification to the Champions League Knockout Round for the first time in the club’s history. Did someone say all aboard for a trip to Barcelona? ✈️✈️ We might have Jonah, but Barcelona have arguably the best wonderkid in FM24 in Lamine Yamal who bags a hat-trick as Xavi’s side hit us for six, meaning we will miss out on a Top 8 finish and therefore need a positive result at home to Dortmund in order to guarantee a place in the Champions League Knockout Playoff Round… AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID 😎😎. A brace from Jonah overturns a 2-0 deficit to earn us a point and secure a 16th place finish in the league stage, finishing ahead of the likes of Arsenal, Roma, Ajax and Man Utd to name a few…suddenly, a long long league season which has pretty much ran from February to February has culminated in the biggest game in the club’s history as we look to progress to the latter rounds of the Champions League. Our opponents? AIK vs Brighton, Champions League Knockout Playoff Round High-flying Brighton, who finished 5th last season under Roberto De Zerbi to avail of an extra CL place in the Premier League are drawn as our playoff round opponents, a side containing FM24 superstars Evan Ferguson and Karou Mitoma as well as newer signings Kang-In Lee and wonderkid Semih Kılıçsoy. Even more alarmingly, in the meantime we had lost our own star midfielder Oscar Hojlund who opted to return to parent club FC Kobenhavn (replacing him with @FridayNightFM‘s 18-year-old Famalicão youngster Gustavo Sa), yet another symptom of the…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotboll (Ep. 2)
Patrik Maddsson is as usual the last to leave the AIK training ground as the sun sets over the Solna city skyline, a familiar sense of accomplishment after a high-octane training session, yet a sense of yearning burning in the back of his mind knowing that these players and this club are capable of so much more. “They need time” he says to himself..”they know they are good, but they don’t yet know they can be great”. Things have been going well – five wins from their first five games, their new signings fitting in well and things have clicked almost immediately to put AIK top of the table at this early stage of the season..is it really going to be this easy? As he makes his way over to his Volvo C40 (electric of course), he passes the U19 side who are deep in a training match under the watchful eye of manager Steve Nilsson..almost immediately his eyes fall upon a strikingly large figure wearing the #9 shirt for his side, tall yet nimble, awkward yet athletic, who out of nowhere snatches a ball out of thin air by trapping it with his right foot before turning and unleashing a powerful rocket into the bottom right corner of the goal. “Holy sh*t” are the words that expel from the usually impeccably decorous mouth of the AIK Fotboll manager..”who the hell is this kid?” Welcome back to Sweden, where we have kicked off Season 1 of this brand new FM24 save adventure having finished our last blog update with a thumping 4-1 opening win against Kalmar FF to give us a cracking start to life in Stockholm. As mentioned above – new Manager Patrik Maddsson is the man at the helm of AIK Fotboll, and though an inherent optimist with a firm belief in his own and his team’s capability, even he couldn’t have dreamed of a better start as this side went on to pick up 5 wins from their opening 5 games to put us join top of the league alongside 2015 champions IFK Norrköping who have also started with an impressive 100% record. Nice to see some of our new boys among the scorers during our opening fixtures with goals for both Oscar Pettersson and Oscar Højlund, not to mention victories over two of our local rivals including a four-goal hammering of Djurgardens, but it was Bersant Celina who stole the early headlines with four goals in our first three games, including an early contender for goal of the season 💥. That run meant we were in top form heading into one of the biggest and arguably most difficult games of the season – a 1200km round trip away to Malmö FF, the club with the most Swedish titles won in history (23 versus our 12). Malmö FF vs AIK Fotboll 📍 Eleda Stadion, Malmö 📅 Saturday 29th April 2023 🗣️🎙️ “It’s 3rd against 1st today as Malmö host AIK in this historic clash, over 1,000 Gnaget fans making the 620km journey south and every one of their voices heard as they were escorted to the Eleda Stadion. AIK are without the in-form Bersant Celina who just about makes the bench following a muscle injury, which means veteran John Guidetti starts up front with Ioannis Pittas taking Celina’s place on the left of a front three. Malmö look to be at full strength with star boy Sebastian Nanasi leading the line after being linked with multiple moves abroad over the summer. Strap in folks, this is going to be a mad one…” 0′ – AIK kick us off here at the Eleda Stadion. 13′ – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Cornelius) – that didn’t take long as the home side pick up their first booking of the game. 28′ – GOAL FOR MALMÖ!! (Nanasi) The AIK fans are silenced as Sebastian Nanasi breaks the deadlock for Malmo, a cool finish past Kristian Nordveldt. 35′ – GOAL FOR AIK!! (Modesto) An almost instant reply from AIK as Modesto heads in an Otieno cross at the back post! Game on now.. 42′ – Substitution for AIK as goalkeeper Kristian Nordveldt looks to have injured his arm after landing awkwardly catching a cross..on comes 6’8” Samuel Brolin, my he is a big fellow… 45′ – There will be four minutes of injury time added. 45+2′ – What are the chances? This time it’s Malmö keeper Jonas Dahlin who is down clutching his hand and can no longer continue, on comes Ismaël Diawara in his place. 45+5′ – GOAL FOR AIK!! (Højlund) – what a header from the 18-year-old who rises highest to meet a perfectly delivered Salétros corner to put AIK in the lead!! Pandemonium in the away end, 2-1 AIK! 45+5” – HALF-TIME. What a half of football and chaos. Nanasi had given Malmö an early lead, but this AIK side showed they are no pushovers and go into the half-time break with a 2-1 lead..let’s see the second half top that!! 49′ – GOAL FOR MALMÖ!! (Jorgensen) Just the start Malmö needed! Sloppy from AIK as a low cross comes in and Jorgensen is unmarked to tap in easily at the back post. 2-2! 72′ – Substitutions on both sides as Malmö bring on Lucas Orban for the goalscorer Jorgensen, while AIK make a double change with Coric and Pettersson replace Salétros and Modesto. 75′ – GOAL FOR MALMÖ!! (Moisander) WHAT A COMEBACK!! AIK are left stunned – a Malmö corner results in a scramble in the AIK box which they fail to clear and it’s Moisander who gets the last touch to put it in the back of the net to give Malmö a 3-2 lead! AIK Manager Patrik Maddsson has his head in his hands..what a finish we have here folks. 78′ – Another double substitution for AIK as Beširović and Celina replace Højlund and Guidetti. 90′ – There will be 5 minutes of additional time added. 90+4 – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Pappagiannopoulos) Frustration as the Greek defender fouls Nanasi as he looks to hold up play. 90+5 – THAT’S IT!! What a contest we have witnessed here in the Eleda Stadion, a game in which both teams looked on course for victory but only one could prevail and it was the home side who take all three points and inflict a first AIK defeat on manager Patrik Maddsson. Defeat for Norrkoping at home to Djurgårdens means that they stay level on points with AIK, while Malmö remain in 3rd but only one point behind after today’s events. How can you not love football…back to the studio. Ignoring the double-goalkeeper injury (a bug which was addressed in the first patch update by Sports Interactive) – that was insane. I won’t lie – up to that point I was worried that things were going too well or that the game might be too easy, so it’s somewhat reassuring to see we are indeed beatable even if it was tough to take. I really shouldn’t have worried… After bouncing back with a huge 4-2 win over rivals IFK Norrköping during which Ioannis Pittas scored all 4 goals and later another 4-2 over Mjallby courtesy of an Oscar Højlund hattrick (from the Mezzala role but more on that later), things started to get a bit choppy as we suffered back to back defeats and overall dropped 14 points across a rollercoaster 10 game period, and this inconsistency saw us drop back to 4th in the league with a lot to be desired for if our hopes of European Qualification are to materialise here in Stockholm. Wonderkids – they’re a thing As promised at the end of my last post, we need to talk about wonderkids. One of the 4 pillars of this save is to up Sweden’s game in terms of wonderkid production, export and success on the international stage and to do that we will look at 4 aspects: (1) existing in-house talent, (2) recruited talent, (3) top targets and (4) our first ever Youth Intake. (1) In-House Talent You saw Patrik Maddsson’s reaction above to seeing Jonah Kusi-Asare on-field for the first time, and we can empathise easily as it’s generally the same reaction we all have when looking at his FM24 profile for the first time. 6’5″ (196cm) and already looking like a top top talent by his 16th birthday, it’s impossible not to compare him to AIK’s most successful ever youth product and also their most expensive departure following an €8.6m move to Dortmund in 2017. Both are tall and athletic, quite quick with decent technical ability and solid mental attributes to go with it – not much between them although Kusi-Asare will arguably become more of a Target Forward than Isak who we could say is a more rounded or complete forward. With Jonah, we are focusing on developing his ability in the Final Third (particularly Composure and Decisions) as well as adding traits for him to play with his back to goal and favour a short passing game..I also noticed he doesn’t seem to get much game time for our U19 side yet, if that continues then we will may be forced to intervene 💪. (2) Recruited Talent Our first transfer window ended up mainly focusing on first-team signings, so as we reached the mid-season window we raised ~€500k through the sales of Jetmir Haliti (Elfsborg) and Axel Björnström (Silkeborg), and reinvested this in a bunch of young Swedish players whom we found to be plying their trade outside of the Swedish leagues. Lukas Bjorklund (19) arrives on loan from Sonderjysk with a €500k future fee, Bamir Sadiku (16) signs permanently from Bologna for €48.5k, Viggo Elfstrom (16) arrives from Sassuolo for €55k, Fredrik Nissen (18) lands from Milan on loan with a €1m release fee, Santino Samuyiwa (17) signs for €160k from Real Sociedad, and finally the most exciting prospect to arrive is Jayson Ezeb (17) on loan from Feyenoord, with no optional fee however as we took over his existing loan deal with Örebro but it felt good and that’s all that matters. It’s unlikely that many of these will end up as first team players for us at AIK and most will go straight into our U19 squad, however if we can unearth a few gems at low cost as well as develop them in-game, we will hopefully be looking at a few prospects who can reach first-team football and/or be sold on for profit. (3) Top Targets As usual in my saves, I want what I can’t have and this year is no different. While there are of course some major Swedish talents that I would love to obtain (e.g. Roony Bardghji, Jens Cajuste, Jesper Karlsson, Hugo Larsson etc), realistically it’s unlikely they will ever be tempted by a move back to Sweden so we must look at a slightly lower level and/or younger profile of player whom we might have a remote chance of luring to Stockholm at some point in the near future. The first of these has FM narrative written all over it: John Mellberg is the son of former Aston Villa and Juventus defender Olof Mellberg, who in addition to being a Swedish legend is also a former AIK alumni having spent a season here in the 1997/1998 season! This would be a dream signing and is now our Top Transfer target – just 16 years old but already looking highly promising for our long-term Centre-Back plans, sadly he has no interest in joining as yet but let the pursuit begin – more targets to follow in my next blog post 👌. (4) Youth Intake Our initial intake preview didn’t give much hope, with the highest rated player earning a C rating from our Head of Youth Development. When the actual…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotboll (Ep. 1)
Solna municipality, Stockholm. 6.00am. A man in his mid-to-late thirties rises from a deep slumber, a familiar twinge of pain in his right knee as he slides a thick heavy curtain along it’s rail to reveal a golden sun rising majestically above a slowly awakening city, a mammoth silhouette of a 50,000 capacity sporting arena towering in the distance like a silent noble sentry keeping watch over it’s principles below. He takes a deep breath, a sense of ambient relief to be back in the city of his birth, mixed with a hint of apprehension and trepidation in the knowledge that this day (the 27th of February 2023) marks his first as custodian of Allmänna Idrottsklubben Football Club, more commonly known as AIK Fotboll. This is a club steeped in history and folklore, a vast and iconic fanbase, and never before has the reign of a new leader been subject to such intense scrutiny and controversy in these parts. “It will work” the man assures himself..”they just don’t know it yet…” It better…. Here we go or sätt igång as we say here in Sweden! Football Manager 2024 is officially upon us, and with that we launch a brand new save adventure at AIK Fotball in Stockholm, Sweden’s 4th most successful team ever who play our home games at the 50,000 seater Friends Arena which over the years has seen the likes of Alexander Isak, Johan Mjällby, Olof Mellberg, Anders Limpar, Magnus Hedman and Sebastian Larsson all grace the turf in the AIK colours. If you haven’t already, have a quick read over our Save Introduction which outlines our plans, objectives and inspiration for this new FM24 blog series (which may occasionally be streamed on Twitch if time permits). Prior to winning their last Allsvenskan (Swedish Championship) in 2018, AIK’s last two league titles came in 2009 and 1998 which means they have only been champions of Sweden 3 times in the past 25 years and haven’t made the Champions League Group Stages since 1999 (in what was a group of death with Barcelona, Fiorentina & Arsenal), somewhat of an underachievement for a club of our stature, history, fanbase and football facilities. This save aims to rectify that as we look to reinvigorate Swedish football on the European and World stage, through enhancement of Swedish youth production, domestic league success, memorable European adventures and overall increased international representation and performance at continental level. At the start of FM24, Sweden are ranked #23 in the world international rankings, #22 in the European Nation Club League Coefficients and #28 in the world in terms of reputation – our mission is to change this while also succeeding at club level domestically and in European compeition. Easier said than done perhaps. When we look at the Season Preview, AIK Fotboll are predicted to finish 5th in the league with no players named in the Media Dream Eleven – let’s see what we can do about that. Our new quest will be spearheaded by (fictional) former AIK youth player Patrik Maddsson, a star of the club’s academy during their Swedish U19 league win back in 2004 who was forced to retire a year later due to a serious knee injury. Maddsson has been entrusted with the keys to AIK’s Friends Arena and has been busy in pre-season as we get ourselves set up for success both on and off the field – more on his credentials shortly. Before we dive in, let’s do a little bit of housekeeping in terms of how we have set up this save and how it will run going forward: 💻 Hardware – sometimes I am asked what hardware I use in terms of laptop, microphone, webcam etc. I am currently running an MSI Katana laptop with an Intel Core i9 processor, 16GB RAM, 1TB Storage and Nvidia 4070 Graphics Card (this is more spec than you would normally need to run Football Manager). I use a Samson Q2U Microphone for streaming/podcasting, along with a Logitech Brio Webcam and an Elgato Key Light Air stream lamp. MaddFM setup ✍️📽️🎙️ 💾 Database – for this save we are using the standard Football Manager database in Original Game Mode. I toyed with the idea of using Real World mode as the Swedish league runs from February to November (therefore we would have to wait until Summer to see some of their new signings) – however I opted against this so we can basically match with the squad they have currently right from the off. In terms of Save Setup, we have added Sweden as our main playable league along with the big leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany) and our two main neighbouring leagues (Denmark and Norway) – this will give us great detail in which to operate this save, and we have also added players from top clubs for Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, USA and Mexico, which gives us an approximate player count of 72,650 – more than enough on which to build our new save universe and dynasty. Also – ATTRIBUTE MASKING ON, ALWAYS. 🎓 Badges – as per our narrative, new manager Patrik Maddsson has just returned from overseas having completed his UEFA Continental A licence after a number of years in various scouting and academy coaching roles in places like Ireland, France and New Zealand. Based on this, we have set his coaching badges accordingly, along with “Professional Footballer (Regional Level)” as his past playing experience. 👕 Kits – while we love the AIK 132 year anniversary kit which I ordered and will be wearing for the majority of this save, we need a new set of in-game kits for a save of this magnitude. With our focus on Sweden and the restoration of Swedish football on a global scale, we have designed a brand new set of Stockholm-themed 2D and 3D kits which are quite tasty if I may say so myself 🔥. Feel free to download them here. 📊 Skin – we will be using the FM24 Rensie Custom Skin by @FMRensie, available to download here. Ondrej produces top class skins every year in addition to all of his excellent FM content, and this year he has done it again as you can see below 👌. 📁 Add-ons – we have added Facepacks, Kits, Logos, Stadiums and Trophies all courtesy of SortitOutSI (with a few manual additions by yours truly), while also installing the Real Names Licence Fix by FMScout. 🔎 Custom Views – I’ve set up a couple of my own views for this save which we will continue to add throughout. If you are looking for some fairly simple and clean views you can download my Squad View, Player Search View, Scouted Players View, Staff Search View, Tactics View, Player Shortlist View and Staff Shortlist views here (which I will likely add to as the save progresses). Right – that’s all the information you need to know before we proceed. The second half of today’s blog will divided into four sections we kick off our first season at AIK: (1) Squad Assessment, (2) Transfer Policy, (3) Tactical Setup and (4) Club Culture as we look to hit the ground running and start our new life in Sweden on the right foot to ensure long-term future success in Stockholm for years to come. (1) Squad Assessment We won’t look at every squad member, instead I will highlight a handful of key players that will form the spine as we kick off this save, plus a couple of higher-potential youth prospects that might have something to say as we progress things forward in Stockholm. Key Players 🔑 We are blessed in the Goalkeeping department which is a relief as it’s not the easiest or most fun position to recruit for. Ex-Swansea keeper Kristoffer Nordfeldt is likely to be our starting #1 initially, with decent experience and international pedigree having amassed 17 caps for the Swedish national team to date; his understudy and likely replacement is Samuel Brolin (no relation to Thomas sadly) who (wait for it) is 6’8″ in height (that’s 208cm for you metric system enthusiasts) and at 22 may not grow much higher but hopefully will develop rapidly under our tutelage. Already wanted by Udinese at the start of the save, he will be one to watch as this adventure begins (we can’t exactly miss him now can we). In Defence, our captain and talisman is former Besiktas and Nottingham Forest Centre Back Alexander Milosevic, who I seem to recall being an FM wonderkid sometime around FM12 or FM13 if memory serves right – still only 31, he will be the lynchpin of our backline but may need a slightly pacier partner to accompany him. Speaking of Pace – I’m intrigued by our Kenyan left-back Erick Otieno who has 16 Pace and 17 Acceleration, this may cause some craic to be had in this league and in the FM24 match engine 👀. Our midfield is relatively weak which is a concern, our best player being Anton Salétros who is a Swedish carrilero – still only 26 with decent passing, positioning and vision, he will likely adopt some form of playmaker or mezzala role and though fairly well-rounded in terms of attributes, he will need to develop these quickly in order to hold a long-term role in this XI. On the wings we are severely lacking in pace and any form of explosiveness, with our best option being 26-year-old ex-Man City academy player Bersant Celina, a Kosovan international on loan from Dijon in France; while he is a flair merchant with good technical ability, he is arguably more suited to a #10 role should we deploy one this season. Up front is probably where we are at our strongest in terms of quality and depth. The first name I saw when I loaded up the save was John Guidetti, another ex-Man City academy graduate (signed by fellow countryman Sven-Göran Eriksson when he was in charge) whom I also recall was an FM wonderkid around the same time as the aforementioned Milosovic. Guidetti is one of those strikers who has arguably failed to live up to his potential and hype as a youth player, but always seems to score against you in Football Manager; still only 30 and though he has played at very high levels (notably spells at Feyenoord, Celtic and Celta Vigo), he now finds himself with a point to prove in Sweden and I will be more than happy for him to do it here as well as be a source of support for our younger players. Guidetti’s main competition comes in the form of our highest valued player (€900k – €1.6m), the excellently named Ioannis Pittas who is a 26-year-old Cyprus international that has just signed from Apollon Limassol; though fairly level with Guidetti in terms of technical and finishing attributes, he definitely edges him for pace and movement which as I write this makes me wonder should we be aiming to start both as an almost “little & large” combo. Decisions to be made 🤔. That’s the main crux of our first-team in terms of key players – definitely gaps to be filled most notably in the centre of defence, in midfield and on the right-wing which will be our primary focus in our first transfer window. That said, there are a handful of promising youth players here who could also evolve into feasible options if the situation requires it as well as having the potential to develop towards the first team later down the line Youth Players 🚸 In my introductory post, we mentioned that Yasin Ayari is the most recent successful export from AIK after he joined Brighton at the beginning of 2023…
Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotball (Prologue)
I started playing Championship Manager games around the year 1996. After spending countless hours with my brother playing Sensible World of Soccer (which was way ahead of its time as football management simulation games went back then), I discovered Championship Manager 2 at a friend’s 10th birthday party. Within hours we had swapped games (a wise decision seeing as to this day I have never returned it to him), and the rest as we know is history; 27 years later I am still playing what is now Football Manager, racking up more hours than ever before and better still (or worse depending on how you look at it), I have spent the last 5 years producing various content about the game and my own save adventures, be it blogs on my own website (MaddFM.com where we are now), random FM threads on Twitter, written pieces for 5 Star Potential, published content for Football Manager’s official Byline website, random Guinness-fuelled streams over on Twitch or weekly verbal nonsense & FM verbatim on the 5 Star Potential podcast. All in all it’s safe to say I have plenty of experience with the game, not necessarily successful experience but hey, god loves a trier right? As we gear up for Football Manager 2024 and what we expect to be the best and most complete version in the game’s history, I naturally began internally bouncing through various save ideas and potential narratives, and as my mind drifted back to previous saves and versions of the game gone by, I found myself presented with a question for which I was rather unsure of the answer.. Tonton Zola Moukoko. Kim Kallstrom. Kennedy Bakircioglu. Stefan Selaković. Alexander Farnerud. Anders Svensson. Jonas Lundén. Labinot Harbuzi (RIP). All famed and renowned Swedish wonderkids from CM and FM days gone by, a time when Sweden had not that long before finished 3rd at World Cup 1994 and were at the forefront of producing young talent not only in our virtual footballing simulation world but also in real-life where we saw the likes of Henrik Larsson, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and even Freddie Ljungberg burst onto the scene and reach the highest echelons of professional football winning countless trophies at domestic and continental level. Swedish Wonderkids of yesteryear.. A similar predicament can be applied to Swedish club football also. No Swedish team has ever won the European Champions League/European Cup, with Malmö the only team to have ever reached a final all the way back in 1979 when they lost 1-0 to Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest. Only one Swedish team have ever won the Europa League (UEFA Cup) and that was IFK Göteborg (1982 & 1987). While the 80’s and 90’s were peppered with Swedish teams competing in the Champions League and UEFA Cup Group Stages & Knockout Rounds, only 2 teams have made it to the UECL Group Stages since the year 2000 (Helsingborgs – 2000 and Malmö – 2014, 2015 & 2021), and we would need to go back to 1995 to find the last time a Swedish team actually qualified from the Champions League Group Stages (IFK Göteborg again). Overall it’s safe to say that the success of Swedish clubs has greatly declined on the European stage particularly in comparison to years gone by. So what has happened? Of course we have seen some highly talented modern day players emerge in recent times – players such as Dejan Kulusevski, Alexander Isak, Emil Forsberg and Victor Lindelöf who have all risen to play elite level football however outside of these and if we really focus in on Football Manager, I find it hard to recall too many top tier Swedish youth players emerging in comparison to the notorious wonderkids listed earlier (exception: Roony Bardghji, but more on him later), with South America and mainland Europe largely dominating in terms of wonderkid production and newgen development. Hopefully that all changes now. For the first time since I started making Football Manager content, I will be venturing outside of Europe’s Top 7 leagues on a brand new save adventure, with a fresh narrative and a new set of footballing objectives to achieve. The goal is simple – to elevate and return Swedish football back to elite level across four main pillars: Save Objectives 📋 Not strictly a homegrown save but somewhere between that and “Build a Nation” I guess..sounds easy right? All that is left to do now is tell you three important pieces of information: (1) The Club ⚽ Our quest will take place at AIK Fotboll who play their home games at the 50,000 seater Friends Arena in Stockholm, which is also home of the Swedish National team. Founded in 1891, the club has won 12 Swedish League Championships making them the fourth most successful club in the Swedish league behind the aforementioned Malmö, IFK Göteborg and IFK Norrköping. Their last Allsvenskan title came back in 2018, prior to that they were champions in 2009 and 1998 – hopefully we can do better than average one league title every 10 years! In terms of past pupils, the club can count Alexander Isak, Robin Quaison and Johan Mjällby among their former alumni while their most recent successful export was Yasin Ayari who joined Brighton in 2023 for a fee of €4m – our hope is that we can rapidly expand on this in terms of quality and quantity of players produced & developed at the club, and later sold for high transfer fees as they move on to bigger and better things. AIK generally play in either a white or black kit which are currently made by Nike, and they recently released a 132-year special edition jersey which I am finding it very hard not to order right now. [Update: I’ve ordered one]. Why AIK specifically? While I am intrigued by their history, their kits, their ultras fan base and the fact that Alexander Isak started his career there (we all know I’m a Newcastle fan right?) – the inspiration actually came from a chance encounter while on holiday in France (the home of my better half); while drinking wine at a house full of French speakers, I discovered the only other non-French native was a Swedish guy married to the sister of a friend etc – turns out he is a massive Football Manager & AIK fan and as we spoke more about wonderkids and FM saves gone by, his stories of AIK and their history & fan base stuck with me, so here we are! If all goes well we may even fit in an ad-hoc visit to Stockholm for a game before the year is out 👀. (2) The Manager 👔 A new game calls for new ideas, and this year we will do something a bit different to what I have done previously – an alter ego: we will bring in a new (slightly fictional) Swedish rookie manager by the name of Patrik Maddsson to lead our quest and take the reins at AIK Fotball in his native Sweden. Born in Stockholm in 1986, Maddsson was part of the first ever AIK youth team to win the Swedish U19 League in 2004 before his career sadly ended though injury. A combative, tough-tackling defensive midfielder, Maddsson returns to AIK having just completed his UEFA Continental A licence after a number of years overseas in various scouting and academy coaching roles notably in Ireland, France and New Zealand. (3) Save Name 📣 Go hard or go home right? Allsvenskan or Nothing: AIK Fotball – coming to a screen near you 🔜. Thanks for reading. Be sure to drop a follow below and on Twitter for instant updates whenever a new blog post drops; you can also jump in my Discord for offline discussions & sneak previews as well as catching me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast 🎙️.
