Football Manager 2020 & FM Touch

[Orikoru]

Well after getting Royally hammered by Chelsea dumping me out of Europe bottom of the group and despite my injury hit squad we limped through to January where I needed to make an emergency signing of Pavlidis up front, Lainez returned from injury to which aided a slight turn around in fortunes and picked up another 5 straight wins including my games in hand.

Ended up going all of January, Feb, March & April unbeaten. Got better and better as players returned from injury. Ended up winning the league by 20 clear points & winning the Dutch cup convincingly. Board confidence on the game still makes me chuckle as I have supposedly impressed them with my ability & happy we've won 3 trophies in my first season, yet they think my transfers leave a lot to be desired especially Ramsdale (who conceded the least goals of any keeper all season and saved 3 out of 5 penalties in Cup semi ??‍)

I've now lost my top scorer Ziyech due to a pre agreed transfer to Chelsea from before my taking job, but thankfully it coincides with Antony finally completing his move.

I did that save as Chelsea before, imagine my surprise when Ziyech turned up, just as I'd bought Zaniolo who plays the same positions.

 

[Wolf]

I did that save as Chelsea before, imagine my surprise when Ziyech turned up, just as I'd bought Zaniola who plays the same positions.

Well you wasted money there ?

Ziyech was beast for me in my only season with him, Leagues top scorer & assists despite losing him for 6 weeks to injury. I do have huge imbalance in my squad though got an absolute lack of full back coverage, I've only got Tagliafico who wants to move on with Inter tabling a big offer & Dest as my other recognised one who is still young, so I need to go out and get at least 2 or 3 new ones, but an unbelievable amount of attacking midfielders to point its hard to give game time to any of them.

 

[Orikoru]

Well you wasted money there ?

Ziyech was beast for me in my only season with him, Leagues top scorer & assists despite losing him for 6 weeks to injury. I do have huge imbalance in my squad though got an absolute lack of full back coverage, I've only got Tagliafico who wants to move on with Inter tabling a big offer & Dest as my other recognised one who is still young, so I need to go out and get at least 2 or 3 new ones, but an unbelievable amount of attacking midfielders to point its hard to give game time to any of them.

Tagliafico usually seems to end up at Man City on my saves. Maybe you can nick Wijndal off AZ, he's a class left back. I think Dest becomes class as well so keep playing him.

 

[Wolf]

Tagliafico usually seems to end up at Man City on my saves. Maybe you can nick Wijndal off AZ, he's a class left back. I think Dest becomes class as well so keep playing him.

Already nicked him for 22m, slotted in nicely..

Quarter way through new season and sitting top with Antony & Boadu banging in goals. Sold De Beek as well so I've got a nice profit of 95m sitting there burning a hole in my pocket..

 

[Orikoru]

My team are ticking along quite nicely, we were in 6th then we had to play Arsenal, Liverpool AND Chelsea all in a row in October - managed draws in the Arsenal and Chelsea games but lost to Liverpool obviously. So we dropped a little to 8th. But now there's a bloody world cup on! No games for us for 50 days!! Whose stupid idea was that?? Only four of our players were called up so I imagine I'll need to arrange a couple of friendlies to keep everyone else sharp. If the staff don't do it automatically.

 

[Wolf]

My team are ticking along quite nicely, we were in 6th then we had to play Arsenal, Liverpool AND Chelsea all in a row in October - managed draws in the Arsenal and Chelsea games but lost to Liverpool obviously. So we dropped a little to 8th. But now there's a bloody world cup on! No games for us for 50 days!! Whose stupid idea was that?? Only four of our players were called up so I imagine I'll need to arrange a couple of friendlies to keep everyone else sharp. If the staff don't do it automatically.

That's going to be my issue this season, but likely I'll be losing a fair few players so 50 days of just hitting the continue button ??‍

Finished my 2nd seasons, only lost 1 game all season that was to PSV. Managed another league & Cup double plus made it to champions league last 16. Problem is my squad was ransacked post season by European Big clubs, I lost Ramsdale & Lainez to PSG for a combined 96m. Tagliafico has now left for 53m to Liverpool, Martinez to Barca for 42m plus some other fringe players.

But have made some cracking signings to replace them and I've only spent 22m.

I have noticed though as Ajax manager I'm being offered so many jobs, in season 2 alone I rejected, RB Leipzig, Wolfsburg, Everton, Tottenham, Dortmund & Blackburn

 

[TheDiablo]

Bounced straight back up, winning the Championship in the end with 102 points, helps getting 53 from the last 20 games. Managed to stay up in the Prem, came 13th but only 5 points ahead of 13th and got squeaky with a terrible run of form before winning 2 of the last 4. Really, really struggling to attract players that significantly improve the side, so its a case of incremental, slow improvements. Desperately need someone to score goals, my strikers ended with 10 and 3 this season!

I have a few 'fork' saves lined up, in the last 3 off-seasons have been approached by Sevilla, Wolfsburg and amazingly now Bayern (just came 5th, massive rebuild required). Tempted to take a break from Colchester now and give the Bayern fork a go

 

[Orikoru]

Got fed up with Norwich, too inconsistent to improve on the 7th we got last season. I've started a new save as Roma, and I'm trying a daft formation that basically imitates some others I saw online (but my own version of it). It's a kind of 4-3-1-2 with W(a) and IWB(s) on both sides, a SS(a) and two pressing forwards, very high line and plenty of pressing. Roma don't have much money or any good strikers so I've bought Dusan Vlahovic from Fiorentina and Giacomo Raspadori from Sassuolo. Both 19 with good potential, and will get plenty of games as Dzeko no doubt quickly ages into oblivion knowing how this game normally treats any player over 31.