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – 4
Welcome back – Il Regionnaire continues as we embark on our third season at a fully revolutionised AC Milan squad that now contains only players and staff who were born or produced within 50km of the city of Milan, having finished second in Serie A last season behind neighbours Atalanta to guarantee our return to Champions League football after a yearlong absence caused by our 5th place finish in Season 1 at the Rossoneri. When we last left off, we were heading into the summer transfer window with a glorious €93m transfer budget available, with the obvious caveat that this can only be spent on eligible players for our local-only transfer policy. Add to that the ~€50m we received in mandatory post-loan fees for Ismaël Bennacer and Charles De Ketelaere and we have one hell of an arsenal available as we go to war in the transfer market. By this point we have already snapped up the majority of available Milan-based talent in the likes of Federico Dimarco, Giorgio Scalvini, Caleb Okoli, Nicolo Rovella, Amad Diallo, Musa Barrow and club record signing Cesare Casadei (€56m) whom we have successfully retrained to be our lone striker following his 24-goal haul last season. In terms of players whom we haven’t yet signed and are eligible – we are talking big names and even bigger transfer values. Gianluigi Donnarumma (ex-Milan academy) has just won the Champions League at PSG and is valued over €300m (!); Dejan Kulusevski (ex-Atalanta academy) is thriving at Tottenham valued at over €220m with his 10 goals helping them to a 4th placed league finish, while Alessandro Bastoni (also ex-Atalanta academy) is valued over €130m and has no imminent interest in switching from the blue to the red side of Milan. So – not as easy as one would have hoped in terms of continuing building our band of elite Milanese talents, however one player emerges from our extensive Regionnaire search filter who is definitely of immediate interest, not only based on his transfer value (€90m – €133m) but also based on the fact that he was born in the town of Lecco which just falls within our catchment area, as well as the fact that he is a former AC Milan academy graduate himself. Have you ever heard the tale of the prodigal son? While Rovella did a great job last season as our Anchor in the DM strata alongside Sandro Tonali as the Segundo Volante (Attack), Manuel Locatelli would be a substantial upgrade as well as being highly versatile, and with this Milan squad looking to compete across Serie A, Coppa Italia and Champions League fronts, we most certainly could do with a player of his calibre. Considering Juventus finished 4th last season (2 points behind ourselves), one might think his head could be turned to lure him back home? We agree a €110m fee with €60m paid up front and the rest spread over three seasons – what a f*cking player, the thought of having Locatelli and Tonali in midfield is mouthwatering and well worth doubling our transfer record for…right? 😅 That still leaves us with around €80m to play with so we set about bolstering our squad depth in a couple of other key positions; Centre-Back Giorgio Cittadini arrives from Atalanta for €7m to offer cover for Scalvini, Okoli and Vanheusden, and he is followed by his Atalanta teammate Matteo Ruggeri (€7.5m) who replaces Tomasso Augello as our backup left-back. Further up the pitch we add Irish winger Kevin Zefi (€4m) who leaves Inter after 3 seasons in their youth academy, and he is followed by not one but two former FM wonderkid attackers in the form of Atalanta’s Roberto Piccolli (€7.25m) and ex-Inter graduate Andrea Pinamonti who arrives from Sassuolo for €22.5m. Before we crack into Season 1, there was time for one more slightly unexpected deal. With Donnarumma still pretty much unattainable, we signed Stefano Turati last summer to replace Mike Maignan in goal and watched him have a fairly solid debut season between the sticks. That said, I couldn’t help but have my head turned by another Bergamo product who on paper looks to be a stronger goalkeeper both in terms of shot-stopping and technical ability as a Sweeper Keeper. In a last minute turn of events (literally the week prior to our season opener), we make a somewhat rash decision to sign Marco Carnesecchi for €27m from Atalanta, and even more interestingly Atalanta then return with a €40m bid for Turati to replace him! We end up literally swapping goalkeepers however I am highly confident we have gotten the better deal here as we bank both a better keeper and a €13m profit to show for it 💰. A final point to add is that the individual performances of some of our band of merry Milanese boys have grabbed a lot of outside attention – not only have we done well in terms of incoming signings, but it’s also an achievement that we manage to hold on to some of our key players particularly with the calibre of clubs that come calling during the summer. We manage to fight off interest from the likes of Real Madrid (Barrow), Inter (Pobega), Tottenham (Tonali) and Man Utd (Dimarco) and our ability to retain these players is in itself as good as a new signing when you consider the size and depth of the player pool available to us here at Milan. Squad Goals Our squad is healthy (albeit not full to the brim with superstars). We are now in a position to fill two different XIs of local-only talent if and when needed which will be essential as we compete across multiple fronts this season. Overall it’s safe to say that we are Regionnairing the sh*t out of it in Milan and things are going reasonably well (compared to Northern Boys anyway, if you know you know). Season 3 It’s deja vu for our opening league fixture as we again face and comfortably beat Spezia at home, made even sweeter by debut goals for both Locatelli and Piccoli which help us to a 3-1 victory to start our season on a high in Milan. That sets us on a somewhat of a roll – a quick blip against Brescia (whom we scored 13 against last season 🤷♂️) is soon forgotten as we go on an absolute spree picking up 9 wins in a row and going unbeaten for 19 games which include 14 Serie A fixtures and 5 Champions League ties (let’s not mention the new UECL format 🤮), the highlight of which were hattricks for Cesare Casadei in a 7-0 thrashing of Atletico Madrid in Europe as well as an immense three-goal return from Sandro Tonali in a 5-0 drubbing of Sampdoria, the latter of whom is making a massive case to be my FM23 Player of the Year (#spoilers 👀). Everything starts to click in what is arguably the best run of games I have had for years in Football Manager – despite the increased game frequency and decreased breaks between fixtures, the depth of our squad means the impact is minimal and when one player needs a rest, another is quick to fill in and make a name for themselves in their own right. A prime example of this is Milan-born Roko Simic (son of Milan and Croatia legend Dario who is one of our scouts at the San Siro), a player who we signed as a 19-year-old in Season 1 for depth and has emerged to be a real goal-threat particularly in Europe wherein he has scored 5 goals to date (the lad is also drawing attention in real-life based on his recent performances for Red Bull Salzburg). By the end of November and after 14 league games, AC Milan are TOP OF SERIE A and remarkably have have only conceded 4 goals in 14 games, Carnesecchi is proving to be one hell of a signing with 10 clean sheets not to mention the partnership of Scalvini and Okoli making us impregnable at the back 🔥🔥. December and January aren’t half bad either – wins against Roma and Torino are followed up by slightly stuttery draws against 2nd place Napoli and 3rd place Sassuolo as well as a 1-1 Champions League draw with Crystal Palace who somehow blagged their way to a Europa League win last season to gain a place in the newly formatted group stages (sigh). By the time we reach the end of January, not only are we still top of Serie A after 21 games played, we are also top of the Champions League League Stage (that’s easy to read right?) and following that end of January draw with Atalanta we are met with a very interesting and welcome Steam notification which I honestly think I have never seen before in Football Manager – does that say more about me than the game? I can safely say I have never had an unbeaten season in this game that I have played for over 25 years – might this be the one? Normality is restored – having already qualified for the knockout stages, we travel away to Stamford Bridge for our final league stage game and get trounced by Graham Potter’s (yep) Chelsea side who boast the likes of Marco Asensio and Yeremy Pino alongside stalwarts (in this save anyway) N’Golo Kanté and Romelu Lukaku. That qualification sets us up for a Round of 16 clash with Red Bull Salzburg (who you may remember were involved in our early CL Group Stage exit in Season 1), here’s hoping Chelsea was just a blip in what has been an otherwise near-perfect season. Having won 16 out of 20 Serie A games up to this point, we go on to draw 1-1 at home to lowly Frosinone before then losing to rivals Lazio, and suddenly our weaknesses are exploited for all to see as we stumble to further draws with Inter and Spezia. 9 points dropped blows the league wide open and opens the door for our Neapolitan friends to draw level with us on 56 points apiece with 25 games played, staggering considering we were 8 points clear of them just 10 games ago..does anyone know the Italian for bottle job? How better to try and regain some form than a trip away to Juventus in Turin? Let’s not forget we beat them 7-0 on the final day of last season… Remarkably we pick up a 3-0 win away at the Allianz Stadium (nice to see youngster Roko Simic on the scoresheet again, one to watch for the future) and this is a vital win as we now look to keep up with Napoli whereby previously it was ourselves setting the pace. That victory gets us back to winning ways in the league through March where we also have a big scare in the Champions League; having lost 3-1 away to Red Bull Salzburg in the first leg, we scrape through with a 114th minute winner from Andrea Pinamonti to make it 6-5 on aggregate and set us up for a quarter final draw with Bayern Munich! We are back to keeping clean sheets again and once more we need to credit a lot of it to our goalkeeper Marco Carnesecchi who by now has also been called up to the Italy national squad albeit with that man Gianluigi Donnarruma still standing in his way of the #1 jersey. If he keeps going like this, manager Stefano Pioli will surely have a big decision to make 👀. TYPICAL. The Football Manager gods are back to run the rule on our progress as we lose our star man for at least a month, at a…
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – 3.2
🚨 WARNING – THIS BLOG CONTAINS MANY MANY REFERENCES TO CESARE CASADEI’S GREATNESS 🚨 Hello again 👋. Welcome back to Milan – a place where one of it’s longest-term residents are going through one of the biggest transformations a football club has ever witnessed as we convert AC Milan to a domestic/local-only club culture and transfer policy where only players & staff born/produced within 50km of the city are permitted to sign for and play for the club. If this is all new to you, feel free to jump back to the start and pick up from there. In my last post we detailed all of our incoming and outgoing transfer activity, wherein after one season (where we finished 5th in Serie A), we have successfully offloaded all non-Milan personnel (e.g. the likes of Rafael Leao, Fikayo Tomori, Theo Hernandez & Mike Maignan) and replaced them with eligible players from our 50km catchment area including the likes of Federico Dimarco, Giorgio Scalvini, Nicolo Rovella, Amad Diallo, Musa Barrow and Cesare Casadei. That means we head into Season 2 with a fully localised squad for the first time in this save adventure as we gear up for our opening fixture at home to Spezia. As mentioned, what’s interesting here (and as discussed on recent 5 Star Potential podcast episodes), we have a lack of forward options within our target player range with a scarcity of “out and out” strikers hailing from the Milan region, so we make an executive decision to retrain Cesare Casadei as a striker having originally signed him to play as a #10 but the emergence of Tommaso Pobega means we can afford to deploy him further forward. That means, a large portion of the success and survival of this save rests on us taking a gamble by retraining a player to become our main goalscoring threat. Decision Making 20 by me right? Season 2 🚀 We start rather well even though one could argue we are given a very easy opening round of fixtures, 4 wins from 6 games and as you can see we earn ourselves a highly impressive Europa League victory away to Man Utd at Old Trafford courtesy of my man Giorgio Scalvini, who headed past his former colleague Mike Maignan to give us our first win in a group which also contains Greek side AEK Athens and Ludogorets Razgrad of Bulgaria. What you may also notice is that although we have played 6 games and scored 8 goals, none of these have come from Cesare Casadei in his new role despite the fact that he started all 6 games up front. Granted it takes a while to fully retrain a player in a new position however I still remain baffled tthe lad hasn’t opened his account yet. After two more games (a 1-0 win over Cagliari and someh how a 3-2 defeat to AIK Athens), we decide to make a small change which is to switch Casadei from a False 9 to an Advanced Forward, ultimately making the call to stop him coming deep to bring others into play, and have him fully committing to lead the line as our #9 and playing off the shoulder accordingly. Go hard or go home right? AC Milan vs Roma 📍 San Siro 📅 Sunday 8th October 2023 🗣️ It’s 2nd vs 3rd today as MaddFM’s rejuvenated Milan side welcome a Roma side managed by Rossoneri legend Gennaro Gattuso after he replaced José Mourinho last summer in the Italian capital. New signing Adama Traoré starts on the right hand side for the Capitoline alongside Dybala, Kluivert and Abraham, while on the opposition side 18-year-old Valentin Carboni replaces the injured Amad Diallo in an otherwise unchanged Milan line-up. 8 games and still no goals as yet for club record signing Cesare Casadei, with Musa Barrow, Tommaso Pobega and Sandro Tonali all on 2 goals each in the league so far this season. Will today be the day? 0′ – Roma kick off proceedings today in the San Siro. 5′ – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Llorente) for a rash challenge on Pobega 15′ – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Cristante) for a foul on Tonali 27′ – GOAL FOR MILAN! ⚫🔴 He’s finally done it, Casadei with his first ever goal for AC Milan! Dimarco’s inswinging free-kick is met by the head of Casadei to beat Patricio on the far post. 1-0! 33′ – GOAL FOR ROMA! 🟠🔴 Dybala with the equaliser!! The Agentinian takes it around Turati and slots it home, instant reply from Roma and it’s 1-1!! 40′ – GOAL FOR MILAN! ⚫🔴 I don’t believe it, Casadei has bagged his second to make it 2-1 Milan! A ball over the top from Rovella is hit first time by Casadei on his weaker side, lovely finish. 44′ – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Pobega) for a challenge on Dybala 47′ – Half Time 🏁 Milan with the narrowest of leads following that Casadei brace, but Roma are very much still in this game. 50′ – GOAL FOR MILAN! ⚫🔴 Pobega makes it three!! Calabria is the architect as he threads a ball through for Pobega to slide past the onrushing Patricio..3-1! 65′ – Penalty to Milan!! Karsdrop is adjudged to have fouled Barrow in the box and the referee awards Milan with a penalty!! Will be interesting to see who takes this one, Tonali is usually Milan’s penalty taker but Casadei is on a hat-trick.. 65′ – Yellow Card! 🟨 (Karsdrop) for that foul on Musa Barrow 65′ – GOAL FOR MILAN! ⚫🔴 Casadei steps up and smashes the ball past Patricio, and it’s a perfect hattrick for the young Italian!! That’s surely the game wrapped up now. 90′ – There will be 4 minutes added on here in the San Siro. 94′ – FULL-TIME 🏁. The final whistle blows and it’s the Milan fans who are singing as their side romp home to a 4-1 victory with a glorious hattrick from Cesare Casadei. What a moment, and perhaps a sign of things to come for Milan this season? Back to the studio.. Well well well. To say we weren’t expecting that is an understatement. Having heard @FridayNightFM also wax lyrical about Casadei playing as a #10 in his Juventus save, I had concerns that he just wouldn’t fit the mould as a striker, however the switch from F9 to AF appears to have initially made a huge difference but only time will tell. Maybe I’m not actually as bad at this game as they say I am.. That takes the pressure off Casadei who along with Pobega and Barrow start to absolutely bang for us at Milan. Pobega in the #10 role as a Trequartista has been a revelation considering he was originally our backup DM for Sandro Tonali, Barrow’s output as an Inside Forward (Left) has made Milan fans forget that Rafael Leão ever even wore the famous black and red of the Rossoneri. The impact of this trio culminated in a 7-1 win away to Brescia in which the latter two both bagged hattricks, and bar a defeat at home to Atalanta, we make it all the way to the end of December with a near 100% record which puts us 3rd in the league and also sees us qualify for the Europa League Knockout Stage after we complete a double over Man Utd, you love to see it. “Il Sogno Impossible” (The Impossible Dream) December also brings about another noteworthy news item in our inbox..some might call it, a Christmas miracle…. Without doubt the best Intake Preview I have ever had in Football Manager – albeit with no striker included, the one position in which we are desperate to see some quality emerge from the Milan region!! We of course have to take it with a pinch of salt as FM has a habit of making promises it can’t keep, however this bodes extremely well for the longevity of this save especially as we are considering carrying this save on into FM24 as part of the new save carry-over feature 👀. Path to Green, Neck & Neck and the Casadei Show We kick off 2024 with the highlight fixture of the year: the Derby della Madonnina, AC Milan vs Inter Milan, arch-rivals in the same home. If you haven’t forgotten, we had to let Olivier Giroud go at the end of his contract in order to satisfy our local-only rules, but little did we know he wouldn’t go far as he signed for the blue and black side of the city – this one is personal 💪. Despite having Giroud leading their line alongside Lautaro Martinez, goals from Musa Barrow and Cesare Casadei seal a 2-0 victory for the red side of Milan, and this sets about a chain reaction of sorts which sees Casadei score 13 goals across 14 games, and shy of a narrow 3-2 defeat by Atalanta, we pick up 11 wins and 2 draws in a run which sees us not only dispose of Rangers in the Europa League Knockout Round, but also close the gap and overtake Inter to go level at the top of Serie A alongside our aforementioned neighbours in Bergamo after 26 games played. Wait, are we in a title race?? Not only are we playing some beautiful football, scoring freely and looking rock solid in defence – the individual performances by some of these Milan-based boys are out of this world, most evident as we again thrash Brescia 6-0 (that’s 13-1 over both games this season) in a match where our front three of Barrow, Diallo and Casadei did this: We have entered March – you want to see what our Youth Intake looks like right? Not quite the 5 x A rated wonderkids we were led to believe, however in Pellechia (GK) and Chiricallo (DC) we have two of the most exciting young defensive assets in Italian football, while I am also quite excited about Luca Consigli (AML) and ANOTHER Irish left-back (see Cian Foy from last seasons intake here) in the form of Blake Fraher. Overall a very promising intake should we proceed as planned in carrying this save into FM24. 12 Games a Save From almost getting the sack last season to mounting a title challenge just 9 months later. Despite all the upheaval and chaos selling our best players and bringing in a band of local boys to pick up the pieces, things have clicked and improved as the season has progressed and suddenly we find ourselves smack bang in a battle for the Scudetto trophy. March goes reasonably well aside from a narrow defeat away to Roma, revenge for the Casadei hattrick I guess. 3 more league wins and we remain 2nd with 30 games played, just one point behind neighbours Atalanta. We also interestingly faced Celtic in the Europa League Round of 16 having beaten Rangers in the last round, and the Scottish double is completed which tees us up for a European Quarter Final – more on that in a minute.. There is just one thing to call out though which may slightly impact our end-of-season run-in..just slightly… 4 of our last 5 games are against teams who along with us make up the Serie A Top 6 after 26 games played. Never mind we have to go away to Atalanta, we then travel to Naples before facing Inter, Lazio and a final-day clash with Juventus?! Yeah thanks Football Manager, like the game isn’t hard enough 😅. Atalanta are a cheat code in FM23. It’s almost laughable – whether it’s the outlandish tactics of the roguish Gian Piero Gasperini or the overpowered-ness of some of their individual talent, we just cannot seem…
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – 3.1
Welcome back to Italy where the Regionnaire save continues as we proceed with transitioning AC Milan to a local-only club culture and transfer policy in Football Manager 2023. When we last left off, we had narrowly missed out on Champions League qualification on the last day of the season, finishing 5th in our first Serie A campaign at the helm of the Rossoneri which all in all was a decent finish considering we had already sold the likes of Fikayo Tomori, Theo Hernandez, Rafael Leão and Ante Rebic as part of our Regionnaire project. The board didn’t seem to be in agreement however; having earlier been knocked out of our Champions League group, showdown talks were held but eventually they agreed to trust the process and give us more time to prove our worth at the San Siro. That takes us into the Summer 2023 Transfer Window with a €62m budget however with one important decision having been made: we will spend the next 3 months completely overhauling the squad until the only players contracted to the club are those who were born or developed within 50km of the city of Milan – so rather than wait two seasons as was the original plan, we will kick off Season 2 with a fully “Regionnaired” squad and backroom staff. That means we have a hell of a lot of work to do, starting with selling all remaining non-local assets including the likes of Ismaël Bennacer, Alexis Saelemaekers and Mike Maignan. It’s going to be a busy summer… Transfers Out 👋 In real life, Sandro Tonali is said to be Milan’s record sale after his €70m move to Newcastle, just pipping the €68m fee they attained from Real Madrid for Kaka way back in 2009. After that the fees start to get considerably lower, so one would imagine that the €65m we received from the sale of Mike Maignan to Manchester United will largely please most fans considering Milan paid €16m for him just 12 months ago. He is followed out the door by Alexis Saelemaekers (€50m), who joins former teammate Rafael Leão at PSG who themselves have been busy picking up the likes of Evanilson and Thiago Almada in this window. Next on the chopping block are defenders Pierre Kalulu (Arsenal – €22m) & Malick Thiaw (€10m – Union Berlin), while we raise over €30m through the sales of Krunic, Adli, Messias, Florenzi and Origi who is simply awful in FM23. Pain As the end of the window approaches we are left with just two first-team players on the books for whom we are struggling to command any form of reasonable transfer fee. Despite repeat interest from Man Utd and Newcastle, Ismaël Bennacer doesn’t attract any bids with the latter opting for another Regionnaire-eligible player in the form of Franck Kessié instead; after several persistent attempts, we manage to secure a deadline day loan for Bennacer to Atletico Madrid with a mandatory fee of €45m payable at the end of the season; we take a hit on his wages but it will be worth it once we can offload him permanently. Charles De Ketelaere also proves to be equally difficult to find a new home for with most clubs not willing to come close to his €54k p/w salary; it takes us all the way to deadline day to seal a similar loan move to Roma (now led by Gennaro Gattuso after they sacked José Mourinho so take from that what you will) – they will pay €15m to make it a permanent move next season. Time to say goodbye… There is one set of final farewells to be made which warrants a paragraph on today’s blog post. The end of the 2022/2023 season sees the departures of not one but two club legends in the form of Olivier Giroud and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. We opted not to renew Giroud’s contract knowing that he has no future with us in this save (a tough decision after he scored 25 league goals last season), and he remarkably signs for rivals Inter Milan on a free transfer – a knife through the heart of Rossoneri fans 💔. He is followed out the door by that man Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who was injured for most of the season and finally hangs up his boots at the ripe old age of 41 years old. Relief! That means we have finally completed a full clear-out of our squad with the likes of Sandro Tonali, Davide Calabria, Matteo Gabbia and Tommaso Pobega the only players that remain from the original Milan squad we inherited at the start of this save. This brings our overall transfer income to €178m for the summer and gives us the bones of €250m to spend rebuilding this squad accordingly. Transfers In 🤝 Unfortunately some of the biggest-name local-born / locally-produced players remain unattainable for another while yet – the likes of Manuel Locatelli and Dejan Kulusevski both signing permanent deals with Juventus and Tottenham respectively following successful loan deals, while Alessandro Bastoni (€142m-€191m) and Gianluigi Donnarumma (€326m-€355m!!) are simply too expensive to even consider approaching at this stage in the save. We had identified GK, LCB, DM, AMR, AMC and STC as the main positions in need of filling, and that’s exactly what we did. Goalkeeper – Stefano Turati & Michele Di Gregorio The departures of Mike Maignan and Denis Vasquez mean we need not one but two goalkeepers, and as we were unable to decide which would be first choice we end up signing Turati (€20m – Sassuolo) and Di Gregorio (€1.5m – Monza) who are both Milan-born and can happily compete for the #1 jersey. Central Defender – Caleb Okoli & Zinho Vanheusen Without an obvious left-sided centre-back available in the market (apart from Bastoni, sigh), we decide that Scalvini will move across to the LCB role having spent most of last season training him on his weaker foot. That opens the door for not one but two right-sided defenders to arrive in the form of Caleb Okoli (€20m) who has been in the Atalanta system since age 14, and Zinho Vanheusden (€12m) who joined the Inter academy at aged 16 but never made a first-team appearance either side of spells at Standard Liége, Genoa and AZ Alkmaar. Defensive Midfielder – Nicolò Rovella & Matteo Pessina Having let go of Bennacer and knowing that we generally play with two players in the DM strata (an Anchor and a Segundo Volante), we need to not only replace Bennacer but add quality and depth to ensure we are covered across all competitions next season. Tonali and Pobega featured predominantly in the Volante role last year but looking at Pobega’s impressive goal output (along with the eligible AMC options available in the market), it’s likely we will deploy him in a more advanced role next season which frees up space for two defensive midfielders to join the ranks: Segrate-born Nicolò Rovella (€12m) who signs from Juventus to be our likely first choice for the Anchor role alongside Tonali, and Italian international Matteo Pessina (€6.25m), who arrives from Atalanta after a season-long loan at hometown club Monza. Attacking Midfielder (Right) – Amad Diallo Replacing Saelemaekers was never going to be an easy task, especially with a seemingly scarce flow of local-born wingers available on the market. The aforementioned Kulusevski is a long-term target for this role, however in the meantime we turn to his former Atalanta team-mate Amad Diallo who joined the Bergamo academy aged just 13 and subsequently rose through the ranks to join Manchester United, albeit struggling to break into the first-team side after loan spells at Rangers and Sunderland. Their loss is our gain, it takes €34m but Diallo looks the perfect fit to unlock the Inverted Winger role on that right-hand side with last-season’s young signing Valentin Carboni offering competition and backup in the same position. Attacking Midfielder (Centre) – Cesare Casadei As discussed on the 5 Star Potential podcast, we have been looking at Chelsea’s former Inter academy graduate Cesare Casadei for many months now with a view of signing him to be retrained as our #10 at Milan. In real-life, Casadei originally operated in a slightly deeper role however he has shown his attacking prowess not least at the U20 World Cup where he scored 7 goals and won both the Golden Ball and Golden Boot awards as he helped Italy go all the way to the final only to lose out to a late Uruguay winner. This combined with his FM attributes make want to deploy him in a much more advanced role (16 Off the Ball, 14 Finishing, 14 Composure, 15 Long Shots, 14 First Touch & 14 Technique 🤤), however that’s not the only option we have for Casadei if we decide to deploy Pobega as the #10 in this side (more to follow below 👀). It takes a big fee but €54m later, Cesare Casadei is officially an AC Milan player 🔥. Striker – Federico Bonazzoli ?? Who? My thoughts exactly. Remarkably, for a region that has produced the likes of Giuseppe Signori, Giuseppe Meazza, Marco Delvecchio and even Mario Balotelli, the volume and quality of local-born / locally-produced forwards is extremely thin at this moment in time. Potential options include Andrea Pinamonti and Andrea Petagna however both completed post-loan deals to Sassuolo and Monza respectively, while the likes of Patrick Cutrone and Roberto Piccoli haven’t really come close to their earlier FM potential and simply aren’t good enough for the club. That leave us with..Federico Bonazzoli, the former Inter Milan academy player who joined the Nerazurri at age 7 and was very much hyped up to be the next Christian Vieri, having played and scored at every youth level for Italy from U15 all the way to U21 level. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to make the grade at Senior level for Inter, featuring just 5 times either side of a host of mixed-success loan spells before eventually making a permanent move to Salernitana in 2022. Though not exactly rocking the goalscoring charts in real-life or in FM, his attributes are actually quite decent for an old-school centre-forward and €3.2m is all it takes to bring him in permanently as an option. Why do I say option? Well – now that we have seen all that the market has to offer, a big decision is made which could make or break this season. While we toyed with the idea of a Strikerless formation which I have never used in Football Manager, I can’t get away from the idea that Cesare Casadei could potentially be retrained and deployed as a Striker if given the right support and guidance, which would at least give us another option should Bonazzoli prove to be unable to score regularly at this level. We top off the window with a few signings to bolster our squad depth (Raoul Bellanova, Filippo Mané, Roko Simic, Kevin Zefi to name a few) and all in all, it’s has been a pretty solid transfer window considering our save rules and Regionnaire ambitions for this AC Milan side. AC Milan Playing Squad – 2023/2024 Goalkeepers: Stefano Turati, Michele Di Gregorio Defenders: Davide Calabria (Captain), Giorgio Scalvini, Federico Dimarco, Caleb Okoli, Zinho Vanheusden, Matteo Gabbia, Tommaso Augello, Raoul Bellanova, Filippo Mané. Midfielders: Sandro Tonali (Vice Captain), Nicolò Rovella, Matteo Pessina, Cesare Casadei, Tommaso Pobega, Roberto Gagliardini, Samuele Vignato, Amad Diallo, Alessio Zerbin. Forwards: Musa Barrow, Federico Bonazzoli, Manolo Gabbiadini, Valentin Carboni. The big question remains – will the board be happy? Will this side be good enough to challenge at the top of Serie A next season? At least one fan thinks so… Thanks for reading – be like Liam 😄. Paul. Be sure to drop a follow on Twitter for updates,…
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – 2.2
Two blogs in two days – you are welcome! When we last left off, we were sitting in 2nd place in Serie A after 22 games in our first season at the helm of AC Milan as we attempt to transition the club to a local-only club culture and playing squad within two seasons. The bad news however (in addition to being knocked out of the Champions League Group Stages) is that our star man and Segundo Volante extraordinaire Sandro Tonali has been ruled out for two months with a thigh injury meaning he will miss all of February and March, a crucial period as we look to continue our good form and secure at least a Top 4 finish which would be more than acceptable having already offloaded a number of key players as part of our process in bringing in players who were born/produced within 50km of the city of Milan. The media are keen to know – who will we look to to fill the void left by Tonali’s absence? Enter 23-year-old Tommaso Pobega, signed by the Milan academy at age 14 and who in FM23 looks to be a solid and versatile midfielder who can hopefully fill Tonali’s boots and continue the positive influence that the Segundo Volante role has offered us so far in this save. AC Milan vs Salernitana – Sunday 5th March 2023 🗣️ “Milan come into this Serie A fixture having gone unbeaten for the whole month of February, however are without two key players with both Sandro Tonali and Musa Barrow missing through injury. Manager MaddFM has turned to Milan academy graduate to fill the void left by Tonali, while veteran forward Manolo Gabbiadini gets the nod ahead of Charles De Ketelaere on the left of a front-three that has impressed all season for the Rossoneri”. 0′ – Giroud gets us started here at the magnificent San Siro with a flood of red and black surrounding us 4′ – GOAL FOR MILAN! (Bennacer) – lovely work down the right hand side by Calabria who crosses it in for Bennacer to smash home. 7′ – GOAL FOR MILAN!! (Pobega) – Saelemaekers delivers a dangerous cross and it’s Pobega who heads in after a clever run from outside the box. 23′ – GOAL FOR MILAN!! (Giroud) – Pobega intercepts brilliantly in midfield and threads a perfect ball through to the Frenchman who calmly slides it into the bottom left corner past Ochoa in goal. 37′ – GOAL SALERNITANA!! (Candreva) – the ball is hoofed over the top by Vilhena and Candreva is on hand to smash the ball past the helpless Maignan in goal. Game on! 43′ – GOAL MILAN!! (Diaz) – Pobega the architect again! The midfielder spots the run of Brahim Diaz and again threads through a pinpoint pass for Diaz to finish calmly past Ochoa. It’s surely all over now? And that’s how it finished. We made 5 changes early in the second half and Salernitana did well to keep it at 4-1, a goal and two assists for Pobega gives him a 9.2 Man of the Match rating. Granted our opposition were poor but this gives Pobega a huge boost of confidence for the games ahead. We hoped he would simply cover in Tonali’s absence but we were wrong – the lad seizes the opportunity with both hands and picks up two goals & four assists in 8 games with a 7.36 average rating, and not only is he more than filling in for Tonali, his performances suddenly attract interest from the likes of Man Utd, Inter and Atalanta..NOT ON MY WATCH SON. It’s hard to tell whether it’s the players (i.e. Tonali and Pobega) who are shining for Milan, or if it is indeed this glorious Segundo Volante role which is proving to be so highly effective in FM23 this year. They are constantly on the ball or involved in breaking up play, recycling possession, making defence-splitting runs and ultimately getting into excellent positions in and around the box, and the results are clearly evident despite it being a “defensive” midfield role. I would love to hear if you have had any similar experiences with it – drop a comment below or hit me up on Twitter, this certainly needs further discussion 🔥. Death, taxes and the end of season slump.. Unfortunately our league form stutters as we see injuries picked up by Dimarco (3 weeks), Brahim Diaz (2 weeks) and Mike Maignan (3 weeks) which takes its toll as we find ourselves short of quality depth and cover in key positions, a natural yet very much unwanted symptom of the Regionnaire transfer model. A 6-2 drubbing by Roma (José Mourinho is a tyrant in Football Manager) followed by defeats against Juventus, Atalanta and Fiorentina see us drop back to 4th in the league just a point ahead of Napoli in 5th, and suddenly our Champions League hopes are on the brink with just 4 games remaining as we gear up for 4 tough games against Lazio (h), Inter (a), Udinese (a) and Torino (h). This league is tighter than a duck’s arse and I fear the board may have something to say if we get knocked out of the Champions League and then miss out on qualification in the same season… Regionn-heirs We’ve spent quite some time bolstering our scouting and youth backroom teams, filling them with local-born staff members in the hope that this will have a positive influence on our Youth Intake and unearth a true Milan-born Wonderkid for the black and red side of the city…. Wouldn’t you know it – we are told not only of a Golden Generation, but that our star youth prospect is of course…IRISH. Those of you who have following my nonsense for some time will remember that I once spent 9 seasons in Germany in FM20 trying to produce an Irish wonderkid before eventually having one come through, and now while doing everything to focus on local prospects, our so called “diamond” aka Cian Foy hails all the way from the village of Glengoole (pronounced “Glen-gooly”) in the obscurity of rural County Tipperary!! He of course is eligible for our save rules (as a local/academy produce) but f*ck me the Newgen gods have a sick sense of humour 😅. Not a bad player though..👀 The Final Stretch 🏁 Four games to secure a Top 4 finish and keep the wolves from the door so we can continue our mission and spend the summer finishing the demolition of this squad to fully migrate to a local-only playing squad and backroom team. We are almost back to full-strength which will be badly needed with two of these games against teams currently above us in the league – it’s now or never for the boys in red and black, #SempreMilan. Game 1 – Lazio (h) Game 2 – Inter (a) Game 3 – Udinese (a) We overturn a 2-0 deficit to go 3-2 up against Lazio (Pobega strikes again) only for my new FM nemesis Ciro Immobile to equalise with 14 mins remaining. We then face arch rivals Inter who know they will be crowned champions with a win, and win they did as we succumbed to a 3-0 defeat and force us to watch them lift the Scudetto trophy for the 20th time in their history. Thankfully we get back to winning ways away to Udinese with Olivier Giroud bagging a hat-trick on what will be his penultimate game for AC Milan with his contract up in the summer. The outcome of those 3 games is that with just one game remaining, we find ourselves still in 5th place in Serie A and crucially one point behind 4th place Lazio who are of course now managed by Stefano Pioli, the man we replaced at the start of the season. This means we have to pick up all 3 points against Torino on the final day of the season and hope that Lazio drop points away to Empoli who themselves need a win to have any chance of avoiding relegation. It’s possible right? AC Milan vs Torino – Sunday 6th June 2023 🗣️ “It’s an emotional day in Milan as Olivier Giroud takes to the field in what will be his final game in the black & red of the Rossoneri before leaving as a free agent this summer, along with substitute Zlatan Ibrahimovic who also walks out at the San Siro for the last time as an AC Milan player – what a legacy these two leave behind them. Despite Tomasso Pobega’s impressive run of form, Manager MaddFM opts for Sandro Tonali in midfield in what is a full-strength Milan side who know that only 3 points will give them any chance at securing Champions League football next season, whilst relying on Lazio to drop points at relegation-threatened Empoli. If rumours are to be believed, anything but a win and the Milan board may reconsider MaddFM’s future at the club. Torino also have high stakes to play for as they sit in 6th place level with Juventus, just one point clear of Fiorentina with all three sides vying for those two coveted European places. What a day of football we have on our hands here!”
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – 2.1
Well well well. It’s been a while. Too long. My apologies. How are you? Still playing FM23? I am, and though it’s been a while since Part 1 dropped, this save is still very much alive and here we are to bring you through all the important events of Season 1 as they unfold in what will be a two part update as quite a lot has happened! If you haven’t already, do check out the Introductory post for this series which lays out all the rules and objectives for the save, as well as the thread below which summarises the building blocks of this latest FM23 save adventure. (1) “Regionnairing“ A reminder that the goal of the Regionnaire challenge is to transition a club to a local-only club culture and transfer strategy – meaning all players and staff must ultimately hail from the surrounding region in order to be eligible to sign and play for the club (similar to the real-life Athletic Club Bilbao). We start by locking in some key staff roles for this save. Three in particular are worth telling you about – our Assistant Manager, Head of Youth Development and Chief Scout who arguably have the most influence when it comes to our efforts at signing and producing the best talent from within our 50km catchment area. Milan-born Antonio Manicone replaces Giacomo Murelli as Assistant Manager having served as Vladimir Petkovic’s #2 at Lazio, Switzerland and Bordeaux over the past 10 seasons. Como-born Giovanni Invernizzi arrives as our Head of Youth Development following relatively successful spells at Sampdoria and Spezia, and he is joined by fellow Como native Massimo Notari who arrives as Chief Scout having previously served as a scout at Milan under Massimiliano Allegri before moving on to be Chief Scout at Monaco and Parma respectively. With these key positions filled, it’s time to talk about transfers. AC Milan start FM23 with a €20m transfer budget, and as specified in our save objectives, our mission is to transition the club to a fully local-only playing squad within two seasons at the helm. We of course have some big assets here in the form of Rafael Leao, Theo Hernandez, Mike Maignan, Ismael Bennacer and Alexis Saelemaekers (all of whom will need to be sold), so I’m hoping money won’t be a major issue in terms of signings going forward however we will need to strike a balance in terms of the timing of our Ins and Outs to ensure we don’t self-implode before the save has even begun. What doesn’t help is that a vast number of our desired eligible signings (born or produced within 50km of Milan) are already out on loan at the start of FM23, so we will need to be patient in terms of buying and selling over the course of these first two seasons in our efforts to build the ultimate Regionnaire squad at AC Milan. First things first – we need to raise some funds. At the start of the save there are already a number of big clubs sniffing around some of our bigger names, and it’s not long before an offer comes in that we can’t really refuse: We tried to push for more but City were quite rigid, so we manage to get €60m up front which will go a long way towards signing what will be Theo’s replacement and hopefully our Left Wing-Back for many years to come seeing as he is Milan-born; Federico Dimarco arrives from rivals Inter Milan for €36m, a big signing who is not far off Theo’s quality, and which leaves us with €24m additional funds to reinvest elsewhere in the squad. The next big departure is an interesting one and a player that I wasn’t originally planning to sell (yet) until the bid itself came in. Real Madrid come knocking at the door with €42.5m, so Fikayo Tomori gets added to our big-name departures list as he earns a big money move to the Bernabeu. Boy oh boy are we demolishing this squad. The pressure is on to replace Tomori with only Simon Kjaer and Malick Thiaw our first-choice centre-back options. Luckily the Milan/Lombardy region has been quite fruitful in terms of defensive production with the likes of Scalvini, Bastoni, Acerbi and Caleb Okoli all eligible for our local-only transfer policy. It takes a big bid but we manage to get it over the line to make Giorgio Scalvini our second big signing of this Regionnaire save 🔥. We proceed to bolster the squad with another 6 players who were born or developed in the region, and with that we are ready to kick off the 2022/2023 season at Associazione Calcio Milan 🚀. (2) The Tactic In real-life, Newcastle fans (including myself) have just fallen in love with that man Sandro Tonali who arrived for a club record €70m fee and already is showing his worth with a debut goal and sensational performance in a 5-1 thrashing of Aston Villa. However, in this save universe and with the FM23 Winter Update, Tonali is still a Milan player and considering he was born and raised down the road (as well as being a lifelong Milan fan), we will look to build this team around him and to do so we will deploy him in a role which I have rarely used previously in Football Manager: We will play Bennacer as an Anchor beside him and hope to unleash Sandro’s creative talent and ability to shuttle the ball up the pitch and be an engine for this team, with a focus on keeping possession and moving the ball quickly through each phase. Dimarco (WB Attack) and Calabria (IWB Attack) will be essential as we look to dominate and run at teams, Diaz in the 10 will hopefully be a focal point for Tonali’s defence-splitting passes, Leao and Saelemaekers cutting inside will hopefully overload the opposition defence, while Olivier Giroud will simply be Olivier Giroud and hey, why the hell shouldn’t he be. (3) Serie A up 📈 We open with an away defeat to real-life 2023 Serie A Champions Napoli courtesy of that man Victor Osimhen, before going on to win 5 on the trot and staying unbeaten until an away defeat to Atalanta around the end of October. By the time the infamous 2022 Qatar World Cup arrives, we find ourselves 4th in the league with rivals Inter Milan taking an early league lead into the new year. (4) Champions League down 📉 Our Champions League Group draw is relatively kind as we gear up to face Atletico Madrid, Red Bull Salzburg and Trabzonspor, all teams who one would think are quite beatable, right? One win and three straight defeats sees us not only get KNOCKED OUT of the Champions League, but finish bottom of the group meaning we even miss out on a Europa League place – it’s not supposed to happen like this…🤦♂️ The Volante Love Affair ❤️🖤 We need to talk about Sandro Tonali.. This Segundo Volante role is purring. Despite being associated as a more defensive role which of course sits in the DM strata on the tactics screen, what we see in-game is that Tonali is EVERYWHERE. It’s almost like a mixed hybrid of a Defensive Midfielder, Roaming Playmaker and CM-At all in one, whereby depending on the circumstances, Tonali adapts to whatever is needed and seems to morph into multiple roles throughout the 90 minutes both defensively and in attack. By January Tonali has racked up 4 goals, 2 assists, 3 POMs as well as being in the Top 10 in Serie A for Pass Completion (88% – 6th), Progressive Passes per 90 (9.5 – 7th), Distance Covered per 90 (14.4km – 8th) and Average Rating (7.34 – 8th). The Rafael Leão dilemma At the start of the season, Rafael Leão was asking for an improved contract with his current deal expiring in Summer 2024, however we decided against offering it in case we needed to sell him to fund early deals for some of our other local born/raised targets (e.g. the likes of Bastoni, Cristante, Okoli etc). The problem that followed was that by January, Leão was deeply unhappy but equally refusing to sign a new deal which meant that with less than 18 months left on his contract, his value was starting to deteriorate and we were faced with a predicament: sell him now and try to raise as much cash as possible, or keep him until the summer at which point we either then sell (for a likely lower fee) or hope he renews his contract in order to get that fee back up? Decisions, decisions, decisions…. After much deliberation and trying to coax maximum offers out of PSG and Man City, €50m is the highest fee we can command and even though it is ridiculously low for player of his quality, we decide to sell him for three reasons: 1. Dynamics – we can’t be having such an influential player causing havoc in the dressing room 2. Revolution – I am tempted to complete the full squad overhaul/non-Milan exodus before Season 2 even begins 3. Succession – Leão’s successor is already here in the form of Musa Barrow, and so far this season there hasn’t been too much between the two and in fact, Barrow’s stats almost outweigh Leão’s in the same role (Leão – 3 goals & 3 assists from 10 games; Barrow – 4 goals & 2 assists from 12 games) So, it’s goodbye to Rafael Leão with €50m in the bank, we swallow our pride and move on 🚀. Back to league matters.. Now that Germany have won the World Cup and everyone had a wonderful time, our focus is back on Serie A to see if we can continue our good form and achieve a Top 4 finish which will be essential not only in terms of revenue and attracting some of our top targets, but also to ensure the board don’t get antsy having already upset them with that glorious early exit from the Champions League. With the exception of a 3-0 demolition by Lazio, we are flying again with Olivier Giroud finding some very welcome goalscoring form, Tonali continuing his excellent performance levels, Musa Barrow making the Milenese fans forget Leao ever existed, and we even see an absolute howitzer of debut goal for young Samuele Vignato, an early Goal of the Season contender if there ever was one. 22 games in and by the end of February we are flying high in 2nd place, 7 points behind rivals Inter who somehow have conceded just 7 goals and had 21 clean sheets courtesy of André Onana!! Things are going well in Milan considering we have already let go of the likes of Theo, Tomori and Leao..Project Regionnaire is well underway and with 13 games to go, we are set up for a cracking end-of-season run-in, not to mention one hell of a summer transfer window if we can continue transitioning Milan to a fully local-only playing squad..what can possibly go wrong? That’s all for Part 1 of this Season 1 update – Part 2 will follow soon 👌. Thanks for reading, Paul. If you are enjoying this, be sure to drop a follow on Twitter for updates, jump in my Discord or Slack for offline discussions & sneak previews as well as catching me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast
Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story – I
The Regionnaire is a save challenge created by yours truly in FM22, when I took over a pre-Saudi owned Newcastle United and converted them into a North-East only football club wherein all players and staff had to be born and/or raised in the North-East of England, similar to the well-known Athletic Club de Bilbao setup in Northern Spain where only players with Basque nationality are permitted to sign and play for the club. That save became known as Northern Boys and from there the Football Manager Regional Challenge aka “The Regionnaire” was born, whereby the idea is to take over a club within a specific region and transition them to a domestic / local footballing model – with a key focus on signing prodigal sons of the region to return home and play for their local club, developing young players through your academy and simultaneously boosting / elevating football production across the region through partnerships and development of neighbouring clubs around you. As saves go this was both gruelling and yet thoroughly enjoyable and challenging, so much so that for the remainder of FM23 (and perhaps beyond based on the latest FM24 updates from Sports Interactive 👀) I have decided to effectively “go again” with a Regionnaire challenge, this time venturing slightly further afield as we head for the allure of Northern Italy and the historic giants of European football – Associazione Calcio Milan 🔴⚫. Wait, what? I know I know. This is AC Milan, conquerors of Europe, giants of Serie A, and former home of global superstars such as Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, George Weah, Ronaldinho, Kaka and Zlatan Ibrahimovic to name a few. How can we possibly contemplate turning AC Milan into a domestic-only club culture and squad setup? The answer is somewhat simple: in May 2023, arch-rivals Inter and AC Milan contested the 2022/2023 Champions League Semi-Final in a fiery two-legged clash which saw Inter reign supreme following a 3-0 aggregate victory to claim bragging rights in Milan for many years to come. Over the course of these two fixtures and of the 25 players who started for both teams across each fixture, can you guess the number of Milan-born players who took to the field? The number of Milan-born players who contested the 2023 Champions League Semi-Final clash between AC and Inter Milan. That one player was Inter’s Federico Di Marco, arguably one of Inter’s best players in their run to the final but equally the only Milan-born player to feature for either Milan side across the tie. True, the likes of Francesco Acerbi and Matteo Darmian (who are both considered to be “Milan lads” through and through) both featured in the clash, however they were both technically born in towns some 20km from Milan rather than being true Milanese natives, and the same can be said for the likes of David Calabria and Sandro Tonali who are both Brescia-born despite both being known to be lifelong AC Milan fans. So, you can see my point – there is work to be done in Milan, and not since the likes of Paolo Maldini have we seen true footballing greatness emerge from the second most populous city in Italy. Based on this, our mission is simple: using the 23.4.0 database from Football Manager 2023, we will wind back the clock to the start of the 2022/2023 season where AC Milan are still under the stewardship of the aforementioned Paolo Maldini as Technical Director; we will steer the club on a different path and universe wherein the plan is for Milan to transition to a domestic-only club within two seasons and simultaneously kick-start the revival of football talent production in the surrounding region accordingly. Our rules will be simple: 1) We are only permitted to sign players and staff who meet one of the below criteria: 2) All non-local players & staff must be sold or released by the end of Season 2 Local-born Local Academy Federico DimarcoSandro TonaliManuel Locatelli Gianluigi DonnarummaCesare CasadeiDejan Kulusevski Il Regionnaire – sample eligible players To do this, we of course need to return to our old friend the Player Search filter, wherein with the help of some online resources we plug in 80 place names which fall within our 50km catchment area – this will serve as a guide for our local-born players and is the foundation of any Regionnaire save 👌. That means that by the time we reach Season 3, our entire playing squad and backroom staff must meet the criteria above as we look to mould this squad into a Regionnaire club and rapidly elevate & develop Milanese football talent production accordingly. We will of course have money to spend once we start offloading the likes of Rafael Leão and Theo Hernández, but the challenge will be replacing these with suitable and eligible players in order to try and maintain our quality and fulfill our board’s expectations. Sounds easy right? 🙃 Il Regionnaire – A Milan Story, starts now 🚀. You better believe there is a new spreadsheet coming 😍. Thanks for reading, Paul. This save will be blogged here regularly as well as streamed occasionally over on Twitch – you can also follow me on Twitter for updates, jump in my Discord or Slack for offline discussions & sneak previews as well as catching me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 8.2
This is Part II of Phase 8 at HFC Haarlem – if you haven’t already you can read Part I here which gives an overview of our current squad, summer transfers and our progress in the European Champions League qualification rounds. Alright alright alright – if you are here it means you are ready to hear all about our 8th season at HFC Haarlem and the chaos that ensued! Thankfully we put our disappointment at losing the final Champions League Knockout Round against Porto behind us and started off the 2029/2030 season with back-to-back home wins over NEC Nimhegen and Excelsior, with new signing Zhuang Hui picking up two goals in two games to give us a real selection dilemma in terms of whether to go with him or Dion Drena Beljo as our first choice in the lone striker role. This must be what Eddie Howe feels like when it comes to choosing Alexander Isak or Callum Wilson to play up front, although Isak’s ability to play on the left-hand side offers a bit more flexibility to get both in the side if Eddie so desires. Quite a lot going on here – not much between them, with the standout differences correlating with the fact that we have a 27-year-old Beljo competing with 20-year-old Zhuang Hui and there are clearly pros and cons to each. Both are going to be a goal threat regardless, however with the amount of games we will need to play this season (minimum 43 across all competitions) it will be important to keep both players fresh and ready to fire on all cylinders at all times. The easiest way I can do this (at least for the first half of the season) is to simply rotate between the Eredivisie and Europa League so we decide that Hui will largely be first choice for league games, while Beljo can take centre stage in Europe with the additional experience and mental attributes he possesses (something something adaptability something). Defeat to Ajax in Gameweek 3 spurred on a 3 game winning streak including a Europa League opening win over Strasbourg courtesy of a brace from Beljo which he followed up with another brace in our revenge mission over Qarabag (if you know you know). By the time we reached our 3rd Europa League game against Roma at the end of October, we found ourselves 3rd in the league after 8 games played with Zhuang Hui leading the goalscoring charts on 7 goals – so far so good ✔️. HFC Haarlem vs Roma UEFA Europa League, Thurs 25th October 2029 We face a strong Roma side who are still led by that man José Mourinho along with Tammy Abraham up front, Lorenzo Pellegrini in midfield, Kumbulla and Ibanez at the back and for some reason Kepa in goals. Beljo starts up front having scored 8 goals in Europe so far (including 4 CL qualifiers) while the in-form Hui is a great option from the bench – there are also starts for new signings Mohammed Diomandé and Marc Soury ahead of Theo and Lahteenmaki respectively. Despite newboy Marc Soury opening the scoring on 7 minutes, the quality of Tammy and Pellegrini proves to be too much and we suffer our first Europa League defeat of the season, and the hangover effect spills over to our next game as we suffer a 2-1 home defeat to Willem II. We need a big couple of months to get ourselves back up the table now.. November and December go quite well as we pick up 8 wins in 11 games (however that Europa League defeat to Villareal sees us finish 10th in the league stage to set up a knockout playoff against Sparta Prague – more on that in a bit). January proves to be challenging though as our squad again struggles to cope with the quantity and proximity of games played, so to combat this we make two January signings to hopefully add some depth and quality to our squad. Irishman Frank Bolger arrives from Shamrock Rovers for €500k to offer cover at both Centre Back and in our DM role, and he is followed by 20-year-old attacking midfielder Rogier Smit who is signed from FC Volendam for €3.7m. Incidentally as we are talking about Volendam – I’ve noticed they seem to churn out quite a few high quality young players through their academy, in particular one Turkish Striker who has emerged to be one of the best newgens in this save universe after moves to RB Salzburg and then Inter Milan. Seeing as our own Youth Development has been nothing short of appalling (despite all our work improving our youth recruitment and facilities etc) – we decide to piggyback on Volendam’s success as we establish an official affiliation with them in the hope that we can steal some of their best talent when the time comes. Back to on-field matters and we are entering the business end of the season which is a fantastic time to go on a winning streak especially considering we lost Zhuang Hui to an injury for 4-6 weeks. 7 wins in 8 league games rockets us up to 3rd in the league, while we also ease past Sparta Prague and Stuttgart to set up a Europa League Quarter Final against French side Monaco – lot’s going on!! HFC Haarlem vs Monaco UEFA Europa League Quarter Final, April 2030 The Europa League Quarter Final – the furthest our little club from Northwest Holland have ever ventured in European competition, facing 2004 Champions League finalists Monaco who have a far richer pedigree in Europe and still boast the likes of Alexandr Golovin, Axel Disasi, Benoit Badiashile and Myron Boadu in their ranks. We will have our work cut out for us over two legs if we aspire to become semi-finalists where the likes of Tottenham, Roma, Villareal and Fiorentina potentially await.. It just wasn’t to be. Despite a spirited 1-1 draw away in France, we collapsed in the return leg at home losing 2-0 and again say goodbye to European football for another few months at least. That means we now turn our focus back to the league once more where we have just 7 games to lock in a Champions League place…or even win the league outright?? Two Zhuang Hui inspired wins later… Somehow we manage to find ourselves in a title race albeit 6 points behind leaders Ajax – what’s equally as important (if not more) is that after 29 games we are just 3 points behind PSV who occupy that all essential-automatic Champions League Group Stage spot, and wouldn’t you know it, Gameweek 30 sees 2nd against 3rd as we welcome the Eindhoven club to Haarlem in what is now the biggest 6-pointer of this save so far 🔥. PSV are led by Ruud van Nistelrooy with the likes of Marcos Leonardo, Mohammed Kudus, Ibrahim Sangaré, Patrick Schick and Cody Gakpo all leading their charge to snatch the title from Ajax and finish ahead of us once more. GAME ON!! Wouldn’t you know it – Zhuang Hui is the hero of Haarlem scoring in his 4th consecutive game to give us all three points – that means with just four games left we are level on points with PSV and six points off league leaders Ajax (whom we still have to play at home 👀); this season is fire in Haarlem and we are on the brink of automatic qualification to the Champions League for the first time in our history… We manage to rescue a point away to ADO Den Haag after going 2-0 down in the first half, before Hui inspired a 2-1 win at home to Ajax to narrow the gap back to 5 points – unfortunately PSV won both their games at the same time to give them a 2-point advantage; both of us then drew our penultimate fixtures which meant that any hopes of a surprise league win for Haarlem were over (despite the fact that Heracles shocked Ajax with a 3-1 win..sigh). That meant we went into the final day of the season in third place, two points behind PSV knowing that we need to win and hope PSV drop points at home against our old friends RKC Waalwijk…is there one more stroke of luck left on the FM wheel of fortune this season? Close but not close enough. Despite a world-beating 10.0 performance from Zhuang Hui to put him on 18 goals for the season, a Cody Gakpo-led PSV run out 3-1 winners to seal 2nd place and leave us in 3rd for the second season running. Not bad at all for where we are after 8 seasons, with the gap most certainly closing as we finish on 72 points compared to last year’s 62 point tally. What we do know is that we will again have to contest the Champions League qualifiers which as we know is trickier that one might hope – that said, our squad continues to improve each season and our signings are most definitely contributing to our upward trajectory, hoping to see more of that in the summer if the board can find it in their hearts to drop us a nice transfer budget… That’s that then – at least we have something positive to look forward to next season..IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME. Thanks for reading, see you again soon for more Haarlem Globetrotting and hopefully, some Champions League football to talk about. Over and out. Check out 5StarPotential.com to find more of my written Football Manager content, you can also catch me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 8.1
Here we are – our 8th season at the helm of HFC Haarlem in the Netherlands, making it my longest save adventure since the Don’t Look Back in Angers days of Football Manager 2021. We finished in an all-time high of 3rd place last season to give us a spot in the European Champions League playoff rounds – a massive jump for our tiny little club from Northwest Holland, a lot of work has gone into getting us here and a lot more will be needed if we are to survive and compete at this level knowing the potential amount of games ahead of us next season. LET US BEGIN. 🏟️ Infrastructure & Facilities When we resurrected HFC Haarlem from obscurity following their dissolution in 2010, it’s safe to say that our facilities and infrastructure truly reflected that of a miniscule club on the brink of destruction. A 3,500 seater stadium, Below Average Training and Youth Facilities, zero sponsorship and a €150k transfer budget to build an entirely new squad from scratch – life wasn’t easy at the start of this save however we have come a long way and have managed to drive our board (even in the post-Ruud Gullit era) to reinvest a lot of our earnings back into the club, as evident by the numerous facilities upgrades, sponsorship deals and of course our planned new 18,849 seater stadium which we will move into next summer upon completion of Season 8. ✅ “The Right Stuff” We originally set out to sign players who fit into our Sexy Football philosophy wherein we want to have players all over the pitch who contribute to our fast, free-flowing, creative and technical attacking football style. In Season 1 the most we spent on a player was €140k (€70k up front + €70k installments), and by Season 6 that record reached €12m. At this point and considering it’s a while since my last blog post I think a quick walkthrough of our First XI from last season will be highly beneficial before we proceed to look at the latest batch of new signings made to bolster our squad with potential Champions League football on the horizon. GOALKEEPER – ALEX PADILLA Signed on a free transfer way back in 2023 from Athletic Club de Bilbao (yes he’s a Basque boy) – Padilla was originally intended to be a backup hot prospect but quickly established himself as our first-choice keeper; an excellent shot-stopper who commands the area well and has great distribution when starting counter attacks and possession build-up play (interestingly he has picked up 3 assists in the last 5 seasons), more recently he was called up to the Spain squad as backup to Unai Simon and has attracted interest and bids from the likes of West Ham, Everton and Ajax. He ain’t going nowhere. LEFT WING BACK – DENNIS CIRKIN Arguably our weakest position on paper when you look at Irishman Dennis Cirkin’s attributes however the lad has continued to perform (2 goals and 5 assists last season) since moving on a free from Sunderland a few seasons back, making it impossible not to put him forward for selection. Capped almost 40 times for Ireland and still only 28, he will remain with the squad for the foreseeable however it’s likely we may bring in a long-term replacement when time and money permits it. RIGHT WING BACK – DANILO VEIGA How many of you have a Right-Back as your record transfer signing? It took €12m to convince Portuguese outfit Gil Vicente to part with Danilo Veiga however has has proven to be worth every penny so far, consistently hitting above 7 average rating and proving to be equally adept both defensively and going forward (3 goals and 4 assists last season). Despite calls from fans and media alike he remains uncapped by a Portugal side managed by André Villas Boas, however that hasn’t stopped Brighton and Brentford’s interest in bringing him to the Premier League – not on my watch. LEFT CENTRE BACK – VICENTE MARTÍNEZ Another incredible Free Transfer, this time a Centre-Half whom we unearthed in the depths of the 4th Tier of Spanish football at FC Vilafranca and who instantly became a first-team regular & hasn’t looked back since. Now valued around €25m, his Physical and Defensive attributes make him one of the best Centre Backs in the league which have led to calls for him to be drafted into the Spain squad already! At the time of writing Southampton and Roma are showing interest but this guy will be at the heart of our defence for the foreseeable future. RIGHT CENTRE BACK – SEPP VAN DEN BERG While I can’t say the same about Sepp van den Berg’s long-term role as our other first-choice Centre-Half, he has been solid as a rock since arriving on a free transfer from Liverpool in 2025 – always averaging close to a 7.0 rating each season, playing 30+ games every year and one of those players where I feel we are more likely not to win when he isn’t in the squad. He provides good cover at right-back and fully deserves his place in the squad currently ahead of third choice CB Mads Orbe – that said, a long-term replacement will be lined up in the next season or two as the bar raises and we face tougher opposition in Europe. DEFENSIVE MIDFIELDER – GJIVAI ZECHIEL Another player whose attributes don’t really jump off the screen however he equally has nailed down a starting spot in the lone DMC role largely based on his defensive ability/positioning as well as his all round technical ability. Signed for €5m from FC Twente he has been a solid if unremarkable signing – what I like is his player trait of “Dictates Tempo” which is visible in-game particularly when we are dominating against inferior opposition, however in the long-run we may need to upgrade in this position and keep Zechiël as competition or as a rotation option. ADVANCED PLAYMAKER (SUPPORT) – THEO Our Captain and talisman whom we have linked up with for the second time after we last managed him at Angers in FM21 – Theo is a top class midfielder at this level and is a go-to signing for any mid-tier teams looking for a technical and powerful midfielder who is also a set-piece specialist and a leader on and off the field. Having recently declared for Algeria (birth-place of his fairly well-known father Zinedine Zidane) – while he is not nearly as good as his father was, he is one of the first names on our teamsheet and has racked up 15 goals and 21 assists in 3 seasons at the club; not bad for a free transfer from Real Madrid C 👌. CENTRE MIDFIELDER (ATTACK) – BRAIS RUIZ Every now and again you find one of those players who despite not having the most amazing profile (aside from some very nice Technical/Creative attributes which are ideal for our philosophy), seems to inexplicably bang in-game and in the match engine for no real apparent reason. Brais Ruiz is one of those players. Since signing him for €600k from Badajoz in the Spanish 3rd Tier, Ruiz took to Eredivisie football like a duck to water and has 24 goals and 18 assists to his name in just shy of 3 seasons at Haarlem, not to mention finishing second in the NxGn Top 50 in 2027. WINGER (RIGHT) – JUHO LAHTEENMAKI Similar to Ruiz – Lähteenmäki’s attributes are nothing to really write home about however he has been a key player during our ascent to the higher echelons of Dutch football, scoring 15 goals and 22 assists over 3 seasons since joining from FC Nordsjælland for a €1m fee. He has scored in some of our biggest games including that Cup Final win over RKC Waalwijk, and though we will likely need to replace him sooner rather than later, he has become a fan favourite and deserves to stick around for a while longer yet. INSIDE FORWARD (LEFT) – TONI MAJIC Our star boy. The shining light of this save and a player that is likely to be my Player of the Year for FM23 unless a world-beating newgen emerges any time soon. We stumbled across him during a random scouting adventure in Croatia and as soon as I saw him I knew he was exactly what we needed to fulfil that powerful Inside Forward role on the left-hand side – equally contributing in terms of goal threat and chance creation, and typifying our technical, explosive and fast-paced football style accordingly. €2.9 million later and at the time of writing he has just been named our 2028/2029 Player of the Season, and has notched up 28 goals and 18 assists in just over 50 appearances across his two seasons at the club. Still only 23, we continue to drive his development and looking at that Flair, First Touch and Dribbling ability, you can see why we think he is magic indeed and keeps the likes of Sebastiano Esposito out of the squad. What a player. STRIKER (CENTRE) – DION DRENA BELJO If you are going to have one Croatian wonderkid why not have two? Dion Drena Beljo is a bit of an FM23 favourite this year and with good reason – the man is simply a goal machine and almost single-handedly dragged us up the league to finish 3rd last season, scoring 12 of his 20 league goals from January onwards after an injury ruled him out prior to Christmas. 30 goals in 45 appearances make his €7.5m fee look quite the bargain and if you are looking for a goalscorer on a mediocre budget then look no further. I feel all he needs is some healthy competition to keep him on his toes 👀. So – now you have a good grasp of our First XI at Haarlem, let’s make some transfers shall we? 💰 Transfers Despite picking up around €8m in prize money after finishing 3rd in the league, our transfer budget lies around €2m as we encounter our first window without making a sizeable player sale – that said we end up not needing to spend any of it as all of our signings arrive on free transfers. Daniel Svensson arrives on a free from Vitesse Arnhem to give cover and competition at Left-Back for Dennis Cirkin. He is joined by French Winger Marc Soury from PSV to give additional options on the right wing, Mohammad Diomandé (FC Nordsjælland) who will give us depth in both our Centre Midfield roles, and wonderkid newgen Jordan Horne who arrives on loan from Everton as a backup for the aforementioned Toni Majic and Sebastiano Esposito. The pick of the bunch however has the potential to be our best value signing of the save so far… 20-year-old half-Belgian / half-Chinese Striker Zhang Hui arrives on a free transfer from Antwerp after being highly coveted by the likes of Juventus and Borussia Dortmund. I have no idea how we managed to lock him in without any of them submitting a rival bid, the importance of getting a deal done early clearly shows as we agree pre-contract terms and on arrival his value literally skyrockets from €13.5m to €35m. If we manage to get ourselves into the Champions League, the rotation between him and Beljo will be key and if I had any doubt over my commitment to this save’s longevity, this guy has quashed it – WHAT A F*CKING PLAYER. Right – let’s play some Football Manager shall we? Season 8 🚀 There is little time for squad gelling and pre-season piss-ups as we prepare…
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 7
Hello and welcome back 👋. It’s been nearly a month since my last update, largely as I was away twice in the last 4 weeks between a nice one-week holiday in Fuerteventura and also a brief work trip to Berlin – no complaints of course apart from a lack of access to Football Manager but hey, first world problems and all that. When we last left off the mighty HFC Haarlem had just completed our 6th season following our resurrection from obscurity and our third since our return to the Eredivisie to compete in top flight football alongside giants Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord. It’s safe to say that was a highly successful season; we finished 6th in the league to ensure a European place however our victory in the 2028 KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup) Final means we guarantee Europa League Group Stage football next season – but more on that shortly, let’s talk squad and transfers as there has been a lot happening during pre-season. Transfers Out 💰 I spoke recently on the 5 Star Potential Podcast about how well we have been doing in terms of revenue generation, namely through our ability to bring in players either cheap or on free transfers and then flip them a few seasons later for a handsome profit (very nice considering we now receive 100% of all Transfer Revenue 🤤). Last season I told you about 5 players who had cost a total of €1.3m and who we went on to sell for a combined €30m, and this season the good times keep rolling as we manage to sell Jens Jacobs (Free → €8.25m) and Filip Panovic (€1.2m → €8.5m) to Feyenoord and Malmo respectively. That basically brings our overall profit through player sales & acquisitions to around €51m give or take additional fees & clauses etc – if you think we track this on a spreadsheet..you’d be right 👌. Transfers In 💸 If you haven’t read or can’t remember my last post then it’s alone worth a look to hear all about Toni Majić, our Croatian Wonderkid signed on loan from Dinamo Zagreb with a €2.9m optional fee. After 21 goals and 11 assists as an Inside Forward (Left) last season – I am pleased to say we absolutely activated the option and he is now a permanent HFC Haarlem player..and a hell of a player at that 🔥. Surprise surprise we tend to concede a lot of goals in our efforts to play Sexy Football, and while we have no intention of changing our philosophy (which is basically to just outscore our opponents), we do need to place more focus on our back line and after deploying our scouts to find us a top centre-half, we weren’t disappointed as we unearthed an absolute gem in Vicente Martinez who was playing for FC Vilafranca in the Spanish 4th tier; we originally signed him on a free transfer in January but he didn’t play at all last season due to an injury – suffice to say this guy will be like a new signing and should expect to be starting come the opening game of the season. Following the sale of Jens Jacobs we were in urgent need of an upgrade at Right-Back and once again our scouts came up trumps. Having deployed FM favourite (and club scout) Kim Källström to Portugal, he returned with one hell of a recommendation in Danilo Veiga who arrives from Gil Vicente for a club record €12m – a huge fee for what will hopefully be our right-back for years to come, this chap is a top top player if you want to look him up 🔎. Speaking of FM favourites – we found another one languishing in the Championship with his contract on the verge of expiring, and for no particular reason other than the name/song association, we pick up Sebastiano Esposito on a free transfer from none other than Ipswich Town whatever the hell he has been doing there – classic case of the AI mismanaging players I guess 🤷♂️. From there it was a case of bolstering our midfield having had a couple of loan signings return to their parent clubs. After impressing against us for Fortuna Sittard in the cup last season, versatile midfielder Famana Quizera arrives for €3.4m with a view of retraining him into a Box-to-Box Midfielder. Our shopping locally continues as we pick up Gjivai Zechiel from FC Twente for €5m to play in our DMC role, while Jamie Bynoe-Gittens arrives on a season-long loan from Dortmund to give us additional depth on either wing. That takes our spending to around €23m versus the €16.75m earned – a pretty good window all round and we are ready to kick off Season 7 in Haarlem with European Football to contend with for the first time since 1983 🔥. HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2028/2029 Goalkeepers: Alex Padilla, Gabi Garrido. Defenders: Danilo Veiga, Sepp Van Den Berg, Vicente Martinez, Mads Orbe, Dennis Cirkin, Martin Frese, Giovanni Haag. Midfielders: Theo (c), Brais Ruiz, Fabio Markelic, Juho Lähteenmäki, Mauro Basoski, Famana Quizera, Gjivai Zechiel, Jamie-Bynoe Gittens, Isak Hansen-Aarøen. Forwards: Dion Drena Beljo, Eldor Shomurodov, Toni Majić. Season 7 We kicked off our season with defeats to Feyenoord in the JC Schaal (Dutch Community Shield equivalent) and in our opening league game against Ajax, before starting to find some form with 3 back-to-back wins and a draw which put us in 5th place after 6 games played. Unfortunately this coincided with Dion Drena Beljo getting sidelined for 2-3 months and our form very much dipping/fluctuating in his absence – INCONSISTENCY being the key word as we dropped points against inferior opposition, in particular at home against the likes of Heerenveen, Heracles and Excelsior and by the end of November we found ourselves in 11th place already 12 points off league leaders Ajax, but only 3 points from the European places such is the nature of how tight this league is outside of the big guns. Consistency ↔ Europe We spoke a lot about consistency on the pod, particularly around Dynamics, Tactics, Player Traits, Coach Reports etc all of which I spent some time trying to tweak and improve – particularly after a summer of overhaul and a relatively large influx of new arrivals coming in. While things started to pick up in December – a key challenge to this has been the Europa League, which in 2028 comes in a completely new format with 36 teams competing in one overall league and each team playing 8 games in the hope of finishing in the Top 8 to qualify automatically to the last 16, with teams finishing between 9th and 24th entering a playoff round. A bit f*cking mad or what? 😅 We started with 4 wins from 4 including an impressive victory over Athletic Club at home in Haarlem, before going on to tank and lose our next 4 which included an embarassing 2-0 defeat away to Qarabag in Azerbaijan. That meant that with our eight Group Stage games played we found ourselves in 14th which set us up for a playoff against Swiss side St. Gallen who finished in 19th below us. Thankfully we battered St. Gallen by an 11-1 aggregate score which set us up for a Last 16 tie with Lille, and what was also very enjoyable is the new Europa League artwork and music as well as seeing the name of lowly HFC Haarlem in bright lights alongside some of the big European names and elite clubs. WE ARE OFFICIALLY GLOBETROTTING PEOPLE. Unfortunately it wasn’t to be. We went 2-0 up at home in the 1st leg only to concede a 95th minute equaliser, and by the time we travelled to France a mix of exhaustion and inexperience led to a 5-3 defeat and sadly our Europa League run comes to an end for another season at least. A League of Our Own Back to the league and I had mentioned things starting to pick up around December time…we got over an unplanned exit from our attempt to defend the Dutch Cup by going on a 6-game unbeaten streak, and then dusted ourselves off from a shambolic 3-0 defeat at Heracles by again going 6 games unbeaten, this time picking up 5 wins which meant by the end of March we had climbed to 4th place and all of a sudden we were firing on all cylinders and all guns blazing. Dion Drena Beljo‘s return was the catalyst as he scored 15 goals from December to March and with just 6 games to go, we suddenly found ourselves talking about Champions League dreams and the prospect of our highest-ever league finish for HFC Haarlem (greatly aided by the downfalls of PSV and AZ Alkmaar who are in freefall in this universe according to Football Manager). Naturally two of those next 6 games were against PSV and AZ Alkmaar…I shouldn’t have said anything 🤦♂️. Both take points off us in the run-in, but wins either side of a draw with Feyenoord mean that with just one game to go and 33 league games played, we go into our final league game (away to FC Groningen) in 3rd place, two points clear of high-flying Heracles who welcome RKC Waalwijk. With a superior goal difference, we enter our last game of the season knowing that at least a point should secure us Champions League football (or a chance at qualification at least) for the first time in the club’s history… It had to be – that man Dion Drena Beljo, whose 64th minute penalty was enough to give us all 3 points in Groningen and crucially seal us 3rd place in the league and most importantly, a path into the UEFA Champions League via the 3rd Round Playoffs as well as a “tasty” €8m in prize money (I keep forgetting how much lower prize money is here..). An incredible end to an incredible (if not chaotic) 7th season at the helm of HFC Haarlem with some big performances from the likes of Brais Ruiz (15 goals & 8 assists), Juho Lähteenmäki (10 goals & 18 assists) and of course Toni Majić who missed 2-3 months due to injury and still managed 8 goals & 7 assists. Overall though our main man again was that man Dion Drena Beljo – 23 goals in 33 games across all competitions left him as our top scorer (2nd in the Eredivisie) and if you had any doubts before about whether you should be looking at him for your own save, I will leave you with this to put all doubts to rest.. Thanks for reading – next stop, the UEFA Champions League and we will also bring you an update on what’s been going on behind the scenes with our facilities and our new stadium build, not to mention a wonderkid who we may just have convinced to join us on a free transfer next season 👀. Happy FM’ing 🫡 Paul. Check out 5StarPotential.com to find more of my written Football Manager content, you can also catch me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 6
Welcome back to Haarlem – home of the 2028 KNVB Beker (Dutch Cup) Champions!! Okay let’s rewind. In my last post we had just competed our 5th season of Sexy Footballing in the Netherlands, helping the resurrected HFC Haarlem finish 8th in our second season back in the Eredivisie, having finished 10th the season before following promotion from the Eerste Divisie. With main man Maurice Krattenmacher moving on, loanee Adam Geraerts (Club Brugge) stepped up to the plate last season however the Belgian club refused to extend for another season which means we find ourselves again on the hunt for a top quality Inside Forward to fill the void on the left hand side of our front three. Out for a Scout I’ve really been enjoying scouting this year, mixing a combination of the Recruitment Focus with specific nation scouting assignments has yielded some outstanding bargain players for us (e.g. Lähteenmäki, Tjärnberg, Krattenmacher, Ruiz etc). More recently we decided to spend some time exploring South-East Europe with the idea that players from these nations/leagues will do well in stepping up to the Dutch league, and while rambling around Croatia our Chief Scout Alen Terzic helped us unearth yet another ridiculous gem to add to our collection. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you TONI MAJIĆ ⭐. Toni arrives on an initial loan from Dinamo with a €2.9 million option which I will be amazed if we don’t activate next summer. We’ve been doing well on the finances front and in particular we have inadvertently built a “buy low, sell high” model in Haarlem of late wherein players are arriving for little to no transfer fee and then being flipped for a high price a season or two later. Name From Fee To Fee Che Nunnelly Willem II Free Sparta Rotterdam €1.5m Gabriele Corbo Bologna Free Monza €2m Conor Noß BMG Free FC Twente €2.9m Maurice Krattenmacher Aachen €800k Young Boys €16m Emilio Tjärnberg Osters IF €525k PSG €10.75m €1.3m €30m €28.7 million of pure profit over the past 5 seasons, much of which has been reinvested into the squad and facilities and although we have a very healthy €7 million transfer budget available, I am quite happy with the quality of our current squad in terms of ability and potential so for now we only add a couple of players on loan in the form Tjärnberg (who PSG bought but offered back to us on loan for the season), Martim Ferreira (DMC – Benfica), Mauro Basoski (MC – Feyenoord) as well as securing four free agents in Giovanni Haag (DMC – Nancy), Mads Orbe (DC – Vendsyssel FF), Isak Hansen-Aarøen (MC – Man Utd) and Juande Fuentes (AML – Barcelona B). That means we kick off Season 6 at Haarlem with a slightly new look side but a strong one nonetheless with the exception of captain Theo Zidane who misses out through injury. Having missed almost all of last season through injury after signing in January from Roma, Eldor Shomurodov leads the line with Majić deployed on the left and Lähteenmäki on the right of our front three. New boy Mads Orbe starts alongside Sepp Ven Den Berg in defence – a strong bench also, looking forward to an improved this season this year 🔥. Despite all that unwavering positivity we suffer a 2-0 opening defeat to RKC Waalwijk, but thankfully we bounce back in the next game to thrash FC Twente 4-1. The weeks that followed saw us very much endure a roller-coaster ride from there – we see glimpses of absolute poetry from this team on the pitch but consistency becomes a MAJOR issue with the likes of Majić, Tjärnberg and Shomurodov all struggling to maintain any type of goalscoring form. By Christmas we find ourselves in 13th place in the league after what has been a highly disappointing period of this save adventure. Break Glass for Emergency Desperate times call for desperate measures. While we can of course continue to try and tweak our tactics, review our training, refresh our backroom staff or look at what we can do with morale and dynamics etc, when you are in dire need of goals sometimes you simply need to go out and buy them…and that’s exactly what we did. Dion Drena Beljo arrives from Osijek in Croatia for a fee of €7.5m, becoming our highest ever transfer and at 25 potentially has 10 years of football ahead of him at this level. Beljo is someone I’ve seen pop up in a few other FM saves around the community and a player I have wanted to manage in FM23 – hopefully he can deliver the goals we need to try and rescue this season and push for a top half finish at least. Well well well. What a signing this has proven to be – not just in the goals that he brings, but somehow his arrival galvanizes the rest of the squad and suddenly the likes of Lähteenmäki and Majić are also upping their levels in front of goal and appearing somewhat inspired by their new forward colleague. Beljo’s presence spearheading our attacking line seems to be the key in making this tactic click and we start to see some outstanding patterns of play particularly between our Croatian Combo who together are loving life in 2028 Haarlem . The pair score 13 goals between them and assist eachother 7 times in a period that saw us win 6 games in a row to lift us up to 8th in the table after 25 games played. Talk about a turnaround! Suddenly we are goals galore and this outstanding run of form also leads us to a KNVB Beker Semi-Final clash with Ajax, this is HUGE as we have a chance at our first silverware of FM23 as well as offering a direct route into European football should we win which was one of our original save objectives laid out all the way back in November. COME ON YOU GLOBETROTTERS 💪💪. Dutch Cup Semi-Final We don’t make it easy for ourselves and it takes extra-time to decide it as Emilio Tjärnberg emerges a hero by scoring a 108th minute winner to put HFC Haarlem into the Dutch Cup final for the first time since 1950 – 78 years after a 4-3 defeat to PSV. Though the Dutch Cup hadn’t really been in our minds when we embarked on this adventure, a shot at a trophy and a path into Europe would most certainly be welcomed with open arms by yours truly. FM Course Correcting? This good run of form almost feels unnatural – so much so that it’s like the game itself realises what is going on and attempts to course correct in an effort to restore balance to the FM universe. First – we play NEC in our next league game after that semi-final win, and out of nowhere we go down to 9 men end up losing 5-0 in our worst display of the season. Next, we are hit with a ridiculous quanity of simultaneous injuries – by ridiculous, I mean 4 first team players all announced injured in the space of 24 in-game hours which takes our total to 7, the highest in the league by far 🤷♂️. Add in a host of random VAR disallowed goals and it really feels like the game is trying to sabotage our season – BUT WE SHALL PREVAIL NONETHELESS. Despite all of this chaos, we manage to persevere and continue our good form as we go on to pick up 4 wins and 2 draws from our next 7 games which means by the end of April with just two games to go. we remain in 8th place just 3 points off AZ in 5th and only a point behind Willem II in 6th place. Is there a late twist in this chaos merchant of a season? KNVB Beker Dutch Cup Final The biggest day in HFC Haarlem’s history for over half a century. After starting this save back in November with an empty squad and no staff to be found, we find ourselves in a Cup Final six seasons in and as luck would have it, we face RKC Waalwijk who you will remember gave us a 2-0 opening day defeat at the beginning of the season. With Feyenoord, PSV, AZ Alkmaar and now Ajax all out of the competition, it’s safe to say we will probably never have as good a chance as this right now with Haarlem listed as 6-5 favourites..I won’t do a play by play here on the blog as I actually did a live Twitter thread for it so hit the Tweet below to relive this memorable occasion for the HFC Haarlem Globetrotters. If you are here, now you know. HFC HAARLEM ARE THE 2028 DUTCH CUP CHAMPIONS 🏆 !!! A cracking 5-1 win over RKC with five individual goalscorers, an all round outstanding team performance to win us the KNVB Beker trophy and even more importantly, a guaranteed place in the 2028/2029 Europa League Group Stages. SAVE OBJECTIVE #4 COMPLETE ✅ The Final Lap Two games to go. While we already have secured European qualification and one might argue that our league position won’t really change that outcome (only Top 3 qualify for the Champions League) – there is still money and pride to play for with around €2m of a difference in prize money between 4th (€8m) and 8th (€6m), not to mention our desire to finish higher than last year’s 8th place finish. If we can beat Vitesse and AZ and hope that other teams drop points elsewhere, we might MIGHT just finish in 4th or 5th which would be a hell of an achievement based on where we were just 5 months back. We do our job convincingly and finish with a bang, Toni Majić putting in a barnstorming performance on the last day which had us in 5th place all the way to the final whistle until Willem II snatched a 96th minute winner at Heracles to seal 5th place for them and leave us in 6th place for the season. A small kick in the teeth from FM right at the end but overall a cracking end to an outrageous season – a season of two halves in which we finished 13th in the first half of the season and 2nd for the second half of the season. I guess 6th is fair overall, but what could have been! Toni Majić really is magic – he finishes as our top scorer and provider with 21 goals and 11 assists with an average rating of 7.49, and he is deservedly rewarded with the Footballer of the Year award as well as earning himself a place in Croatia’s Euro 2028 squad. I guess he is worth triggering the €2.9m transfer clause right? Also – what’s that they say about self-praise? Thanks for reading – see you next time. Be sure to hit the follow button below and on Twitter to get instant updates when a new post is live. You can also catch me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 5
Welcome back to Haarlem, for what is now our 5th season at the helm of the HFC Haarlem Globetrotters whom we have spent the last 4 seasons resurrecting from dissolution to take a place in the Dutch Eredivisie, having finished 10th in our first season back in the top tier and more than holding our own against heavyweights Ajax, PSV and Feyenoord. As usual we have another mini-clearout and squad rebuild over the summer but before we do that I need to give you an update on our 3-year love affair with a certain Maurice Krattenmacher. Since signing him for €400k up front (with another €400k in installments over 3 years), Krattenmacher has been by far our best player with 29 goals and 19 assists in 60 odd games for the club playing as an Inside Forward (Left) wherein he frequently cuts in on his favoured right side and plays in our Striker or takes a shot on goal himself. In my last update I had told you that we rejected bids from Bayern and Milan for his services, ultimately agreeing with Krattenmacher that it would take €15m for me to accept a bid for his signature. After rumoured interest from Newcastle, Crystal Palace and Everton – surprisingly the highest bid came from a somewhat unexpected source and €16m was an offer we simply couldn’t refuse. We tried to see if anyone else was interested however no other club was willing to match the €16m bid from Swiss Champions Young Boys, literally 20 times the amount we paid for him just two seasons back. With our board giving us 50% of all incoming transfer revenue, we get a tasty €8m into our Transfer Budget and once again we get to treat ourselves to a summer transfer window shopping spree 😎. First things first – we need not one but two wide forwards with Krattenmacher leaving and Jaden Slory returning to parent club Feyenoord. The latter was outstanding in our promotion season but simply hasn’t been good enough to cut it at this level. This is still a tricky transfer window – we have money, but our reputation and size is still such that interest levels in joining Haarlem are still relatively limited when it comes to the calibre of player we can attract. That coupled with our continued focus on highly technical, creative and explosive players as part of our Sexy Football philosophy means that our taste is very particular when it comes to who we bring into the club. Enter a wonderkid from Finland… Juho Lähteenmäki arrives from the talent factory that is FC Nordsjælland for a fee of €1 million after racking up 6 goals and 3 assists in 20 odd games last season. At 20 years old he has excellent technical attributes, is relatively quick and has huge scope and runway to rapidly develop under our tutelage and become a key part of our Sexy Footballing ways on the right-hand side of our forward three. Of course – that still doesn’t fill the gap left by Krattenmacher. For that we need to go to Belgium.. We are back in Newgen territory as Adam Geraerts arrives on loan from Club Brugge in the Belgian Pro League. While we could have tried to sign someone permanently, Geraerts is the player I really wanted based on the fact that although naturally a Striker, he is primed and ready to be fully retrained into a Left Inside Forward, again cutting in on his favoured right-hand side and with good Finishing, Technique and Flair should be able to fill the goal contribution void left by Krattenmacher. Replacing a €16m player with a 19-year-old Belgian loan signing while risky is very good business, and with a €10m optional fee we may even be able to sign him permanently if he bangs this season. If he doesn’t – why not have a new Serbian newgen as back up? Welcome Filip Panović who signs from Partizan Belgrade for €1.2m ✍️. From here we have three more positions to fill. After signing Theo Zidane last season to replace the outgoing Luciano Valente, it became clear that he is much more suited to the DLP Support role rather than as a CM on Attack. We need a more mobile, explosive and direct attacking midfielder who will make those surging runs into the box and cause havoc for opposition centre-backs accordingly. Again our scouting system takes us in a slightly unexpected direction but comes up trumps again as we welcome Brais Ruiz to the club, signing for €650k from C.D. Badajoz in the Spanish Third Tier. At 18 he already has great physical and mental attributes, and looking at his Technique, Passing, Touch & Shooting combined with that Vision and Off the Ball, we are going to have a lot of fun with this chap in Haarlem. Next our focus is on a Left-Sided Centre Back which I have grown extremely fond of in this year’s game looking at the options they give on the ball and when playing out from the back (so much so I wrote an article about them here). Having had Soumaïla Coulibaly on loan from Dortmund last year, his departure means we need a replacement and in true Football Manager fashion we succeed in finding our man before the season had even finished with Dennis Cirkin agreeing to sign from Sunderland on a free Transfer at the end of his contract at Sunderland. That’s right – not only did we rob the Mackems, he is also Irish 😍. Our final signing is a Left-Back, with another previous loan signing from last season returning to Feyenoord. Considering we have just signed three players aged 20 or under, probably wise to bring in a bit more experience to help in terms of dynamics and average age etc. During our travels in Denmark we spotted a pretty decent option at Nordsjælland, and it takes €2.8m to convince them to part ways with Martin Frese who should be able to immediately slot in as our first-choice Attacking Left Full Back. 5 players in the door means we have some fat to trim in this squad to ensure we keep on elevating year on year in terms of quality and footballing sexiness, which means that we say goodbye to Conor Noß (FC Twente – €2.8m) and Tom Gaal (MVV – €250k), a decent haul overall considering the two cost us a combined €190k just two seasons back. Right – let’s see how our squad now looks for Season 5 at HFC Haarlem 🔥. HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2026/2027 Goalkeepers: Alex Padilla, Vlastimil Helebrand. Defenders: Jens Jacobs, Sepp Van Den Berg, Dennis Cirkin, Martin Frese, Inaki Leon, Maxim Gullit. Midfielders: Lukas Quirin (c), Theo, Brais Ruiz, Fabio Markelic, Martin Pečar, Juho Lähteenmäki, Filip Panović, Jack Byrne, Caspar Jander. Forwards: Emilio Tjärnberg, Adam Geraerts, Marten Winkler. Season 5 After opening with a comfortable 2-0 win over ADO Den Haag in which Adam Geraerts scored on his debut for the club, we thought we were onto a winner right from the go this season. We were wrong… This is very much a changed side from last year – younger, less experienced and a lack of cohesion & familiarity leads to 5 games without a win however we continue to see signs of Sexy Football with us having good possession stats and creating plenty of chances (albeit not converting them). We ramp up the Team Bonding and Match Tactics training, and suddenly October is a lot nicer to us as we win 4 consecutive league games, followed by defeats against the likes of PSV, Ajax and Feyenoord to leave us in 8th place in the league by the end of January with 20 games played – not bad considering 8th or above can give us a path into European football next season. Let’s talk about Strikers for a moment. Emilio Tjarnberg is our first choice Centre-Forward for the Lone Striker role and he has shown signs of being absolutely brilliant – 19 years old, Swedish with really promising all round attributes. The problem as we all know though is that POTENTIAL IS NOT ABILITY. While he has a promising future, for now he is just too inconsistent which has led to us having to draft in Marten Winkler frequently, however the latter just isn’t really good enough for this level to contend for a starting spot. We need someone who is ready. A more experienced striker, someone with a bit more pedigree and more developed in terms of attributes and ability in game. With the January transfer window about to close, it’s time to see if we can find someone who can add some goals to this team.. Former Roma Striker Eldor Shomurodov signs on a free transfer after finding himself without a club since being released by José Mourinho in the summer. While certainly not a superstar, at 31 he still has good physicals and definitely knows his way around the box – here’s hoping he can hit the ground running to help us kick on and maybe, just maybe, push for a Continental place in our second season in the Eredivisie. THAT FEELING. Your new signing scoring a hat-trick on his debut after signing him without spending a penny when no-one else wanted him, proving you are the shrewdest and most astute manager in the land. Eldor Shomurodov, Uzbekistan’s all-time leading scorer, the man who José Mourinho himself couldn’t get a tune out of, popping up in Haarlem to help us become true globetrotters and potentially propel ourselves into European football for the first time in 44 years. It’s written in the stars right? Well. That’s that then. 3-6 months. Out for the season. See you next year Eldor. We hit the business end of the season and both of our strikers are out injured (I forgot to mention we sold Marten Winkler for €900k in January because his contract was running down). Our dreams of a European place now rest on our young lads again with Adam Geraerts being thrown into the deep end up front…. On the plus side – Adam Geraerts loves being a striker, scoring in 5 games in a row and bagging 7 goals in 7 appearances and restoring my faith in this youthful Haarlem squad alongside Brais Ruiz who also chips in with a few lovely well-taken goals in that CMA role. On the down side – despite this, we still only win 2 games across March and April and with 3 games to go, we are barely clinging on to 8th place. Can our young guns step up to the plate and help get us over the line once and for all? More draws than Ikea but in the end Adam Geraert’s 81st minute equaliser in the last game of the season seals an 8th place finish in the league, which means we enter a playoff semi-final against SC Heerenveen for a chance at qualification to the Europa Conference League. Having taken 4 points from our two games against them earlier in the season, we have to be confident – all to play for as we look to truly become the Haarlem Globetrotters for the first time in this FM23 save… Oh well , it was nice while it lasted! A scoreless draw at home in the second leg was not enough to overturn a 3-0 deficit from the first leg, and we miss out on Europe for another season at least while Heerenveen go on to win the playoff final and take a place in the Europa Conference League. Adam Geraerts finishes as our top scorer…
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 4.2
Welcome back to the second update of our 4th season at the helm of HFC Haarlem Globetrotters, where we are having a wonderful time in the Netherlands having been promoted in Season 3 and now competing with the big dogs of the Dutch Eredivisie. When we last left off in Part 1, we were sitting in 10th place in the league in January 2026 after 17 games played, having started reasonably well but naturally taking some time to get used to the big jump in quality at this level. As soon as January hit, we were suddenly presented with a real problem… As if that wasn’t bad enough… It’s all crumbling down around us! If the prospect of losing our best player isn’t bad enough, we receive word that our so-called esteemed Chairman and patriarch Ruud Gullit is looking to move on and before we even have a moment to process this revelation, we receive confirmation of the fact that the deal is done, our relationship with Gullit is no more and there’s a new Ruud in the house… Ok, so back to Krattenmacher. Our German Golden Boy. Originally signed for €400k (plus many add-ons) from German 3rd tier side SC Verl in Season 2, the lad has bagged 21 goals and 15 assists in 49 starts for us so far and is very much the flagship player in our mission to play Sexy Football and restore HFC Haarlem to global stardom. It was inevitable that the lad would outgrow us but I wasn’t expecting it this soon – we haven’t even completed our first season back in the Eredivisie yet!! German giants Bayern land in with a bid of €2.1m up front rising to €11.25m with installments and add-ons etc, while Milan offer a whopping €5.75m up front rising to €10.5m after installments and add-ons. This is a predicament. We can do a lot with that money. A lot. Considering we had €200k in our transfer budget last summer – it’s safe to say this would be a game-changer. That said – Krattenmacher would be a key player for the entirety of this save if he were to stay, good enough to play at a very high level and is exactly what we need in terms of goal contributions and sheer class off that left-hand side (assuming he wouldn’t kick off too much should a bid be rejected). After much deliberation and emotional turmoil, we decide to brave it and decline both bids without any negotiation. THE KRATT IS NOT FOR SALE. This is our boy, a gem we unearthed from the depths of lower league Germany. The first player to get profiled in our Wonderkid Watch series and that rare player where you feel you have signed a wonderkid that no-one else knew about. We have to keep him, at least until the end of the season. He wasn’t over the moon about the decision however when we sat down and discussed it, we agreed that €15m is a fair valuation of his services and that until someone meets that price, he remains a Haarlem player. We may have declined a cash windfall for Krattenmacher but don’t forget we still have a good chunk of the Gabriele Corbo cash left over after he left for €2m on Deadline Day a few months back. While we have a 20-man squad, we are still lacking in terms of quality/depth and often struggle to make an impact from the bench in games where we need to score or overcome a deficit. Sticking with our philosophy of signing fast, attacking, technical and “flair” players wherein our scouts are continually scouring local and European leagues for potential recruits, we unearth not one but two potential stars who absolutely fit the bill of what we are trying to do and will offer significant competition and depth to our forward line. Winger Martin Pečar joins from Austria Wien on a Free Transfer, coming in with excellent Dribbling, Passing, Touch and Technique as well as Determination to beat the band at this level. He is joined by our first big Newgen signing in the form of Emilio Tjärnberg who arrives for €500k from Osters IF in Sweden – a hefty fee for a player at that level, but at age 18 he has bags of potential to nail down a spot on either wing or leading the line up front, as reflected by his in-game value which rockets up towards €11m-€13m becoming our highest value player behind Krattenmacher. DISCLAIMER: New signings do not lead to a change in on-pitch fortunes.. One win in seven games sees us slide back to 13th in the league and suddenly we are in free-fall – not really in danger of relegation but showing nothing but mid-table mediocrity which is far from our objective of Sexy Football here in the Netherlands. Having persisted with Marten Winkler up front after his 24-goal haul last season which effectly sealed promotion for us, it’s clear he simply can’t kick it at this level so we turn our attention to Feyenoord loanee Fabiano Rust, who we signed at the beginning of the season as backup to Winkler in the lone striker role. Attributes-wise he is no superstar – quick, versatile and well able to hold his own looking at his technical ability and attacking figures – for some reason however, he gives us the jolt we need, picking up 4 goals in March as we pick up two more wins, and seemly inspiring Maurice Krattenmacher to raise his game as he also bags 4 in April to give us another couple of victories. We suddenly look a more threatening, fast-paced, high-octane side – breaking out of the traps much quicker and creating/taking far more chances than was the case previously, culminating in a powerful 4-2 away win over FC Twente in the penultimate game of the season (thanks for the hat-trick Fabiano) before we went on to absolutely thrash NEC Nimjegen 7-1 in the last game of the season courtesy of the Rust/Pecar/Krattenmacher show. Why couldn’t we play like that all season?! Thanks to Rust’s overall tally of 16 league goals, in the end we hold on to 10th place in the league a comfortable 21 points clear of the relegation zone, but 40 points behind Champions Ajax (surprised much?) which shows the massive gap that exists between the top and bottom of this level especially considering there are only 18 teams in the league. That said, 10th is an excellent achievement for us considering we were originally tipped to finish bottom of the league after gaining promotion, not to mention what it means in terms of Prize Money for the first time in 4 seasons of this save 💰. A much improved second half of the season gives me genuine hope and confidence that we are building something special here at Haarlem – particularly when we look at some in-game stats which highlight the gulf in class that exists in this league and how much we are punching above our weight based on our current size and means: We have one of the youngest squads, one of the lowest average wages paid, the least amount of cash and by far the lowest stadium capacity/attendance in the Eredivise which as part of our original save objectives is one of the biggest concerns I have at present. Thankfully our new board and Chairman are in agreement, and while it’s not a new stadium as desired, we will absolutely take the opportunity to effectively double our capacity and take Haarlem to the next level. Things are looking good, a new stadium, a mid-table finish and we might actually have a real transfer budget to play with this summer…things can only get better from here right? Thanks for reading, roll on Season 5 🚀. Check out my new “Wonderkid Watch” series over on 5StarPotential.com where you can find profiles of some of the best wonderkids out there, looking at how their real-life development compares to their Football Manager ability and potential. You can also catch us talking all things FM on the 5 Star Potential podcast, the longest running Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 4.1
Hello again. Or as we say in the Netherlands, Hallo. Did we mention we are an Eredivisie club now? That’s right. It took us 3 seasons but we are now officially in the Eredivisie, the top tier of Dutch football in the Netherlands where will now be the smallest club with the lowest salaries and the worst stadium of the 18 clubs who compete at this level, which of course inlude the likes of Ajax, PSV, Feyenoord and AZ Alkmaar. We are a tiny fish in a very large pond – what can go wrong? Season 4 Promotion is very good for your health as a Manager though… Yes, things have been going well – we finished 2nd last season to guarantee ourselves automatic promotion which means sh*t is very much getting real here in Haarlem. We had a decent squad but one still quite reliant on loans who have now returned during the summer along with a few elderly statesmen leaving the club, meaning with just 13 Senior Players on our books, we need to go out on somewhat of a shopping spree (albeit with a budget of €250k which we can probably stretch to €400k in total). Not a lot to go on but we are well used to scraping the barrel in this save, let’s see what miracles we can produce in the Summer 2025 transfer window 💸. Goalkeeper Alex Padilla will continue as our first choice keeper – the young Basque stopper has developed well (as you can see below) however we need backup/competition so we bring back a familiar face on loan whom we spoke a lot about in Phase 2; welcome back Charlie Setford 🔥. Defence Despite getting promoted in 2nd place last season, we conceded 47 goals in 38 games which was the worst in the Top 8 of the Eerste Divisie. Yes, we play Sexy Football which means we generally tend to just score more than our opponents but equally we need defensive reinforcements if we are to have any chance of surviving this level and avoiding relegation. Enter Sepp Van Den Berg (Liverpool – Free Transfer) who can play at DC or RB, very happy with him as a defender with a bit of pedigree and definite Eredivisie-level quality. We also bring in 20-year-old Rainey Breinburg (Feyenoord – Loan) who should nail down the Left-Full Back spot, and Filip Brekalo (Dinamo Zagreb – Loan) who will hopefully provide him with some competition. Midfield I am devastated to say that our star man of the last two seasons Luciano Valente (28 goals & 10 assists in 62 starts) returns to Groningen who refuse to loan him to us for a third season, understandable as we have made him a superstar in the CMA position. That leaves a huge creative hole in our midfield, so to combat this we bring in not one but two suitable replacements; versatile midfielder Fabio Markelic (€5k!) arrives from Austria Klagenfurt in the Austrian Bundesliga, while an old friend of mine arrives in the form of our captain from my FM21 save at Angers who signs for a cool €180k from the Real Madrid Castillo squad – WELCOME THEO ZIDANE ❤️. Forwards Needless to say, goals will keep us in this division. While we of course have Marten Winkler and my boy Maurice Krattenmacher who between them scored 40 goals last season, it remains to be seen if they can crack it at this level so we decide to bring in at least a backup option to keep things fresh at that end of the pitch, with youngster Fabian Rust from Feyenoord on loan for the season..he’s not half bad either 🤞. That brings our 13 man squad to 20 as we prepare for Season 4 and our first Eredivisie game against…you guessed it…PSV 🤦♂️. HFC Haarlem vs PSV, Sunday 17th July 2025 By the time our opening game came around, a couple of our new signings hadn’t even landed yet so we lined up with a similar side to last season with the exception of our midfield duo whereby both Theo and Markelic make their HFC Haarlem debuts in our usual 4-3-3 formation, with new signings Sepp Van Den Berg and Fabian Rust on the bench. PSV on the other hand start with the likes of Noni Madueke and Mohammad Kudus up front having just sold Xavi Simons to Newcastle for the measly sum of €76m – safe to say we are not equals but anything can happen in 90 minutes right? On 69 minutes, we were proven correct… MAURICE F*CKING KRATTENMACHER STRIKES AGAIN!! Albeit with a lucky deflected cross but they all count, and we continue to look defensively solid as we see out the game and finish our first Eredivise game against Dutch giants PSV with a 1-0 victory…WE ARE F*CKING ELITE!! That win sets us off on a 3-match unbeaten run as we pick up 7 points from a possible 9, conceding a late equaliser away to Heracles before beating Sparta Rotterdam 1-0 in their own back yard. It wasn’t meant to start like this… Of course, things start to go slightly arwy from here. Firstly our star Centre-Back Gabriele Corbo (signed on a free from Bologna where we had him in my FM21 save) decided to kick-off wanting to move to a “bigger” club & threatening to run down his contract, and in the end we are forced to let him move to Monza for a nice €2 million profit. The only problem is that it is already Transfer Deadline Day when it happens, so we are forced to scramble in order to bring in a last minute replacement.. At the eleventh hour, Soumaïla Coulibaly becomes a Haarlem player as we secure a season-long loan from Dortmund. What is magnificent about this in addition to him being an absolute unit at the back is that he is a left-sided Ball Playing Defender, something I had wanted for a while and hopefully he can build up a solid partnership with right-sided Sepp Van Den Berg…6’3″ and 6’4″ respectively, I’ll take it. DISCLAIMER: It may take two brand new Centre Backs a while to gel and get used to eachother in FM23… Two months without a win sees us slip back to 12th place despite Krattenmacher’s best attempts to carry us through (if you haven’t already, check out my Wonderkid Watch piece on him over at 5StarPotential.com). The likes of Slory (who by the way we resigned on loan from Feyenoord after a cracking season last year), Winkler, Jack Byrne, Conor Noss and new boy Filip Markovic have all been disappointing so far but I have confidence that we have built a side capable of surviving and competing at this level once we have time to work on our tactical familiarity, squad dynamics, role cohesion etc..in fact, that’s exactly where we start – a training schedule designed exclusively to focus on increasing morale, cohesion and familirity within the squad. Whether it worked or not, you never know – but we have a considerably better time in November and December, more than holding our own against the likes of AZ and Twente and narrowly losing to perennial champions Ajax. By the end of 2025 and halfway through our 4th season at Haarlem, we sit contently in 10th place in the Eredivisie and you know what, as the club predicted to finish bottom of this division in 5 months time, I’ll take it. We enter January with thoughts of how we might go about spending that lovely €2m Corbo money, when suddenly this happens… Haarlem we have a problem…more to follow soon, stay tuned and pray for us 🙏. Thanks for reading 👌. Enjoying this? Am I? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below..what should we do? How much would you accept for Krattenmacher? (view his profile here). You can also catch me every Monday on 5 Star Potential, the longest running weekly Football Manager podcast.
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 3
Welcome back to the 5th installment of this Football Manager 2023 save in the Netherlands as we commence our third season at the helm of the newly restored HFC Haarlem in the second tier of Dutch football. In Phase 1 we finished our first season in 15th place, having had to rebuild an entirely new squad and backroom staff with a focus on sexy football and attributes heavily favoured towards the more attacking, creative and technical elements of the game. The following season we continued our rebuild and completed Phase 2 in a very respectable 6th place in the Dutch Keuken Kampion Divisie, setting us up nicely for what we hope will be a highly competitive third season in which we might give ourselves an outside chance at promotion (most likely through the playoffs where we were disappointingly eliminated in the first round last season). Before we do that however, we again need to do some rebuilding as we continue to deal with player attrition, turnover of retiring players and navigating the financial challenges we face at this level. Let’s roll 🚀. Not so sexy finances… Money makes people do silly things…a lack of money ain’t much better though.. Despite finishing 6th, prize money in this league is virtually non-existent meaning we need to devise a recovery plan. Nothing revolutionary needed however we need cash. Fast. With a new season on the horizon, we formulate a 4-point plan to raise as much funds as possible: 1. Cuts, Cuts, Cuts Looking at our expenses – obviously Player Wages are the biggest contributor to our overheads, accounting for 30% – 40% of our monthly outgoings. The Average Player Salary in this league (excluding the “Jong” teams of Ajax, PSV, Utrecht and AZ) is approx. €1.7k per week, with each team spending around €140k per month on player salaries. We are spending over €200k per month on salaries averaging around €2.4k per week, so on the face of it we have room to improve here – we will look to offload a few of our highest earners for the greater good in order to bring this number down (more on that below). Our Staff Wages are also a lot higher than we thought having filled the quotas for both our Senior and U18 team – instant cuts needed, we lay off 6 Staff Members which will in turn save us ~€3.7k per week. Having built up a reasonably extensive shortlist of creative technical players with high passing, vision, technique, first touch etc, we will instantly cut our Scouting Budget to zero. From now on – all Bonuses (reward bonuses, loyalty bonuses etc) will be kept to a minimum. 💰 Estimated overall savings: €65k per month 2. Friendlies for Cash Setting up multiple friendlies away from home are the best way to drive some additional income, even if it comes at a cost to things like morale and dynamics etc. We can’t travel far but games against some of the big teams in the Netherlands always draw in a crowd. 💰 Estimated Overall Earnings: €160k 3. Television Revenue 💰 Estimated Overall Earnings: €220k per month 4. Profitable Player Sales I hadn’t thought much about it back when we signed Gerardo Martinez, but he takes up a considerable portion of our budget and will have to be offloaded this summer. Che Nunnely is our best player but equally he is also highly paid not to mention our highest value player with the most potential to flip for a profit. Caspar Jandar was a new signing but is arguably only a squad player, while Bookjans barely plays and will also likely leave. 💰 Estimated Overall Earnings: €2m Time to make some transfer moves, stat. > Departures ✈️ 10 players from last season’s registered squad depart the club with notable players such as Cuco Martina, Erik Falkenburg and Jakob Bookjans all leaving at the end of their deals, while the likes of Charlie Setford (Ajax), Alex Murphy (Newcastle), András Németh (Genk) and Ilyas El Moussaoui (Feyenoord) all returning to their parent clubs. While we struggle to offload Martinez (eventually letting him return to Argentina on a free transfer before the window closed), our biggest departure is of course the aforementioned Che Nunnely whom we originally signed on a free transfer from Willem II at the start of the save and whom has been our best player so far to date. Between financial reasons as well as the player himself demanding a move, our hand is forced as we sell eventually move him on to NEC Nijmegen for a cool €1.5m – not a bad profit at all, will go a long way towards our financial recovery however that leaves a huge gap in terms of pace and creativity on that right-hand side. Rayan El Azrak also leaves to help our financial woes, moving to Almere City for €175k. All of this effort brings us back from the red for the first time in this save, and suffice to say Ruud Gullit is a happy boy once more: Arrivals ✍️ Very excited about some of our incoming signings. VERY excited. The easiest thing to do here is divide these into three groups as follows: 1. Fee-Paying Transfers Having finished as our Top Scorer in the league last season with 20 goals while on a season long loan, we decide to make a permanent move for German Striker Marten Winkler who signs from Hertha Berlin’s second team for €275k – looking forward to seeing him continue his good form as an AF in the lone striker role. Winkler is just one man however, and with both our strikers from last season returning to their parent clubs we send our scouts out and about in search for a forward who can either play alongside Winkler in a 4-4-2 or 4-3-3, or alternatively cover and provide competition when needed throughout the season. Suffice to say – our scouting team came up trumps as they unearthed this man lingering in the 4th tier of Germany…WHAT A F*CKING PLAYER. It takes €400k plus a bunch of add-ons to lure Maurice Krattenmacher to Haarlem and it’s instantly clear he is already a cut above the rest at this level even at just 18-years-old. FM logic dictates we will probably lose him to a bigger club in the near future but if we can get even one good season out of him then it will be money well spent – it looks like we aren’t the only ones who have become aware of Krattenmacher in FM23 either 👀: Fair to say we might be onto a winner with this lad but more on that later. We make one final addition in terms of spending which was actually one of our overall save objectives back when we started in November…it’s an emotional one as our Chairman Ruud Gullit is reunited with his son Maxim Gullit at HFC Haarlem…we spend €220k plus a few add-ons to bring him in, likely as a squad player but FAMILY IS MORE IMPORTANT RIGHT 😄. 2. Free Transfers If you thought we were buzzing after those three, wait until you see what’s coming. I mean who doesn’t like a free transfer right? Our main priority was to sign a goalkeeper after Charlie Setford returned to Ajax who were reluctant to let him extend for a second season (chiefs), so we again took to scouring the free agent market to see if any bargains would be available after a second year of contracts expiring in this save. Initially it looked to be slim pickings – that was until a Basque gem appeared in the form of 20-yr-old Alex Padilla: Before his contract ended he was wanted by both Dortmund and Everton, however we swooped in early and managed to lock in a deal which saw him join us when his contracted ended at Athletic Club de Bilbao..somewhat surprising they let him go when you consider how hard they tend to cling on to Basque players (let’s not forget the last keeper to leave Bilbao was Kepa Arrizabalaga and that only cost Chelsea €80m 😳) but we don’t mind at all. Our Free Agent luck continues and this time it’s luck of the Irish – naturally while searching to see what Irish players would be interested in a move to Haarlem, we stumble across not one but TWO Irish boys who both had their contracts expire in Summer 2024, both of whom are very technically capable and will add depth and competition to our first-team squad instantly; Jack Byrne arrives after leaving Shamrock Rovers at the end of his contract, and he is followed by Conor Noß who was released by Borussia Monchengladbach after failing to have his deal renewed. 3. Loans You’ll notice we still haven’t technically replaced the pace and flair offered by Che Nunnelly on that right hand side, and in the absence of any clear first-team quality we decide to bring in two players to compete for this spot. Our affiliation with Feyenoord enables us to bring in Jaden Slory on loan without having to pay any wages, while another player familiar to us from my Bologna save last year arrives in the form of ex-Man City graduate Jayden Braaf who joins on a season-long loan from Dortmund. Finally and possibly one of the biggest signings of the window – we manage to extend the loan deal of Luciano Valente from FC Groningen for a second season after he notched up 13 goals and 6 assists from Central Midfield last season..THIS IS NICE. I think we are ready for a third season of Sexy Football..🔥. Season 3 HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2024/2025 Goalkeepers: Alex Padilla, Indy Groothuizen Defenders: Luca Stellwagen, Iñaki León, Gabriele Corbo, Enock Kwateng, Jens Jacobs, Steven Edwards, Maxim Gullit Midfielders: Lukas Quirin, Caspar Jander, Luciano Valente, John Goosens, Jack Byrne, Conor Noß, Jaden Slory, Jayden Braaf Forwards: Marten Winkler, Maurice Krattenmacher Despite the bookies tipping us to finish around mid-table this season, we open with a 4-2 win away to TOP Oss in a game which sees debut goals for Krattenmacher and Slory as well as another goal from Valente in the CM (Attack) role and by the end of September we find ourselves top of the league after picking up 7 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat in our opening 9 games in the Eerste divisie. What’s interesting here is that the way this league is set up – the season is divided into four “periods”, with the teams who top each 9-game section guaranteeing themselves a place in the playoffs at the end of the season. I guess this is like continuous assessment in university right? That means that with 9 games played we have guaranteed ourselves at least a playoff spot and a shot at promotion already at this early stage of the season. What makes things even better is that not only are we getting results – we are doing it in style…. A few blips follow including a 5-game winless run, however we find our form again as the end of 2024 approaches and with 20 games played we sit top of the league, level on points with VVV Venlo and dreams of Eredivise clashes with Ajax and PSV are slowly becoming more and more a reality.. Things are clicking well. The likes of Slory, Valente, Krattenmacher and Winkler are all performing well individually and it’s a reasonable argument to say we probably have one of the best sides in the league right now. But it’s more than that. We have set ourselves up to play a specific type of football that is fast paced, high…
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 2
Welcome back to the sexiest Football Manager save adventure you’ve (n)ever seen. When we last left off, we had just completed (and survived) Season 1 at the helm of HFC Haarlem, our newly restored team of choice for FM23 under the guise of our esteemed patriarch and former clubman Ruud Gullit who has resurrected the club from extinction following their dissolution in 2010. A hard-earned 15th placed finish in the Keuken Kampion Divisie (Tier 2 of Dutch Football) was no mean feat considering we had to build and entire 25-man squad and backroom staff with a budget of ~€170k, giving us a solid platform on which to build our Haarlem Globetrotters empire and bring Ruud’s vision and dream of Sexy Football to life in the Football Manager match engine. This time around the Dutch media predict we will finish in 13th place following last season’s exploits, but before we can do that there is the small matter of replacing the 12 players that have now left us in the summer after either their contracts or loan deals ended. This time around we have ~€300k to spend, which means we hopefully can lock in a few permanent deals for some bargain players that will be good enough to stick around and contribute to our Sexy Football mission through our transfer policy of signing players with good Passing, Technique, First Touch, Dribbling, Pace, Vision etc. Let’s begin 🚀. Goalkeepers Indy Groothuizen (whom we will now refer to as Groot for this save) became our first choice keeper last year however I don’t seem as a permanent fixture between the sticks. We let 35-year-old Piet Velhuuizen leave on a free so our mission was to find either a First Choice keeper to replace Groot, or a young keeper with high-potential to take over after a season or two (assuming we make it that far). That brings us to The Setford Brothers. Brace yourself for Football Manager perfection. Two brothers. Both Goalkeepers. Both dual nationality (Dutch & English). Both in the Ajax Academy. And crucially for the narrative of this save…BOTH BORN IN HAARLEM. You couldn’t make it up!! After first discovering 18-year-old Charlie Setford in the Ajax Reserve squad, we then quickly realised that his brother Tommy (16) is also on the books at Ajax and further research showed that while both were born in the Netherlands (to a Dutch mother and English father who is an ex Professional Golfer) and both have played underage football for the Dutch National side, they both appear to have switched allegiance to England having recently featured for the England U20 and U17 sides respectively. In Football Manager terms, it’s relatively early days in terms of how they will be in game but both have potential to be moulded towards first-team football especially at our level. For some reason Ajax were initially reluctant to loan either of these chaps out to us, however as usual I persisted and eventually they agreed to allow Charlie to join us on loan for a season wherein he will initially be backup to Groot, remains to be seen if he will actually contend for first-team football but at the very least we hope he will become fond of life in Haarlem and in future favour a permanent move particularly considering that we convinced Ajax to include a €400k optional transfer fee as part of his loan deal. If you want to read further about Charlie and Tommy Setford, these lads even have their own website – http://www.thesetfordbrothers.com. Defenders We had a very aged back line until the arrival of Iñaki León in January, prior to that two of our Centre Halves Thomas Heurteux and Magnus Troest had a combined age of 71 so it was only right that we let both of them go, while we also lost David Herold who returned to Bayern before agreeing a permanent move to Sparta Rotterdam rather than return to Haarlem (CHIEF). We also struggled at Right-Back last season so a complete defensive overhaul is needed (aside from Luca Stellwagen at LB who proved to be a great signing). By now you readers know how much I enjoy narrative so it’s only fitting that we signed not one but two of my former FM players on Free Transfers – Gabriele Corbo arrives on a free after his contract ended at Bologna (FM21) while Enock Kwateng also arrives on a free from Bordeaux who we of course knew from my Angers save in FM20. Continuing with the Narrative FC we also sign Irishman Alex Murphy on loan from Newcastle (great young prospect from my hometown here in Galway), and finally we pick up a relatively speedy right-back in Jens Jacobs on a free transfer from VVV-Venlo. Midfielders We lost almost all our Central Midfield line bar John Goosens with the likes of Elmkies and Hyun-Ju returning to their parent clubs, so solutions were urgently needed as we continue to deploy a 3-man midfield. First in the door was 23-year-old German DMC Lukas Quirin after his contract was terminated by Mainz 05, and he is followed in by not one but two talented midfielders in the form of Caspar Jander (Duisberg – €110k) and Luciano Valente (FC Groningen – Loan) who you will be hearing much more about later. With star man Che Nunnely and Captain Erik Falkenburg staying on for an additional season, we didn’t need to strengthen too much out wide however we do bring in lightning quick winger Adnane Abid from Genk to add additional pace and flair in our attacking third – if we can get him and Nunnely firing then expect to see nothing but fear in the opposition full-back’s eyes this season 💥. Forwards By this point you may have noticed we have only made 3 loan signings so it will come as no surprise that the three forwards brought in all arrive in on loan for a season. Having finished as top scorer last season with 10 goals either side of a 2 month injury, András Németh returns for another season on loan from Genk where he can hopefully build on a decent turnout last year, and he is joined by what will likely be his main competition for the lone striker role in the form of 20-year-old German Striker Marten Winkler on loan from Hertha BSC – loving this guy’s technical attributes, particularly his touch and technique which will hopefully see him link up play and score some peachy goals inside the box (Bergkamp-esque if you will). A trio of forward signings is then complete with the arrival of Ilyas El-Moussaoui from Feyenoord, who incidentally just agreed to become our first Senior Affiliate in-game – you love to see it. 12 signings later and all in all we are looking in decent shape ahead of our second season at HFC Haarlem 🔥 HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2023/2024 Goalkeepers: Indy Groothuizen, Charlie Setford Defenders: Luca Stellwagen, Iñaki León, Gabriele Corbo, Alex Murphy, Enock Kwateng, Jens Jacobs, Steven Edwards, Cuco Martina Midfielders: John Goosens, Lukas Quirin, Caspar Jander, Luciano Valente, Che Nunnely, Gerardo Martinez, Adnane Abid, Erik Falkenburg, Rayan El Azrak, Jacob Bookjans Forwards: András Németh, Marten Winkler, Ilyas El Moussaoui Season 2 For the second season running we face Da Graafschap in the league opener. Injuries to Martinez and Nunnelly mean starts for Valente and Abid, while Winkler is selected up front ahead of Nemeth. Despite beating these chiefs in the same fixture last season, the game ends in a 0-0 stalemate, positively a good defensive performance but overall quite flat and most definitely NOT SEXY – the same can be said for our opening 3 games as we go on to have another 0-0 draw with FCDB and a 1-1 draw against FC Eindhoven. TRUST THE PROCESS. Thankfully we go on to pick up 3 wins on the bounce with the likes of Winkler and Nunnely starting to find some form, and by the end of October we find ourselves in 9th place in the league after showing some promising performances here and there without displaying anything overly noteworthy in terms of the sexiness of our football. Time for a few tweaks again and it’s at this point I will get slightly lazy and divert your attention to a well-received Twitter thread I posted on this topic. With Gerardo Martinez not quite cutting it in the Mezzala role, we made a conscious decision to flip the role to a Centre Midfielder on Attack and deploy young Luciano Valente as first-choice in the role. The results were…well, hit the thread below and see for yourself..(there are #GIFGoals worth seeing) 👇👇 It took a couple of games to settle but suddenly the introduction of Luciano Valente as a CM(A) has a Frank Lampard-esque impact on the team, inspiring us to a 10-game unbeaten after those 3 defeats in November scoring 11 goals in 14 games and propelling us to 6th in the league with 10 games remaining. His tendency to arrive late in the box and shoot more often make him ideal for the role, and the space created by a Winger on Attack as well as the freedom granted by a BWM and DLP behind him seem to completely unleash him to surge forward and almost act like a second striker when the opportunity presents itself. I LOVE THIS GUY 🇮🇹❤️. Angels of Haarlem 👶👶 In December we received a very unexpected news item into the old paper tray at Haarlem Stadion…. Of course those ratings are based on our level and on the scouts we have etc, but considering our Youth Recruitment and Youth Facilities are still Fairly Basic and/or Adequate, we were not expecting this at all…surely we aren’t going to get a Wonderkid in this save so soon, right? Things are definitely getting sexier here in Haarlem…we play Tiki-Taka football with a Positive mentality, focusing on a High Tempo Short Passing style of football, encouraging the lads to run at the opposition defence and empowering our Midfielders to take more risks, try through balls, hit early crosses and in particular encouraging the likes of Valente to arrive late in the box and have our wide players making runs into the channel or cutting inside to overload the final third. While it’s nothing revolutionary, it seems to be working in this match engine and we are very much enjoying playing football this season.. One win in March slightly sets us back but a better start to April brings us right back up into playoff contention – actually, we need to talk about the Dutch League Rules for a moment, specifically the promotion rules for the Keuken Kampion Divisie. It’s crazy that we are even talking about this, we couldn’t be less ready for top division football let alone considering playoffs etc however it’s important to understand the rules in the unlikely event that we do end up challenging! First thing to note is that none of the Jong teams can get promoted meaning 4 teams (Jong Ajax, Jong PSV, Jong AZ and Jong Utrecht) cannot go up even if they win the league (not even sure what would happen if their senior side was relegated and their Jong team wins it but that’s for another time). The Top 2 non-Jong teams get promoted automatically, and the next best 6 teams (comprising of any non-promoted teams who won one of the 4 x 9-game “periods” throughout the season along with the next best placed teams) contest a 6-team playoff, the 3 winners of which each then enter a 4-team playoff with the 18th placed team in the Eredivisie with one overall winner then taking a place in the top division. Not confusing at all right?! 🙃 Long…
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Phase 1
The scene is set. We have restored the previously extinct HFC Haarlem (dissolved in 2010) to professional football under the guise of new owner Ruud Gullit who started his career at the club all the way back in 1979, and has now revived the club to take a place in the Keuken Kampion Divisie in the Netherlands (aka the Eerste Divisie, the second tier of the Dutch football league) with one main footballing philosophy: Sexy Football. In my previous post, I brought you through our efforts to rebuild an entirely new squad and backroom staff from scratch wherein our primary focus has been to bring in players and staff who favour and have higher attributes across the more attacking and technical attributes in Football Manager – using our trusty Sexy Football Spreadsheet to illustrate how we look and set up overall in terms of these attributes. The result is that we built ourselves a 25-man squad for less than €190k, bringing in a mix of free transfers, loan deals and a couple of key players where we spent our minimal budget, the highlight being Luca Stellwagen for whom we handed over €70k up front with a further €70k in installments to SC Verl in the German 3rd tier. While quite a few players are on the slightly more aged side of the spectrum than one would have liked, I am confident that this is the side that can help us survive our first season back in professional football and commence building our new regime of Sexy Football in North-West Holland. HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2022/2023 Goalkeepers: Piet Velhuuizen, Indy Groothuizen Defenders: Cuco Martina, Pele van Anholt, Luca Stellwagen, David Herold, Thomas Heurtaux, Steven Edwards, Magnus Troest Midfielders: Ilay Elmkies, Mehmet Sahin, Thomas van Bommel, John Goosens, Lee Hyun-Ju, Jacob Bookjans, Paco van Moorsel, Thijme Verheijen, Che Nunnely, Dico Jap Tjong, Rayan El Azrak, Mitchell Schet, Sylvain Marveaux Forwards: András Németh, Keke Topp, Erik Falkenburg The Tactic The all important question. It’s all well and good recruiting and building a team of technicians and creative/attacking players, but what really matters is how are we going to deploy a system that favours Sexy Football? Here’s what we know: ✅ We want a high-energy high-octane brand of football ✅ We want to favour quick-passing, free-flowing football ✅ We want a big focus on vision and off-the-ball movement, facilitating lots of through-balls and defence-splitting passes ✅ We want to have a lot of possession ✅ We want to make full use of the various specialist roles available in-game After much soul-searching and pondering on the various tactical set-ups out there, I couldn’t help but be drawn back to my FM20 save at Greuther Fürth wherein we devised a 4-1-2-2-1 Assymetric tactic that saw us take the Kleeblätter all the way to 4th in the Bundesliga. This system favoured the use of multiple specialist roles, allowed for excellent off the ball movement and in particular gave us a lot of flexibility to deploy players in their strongest roles on-field. Let’s see if it translates to modern day FM and to Dutch football shall we? Training Sexy Football isn’t just on the pitch. We want to truly embed a culture and philosophy of creative, attractive and entertaining football wherein we are confident on the ball and creating plenty of goal-scoring opportunities and well constructed moves to somewhat portray an highly aesthetic style of football in an effort to make this match engine purr in-game. To do this we have built two main training schedules on which we will focus throughout the season: Sexy Money Having set our budgets to reflect those of a fairly mid-table Eerste Divisie team, one concern we have is a lack of income throughout the season having maxed out our transfer and wage budgets. The ever useful friendies-for-cash technique always comes in handy as we raise ~€166k through friendlies against Crystal Palace, Club Brugge, Nottingham Forest and FC Twente (and losing them all but such is life), and I also like to think that this helps us flog ~1500 season tickets which is almost half our 3,500 capacity. Season 1 We open our league campaign away to Da Graafschap who are expected to finish 8th this season – the experts predict that we will finish in 16th place which hopefully means we have recruited fairly well considering we are the newbies in this division, it’s time to put our money where our mouth is and see if our Sexy Football philosophy can be brought to life in-game.. As mentioned before we have high hopes for Che Nunnelly, the 23-year-old Dutch speedster released by Willem II who are expected to win our division this year. With 15 Pace and 18 Acceleration he should be a handful for opposition defenders this year, as too (we hope) should Hungarian youngster Andras Németh who is on loan from KRC Genk in Belgium. Needless to say, in our excitement to kick-off some sexy football it was the home side who scored first on the brink of half-time resulting in a boll*cking from yours truly, which thankfully seemed to resonate with young Németh who equalised early in the second half, and 20 mins later we found ourselves in the lead thanks to a lovely finish from John Goosens (@FridayNightFM likes this). That lead was short lived as we conceded a penalty with 10 minutes to go, and with 92 minutes played and the game all set to finish in a draw, the boys of Haarlem put together a lovely phase of passing for 36-year-old substitute and former Newcastle legend (lol) Sylvain Marveaux to do this: Victory is ours in our first game back in football!!! A 92nd minute winner sends all 142 (🤷♂️) travelling fans into raptures to give HFC Haarlem all 3 points in our opening game of the season. It wasn’t hugely sexy by any standards but some promising signs overall and most importantly a fantastic platform to build on as we get ready for our next game against ADO Den Haag..here we go! LET THE SEXY FOOTBALL BEGIN!! 👇👇 Two wins from two and the signs are promising so far..as you can see above, the players are starting to get it – sexy football is about working the ball, spreading the play, moving for each other and progressing the ball forward at pace and so far we have shown signs of doing exactly that. If we can keep this up then Ruud will be a very happy boy at the very least. Fast forward to the end of September….. Winless ain’t sexy at all. If you were thinking that we had somehow set all of this up to be too easy and/or unrealistic, you were wrong. Any doubts or concerns are quickly quashed as we go on to pick up just 3 points from a possible 21 and fail to pick up a win at all in the next 7 games. We went three games without scoring before again finding our scoring boots, however a general lack of ability to keep possession of the ball has culminated in chances being gifted to the opposition as well as a general lack of control over games and a tendency to score late on rather than start as we mean to – putting us at the unwanted end of the league possession stats with a grim narrative of our ability to win back and hold on to the ball as well as our ability to create goal-scoring chances 🤦♂️. Time to tweak. Defensively we aren’t great, but in a tactic built around attacking play and creative freedom, conceding goals is but to be expected. Instead our focus is on tweaking some of our midfield roles in the hope that we can better win back, retain and recycle possession more effectively, spread the ball a bit better and ultimately create more clear cut chances (sexy football = SCORE MORE THAN THE OPPOSITION). To do this, we make a couple of tactical changes to our midfield roles as follows: ✅ Ball-Winning Midfielder ➡️ Deep Lying Playmaker (Defend) to hopefully get on the ball more often and dictate play ✅ Box-to-Box Midfielder ➡️ Mezzala to encourage more movement and energy in the middle ✅ Trequartista ➡️ Advanced Playmaker to have our AMC look for the ball to feet more often and distribute more through balls and passes to our forwards in space ✅ Inverted Winger ➡️ Wide Playmaker – similarly to get our more technical players on the ball more often and contribute to attacking phases and building up possession The results weren’t instantaneous, but we definitely felt an improvement – finally winning a game not to mention scoring 7 goals in 4 games during October, before picking up 7 points from 12 in November and one more win in December to put us in 14th place by the end of 2022 with 6 wins from 19 games. 14th is pretty good overall all things considered, while we simultaneously focus on rebuilding this club across all fronts in particular looking at our facilities and financial situation wherein we are presented with two pieces of good news. The injection of sponsorship combined with the cash raised earlier through friendlies mean we have some additional flexibility in our Transfer/Wage Budgets so we again take to the transfer market to see if we can bring in some additional depth and quality to our Sexy Football mission. First in the door is Ball Playing Defender Iñaki León who arrives from Fuenlabrada in the 3rd Tier of Spain, and he is followed by Gerardo Martinéz who arrives on a Free Transfer from Midland who play in the 4th tier of Argentina – yes we are pushing the boat out in terms of identifying and scouting players but needs must! Really happy with these two signings both of whom are good enough to challenge for first team football. Onwards and upwards as we enter January 2023 in a world where the entire country is still hungover following the Netherlands’ World Cup Final win over England after an 18-penalty shootout that saw Raheem Sterling miss to hand the Dutch their first ever World Cup trophy..it’s all coming up Oranje this year 🟠. Positives – we stopped losing which is always nice. Also our supposed main man Che Nunnely finally found his scoring boots after we switched him from an Inside Forward to an Attacking Winger, picking up his first goal of the season away to PEC Zwolle and helping us to a fine 2-1 against Jong Utrecht. Although not a bad run at all I felt this was a good time to capitalise on his resurgence as well as freshen things up tactically – focusing the ball down his side of the pitch and dropping back our AMC into a 3-man midfield to give a bit more spine down the middle and foster a shorter passing game. I know it’s not always advisable to keep changing tactics within a season, however as we continue to search for our sweet spot in terms of playing style and possession based football (as well as have three familiar tactical setups in place), here’s hoping this can help bump our form as we enter the latter stages of the season. Definitely better even if a little consistent! Munnelly is a different player in the second half of the season picking up 4 goals and 4 assists during a run which saw us win 4 games in 5 with our biggest win of the season against Roda JC. Much improved style of play which saw us performing well above average in our Passing and Pass Completion stats (see below) as well as our XG wherein we outperformed…
HFC Haarlem Globetrotters: Sexy Football – Foundations
It’s here, and it’s beautiful…🤩 That’s right. At midnight on Tuesday 8th November 2022, Football Manager 2023 officially dropped and though there have been the usual gripes and controversy over the features and match engine etc, FM23 is bigger and better than any version that has preceded it and with my FM23 plans firmly in place for weeks there was no time to waste – we have a club to restore from extinction and another adventure of epic proportion to kick-off the new cycle. The FM Editor. Though we joke about edited databases on the 5 Star Potential podcast, it’s great to have the option to create and spin off multiple universes through our ability to tweak and make changes to leagues and clubs etc. Last year it was about removing the Saudi takeover to facilitate our quest to convert Newcastle to a North-East only club and playing squad – this year it’s about resurrecting HFC Haarlem from extinction since they folded in 2010, bringing in our patriarch Ruud Gullit as our new Owner and Chairman, populating all of the vital club info missing due to their dissolution including finances, reputation, facilities and *spoilers* adding relegation to the Keuken Kampioen Divisie (aka Eerste Divisie) which is Tier 2 of the Dutch football pyramid where we will restart life as a professional football club. This is arguably the most important part of the save (we haven’t even started yet) and shout-out to @Nerdphonic for giving me an ad-hoc Editor tutorial and helping to keep me honest as we went about restoring HFC Haarlem to the football world. When doing something like this it’s essential to get the finances and reputation right so as not to make it either too easy or too difficult once the save itself is loaded up. Too high a reputation and we will be able to attract players far beyond our means as well as experience unrealistic growth and development etc; too low and we might face a long but short-lived season that would inevitably result in relegation due to lack of ability to bring in the required players and staff to kickstart life in the Eeerste Divisie. There’s only one way to do this…(if you know you know): The methodology is simple. First we decided to remove last season’s bottom placed team (Helmond Sport who weren’t relegated due to no relegation in this league unless certain criteria are met); then it was a case of putting together a dataset of all the existing Eerste Divisie teams to get an overview of their budgets, reputation, facilities etc (excluding the Jong teams e.g. Ajax, PSV, AZ and Utrecht whose info represents their senior squad), which in turn enabled to us to get an average of all the core data points across the league and subsequently decide on our own reputation, finances, facilities and morale etc to ensure we were in-line with the other teams in the competition. The outcome of this was as follows: Data Point Value League Rank Overall Balance €1,117,174 7 Transfer Budget €111,717 8 Wage Budget p/m €245,470 3 Scouting Budget €58,912 2 Reputation 5000 9 Morale 12 5 Training Facilities Below Average 16 Youth Facilities Below Average 15 Junior Coaching Average 16 Youth Recruitment Fairly Basic 16 Given that Ruud Gullit must have a bit of cash to spare we give ourselves a small injection to the Wage and Scouting Budgets especially considering we need to invest in an entirely new squad and backroom staff (goes without saying that an extinct club has neither in-game). With everything else set around mid to bottom half of the table, we certainly will have a lot to do particularly looking at those facilities and coaching levels 🤦♂️. Once this was all updated in the Editor, our final action was to amend the Eerste Divisie league rules to add relegation to the league – no point being a bottom half club if you can’t get relegated right?! In real life, relegation was suspended for the 2021/2022 season and after that, a club can only get relegated if there is a team in the Tweede Divisie (3rd Tier) willing to turn professional and present a solid business plan etc – therefore I felt it best that we add it to the league and without going into the details, this can be done in the Advanced Rules section of the Editor however requires some testing to ensure it applies correctly (once again kudos to @Nerdphonic for his expertise here). Download the Editor file here 👇 if you fancy a look or a crack at it yourself! Right – let’s play some Football Manager shall we?! The remainder of this post will cover two main aspects: (1) building an entire backroom staff form scratch (first tteam only for now) and (2) building a full 25-man playing squad to compete in the Keuken Kampioen Divisie this season with less than €120k transfer budget..tremendous. Backroom Staff 🛠️ If you remember from our introductory post – our objective in terms of playing style and recruitment is of course SEXY FOOTBALL. That means that our primary focus is on building a backroom team that favours more attacking football and leans towards attacking/technical coaching in terms of attributes and philosophy. Easier said than done based on our level, but as we all know – the Netherlands has never been short of a few ex-legends when it comes to Football Manager backroom staff.. 131 Caps and 31 goals for Holland – Wesley Sneijder arrives to take the role of Assistant Manager at HFC Haarlem, his first non-playing role and though he has room for improvement in the coaching department he definitely brings an air of attractive football and style to the club. He is joined by Caspar Dekker (Head of Youth Development) and coaches René Eijkelkamp (Attacking), Boudewijn Pahlplatz (Technical), Gert-Jan Westerhout (General) and Remy Tang (Fitness) who you could argue we hired solely because he is Dutch with Irish heritage. I won’t go into too much detail about our Recruitment and Medical teams (see the aforementioned spreadsheet for more detail) however it’s worth mentioning that our Scouting department led by Chief Scout Henk Grim includes ex-Arsenal defender Nacho Monreal, former Champ Man legend Kim Kallstrom and the brilliantly named Cock Jol (brother of former Spurs and Fulham manager Martin) – can you believe they have another brother (a referee) named Dick?! 😆 Our final piece of the Sexy Football backroom puzzle is of course our Director of Football – Ruud isn’t going to run this show all alone right? Building a 25-man squad..from scratch…with €120k Through a series of scouting, trials, trawling through surrounding leagues and a few tasty loan signings we managed to build ourselves a 25-man squad that I feel is capable of competing at this level – at least to avoid a relegation battle and challenge for a mid-table position. Don’t worry I’m not going to bring you through absolutely every player we scouted and signed during pre-season in Haarlem – that’s what the spreadsheet is for, and as you can tell & from what we have said so far in terms of our recruitment focus, our goal is to sign players that have particular attributes and traits which are well suited to our new style of sexy football – meaning good Passing, Technique, First Touch, Dribbling, Flair, Vision, Pace etc. Instead we will do a spotlight on what I feel are the Top 5 Players signed during the window whom I think will be our key players as we kick-off this new save adventure and commence our quest for the sexiest football ever seen 🔥. Che Nunnely (AM R/L) – Free Transfer 🇳🇱 Can’t believe this guy was available on a free transfer after scoring 6 goals for relegated Willem II in the Eredivise last season. The former Ajax graduate is out for 3 months but is well worth the wait – expect him to tear sh*t up in this league (15 Pace and 18 Acceleration 🔥) and he will likely be deployed as an Inside Forward or Inverted Winger on the right-hand side of our asymetric formation (more on this in my next post). Luca Stellwagen (DL/WBL) – SC Verl (€70k + €70k installments) 🇩🇪 Our most expensive signing this window and what a signing it is. Somehow languishing in the 3rd tier of Germany, Stellwagen should be a big impact player in the Left Wing Back position with good all round attributes both defensively and in attack – his versatility means that he can play in multiple positions and I’ll be amazed if we go a whole season without him scoring a thunderb*stard on his favoured left peg. Erik Falkenburg (AML/C) – Free Transfer 🇳🇱 At 34 Falkenburg hasn’t much to offer in terms of speed or mobility, but with us looking likely to deploy either a Treqartista or an Enganche in the AMC position, his technical ability and awareness should make him a focal point in attack, linking up play and hopefully fuelling our quick possession and passing game to slice open opposition defences – will likely be our first choice penalty taker also. András Németh (STC) – Genk (Loan) 🇭🇺 The one position we failed to fill in the Free Transfer market was up front, so we headed over to neighbourly Belgium to bring in the 19-year-old Hungarian on loan from Genk who generally have a pretty good pedigree when it comes to youth development. Most likely he will be deployed as a lone striker but with 14 Finishing, 14 Off the Ball and 14 Technique combined with a nice drop of Flair and Vision, we expect him to be a constant threat up front and cause havoc for opposition defenders. David Herold (DLC) – FC Bayern (Loan) I really like this chap – although seemingly a natural Full-Back he will be deployed at Centre Half in our formation bringing much needed pace to the back-line especially considering that his centre-back partner will either be 34-year-old Thomas Heurtaux or 35-year-old Magnus Troest. Tall, strong, fit and decent in the air – with his contract up in the summer he could be one to keep a close eye on should he prove his worth at Haarlem Stadion this season. View all 25 of our signings here (click below to see individual profiles) HFC Haarlem Playing Squad 2022/2023 Goalkeepers: Piet Velhuuizen, Indy Groothuizen Defenders: Cuco Martina, Pele van Anholt, Luca Stellwagen, David Herold, Thomas Heurtaux, Steven Edwards, Magnus Troest Midfielders: Ilay Elmkies, Mehmet Sahin, Thomas van Bommel, John Goosens, Lee Hyun-Ju, Jacob Bookjans, Paco van Moorsel, Thijme Verheijen, Che Nunnely, Dico Jap Tjong, Rayan El Azrak, Mitchell Schet, Sylvain Marveaux Forwards: András Németh, Keke Topp, Erik Falkenburg Overall consensus? Not too bad really all things considered? Those five above in addition to the likes of John Goosens (Free Transfer), Lee Hyun-Ju (also on loan from Bayern), Keke Topp (on loan from Schalke) and of course 36-year-old ex-Newcastle flop Sylvain Marveaux (sure why not) collectively form a squad that is far more technically and attacking minded than any squad I’ve managed previously – not necessarily implying we are actually good at it, just far more offensive than defensive in comparison to my usual approach in FM but hey, isn’t that what Sexy Football is all about? Only time will tell as we gear up for our first game of the season against Da Graafschap (a) but that can wait until my next post where we will delve into building a culture of Sexy Football in Haarlem, in particular our Tactical Style, Training Approach, Player Development and of course our efforts to elevate the club facilities and reputation along the way..much more to come! Until next time 👌 Paul. Thanks for reading, be sure to hit the follow button below to get instant updates when a new post is live, as well as following me on Twitter and Twitch where we will have as many occasional streams as possible! I have…
The Byline
The Byline is Football Manager’s official blog and general interest website, continaining a wealth of guides and specialised pieces covering all aspects of the game. I have written a number of articles for The Byline and have been lucky enough to visit the Sports Interactive studios on more than one occasion, you can find links to all my Byline content below:
Northern Boys – Finale (Part X)
(Spoilers) – if you haven’t read the last installment of Northern Boys, do it now…IT WAS HUGE. Welcome back….to….THE PREMIER LEAGUE. That’s right, our Northern Boys are back in the big time after the unlikeliest of promotions on the final day of last season, which means after 3 seasons of languishing in the Championship and 7 seasons overall of navigating this save series, our North-East only squad are finally back in the Top Flight and I honestly have no idea how on earth we will survive it…but more on that later. Northern Development One thing we didn’t touch on at the end of last season was a status update on our North-East development project where our goal is to reinvigorate football in the North-East region and elevate footballing production across all the surrounding clubs in the area. To date we have invested more than £72 million across the region, largely taking the funds earned from players sales of ASM, Willock, Wilson, et al and reinvesting this into our North-East counterparts via friendlies for cash, affiliate fees and over-zealous transfers where we buy low value players for exorbitant fees as a means of pumping cash in to their respective footballing coffers. Let’s talk about South Shields again as there are truly remarkable things happening at this club. We previously spoke about how they had gained back-to-back promotions from Vanarama National North to Vanamara National, and then from Vanamara National to League 2. As you can see above we have given close to £12 million in development funding to South Shields as well as loaning them 8 players to date (they are one of our three official affiliate clubs in-game along with Hartlepool and Blyth). Not only have did they hold their own in League 2……THEY F*CKING WON IT. Absolute scenes as these North-East minnows slowly make their way up the footballing pyramid and even more interestingly, despite the £12 million we’ve given them they themselves have only spent ~£480k over the past 3 seasons yet something is definitely brewing at this club and hopefully we can also see this filter into their North-East youth production in the coming season. You’ll also see Hartlepool giving a stellar account of themselves finishing 9th in the league, while our other affiliate Blyth Spartans also had a great season following relegation last year – winning the Vanarama National League North to take a place in Vanarama National next season alongside Gateshead. Deserters On a more negative note we start pre-season with some pretty grim news. Despite our best efforts and even after getting promoted to the Premier League, Lewis Gibson point blank refused to sign a new contract (been pissed ever since we rejected those bids from Roma and Napoli) and subsequently decides to sign for Trabzonspor in the Turkish League on a free transfer – very much a shame as one of our starting Centre Halves and at 27 would have been a big part of our survival bid (you better believe we will go back in for him in January). Gibson is followed out the door by Daniel Barlaser who despite starting 29 games last season also refused to renew his deal and opts to become a Free Agent rather than join us in the Premier League. Really Daniel? In a world where quality Northern Boys are a scarce commodity, this is slightly concerning when we think about trying to compete in the Premier League.. The Big Time The Premier League is a wild old place in the year 2028. Since starting this save Liverpool have won it 4 times, Man Utd have won it twice and interestingly City winning just one title in 2025/2026. These three have made up the Top 3 every season bar two, with Arsenal finishing 3rd last year and Aston Villa randomly finishing 3rd in 2024 under one Frank Lampard. Speaking of last year – not only did Man Utd win the league but they did so courtesy of on outstanding season from our ultimate Northern Boy Giovanni Reyna who finished the season with the highest Average Rating in the league (7.52) after bagging 13 goals and 6 assists in just 25 league games, which was also enough to nab him the Ballon D’Or ahead of Romelu Lukaku and Jude Bellingham. Suffice to say we won’t be seeing him in a black and white shirt for some time (if ever).. Reyna isn’t the only Northern Boy to elude us permanently however 😔.. What does all this mean? Essentially it will be fairly slim pickings in the transfer market for us largely due to the fact that all of the top North-East born/raised players are already here and as you can see below, the only players that we would even have a sniff of signing would be our former Right-Back Nathan Wood, and Sunderland pair Dan Neil and the infamous chief of all chiefs John Wright who has refused to sign for us for 4 seasons straight such is his devotion to our closest rivals… Not much we can do here except again commence the @FridayNightFM pursuit with little or no hope of any success. Let the games begin.. Step 1 – Watch from Afar Step 2 – Chinese Whispers Step 3 – Chat Sh*t, Get Banged Step 4 – Peer Pressure Step 5 – Pray ABSOLUTE SCENES. After 5 years of begging, stalking, praying and sheer abuse on the man’s name – John Wright who at 15 looked like one of the best young defenders we had ever seen arrives at St. James Park aged 20 to help fight our cause for Premier League survival and is still young enough to be developed further having not really improved drastically since emerging as a Newgen. John Wright – Sunderland till he dies, the Mackem Mercenary, is finally a Northern Boy. Our spending continues as we also pick up his Sunderland team mate Dan Neil (born in Hebburn) as a rotation option, while a couple of newgens are brought in with the signings of Kevin Williams (born in Hartlepool) and Russel Foster (born in Stockton-on-Tees) from Brentford, taking our total spending to €25m in our first season back in the Premier League and our 8th at the helm of Newcastle. In other unexpected news….. This was quite unplanned and unexpected to say the least!! In previous saves I have always wanted to get the Ireland job, and here we are in a save with no focus on international management and we get the offer without even having to interview!! This created a bit of a predicament..accepting it would mean even slower progress on the Northern Boys front (considering how slow I play as it is), while declining it means an Irishman turning down the chance to manage his country organically in FM. Decisions!! As difficult as it is, the save must come first so we decline the offer to focus solely on Premier League survival and seeing out what will likely be our toughest season of this Northern Boys saga if the Media Prediction is anything to go by. Here, we, go…. Northern Boys – Season 8 Newcastle United Squad List 2028/2029 Goalkeepers: Freddie Woodman, Bailey Peacock Farrell Defenders: Fred Briggs*, Obeng Arthur*, Dael Fry, John Wright*, Mattie Pollock, Leif Davis, Kevin Williams* Midfielders: Sean Longstaff, Lewis Wing, Shola Shoretire, Josh Mellor*, Elliott Embleton, Dan Neil, Gabriel Odumosu*, Elliott Anderson, Russell Foster*. Forwards: Adam Armstrong, Sam Greenwood, Joe Hugill, Luke Young*, Josh Coburn *Newgen Naturally we are given a very generous start to the season with our first three PL games scheduled against Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool. Somewhat surprisingly however, we come out of it with 4 points and it should have been 7 only for a late goal by one Youssef Moukoko in that second game away to Chelsea, while somehow we manage to hold off Liverpool’s advances in Anfield so that big man Dael Fry could snatch a late winner!! This encouraging start gives us a huge boost going into September as we pick up another 7 points, and by mid-October we somehow find ourselves flying high in 6th place!! While Adam Armstrong seems to struggle to adapt to life in the Premier League, it’s the likes of Shola Shoretire (my FM22 Player of the Year) and Gabriel Odumosu who are stepping up and carrying us through some incredibly tough games and if we can continue along in this vein then our relegation fears will surely start to recede…right? We had to say it – we then went on a 4 game losing streak, and despite picking up a good 3-2 win away to Leeds, disappointing performances against the likes of Wolves, West Ham, West Brom and Middlesbrough see us slip right back to 11th and suddenly we are sliding downhill with nothing to stop the fall…that’s always a good time to play Man Utd in Football Manager right? I mean LOOK AT THAT TEAM 🤦♂️ Ninety-something minutes later……. Not a clue. Somehow, after weeks of poor performances and struggling in front of goal, we found ourselves 3-0 up against last year’s champions and despite conceding two goals late on in an attempt to give me heart failure, we held on for an epic 3-2 victory. The downside to this is that it seems to knock the stuffing out of us for the rest of December and Christmas (pun fully intended), and by the end of 2028 we find ourselves still in a downward spiral in 15th place in the 2028/2029 Premier League season. Now I know what you’re thinking. Surely we can do something in the transfer market. Surely there are some Northern Boys available that are better than what we have and that can help propel us back up the league towards safety and mid-table mediocrity. The honest truth is, short of Jordan Pickford (still at Everton), Nathan Wood (left us for Leeds) and Gio Reyna (banging for Man Utd) – there really isn’t. All are uninterested and therefore the challenge to improve this squad is greater than ever – we even went back in for Lewis Gibson (Trabzonspor) and Dan Barlaser (Central Coast Mariners) and both said no, chiefs. We must make do with what we have and see if we can somehow turn our fortunes around in 2029. Guess it’s up to me and my tactical astuteness right? It’s bad. Oh so very bad. We try to mix things up, flicking between 4-1-2-3 and 4-4-2 but nothing seems to be clicking. After defying odds at the start of the season, the game is healing itself and suddenly we find ourselves all the way down in 17th place just a couple of points clear of relegation and in real trouble with Brighton, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest all looking up at us with glee as we spiral out of control..the only positive note is that our job remains stable, bearing in mind our original media prediction was 19th and club vision was to battle for survival… Surely it can’t end like this. Not after all we have been through. Is our final legacy at this club to bring them our second relegation in 5 seasons and (with the close proximity we now have to FM23) leave them there to rot eternally? Even our Youth Intake was so poor it’s not even worth talking about…WE NEED A MIRACLE PEOPLE. It’s not over until it’s over. While Man Utd gain their revenge as expected, we pick up crucial back to back wins over two of our relegation rivals, and draws either side of that loss to Arsenal…
Northern Boys – Part IX
Well well well, have I got a story to tell you….. Let’s recap. It took us five seasons to clear the decks at non-Saudi owned Newcastle and fill our squad and backroom ranks with players and staff who were born or raised in the North-East of England. This was part of the plan. It took us four seasons however, to get ourselves relegated from the Premier League and just about cling onto our job with our esteemed Chairman Joe Ordiman showing all kinds of blind faith and trust in the process. Needless to say this was not part of the plan. Two seasons later we find ourselves still in the Championship, with back to back final day disappointments which saw us missing out on consecutive playoff spots to finish 7th in each of our first two attempts at returning to the Premier League. Northern Boys proves to be a far more difficult challenge than we ever could have anticipated all the way back in November when this save adventure began. That being said – operation restore the North-East and boost football production across the region is in full flight, and we are slowly starting to see the fruits of our labour both in terms of our own youth production as well as footballing stature in this part of the world – but more on that later… Season 7 The long and the short of it is that after 6 seasons, we have signed virtually all of the real-life Northern Boys that are either interested or good enough to play for this fine club. Having added the likes of Dael Fry, Lewis Gibson, Shola Shoretire and Adam Armstrong – only the likes of Jordan Henderson, Jordan Pickford and Giovanni Reyna remain unattainable for the foreseeable future. Actually, make that the unforeseeable future…🤦♂️ We do however, succeed in bringing in a replacement for error-prone goalkeeper Bailey Peacock Farrell with a familiar face returning in the form of Freddie Woodman, who we sold to Leeds back in 2023 (at a time when now-retired Fraser Forster was keeping nets for the boys) and now returns for a £4m fee from Barnsley – not quite Pogba levels of double dipping, but hopefully he can be a more stable stalwart between the sticks than his predecessor (see previous blog posts for the madness of BPF). In addition to Woodman we also bring in Luke Young from Sheffield Wednesday for £8m after he scored 14 goals in League 1 last season, along with Josh Coburn from Forest Green (£200k) as another backup striker to the likes of Adam Armstrong, Sam Greenwood and Joe Hugill. That means we commence Season 7 with a Northern Boys squad as follows: Newcastle United Squad List 2026/2027 Goalkeepers: Freddie Woodman, Bailey Peacock Farrell, Stuart Shaw* Defenders: Dael Fry, Lewis Gibson, Mattie Pollock, Leif Davis, Fred Briggs*, Obeng Arthur*, Bali Mumba, Steve Connolly* Midfielders: Sean Longstaff, Lewis Wing, Shola Shoretire, Josh Mellor*, Elliott Embleton, Dan Barlaser, Gabriel Odumosu*, Elliott Anderson Forwards: Adam Armstrong, Sam Greenwood, Joe Hugill, Luke Young*, Josh Coburn *Newgen (Before you get alarmed – we decided to loan the big man Willie Power to Newport County for the season, at 17 he needs minutes and crowd worship, Vanarama fans won’t know what hit them) After a frenetic opening game which saw us take a 92nd minute lead only for Luton to equalise on 96 minutes (standard Northern Boys behaviour that) – we only managed one defeat in our opening 10 league games before slipping up to Bournemouth and Crystal Palace in October which left us in 10th place as we entered the busy Winter period – not ideal but such is life in the Championship that only 4 points separate us from 2nd place!! This isn’t even the most disappointing news. After 6 seasons of tears, joy and emotion with our esteemed Chairman Joe Ordiman (and despite the fact that I selected “prevent takeovers” in the Editor before starting this save 🤔), the unthinkable happens as a takeover indeed goes through with Joe moving on to pastures new to be replaced by one Jamie Eccles. Thankfully he doesn’t get any wild notions of dethroning us from the Northern Boys helm, but it’s a sad day in the Trust the Process saga as we say goodbye to big Joe forever. Fare Thee Well Joe ❤️ Back on field, a blip against Ipswich is quickly forgotten as we win four on the bounce in November, however stumble through December and January picking up wins here and there but dropping far more points than one would desire at this time of year. By the end of January and with 30 games played we were up to 6th in the league, albeit with an 11 point gap from the automatic promotion places and finding ourselves as one of 7 teams within 3 points of each other. The Championship is as mad as a bag of cats. All I can say is thank f*ck for Adam Armstrong. By the time we hit February he has bagged 25 goals in the league including 7 braces, and is on a one-man mission to get us back into the Premier League. You may remember that in both of our last two seasons we saw him pick up long-term injuries in the second half of the season – if we can keep him fit and firing for the rest of the season then surely we can at least make the playoffs for the first time in three seasons 🤞. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for any of his striker partners – so far we have dabbled between Luke Young and Joe Hugill, neither of whom have been taking their chances so we decide to shift direction and rotate between Sam Greenwood and Gabriel Odomosu, the latter of whom came through our youth intake a few seasons back and is showing signs of becoming a first team contender (at least at this level). Oh – one other change of note. Having had Graeme Jones as our Assistant Manager for the past 6 seasons, we decide to freshen things up by promoting Michael Carrick as our second-in-command – a player I would have loved to see in a Newcastle shirt back in his day however we will settle for having him beside us in the St. James Park dugout..I bet he smells good too. Whether it was the Striker changes, the takeover, Carrick’s influence, an intervention from @FMDoop and @Nerdphonic on the @5StarPod or FM showing a rare moment of sympathy to the Northern Boys cause, something clicks and we have ourselves a great time in February and March. Out of nowhere we win 8 games from 9 and the accummulation of results elsewhere sees us go level with Cardiff in 2nd place, 9 points clear of the cut-off for playoff places and only 5 points behind league leaders Bournemouth. PROMOTION KLAXONS ARE RINGING AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO 😄😄. Of course, that’s not all March brings as most of you Football Manager enthusiasts will know. We gave you a sneak preview of our Youth Intake at the start of this post, and now it’s time to see if all our efforts to boost our Youth Development, Facilities, Category, Scouting and Recruitment might finally pay off after a number of seasons referencing a so called “Golden Generation” without seeing any true 5 Star Potential wonderkids coming through (even Willie ain’t that good). Please please please please please…… Ok so it might not be 5 stars but remember the name – DENNIS JAMESON. 19 Flair, 16 First Touch, 16 Technique, 15 Off the Ball and 16 Determination – not bad for a 15 year-old and to top things off, the lad was born down the road in South-Shields – as Northern as Brown Ale and by God I hope he turns out half as tasty. In addition to this we see huge potential in Carl Daniels (who we will retrain as a DM), Harrison Jessup (Box to Box material) and Goalkeeper Sam Williams – all of whom have ridiculous mental attributes in what has been our best intake of the save so far. Watch this space!! The Final Lap Six games. Six games to revive our season, reignite the save and restore Newcastle to the bright lights of Premier League football. Six games to make us forget the pain and anguish of seasons gone by. Six games to silence the haters and put the North-East back on the Premier League map and bring joy and elation to the Toon faithful. Our time is now surely… There is an evil version of Fabrizio Romano in another universe whose tagline is “Here We Go AGAIN”. I mean, really. How is this possible. That makes it THREE consecituve seasons in which Adam Armstrong has picked up a long-term injury (at a time when he is top league goalscorer) and is ruled out at the business end of the season missing our most crucial run of games. WHY ARE THE FM GODS SO VENGEFUL. This means our fate rests in the hands of Sam Greenwood (6 goals) and Gabriel Odumosu (3 goals) in a run which includes a massive six-pointer against Cardiff with whom we are currently level on points. I’M NOT CRYING YOU’RE CRYING. On the downside, we dropped 4 points including a dull 0-0 draw with our arch rivals. On the bright side, Cardiff dropped 6 points losing to Blackburn and Birmingham which puts us in pole position as we prepare to welcome said Cardiff to St. James Park in what is now the BIGGEST game of this save so far to date. Win and we are back in the Premier League. Draw and we HAVE to beat Portsmouth away in our last game. Lose and it’s out of our hands. We’ve said it before but…it all comes down to this. Newcastle vs Cardiff – Saturday 29th April 2028. 🗣️ “67 minutes on the clock and these two promotion chasing sides can’t be separated, locked in a scoreless draw as the tension rises knowing what is at stake for whichever team can make the first breakthrough. The home side have slighlty edged it on posession and shots on goal, but Cardiff’s three at the back have dealt with everything thrown at them not to mention goalkeeper Andrew Fisher putting in a 7.9 rating. Surely one of these sides will take a chance and…..PENALTY TO NEWCASTLE, I DON’T BELIEVE IT!!“ 🗣️ “Adam Armstrong has scored 8 from 8 penalties this season but is not on the pitch for Newcastle today. The hope and dreams of Tyneside now fall on the shoulders of Sunderland-born Sam Greenwood….“ 🗣️ “HE MISSES!! I DON’T BELIEVE IT!! SAM GREENWOOD HITS IT STRAIGHT AT THE KEEPER AND NEWCASTLE HAVE SQUANDERED A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO GAIN PROMOTION TO THE PREMIER LEAGUE!! OH MY DAYS…” 🗣️ “RED CARD FOR CARDIFF – TOM DAVIES RECEIVES A STRAIGHT RED FOR A HORROR TACKLE ON DAEL FRY!! SURELY THIS IS NEWCASTLE’S TIME, SURELY…” Weirdly this feels normal again. A penalty and a red card and we’ve still managed to squander a golden chance for automatic promotion. Adam Armstrong would have scored. Hell, Neil Armstrong would have scored, but in typical FM / Northern Boys fashion we somehow fail to win and now we have to make the 400 mile / 635 kilometre journey to Portsmouth knowing that only a win will guarantee us a place in the Premier League next season, anything else and we will have to rely on Cardiff dropping points at home to 18th place Blackpool. The stars are aligning, and not in a good way…. Portsmouth vs Newcastle – Saturday…
Northern Boys – Part VIII
Greetings from the year 2026 where we are about to enter our sixth season of this Football Manager save adventure. Spain have just beaten England in the World Cup Final courtesy of an Ansu Fati winner, a Karim Adeyemi inspired Man City are Premier League Champions again following 3 years of dominance by Liverpool while PSG have finally been crowned Champions of Europe after beating Liverpool in a penalty shootout with Scotsman Aaron Hickey scoring the winning penalty for PSG after Joshua Kimmich missed Liverpool’s last spot-kick in Old Trafford of all places. But that’s not why we are here. This story is all about Northern Boys, a North-East only save in which our mission since FM22 was released back in November 2021 is to fully transition a non-Saudi owned Newcastle United to a regional squad and transfer policy (i.e. local born/raised players only) as well as elevate football development and production across the North-East of England through our ties and investment in clubs from the surrounding area. Let’s see how we are getting on shall we? Newgen Development One of our main goals is not only to elevate our youth production at Newcastle, but more specifically to increase the quality and quantity of local-born/raised Newgens coming through in the hope that at some point we see one or more of these turning out for England in the near future. Having had several references to the infamous “Golden Generation” by our Head of Youth Development, we are yet to see any real elite North-East Newgens emerge however what is pleasing is that a number of our own Newgens have evolved to become first team regulars in this Northern Boys side. Josh Mellor ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Newcastle-born Josh Mellor has emerged our first-choice AMR since coming through our Youth Intake in Season 1. Left footed with decent speed and dribbling, he has taken well to life in the Championship contributing plenty of goals and assists where he is deployed as an Inverted Winger on the right-hand side of a 4 man midfield. Fred Briggs ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Also Newcastle-born – Freddy Briggs originally came through in Season 2 as a DC/DMC but at 5’9″ we decided to retrain him as a Right Back where he usually features as an Inverted Wing Back adding an extra body to our two man central -midfield. Solid in the tackle with good Anticipation, Bravery, Decisions, Acceleration and Strength – he has become a fan favourite as well as being capped at England U21 level, with the only downside being his Natural Fitness is very poor and he often requires a rest during the 46 game season that is life in the Championship. Gabriel Odumosu ⭐⭐⭐⭐ We were quite excited when this man came through the ranks being touted as the next Michael Owen, and though he is London-born he is a defacto Northern Boy having spent much of his younger years in the North-East. 18 goals in 21 games for our U18’s saw him promoted to the first team and though not really an out-and-out Striker (being retrained as an Inside Forward), and he will hopefully become an important squad player with potential to break into the first team this season. Obeng Arthur⭐⭐⭐⭐ Named as an Elite Youth Candidate when he came through in Season 3, we didn’t have much high hopes for the young French/Ghanian prospect looking at his defensive and technical attributes, however a lack of pace and agility in our back line forced our hand and he has sinced established himself as a first-choice centre-half at the club. Consistently averaging above 7.0, his development and value have dramatically increased with first-team football and at 18 has plenty of room to improve at least as a Championship player until we can hopefully push for promotion. Willie Power ⭐⭐⭐ What can be said about Willie Power that hasn’t been said already! Though not a world-beater by any means, Willie has added an extra layer of entertainment and hope to this save so much so that the man even has his own tune and emotes on stream. We will be playing him in the Cups this season – let’s see if he can rise to the occasion 😄. Northern Boys – Season 6 In my last post you learned of the disappointment we had in missing out on the Championship playoff spots courtesy of a 93rd minute Luton goal of all things, so Season 6 sees us again take this Northern Boys squad in the second tier of English football with high hopes of Premier League promotion. We have to right? Despite maintaining a very healthy bank balance (£116m) and transfer budget (£77m) – there are simply no North-East born/raised players out there good enough to improve our squad (any that are good enough aren’t interested in joining our Championship exploits) so for the first time in this save we make no new transfer additions with the exception of some players purchased from local clubs as part of our North-East investment (which we will talk about later). Newcastle United Squad List 2026/2027 Goalkeepers: Bailey Peacock Farrell, Stuart Shaw* Defenders: Dael Fry, Ben Gibson, Lewis Gibson, Mattie Pollock, Leif Davis, Fred Briggs*, Obeng Arthur*, Balli Mumba Midfielders: Sean Longstaff, Lewis Wing, Shola Shoretire, Josh Mellor*, Elliott Embleton, Dan Barlaser, Matty Longstaff, Jacob Murphy, Gabriel Odumosu*, Taylor Taylor*. Forwards: Adam Armstrong, Sam Greenwood, Joe Hugill, Willie Power* *Newgen Jump forward to November and it’s safe to say things are going fairly well… Adam Armstrong starts the season like a house on fire with 14 goals in 15 games, with Shola Shoretire notching up 8 assists and even the aforementioned Willie Power getting in on the action with 4 goals in 2 games in the Carabao Cup. Our 4-4-2 formation seems to be ticking along nicely – we continue to concede goals, but in typical Entertainers style we are mostly outscoring our opponents and operation “get back to the Premier League and stop pricking around” is well underway. December is a bit more rocky as we lose important games against Watford (twice), Barnsley and Brentford – all of whom are promotion rivals and all of whom start to pick up points as we in turn drop them. Though we aren’t playing our best, what they say about the Championship is certainly true – it has to be one of the toughest leagues out there. You would think we would be the strongest team in this division however it’s important to remember that we are still a North-East only side competing in a league where the teams are getting stronger each year; Adam Idah is on fire for Nottingham Forest and it’s between him, Juan Hernandez and Adam Armstrong to finish Top Scorer this season. Julian Alvarez (Leeds) has overtaken Shola Shoretire to top the Assists and Average Rating charts along with Ryan Gauld of Brentford and Forest’s Daniel Podence, how he has ended up in the Championship we will never know. We have also noticed that many of these sides are littered with Newgen Wonderkids on loan from the likes of Chelsea, Man City and Man Utd (a pleasure which we of course have denied ourselves in this save universe) and you can see clearly in the Match Engine that some of these lads are far too good for this division. Not to make too many excuses but overall THIS IS DIFFICULT – by the end of January the league is blown wide open with the top 6 teams all within 7 points of each other, and unfortunately we suddenly find ourselves 5th in that list with much to do as we enter the new year. Let’s play a little game shall we? Typical. Having scored 24 league goals making him Championship Top Scorer by a country mile, the FM gods intervene once again to rule him out for the rest of the season with a damaged achilles tendon. I mean, HE WAS JUST RUNNING. This is a huuge blow to proceedings having not even hit March yet, and all of a sudden our promotion surge has been dealt a massive blow with our hopes now lying with Joe Hugill and Sam Greenwood to bag the goals we need to seal promotion. This is not what we want at all.. Positively Joe Hugill scores in his first two starts of the Armstrongless era, however his absence is still very much felt as we only pick up one win in March and again start to concede stupid goals much to @Shrewnaldo‘s frustration (he really hates our defenders & rightly so). These dropped points mean that after 40 games and with 6 to play – our chances of automatic promotion are no longer in our hands, with a playoff spot looking to be our best chance at going up this season. I CAN’T F*CKING COPE. Ok then. This is good. 3 games to go, 3 points off the automatic spots, a whole 7 points clear of Birmingham who sit just outside the playoff spots. We’ve had bottle jobs before but even the FM Gods can’t get us now surely…. This happened. Live on stream. We proceeded to lose our last 3 games meaning that all it would take to knock us out of the playoffs is for Birmingham to win their remaining 2 games after we handed them 3 points at home. Surely not. Not like this. NOT LIKE THIS. EIGHT GOALS. EIGHT GOALS IN TWO GAMES. Our embarassing 4-1 defeat at home to Barnsley combined with Birmingham’s thrashing of Luton and Preston mean we end up missing out on the playoffs on goal difference, finishing 7th overall and once again we despairingly miss out on promotion for a second consecutive season. WHAT IN THE ABSOLUTE F*CK……. Fast forward a few weeks to the time of writing…. Ok, so the dust has settled. That very nearly broke me in terms of my love for FM and my commitment to this save, so much so that I have barely touched the game since it happened. It’s not so much that I can’t deal with missing out on promotion, or plodding along in the Championship with this Northern Boys squad (I mean, our squad is probably Championship level in 2027). It’s more so the way in which this game has dealt us blow after blow, three seasons in a row crushing us on the last day of the season – there isn’t enough Guinness in the world! 😄 However, the more I recap on this save and all of our efforts in terms of the North-East project, our regional development efforts, the blog so far, seeing others replicate what we have now dubbed the “Regionnaire” challenge and in particular the amount of support and interest I have received from those of you who have been following, reading and watching live on stream – I am very much ready to get back on the horse and bring Northern Boys back to the stage starting with this blog post and continuing with more streams and more carnage in the North-East. What we can do however, is end this post on a positive note by reflecting on the impact our Regional Development has had so far. We invest into North-East football development directly to clubs in the surrounding region via 4 main avenues: Player Signings (overly generous ones at that) Friendlies for cash (playing at their grounds so they get the revenue) Affiliations (annual fees paid to feeder clubs) Outgoing player sales/loans (i.e. from us to them through affiliations or targetted deals) To date we have spent £58 million as part of our North-East development funding – granted, £26m of that is the signing of Elliott Embleton from Sunderland, however even when you…
Northern Boys – Part VII
Welcome back to Northern Boys, a North-East only Football Manager save where we are in Season 5 of the newly branded “Regionnaire” save at the helm of Newcastle United Football Club…in the Championship…🤦♂️ That’s right – unfortunately last season (our fourth in the hotseat at St. James Park), we managed to get relegated after a string of disastrous results and FM-induced lunacy however in spite of this, our esteemed chairman Joe Ordiman contiunes to trust the process and decided not to sack us despite a multitude of boardroom summons to explain our poor form – not only that, we managed to capitalise on this extreme display of poor judgement by blagging big Joe into giving us a new contract for another 2 seasons 😄. WE ARE ELITE. Though unplanned and unexpected at this point, life in the Championship at Northern Boys makes for an interesting concept. We had originally given ourselves 4 seasons to fully transition to a North-East only squad and staff policy, which meant that not only did we get relegated but we also bid farewell to Allan Saint-Maximin (Crystal Palace – £42m), Joe Willock (£28m), Callum Wilson (Almeria – £6m) and the regrettable sale of Northern Boy Nathan Wood to Leeds after they triggered his relegation release clause (£18m). As we embark on Season 5, we are officially a North-East only club that find ourselves in outstanding shape financially – our relatively low annual new transfer spend combined with high transfer revenue giving us an extremely healthy overall Bank Balance (£164m) and Transfer Budget (£92m) as we enter Season 6 which surely played into Joe Ordiman’s decision making when it came to not sacking us following relegation. ✔️ Positives – mission accomplished in terms of full migration to a North-East only model as well as having an extremely solid and healthy financial situation on which we can build for the future. ❌ Negatives – now that we are in the Championship, the quality of available and interested North-East players has rapidly dwindled, and it will be a long time before we can convinve the likes of GIovanni Reyna, Jordan Pickford or Jordan Henderson to return to their roots and join the Northen Boys gravy train… Regardless, we need to bolster our squad depth with 46 league games ahead of us, and that’s exactly what we did. Transfers In ⬅️ Elliott Embleton (b. Durham 1999) – Sunderland (£26m) Dan Barlaser (b. Gateshead 1997) – Rotherham (£8m) Bali Mumba (b. South Shields 2001) – Norwich (£2m) Even more entertainingly – after spending £8m on Daniel Barlaser who is a former Newcastle Academy graduate, we are given the news that we are entitled to 50% of his transfer fee due to a clause when he left Newcastle for Rotherham originally – meaning we essentially receive half of our own transfer fee back and pick him up for half-price 😄 #ShrewdOperator Season Transfer Spend Transfer Income Net Revenue 21/22 £36.5m £4.4m -£32.1m 22/23 £32m £24m -£8m 23/24 £41.5m £35.5m -£6m 24/25 £35.5m £64m £28.5m 25/26 £44m £34m -£10m Total £189.5 £161.9 -£24.6m Summary of Transfer Revenue & Spending to date So here it is, confirmation of our first ever fully #NorthernBoys squad – ok, we probably would have struggled in the Premier League but now we need to bounce straight back up, no excuses. Newcastle United Squad List 2025/2026 Goalkeepers: Bailey Peacock Farrell, Stuart Shaw* Defenders: Dael Fry, Ben Gibson, Lewis Gibson, Mattie Pollock, Leif Davis, Fred Briggs* Midfielders: Sean Longstaff, Lewis Wing, Shola Shoretire, Josh Mellor*, Elliott Embleton, Dan Barlaser, Elliott Anderson, Matty Longstaff, Jacob Murphy. Forwards: Adam Armstrong, Sam Greenwood, Joe Hugill, Michael Smith *Newgen Northern Boys – Season 6 🚀 A shaky opening day defeat at home to QPR is quickly forgotten as we pick up 6 wins in our opening 9 games, going unbeaten for 8 of them and propelling ourselves up to 2nd in the league by the end of November with Brighton already breaking away from the chasing pack – Adam Armstrong picking up 16 goals and clearly showing the world he is too good for the Championship. Of course this is where FM intervenes and decides enough is enough Adam – he proceeds to score just ONE GOAL in our next THIRTEEN games during a spell in which we didnt draw a single game and it was either win or lose all the way up until February after which we sat in 5th place, still well within reach of the automatic promotion spots and keeping us feeling very positive about our chances of bouncing back up this season. You would too right? Northern Boys to Men We are further boosted with reports of a Golden Generation coming through our Youth Intake. With our finances in such strong shape we have reach a point where our Training Facilities, Youth Facilities, Youth Coaching and Youth Recruitment continue to improve year-on-year and as you may have seen above, we are reaching that point in-game where Newgens are coming to fruition with the likes of Fred Briggs and Josh Mellor both breaking into the first team to become regulars on our teamsheet. Our Season 6 Youth Intake brings news of more high-potential Newgens at Newcastle and brace yourselves because something magical is about to happen. While live on stream joking about Football Manager Newgen names and the like, we are presented with our latest Youth Intake and at the top of the list sits one player who is listed as an elite prospect with 4.5 star potential: Not only is he Irish, not only is his name absolutely glorious – the boy can play and fingers crossed we can develop him into a top centre-forward for the club. He is also accompanied by Gabriel Odumousu, who in addition to having 4.5 star potential is also tipped as having the potential to be none other than the next Michael Owen! Assuming this is football and not punditry related, hopefully this lad can be a big part of Northern Boys for years to come. Promotion Chase.. It begins. 16 games to try and secure our return to Premier League football and see if we can take our band of misfit Northern Boys back to the big time. North-East bums are officially sweating. March was sh*te and April wasn’t much better. Adam Armstrong’s barren run continued and we couldn’t find anyone to step up and grab the goals we need to keep our promotion push going – add to this a RIDICULOUS amount of late goals conceded and suddenly we’ve only picked up one win in 7 games, throwing our chances of promotion (and even making the playoffs) into serious jeapordy with just 4 games remaining.. This is a bottle job beyond belief. As if getting relegated wasnt bad enough, we are now in serious danger of missing out on a playoff spot and languishing in the Championship for another season (assuming Joe Ordiman doesn’t deem missing the playoffs as a sackable offence). As it stands we have just 4 games to decide our fate; 12 points to play for, 4 points off the automatic promotion spot with 3 teams all on 70 points and 6 teams competing for 4 playoff places..say what you like, the Championship is absolute chaos. Strap yourselves in because FM is about to take us for a ride… We beat Preston 3-0, lovely jubbly. We then travel to Rotherham where go 2-0 up before our keeper Bailey Peacock Farrell decides to produce not one but two goalkeeping howlers which result in a poor 2-2 draw. I MEAN SEROUSLY, WHAT THE F*CK IS HE DOING: That 2-2 draw is followed up with another 2-2 draw, this time at Home to Birmingham where it was us who went 2-0 down and scraped a 2-2 draw. That means, with one game remaining we sit in 6th place knowing that we have to win to ensure a playoff spot and not rely on other results to go in our favour. Surely we can beat 16th placed Luton Town to keep our promition hopes alive?? 3-1 up with 10 mins to go and we end up drawing in the 93rd minute. 90 PLUS THREE. ANOTHER late goal and another kick in the FM crotch as Luton condemn us to finish in 7th place meaning we miss out on the Playoffs and will contend the Championship again next season for the second year in a row. Brighton run away with the league and are joined by Norwich and Ipswich in the Premier League, while we look forward to facing Leeds, Crystal Palace and Bristol City in the Championship next season – so much for the £42m Palace spent on Allan Saint-Maximin! Positively – we don’t get sacked, with the board disappointed but still fully trusting the process – so much so that they go on to make what must be the most bizarre decision of the save so far.. 5 seasons down and we continueu the wild adventure that is Northern Boys here at Newcastle, not always going to plan but never failing to disappoint in terms of entertainment, narrative, fury and overall FM mania – would you have it any other way? Next time we will take a look at development in the North-East with a particular focus on our affiliates in the region, as things appear to be going well for them after our continued support and investment… Thanks for reading, MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in the MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me streaming occasionally on Twitch.tv/MaddFM as well as most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part VI
“JOHN WRIGHT IS A CHIEF” – MaddFM, Northern Boys 2024. Welcome back! It’s been a while since we caught up on all things Northern Boys here largely down to the fact that I was overseas for a bit and have been quite busy streaming this save over at Twitch.tv/MaddFM in-between. That said, blogging is still very much at the heart of this save and a hell of a lot has been going on – strap in, things are about to get wild. Season 4 – Northern Boys As you may remember from our intro post all the way back in November – the goal of this save is to fully transition Newcastle to a North-East only player and staff policy within our first season, meaning this season is our last in terms of clearing the decks and fully migrating to become North-East only ahead of Season 5. Having finished 9th in the league last season to earn a hefty £25m in prize money (and very nearly qualifying for Europe) – we now find ourselves armed with a £71m transfer budget having sold Jamal Lewis to Bournemouth for £21m and Isaac Hayden to Norwich for £11m..might this be the time we make some big #NorthernBoys transfers? 👀 Having finished ahead of Everton last season I had hoped we might be able to sway Jordan Pickford, however seemingly he is afraid to set foot in Newcastle following his Sunderland history – Giovanni Reyna must be the same (born in Sunderland while his father Claudio played there) but is too afraid to admit it 😄. That means there aren’t a whole lot of North-East players readily available that are either interested or better than what we have already, however we do manage to find a couple of Northern Boys that can add to this team and bolster our squad depth accordingly. Perhaps even more epic on the Northern Boys front – we also make a huuge staff addition with local lad Michael Carrick returning to Tyneside as a Coach after he left Manchester United in the Summer. Maybe he can be persuaded to come out of retirement? 😄 One last addition to speak of before we proceed. After starting to stream this save following prolonged periods of Covid & Christmas induced FM game-time – a wonderful chap by the name of @kc87bw arrives in chat one day with a kind offer to design some new retro kits for us as we approach the full transition to North-East only. Needless to say, we did not decline and more importantly, he did not disappoint.. Newcastle United Squad List 2024/2025 Goalkeepers: Bailey Peacock Farrell*, Mark Gillespie*. Defenders: Dael Fry*, Ben Gibson*, Lewis Gibson*, Mattie Pollock*, Leif Davis*, Nathan Wood* Midfielders: Jonjo Shelvey, Sean Longstaff*, Joe Willock, Matty Longstaff*, Jacob Murphy*, Allan Saint-Maximin, Shola Shoretire*, Miguel Almiron, Elliott Anderson* Forwards: Callum Wilson, Adam Armstrong*, Sam Greenwood*, Joe Hugill*, Michael Smith* *North-East born/raised Away We Go 🚀 Not the start we had planned. Granted, signings-wise it’s not been our greatest season however having finished 9th last season and the likes of Shola Shoretire, Sam Greenwood and Joe Hugill all improving year-on-year I had thought we were definitely on an upward trajectory at the club. Not only did it take us 14 games to get 3 points on the board, it wasn’t until the Leeds game that Adam Armstrong finally picked up his first goal of the season in a game that saw us equalise in the 93rd minute before Callum Wilson netted a 95th minute winner. HUGE. The following game saw us go 2-0 up against Arsenal within 15 mins in a batshit crazy game that saw us 4-2 down at half time and lose 5-3 overall despite having a 4.33 XG against Arsenal’s 2.45! Having said that, one could feel a newfound sense of belief in the squad which translated into 3 wins on the bounce against Crystal Palace, Brighton and Aston Villa. This is where you feel you’ve hit the turning point in FM, right? We hit yet another barren run. 8 games without a win, 3 goals scored and we are in big big trouble in Season 4 of Northern Boys. We are officially in a relegation battle. This is not good – bearing in mind that next season will be our first full season as a North-East only team, getting relegated in our last season with the likes of Wilson, Willock and Allan Saint-Maximin still in the squad is simply not an option. For the first time in this save we are truly in danger of facing the sack and the end of #NorthernBoys before it has officially begun – time for drastic action. If we wind back the clock to the beginning of the save, one of our rules was that we could bring in up to two non-North East loans per season until the 4 year transition is complete. We have only done this twice so far – bringing in Antonio Sanabria in Season 1 (after Callum Wilson broke his leg) and then loaning Devyne Rensch in Season 3 to provide cover at right-back. With the amount of goals we are conceding combined with the lack of creativity up front – we swallow our pride to bring in two loan signings, William Saliba and Pedro Neto who will hopefully make an instant impact this season. January also sees Jonjo Shelvey make a random move to Malaga, so we also add one more Northern Boy to our ranks in 29-year-old Lewis Wing, who is a bit of a long-shot/free-kick specialist and will be a good replacement for Jonjo in terms of ball distribution and set-piece delivery. The impact was instant if you count a 1-0 win over Bournemouth as an achievement, however things continued to worsen as the defeats just kept on coming – losing 4 on the bounce before a couple of well-earned draws against Man City and Arsenal. 8 games to go and well, see for yourself…. By this point we have been summoned to the boardroom no fewer than 5 times, each time convincing our esteemed chairman Joe Ordiman to Trust the Process and that things aren’t as bad as they seem. Let’s hope he doesn’t read the newspapers… Five games. Five games to secure Premier League survival. Five games to ensure we don’t get the sack and have this save come crashing to an end just at the point where it’s actually getting interesting. How have we gotten here? It all comes down to this… Game 1 – Crystal Palace (h) Game 2 – Aston Villa (h) Game 3 – Burnley (h) Game 4 – Chelsea (a) Game 5 – Wolves (a) Relegated. Bottom of the league. Absolutely mudded. How we have managed to go from 9th to 20th in one season is beyond me. Despite putting up somewhat of a fight all other results go against us, and a comeback charge against Wolves on the final day was not enough as we are consigned to 20th place in the 2024/2025 Premier League season. We did not see this coming, and at that exact moment we were braced for the sack and the end of Northern Boys as we know it…dare we enter the boardroom where our fate awaits us? Madness. Despite relegating the club and finishing bottom, big Joe Ordiman still trusts the process and is willing to give us another go, so much so that we even manage to secure a new contract as we mentally prepare for life in the Championship next season. Just 12 months ago we were cursing our luck about not getting into Europe, how quickly life can change! What we do know is that it’s time to officially complete our transition to a North-East only team, which means we will commence life in the Championship with a 100% North-East only squad and backroom staff at the club. Maybe it’s a good thing? What the hell are we going to do with all this? 😅 Thanks for reading..I’M SORRY. MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in the MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me streaming occasionally on Twitch.tv/MaddFM as well as most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part V
It begins… Welcome back to Season 3 of Northern Boys, a Newcastle save like no other whereby all the Saudi millions have been removed from game and we embark on a quest to convert the mighty Toon Army to a North-East only squad, staff and transfer policy within 4 seasons at the helm. We don’t ask for much right? (click here to relive our journey up to now). Transfer Talk 🗣️ When we last left off, we had just finished 15th in Season 2, somewhat narrowly avoiding relegation and finding ourselves armed with a £52 million transfer budget due to our low net transfer spend as well as the windfall of Premier League prize and TV money alike. Remember – this is Northern Boys, we can only spend this cash on players that were born or raised in the North-East meaning pickings are quite slim as we await the fateful day when the likes of Giovanni Reyna, Jordan Henderson and Jordan Pickford show any shred of interest in joining the club. Having said that, there is progress to be made and a familiar face from the very top of our eligible Transfer Target pool arrives at St. James Park to become our biggest signing of the save so far. Having spent half of last season on loan with us before Man Utd recalled him due to us not playing him in his natural position Ole Gunnar Soskjaer being a moany twat, Newcastle-born wonderkid Shola Shoretire puts pen to paper on a £36 million deal (£18m up front) to become our record Northern Boy signing ahead of Adam Armstrong (Southampton – £28m). Still only 18, Shola will have a huge part to play in this adventure and is definitely a coup for the club considering the calibre of North-East players available and interested in joining. Shola is joined by Darlington-born goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell who arrives on a cut-price £250k deal from Burnley – a deal that could prove to be a bargain, hoping he can compete with an aging Fraser Forster for the #1 jersey at Northern Boys. Season 3 🚀 After playing 10 away friendlies with some of our North-East neighbours in order to boost their own finances (more on this later), overconfidence from scoring 55 goals must have crept in as we started the season somewhat horrendously, winning just one game in six including home league defeats to West Ham, Chelsea and Aston Villa not to mention a pathetic exit from the Carabao Cup at home to West Brom. I should also mention this all unfolded live on stream (Twitch.tv./MaddFM) and morale was well in the mud, and then something magical happened. Through some sort of divine miracle, we proceeded to beat Man City in the Etihad before beating Arsenal at home and going on a 7 match unbeaten run to leave us in 7th place in the league with 12 games played. WE ARE MASSIVE. Unfortunately Christmas did not produce any further miracles as we suffered 4 defeats during a busy December followed by an even busier January which also saw us exit the FA Cup at the hands of lowly Peterbrough, and a further 3 defeats in February saw us drop to 9th place in the league. This called for some action to be taken. Having failed to sign him in Season 1 when we were beaten to his signature by Tottenham, we complete the loan signing of Middlesbrough born right-back Nathan Wood until the end of the season with Ben Gibson failing to cut the mustard in that position. We also lose patience with 35-year-old Fraser Forster and make a live stream decision to make Bailey Peacock-Farrell our #1 keeper for the foreseeable future. These signings seemed to inject a lease of new life into our squad, starting with a solid 1-1 draw with Liverpool before going on to win 3 on the bounce including the following: That meant with just 3 games remaining, we suddenly found ourselves on the brink of European qualification (not to mention picking up our first ever Manager of the Month award) – far earlier than expected having finished 16th and 15th in the previous two seasons and with a predicted 18th placed finish this season. Surely it’s too soon for European football at Northern Boys????? We fought admirably but it just wasn’t to be, the draw with Leeds making Spurs a must-win which was always going to be a huge ask away from home. In the end we finished 9th which in itself was a huge achievement considering our primary goal for the first 4 seasons is to avoid relegation and keep hold of our job while we transition to a fully North-East club culture and policy!! £23m prize money means the board are most certainly happy with our performance even if we are Overachievers, and the sale of Jamal Lewis to Bournemouth (£21m) brings our budget up to a whopping £71m for next season. Safe to say everyone is having a good time in the North-East…well, almost everyone… Regional/Youth Development We continue our efforts to develop football in the North-East of England, primarily focusing on improving the clubs around us by injecting cash into their economies through friendlies and generous transfer fees, as well as by loaning them players regularly each season. Having agreed official affiliations with Blyth, Hartlepool and South Shields we were pleased to see Blyth get promoted to the Vanarama National LEague last season along with another Northern club, Gateshead. Unfortunately Blyth found life difficult in the next tier and were relegated again (along with Gateshead and Darlington) so drastic was action needed – we dropped £1m each to Blyth, Hartlepool and South Shields as well as another £1.5m across a few others which will hopefully give them a swift impetus to develop and ascend with a bit more haste than as has been the case up to now. In terms of Youth Development in the North-East – while our Season 3 intake wasn’t great, our exploration of North-East player development unearthed THE BEST 15-YEAR-OLD LEFT BACK YOU WILL EVER SEE. We naturally swoop in like the Billy Big-Bollocks North-East kings we are and have an £11m bid accepted… Turns out John “The Chief” Wright is Sunderland until he dies and refuses to move despite several attempts and bids accepted. Absolute CHIEF. We won’t rest easy – let the @FridayNightFM pursuit begin… Thanks for reading, MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in the MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me streaming occasionally on Twitch.tv/MaddFM as well as most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part IV
Welcome back to Newcastle – a place where Saudi takeovers don’t exist, where North-East only transfer-policies thrive and where we embark on Season 2 at the helm of this fine great club following our 16th-placed finish last season. Click here to catch up on the first four episodes of this adventure if you are new or would like to get more immersed in our project and journey here. When we last left off, the board had generously decided to give us a £35 million transfer budget for our second season at St. James Park, partly due to the funds we earned via the sales of Ryan Fraser (Getafe – £12m), Martin Dubravka (West Ham – £9m) and Joelinton (Krasnodar – £3m). Now, normally one would rub their hands with glee with said funds (bearing in mind we set the budget to zero at the start of the series), however this is no normal Football Manager save; our self-imposed transfer policy is to only sign North-East born/raised players, eventually converting Newcastle to a North-East only club after four seasons – so although money isn’t a huge issue, high profile and high quality eligible targets are. £28 million pounds later…. Although not the most prolific signing we hope to make in this series, Adam Armstrong is at the top of our North-East playing pool in terms of quality and value and it takes £28 million (50% up front) to secure his signature. At 25 he will be a core part of our Northern Boys journey going forward having racked up 14 goals in 30 games for Southampton, and of course who doesn’t like a prodigal son returning? On the topic of targets – one of our long-term desirables whom we’ve discussed frequently on the 5 Star Potential Podcast is Newcastle-born Man Utd academy graduate Shola Shoretire (pronounced “Shore-a-tir-ay” as I am reliably informed by @FMPoacher). The bad news is that he signed a new contract with United rendering him completely out of reach permanently, however with the club keen to send him out on loan we are happy to oblige in the hope that we can at least build up a relationship with the lad which he may fondly remember later down the line.. Maybe I am enjoying the Northern Boys narrative a bit too much as the fun doesn’t stop there. Desperately in need of strengthening at the back, we sign not one but two Central Defenders – one of whom is also a prodigal son returning and both of whom have the same surname. Any guesses? Having left the academy to join Everton back in 2017, Lewis Gibson returns on a £13m deal and on paper has plenty of ability and potential to partner fellow Northerner Dael Fry at Centre Half, while his brother-from-another-mother Ben Gibson also arrives on a cut price £750k deal from Norwich having only joined them for £8m two seasons back. That makes us now fairly stacked at Centre Half and all we need now is a Martin Dubravka replacement having sold him for £9m to West Ham (we couldn’t turn down that offer for a 34yr old who was unlikely to sign a new deal). To put one more prodigal cherry on this Northern Boys cake, Fraser Forster makes his homecoming on a £3m deal from Southampton. Our squad is finally starting to take shape as we bolster the Northern Boys ranks, and for good measure/cover we add Left-Back Leif Davis from Leeds (1.3m) and use one of our two annual non-North East loaning signings to bring in Devyne Rensch from Ajax as cover at Right-Back – I say cover but Javier Manquillo is so poor he may well earn himself a first-team spot 🔥. Season 2 We flirted with both relegation and the sack at various points last season, eventually finishing 16th which the board seemed quite happy with. With a predicted finish of 18th this time around, it’s clear the media aren’t very supportive of our transfer policy – NO ONE ASKED YOU CHIEFS. Newcastle United Squad List 2022/2023 Goalkeepers: Fraser Forster*, Mark Gillespie*, Freddie Woodman. Defenders: Dael Fry*, Ben Gibson*, Jamal Lascelles, Lewis Gibson*, Jamal Lewis, Javier Manquillo, Leif Davis*, Devyne Rensch, Paul Dummett. Midfielders: Jonjo Shelvey, Sean Longstaff*, Joe Willock, Isaac Hayden, Matty Longstaff*, Jacob Murphy, Allan Saint-Maximin, Shola Shoretire*, Miguel Almiron, Elliott Anderson*, Matt Ritchie. Forwards: Callum Wilson, Adam Armstrong*, Dwight Gayle, Andy Carroll*. *North-East born/eligible It’s not a terrible side but when you consider the likes of Lautaro Martinez (Man City), Joshua Kimmich (Liverpool), Andrea Belotti (Spurs) and Paulo Dybala (Liverpool) have made their way to the Premier League by now – well, we will have to punch above our weight to build on last season’s finish. We just need to avoid relegation… It took 2 months and 12 or so games, but finally Adam Armstrong got off the mark in a 2-1 win over Fulham – with the added problem that Callum Wilson only scored one during the same period meaning Lewis Gibson found himself our Top Scorer after 12 league games played. The partnership of Gibson and Fry at the back was looking incredibly solid, that is until we conceded 6 away to Leeds and another 6 away to Spurs – thankfully those 4 narrow wins against Brighton, Southampton, Wolves and Fulham stood to us as we entered November and the Qatar World Cup-induced winter break in 12th place in the league. How do you solve a problem like Shola.. Shola Shoretire is a joy to watch on the field. His pace and flair make him appear to glide all over the pitch – however in terms of end product, it’s been non existent. We have been playing him mostly as Inverted Winger on the left-hand side largely due to Man Utd Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s relentless pestering to play him in his natural position – the problem is, he brings us no return in terms of goal contributions and because we need this guy to reach greatness as a vital component of Northern Boys future, we decide to switch him back to the right side as an Inside Forward in the hope he can give more in the final third cutting in on his stronger foot. A cracking result against the league champions to ring in the New Year which you would hope gave us an excellent platform to kick on and make a name for ourselves this season, and for a brief moment it did…. We went 1-0 up on Chelsea and then everything fell apart, which continued into a 6 game losing streak that send us tumbling down the league. Everything started to go against us as we proceeded to lose all our games by the smallest of margins; VAR was a bastard and we missed chance after chance throughout. You will also notice no mention of Shola Shoretire since…HERE’S WHY 😡 After all Ole’s persistent moaning, Man Utd threw their toys out of the pram and recalled Shola at the end of January leaving us quite short-stacked in terms of attacking options. With plenty of money in the bank we decide to slightly panic and overspend on two North-East born targets whom we had always intended to add to our Northern Boys contingent. Sunderland-born Sam Greenwood arrives from Leeds on a £5.25m deal having spent two seasons in the Arsenal academy after leaving Sunderland, and he is joined by Durham-born Joe Hugill who arrives from the Man Utd academy for a hefty £7m. Both of these players have potential to be first-team competitors and at the very least we feel a bit better after Shola’s departure. Northern Golden Boys 🟡 We spoke a lot in my last post about regional development and our efforts to invest in local clubs as well as recruit some of their more promising Northern prospects to see if we can raise the quality of North-Eastern football production – now we can turn our attention to our own Youth Academy as we have made considerable investment and development. Last season’s intake wasn’t too bad with the likes of Josh Mellor and Taylor Taylor ticking along nicely in our U18 team, and since then we have managed to convince the board to improve our Youth Facilities and Recruitment. March arrives and the two most coveted words in Football Manager appear..GoLdEn GeNeRaTiOn… While not fully convinced, local boys Fred Briggs and Lee Lindley could have a bit about them if we do our development duties properly – expect a Newgen Analysis post very soon 👀 Season 2 Climax Some costly defeats in February and March left us deep in a relegation battle as we approach the business end of the season. Having thought we turned a corner with wins over West Ham and Brighton in April as well as seeing a marked improvement in Adam Armstrong’s goal return, a red card for Ben Gibson condemned us to a 7-2 defeat at home to Leeds and with 3 games to go we find ourselves under quite a bit of pressure with West Brom, Brentford, Everton and Fulham all within 4 points of us and all battling to avoid that last relegation spot. With Liverpool and Chelsea among our remaining 3 games either side of a potential 6 pointer with West Brom – this one is going down to the wire.. An unexpected victory over Liverpool courtesy of some top notch assistant advice from @DavidNyholm live on stream (Twitch.tv/MaddFM) meant that we avoid relegation and only Timo Werner’s late winner for Chelsea stops us from finishing 14th, in the end we finish one place better than last season with plenty to build on and most importantly another £11m in prize money to add to our growing transfer budget which now stands at £52m based on our low net transfer spend in the last two seasons. The real question is – which Northern Boy will be next on our list? Regional Development In my next post we will do a more holistic overview on how our North-east development efforts are going particularly looking at our investment and regional spending via a lovely G sheet that I know all you FM nerds will enjoy – in the mean time we need to talk quickly about Affiliations as there has been some major developments. At the time of writing we now have three North-East feeder clubs following agreements with Blyth Spartans, Hartlepool and South Shields – all of whom have benefitted directly from investment and player loans this season. What’s most interesting is the ascendency of Blyth in the Vanarama National League North – after they finished 17th in Season 1, we’ve given them approx. £250k in affiliation and transfer fees as well as loaning them 4 players, and this has seen them rapidly rise up the league and actually win the title in Season 2 (also nice to see Gateshead promoted alongside them). We will now have four of our North-East neighbours competing in the Vanarama National and this continued progression will hopefully be a fundamental part of our ambitions to elevate football across the North-East of England. Watch this space!! Thanks for reading, MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in the MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part III
This save adventure takes place in a world where there have been no Saudi takeovers and Newcastle are on a 5 year quest to become the first ever British club to implement a “Basque-only” squad & transfer policy. Click here to be part of this story from the very beginning. ____________________________________ Welcome back! If you are here it means you are keen to learn about how things are going on our journey to convert Newcastle United to a North-East only football club in 4 seasons, wherein our mission is to build a squad and backroom staff of North-East born/raised personnel as well as to elevate football production in the North-East through investment in football across the entire North-East region, in particular through a network of 22 football clubs which were pre-identified in Part I. A big and time consuming ask, yes – but time is on our side – this save has the potential to last for the entirety of FM22, assuming one doesn’t lose one’s job in the process.. When we last left off we were 13th in the league by January of our first season and were just dealt the harshest of blows with the news that Top Scorer Callum Wilson (12 league goals) had broken his leg on New Years Day and would be out for the rest of the season. You can imagine my reaction.. Certainly not part of the plan especially considering we have little or no money in the bank to spend, with the likes of Joelinton, Dwight Gayle and Andy Carroll (yes we signed him) our best backup options at present. Considering these three have amounted just 2 goals between them up to this point, we found ourselves in a perilous situation much earlier than planned (I say planned as eventually we need to sell Wilson and any other non North-East born players at some point). Having opened 2022 with a 5-0 defeat away to Liverpool in the game that saw Wilson break his leg (let’s not even mention that it was North-East lad Jordan Henderson who made the offending tackle), we proceeded to pick up just one point for the whole of January in a 1-1 draw away to Tottenham, and it’s at this point it becomes clear we may need to act fast with deadline day just around the corner. Having failed repeatedly to raise funds by offering out the likes of Ryan Fraser, Joelinton, Karl Darlow, Ciaran Clark and Dwight Gayle (all to no avail), we are left with no option. You may remember from my introductory post that our new fictional chairman Joe Ordiman had most kindly agreed that the club can sign up to 2 non-North Eastern loan players each year for the first four seasons, so our hand is forced as we make our first signing from outside of the North-East in this save with 25-year-old Paraguay international Antonio Sanabria arriving on loan until the end of the season from Torino having had spells at Barcelona, Roma and Real Betis previously. Can this guy fill the void left by the injured Wilson and bag the goals needed to ensure a solid finish in our first season at the helm? Granted it was in an FA Cup 4th round tie against League 2 Walsall but we’ll take it, with fans dubbing Sanabria as our light and saviour as we enter the business end of the season. It wouldn’t be like Newcastle fans to get carrier away surely…(bearing in mind I am one 🤦♂️) Not really the impact we hoped for as the defeats keep on coming and with just shy of 30 games played we remain in 17th place – that victory over Watford proving to be a six-pointer to give us a small bit of breathing space with the Hornets lying in 18th. Nothing works – Sanabria has shown signs of quality but is clearly taking his time settling in; the likes of Gayle and Joelinton simply cannot be relied on and most disappointingly Allan Saint-Maximin decides to go on the most barren of goal-scoring runs, clearly no-one willing to step up and drag us through what is now clearly a relegation battle. I know what you’re thinking…any chance of some good news Madd? Player/Regional Development We discussed recently on Episode 223 of 5 Star Potential how a big part of this save is our off-field activities, namely reinvigorating football in the North-East through investment in football across the region in the hope that we can raise the level and quality of player production not only at St. James Park but at the other North East football clubs surrounding us. We’ve committed to investing a minimum of £2 million per annum in other clubs to help them develop on this journey alongside us, and after already spending close to £200k in pre-season through friendlies with some of our neighbours, our first ever Youth Intake in this save gave us a good solid platform from which the Northern Boys narrative will hopefully kickstart. Having convinced the board to invest in our own Youth Facilities and Recruitment we saw a decent influx of youth candidates enter the fore in March, most notably the likes of Josh Mellor (elite!), Mpho Kameya and the brilliantly named Taylor Taylor who all look like they could feature highly as this save progresses. Mellor immediately attracts interest from the likes of Arsenal, Leicester, West Ham, Leeds and Aston Villa (they can all do one) and although both Kameya and Taylor are technically Welsh, we will allow them to be eligible having come straight from our own academy (but any other youth signings must be from the North East). Youth Intake is a magical time of year, and also gave us the perfect opportunity to hand some cash over to our “affiliate” clubs in whose development we have a vested interest during this journey. The concept is simple – we slightly overspend on some of their better prospects, and in turn they get an influx of cash which will hopefully help propel them within their individual leagues and develop their own facilities, youth level, reputation etc – that’s the idea anyway, and the likes of Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Hartlepool, Darlington, Gateshead, Spennymoor, Whitley Bay and Newcastle Blue Star are all benefactors of our North-East investment plan. This brings our total local investment to £6.7 million between friendlies and player acquisitions – I’m like a modern day Mother Theresa at this stage 😌. Local Investment (to Date) Season 1 Conclusion Meanwhile back on-field, things are going…well, see for yourself: With 5 games to go things were getting desperate – so much so that following our defeats against Arsenal and Man Utd the board’s patience began to wear thin and summoned us for our first ever showdown talks (and not the good kind). Might this be the first time that an FM enthusiast has installed a fictional Chairman only to be sacked by him within the first season?? Luckily Joe Ordiman is a reasonable man who likes a bit of sweet talking, and we convince him to trust the process even though our job status remains insecure and on the ropes as we make the journey South towards Burnley. Defeat here could put us in dangerous territory, however thankfully we pull together one of our best performances of the season as we pick up an excellent 4-2 win – Ryan Fraser scoring his (probable) last goal for the club before he leaves for Getafe at the end of the season, not to mention Allan Saint-Maximin finally breaking his duck and scoring in back-to-back games to leave us in 16th place by the end of April. With 3 games to go our Premier League status is all but secured – we host Leicester knowing that a win will guarantee safety, while Crystal Palace travel to Burnley knowing only a win will keep their survival hopes alive. An unexpectedly crucial moment early in our Northern Boys saga… In a game which epitomised our season, we held a strong Thiago Almada-inspired Leicester side for 82 mins before Wilfried Ndidi consigned us to defeat at St. James Park, however down in Burnley Chris Wood’s 62 minute header was enough to seal Crystal palace’s fate. I never thought I would actually have to write this but, WE ARE STAYING UP!! That defeat dropped us back to 17th and after losing to Wolves in our next game we looked set to stay there as we entered the last day of the season, however our victory over Norwich combined with Southampton’s surprise defeat to Watford meant that we end up taking 16th place and in the end finishing comfortably outside the relegation zone. Liverpool walk away as league champions while it’s another disappointing season for both Tottenham and Arsenal who incidentally both sacked their managers during our opening season (Conte taking the Arsenal job and Bielsa moving to Tottenham). All in all – a really tough start to our Northern Boys adventure. We knew it would be difficult especially early on with limited interest from the top end of our eligible player pool. The likes of Giovanni Reyna, Jordan Henderson and Jordan Pickford are all still out of reach however the £12 million received from Getafe for Ryan Fraser has clearly put our board in good form as they announce our budgets for next season: What does one do with £35 million in a save universe where one can only sign players that were born/raised in the North-East of England and whom are interested in joining the 16th best club in the league? We have a LOT to look forward to next season, our work has only just begun. Thanks for reading, MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in a brand new MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part II
If you are here to read all about a North-East-only save in a world where there has been no Saudi takeovers, you’ve come to the right place. This is the third post in our Northern Boys series wherein we will spend our first 4 seasons converting Newcastle United to a North-East-only player and staff transfer policy – feel free to jump back in time to catch up on our previous two posts and learn/remind yourself about how we’ve gotten to where we are currently in FM22. Bearing in mind we started this save with zero transfer budget, a self-enforced transfer policy wherein any U23 players signed must have been born/raised in the North-East of England and with four seasons in which to completely transition the club to a “Basque-only” operating model – if you’d have told me that within our opening 15 games we’d have beaten both Man City and Arsenal and watched Callum Wilson bag 11 league goals, I probably would have snatched your hand off while also laughing you out the door simultaneously. This did in fact happen, the only issue being that those two wins were two of only three victories in total in the same period – so rest assured that FM22 is not taking the piss or is too easy, and things are as they probably should be given the circumstances… Let’s rewind for a moment, as there is a hell of a lot going on in this save and only a fraction of it relates to our on-field success (or lack thereof). Regional Development Our mission is to revive football in the North-East. Naturally a big part of this is our own Youth Development and Recruitment, however the North-East is a big place and if we are to be successful then we will need to also focus on elevating the stature and production of some of the other football clubs in the area. 22 of them to be precise, all of whom we will gradually look to add as affiliates and into whom we will pump funds annually through friendly tournaments, transfer signings and player mobility between ourselves and these feeder clubs. Safe to say it took a while before we hit the Continue button.. Transfer Policy No local unknown signings to report yet (bearing in mind we must invest a minimum of £2m per season locally in the region), and having reset the club reputation to reflect pre-Saudi Newcastle, we have limited interest from most of our top targets (namely the likes of Jordan Pickford, Adam Armstrong and Dael Fry). With no money in the bank, our first focus is to offload some players who we don’t expect to feature this season. Not too many mind; survival is still our main focus while we get this project off the ground. Having watched @FridayNightFM rake in £20m for Ryan Fraser during the FM22 Beta I was hopeful of a small windfall for the 27-year-old winger. I was wrong.. After touting his services around to no avail we finally received a £9m bid from RBL only for the board (and our new fictional chairman Joe Ordiman, saviour of the North-East) to block the bid by demanding £12m for Fraser’s signature. Absolutely no-one bites at this, and apart from the £2m sale of Emil Krafth to Aston Villa we are left somewhat wanting in the transfer market; it’s at this point that I will openly admit…we started to get a bit desperate… Carroll arrives at the same time as another Northern Boy in the form of Bali Mumba, the ex-Sunderland right-back who featured 4 times for Norwich in their promotion winning season last year. Doubtful he will be good enough in the long-run, but as a backup option on loan with an optional 4m transfer fee, no harm taking a look 👀. It wasn’t until it came to setting our league and cup bonus that we managed to bump up our transfer budget (£5m to be precise), and with that we decided to try one last cheeky attempt to bring in what will likely be one of the main characters of this Northern Boys save. Having refused to enter contract talks earlier, we learned (through the always useful “Ask Agent About Availability” function) that Middlesbrough-born Dael Fry was suddenly interested in a move North and even though they previously asked for close to £7m including add-ons, our proximity to the transfer window closing meant that Middlesbrough accept a £4m bid and with just hours remaining, our first main Northern Boy is on the bus 💪. Northern Backroom Yep, even our coaches, scouts and medical team will all need to be North-East born/raised in order to stick around here for the long haul. Fortunately for us Graeme Jones is Tyne born and bred so that’s our Assistant Manager covered, however from a coaching and scouting perspective some personnel changes are definitely required – starting with Blyth-born Tony Carss arriving in from Blackburn as Head of Youth Development, local lad Kenny Wharton returning as an U18 Coach and pick of the lot Sonny Wake (a newgen coach from Gateshead) arriving in as a first-team coach. Foundations.. That’s probably enough admin for now right? Our Northern Boys project is well underway – let’s play some football. Northern Tactics? We are but the sum of our parts, and with our board expectations being to avoid relegation and knowing that we are at the start of a major uphill climb as we commence this project – we opt for quite a conservative counter-attacking formation with a big focus on using our Central Defenders to initiate counter attacks (enter a WCB and a Libero), passing into space via attacking wing-backs and advanced midfielders (well hello Mezzala) as well as unleashing ASM and Callum Wilson while we still have them at the club relying on their quickness and off the ball skills to get into clear goalscoring positions. That’s the theory anyway… We spoke about FM giving and taking. After going 1-0 up away to Brentford in our league opener, we end up losing to a 97th minute Ivan Toney penalty (and no he doesn’t qualify for Northern Boys even though he’s an ex-Newcastle youth player 😔). We are then 2-0 up at home to Liverpool only to concede another penalty which sparks a 5 goal comeback for them to win 5-2 overall. What’s next? A 4-3 win over Man City of course – is this Newcastle or Harchester United? By the time we hit Christmas, we’ve beaten Arsenal (a) and Palace (h) and then drawn or lost every other game in between. Thankfully we enjoy a drop of Christmas spirit though as we manage to grind out wins over Wolves (h) and the return leg against Brentford (h) to leave us in 13th place at the turn of the year, with Callum Wilson bagging 12 goals in 19 games and some really positive signs from the likes of Dael Fry, Jamal Lewis and Joe Willock. Overall we are starting to feel quite positive about this project with loads happening both on and off the field – we’ve heard about things going South quickly, perhaps they can go North for once? There you have it – project Northern Boys is well underway as we make gradual progress in terms of regional development, incoming transfers, staffing and of course on-field success (although we now face the dilemma no-one ever wanted – Gayle or Carroll to replace Wilson 😄). Whether or not we can transition the club to a fully North-East only model in four seasons is anyone’s guess, but with a stubborn Irishman at the helm who has a fondness for blogging nonsense, anything is possible. Thanks for reading, MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? I’ll be posting regular updates in a brand new MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.
Northern Boys – Part I
“It’s not about winning titles, fighting for trophies, reaching finals or gaining achievements. This is bigger than success. It’s about reviving football in the North-East. Awakening a sleeping giant in terms of football as a region; restoring it’s reputation for producing top-tier talent as has been the case in previous years gone by. This is about legacy.” (an excerpt from our introductory post to this save). FM22 is officially out, therefore it’s time we set the scene in terms of this save universe in which we will operate and have a little look under the hood now that we can officially kick off this series. Newcastle United have indeed had a takeover, but rather than being bankrolled by a Saudi Investment Fund, Mike Ashley has instead sold the club to local (and fictional) millionaire businessman and philanthropist Joseph Ordiman (Joe for short) who is renowned for his love of gravy, Brown Ale and 80’s English football. His autobiography details how as a young Northern lad his dad would take him to games all over the North of England, not to mention a trip to Estadio Azteca in Mexico in 1986 where as an 11-year-old he watched Diego Maradona break the hearts of a nation with that famous Hand of God goal to send England out of the World Cup semi-final. But it wasn’t Maradona that Joe Ordiman’s eleven-year old eyes were fixated upon for the duration of that tournament. Having learned of the strong North-Eastern influence on that World Cup side from his father Joe Senior, it was the likes of Peter Beardsley, Chris Waddle and Bryan Robson that young Joe was most interested in seeing, not to mention the awe and admiration that welled up in his chest every time he saw (what was in his eyes) a giant of a man in England Manager Bobby Robson, who was born just a few miles down the road from Joe’s home in Durham and now stood in front of millions on the greatest stage in world football. This sparked a deeply engrained sense of pride and passion in Joe from that point onwards – further molded by the emergence of the likes of Paul Gascoigne, Steve Howey, Lee Clark, Barry Venison and of course Alan Shearer not to mention reading up on the legendary stories of Jackie Milburn, Stan Mortensen and the Charlton brothers. Although Joe went on to travel the world and make millions in the aerospace industry, he always called Durham his home and the recent downfall of football in the North-East was of particular despair to him having held such fond memories and high regard for those Northern heroes all those years ago. After years of yearning to give back to the local region and reinvigorate football in the North-East, the perfect opportunity presented itself… Statement from Joe Ordiman “It’s an honour to sit here as the new owner of Newcastle United Football Club. Change brings about change and we will be doing exactly that – after clearing all debts, it’s time now for this club to become a beacon of footballing hope for North-East England, with our main objective to transition to a North-East only model over the next four seasons as well as put a huge focus on investing in football across the region to elevate player standards and development from grass-roots all the way up to Premier League level”. To put it simply – we are giving ourselves 4 seasons to convert the club to a fully “Basque” transfer model and staff policy whereby only players and staff born and raised in the North-East of England will be eligible to play and work for the club. That means we have 4 seasons to offload all our existing non-Northern players, using the funds from these sales to reinvest in our squad and youth recruitment as well as pumping much needed cash (minimum £2m per year) into the local region through feeder clubs all over the North-East area and indirectly raise football development through these clubs as well as ourselves (see our Introductory Post for a breakdown of Save Objectives & Rules). Player Search & Regional Development 🔎 📝 FACT: of the 276 players used in the Premier League last weekend (w/o 5th November 2021) – only 4 were born in North-East England (1.45%). As stated previously – not only will players need to have been born/raised in the North-East in order to sign and play for Newcastle United in 4 seasons time, we will also spend a large portion of this save trying to elevate football development and production in the North-East having seen a decline in the standard and impact of the region over the past 20 years. Of course this will be essential if we are to fully migrate to a North-East only squad, but we also want to see clear evidence that we are successfully raising the standard of football both organically and economically across the region. During our research (and with the help of @Shrewnaldo who showed me a very useful function in the FM editor whereby you can use geographical coordinates to see cities and clubs etc in a particular area) – we found that there are over 50 professional or semi-professional football clubs in the North-East of England spread across some 60+ cities and towns locally in the area. After expanding our Player Search to include players born across all of these locations, we are left with an 850+ playing pool from which the vast majority of our initial transfer dealings will be sourced. From a regional development perspective – our goal is to pump as much cash into football in the North-East and this will mainly be through player acquisition and friendly tournaments as well as creating a cyclical flow of players to and from Newcastle and these “feeder teams”. There’s no way we will be able to boost over 50 feeder clubs and actually play a lot of FM at the same time, therefore seeing as this is FM22 we have identified 22 clubs in the North-East that will receive targetted attention based on a number of criteria which in turn will serve as our Key Performance Indicators for how successful we are at elevating their footballing respective stature (and therefore hopefully the quality of youth candidates produced each season). Northern Boys – Feeder Club KPIs 📈 Division (Tier) Status Stadium Capacity Stadium Condition Training Facilities Youth Facilities Youth Level Junior Coaching Youth Recruitment Youth Players A few Edits.. ✍🏼 Now when I originally thought up the idea for this save, the Saudi takeover was still a distant memory rather than a likely outcome, therefore we have the slightly inconvenient issue of Newcastle having a £250 million bank balance and a £200 million transfer budget at the start of FM22 as well as an increased reputation and rich benefactor (sugar daddy) at the helm. In order to turn back time and kick off off our new fictional regime under Joe Ordiman, we must take to the FM22 Editor to make a couple of important changes and bring us back to how things were at the end of FM21, therefore erasing all existence of the Saudi takeover: Create a staff profile for Joe Ordiman our new Chairman and kick Mike Ashley out of Newcastle along with that chief Lee Charnley. Amend bank balance from £250m down to £25m. Reduce transfer budget from £200m to £0. Remove Rich Benefactor (the artist formerly known as “Sugar Daddy”). Prevent any future takeovers from occurring. Revert Club Reputation from 6800 to 6550 and morale from 19 to 12. Clear all debt. Ok, we are clear. Four seasons to convert Newcastle to a “Basque” transfer model. Only players born / raised in the North-East will be allowed by the time we reach 2025, until then all U23 players signed must be from the North-East with 2 additional signings allowed each season until our 4th season is complete. No transfer budget. Same opening balance and club reputation as they had at the end of FM21. Twenty-two “feeder” clubs which we will invest in to raise the quality and volume of young Northern players produced annually. Who is mad(d) enough to take the reigns on this likely path to the club’s eventual demise? Before we leave, we can’t not talk about potential transfer targets especially having made the necessary budget and reputation amendments. Our current squad isn’t really blessed with North-Eastern talent (Dummett, Gillespie and the two Longstaffs are our only Senior players born in the North-East but I reckon we can do good things with Elliott Anderson), however the likes of Dael Fry, Ben Gibson, Adam Armstrong and Fraser Forster are all hopefully within reasonable short-term range before we can even think about the likes of Jordan Pickford, Jordan Henderson and the holy-grail of North-East born players in FM22 – Giovanni Reyna. Pickings are indeed slim though – we have a lot of work to do 👀. Thanks for reading – enjoy the hell out of this new game 👌. MaddFM. Want to get involved and/or get real-time updates or sneak previews? Got players to recommend or advice on North-Eastern geography I need to know about? I’ll be posting regular updates in a brand new MaddFM Discord server as well as on FMSlack (#MaddFM) so feel free to drop by and keep an eye out. You can also catch me most Mondays on 5* Star Potential, your weekly Football Manager podcast.