 

[Dan2501]

Everton going about as well as I could expect. Just into Feb now, sat 6th in the league level on points with 5th place Arsenal but well off the pace of the top 4. Finished top of my Europa League group and been drawn against Marseille in the 1st KO round, a good EL run would be nice.

Transfer wise we picked up Sergio Gomez in January for £9m and then Rolan finalised his move to Wolves - which might be the worst £20m ever spent as he joins them with 5 months left to recover from a cruciate injury, then Walcott (£3m) and Kenny (£18m) moved to Korea and FC Seoul, and sold some crap u23 players for a combined £7m so finances are looking decent which doesn't happen often in an Everton save.

Not sure what the plan for the save is, I'd like to win the league but we're a long way off that and it's bloody difficult to compete when Liverpool spent £107m on Bentacur in Jan, City spent £96m on Lautaro, and Chelsea have already spent £316m this season. Going to take a few seasons to get us up to the level required I think.

 

[Orikoru]

Roma game is going ok. We started the season with 5-0, 4-1 and 5-0 wins in the league and I thought I had the holy grail of tactics, but then we lost to Juve 4-1 started drawing games endlessly. Lost to Lecce who are terrible, but now we're on a good little run again with a few wins taking us back into the top four, and top of our Europa group.

Just approaching Christmas, our top scorer is Kolarov. From inverted wing back (DL position) he's managed 7 goals in 12(2) appearances. Several penalties and free kicks in that, but still. The guy is 34 years old! His average rating is 7.61. The downside is I'll never be able to replace him on Roma's meagre budget!

Speaking of budget, Roma have players on absolutely stupid contracts, it's no wonder I'm not allowed to spend any money. Dzeko gets 155k, he's 33 and I rarely start him. Pastore earns 140k, I've started him only once. Even if I manage to sell him I'll never do it without having to stump up a wage contribution. Jordan Veretout, an Aston Villa reject, is our fourth highest earner on 92k and I haven't started him once. And I can't sell him in Jan either because he's only on loan at the moment, which becomes permanent at the end of the season. Give me strength.

 

[Dan2501]

That's always the issue with Roma. So much of their budget is blown on old past their best players that you can't really sell in the first season, but come the end of Season 1 you'll be able to have a squad clearout, you'll get some decent cash from the Serie A TV deal and then you can start building a decent side. Always a grind getting through that first season though, has been for a couple of seasons on FM as them. Some good talent in the squad though - Kluivert is excellent, Cristante, Pellegrini and Zaniolo are fantastic in the middle, Under's brilliant and Schick is a handy striker, good core to the squad.

Putting together some decent little cup runs as Everton. Just beaten QPR in the FA Cup Semi Final to reach the final, which is great, but we've got Liverpool in the final, so not going to win that. We've also just beaten Schalke in the Europa League Quarters and face Valencia in the Semis with Atletico or Spurs awaiting the winner. Could make the Champions League after all with a bit of luck!

 

[Orikoru]

After I made that post, a couple of Chinese clubs came in for Pastore and by some miracle they didn't ask for any wage contribution! That's 140k a week off the books! Kolarov signed an end of contract agreement with Arsenal. I did offer him a one year extension but he took the Arsenal gig. He is 34 though so surely he's going to decline soon. I had a bid for Perotti (another part-time player on 90 grand) but he rejected the move, useless bastard. But yeah as you say, at least we have a strong midfield to start with.

 

[Dan2501]

Somehow absolutely smashed Valencia in the Quarters. Beat them 4-0 at Goodison and then got a 2-2 draw at the Mestalla to win 6-2 on aggregate, very tidy. Spurs then got dumped out 5-2 by Atleti so face them in the Final. Nice little end to the season, an FA Cup final and then a Europa final to try and secure a Champions League place.

4 games left in the league. Sat 7th atm but only 2 points behind Spurs and have 2 games in hand. They finish their season with games against Arsenal and Leicester whereas we've got Burnley, Southampton, Liverpool and Chelsea, so I'm hopeful we'll nab 6th but need it basically in the bag before the last 2 games so need results to go our way. 6th place + FA Cup and Europa League finals makes for a decent little season, be even better if we can get a trophy out of it!

 

[Dan2501]

We did it! It looked like it was going to be a disaster finish to the season. We lost to Liverpool and drew with Chelsea in our last 2 games of the season which allowed Spurs to overtake us so we finished 7th, the board were absolutely fuming and my Manager Performance rating dropped to an F. Then we lost the FA Cup final to Liverpool 2-1 which didn't help, but then by some miracle we actually beat Atletico in the EL Final. We dominated for a lot of the game, DCL scored in the 36th minute and we held onto our lead until the 84th minute where Koke scored from a corner. It was looking like the game was going to penalties and then Sergio Gomez pinged a ball across field to Moise Kean who cut inside, beat Partey and curled one past Oblak into the top corner to win us the trophy. Absolute miracle win and now we're on the way to the CL. Get in!

Now the fun of a summer re-build to get us ready for CL football. Have £58m to spend initially and then aiming to sell Delph, Bernard and Mina to free up some more cash to improve the squad. Could really do with a couple of CL quality defenders and a new winger or two. Just need more quality, we've got some good players, but not going to be good enough to compete in the CL yet.

 

[Dan2501]

PL season is about to start - starting off with 2 games against United, one in the league, then one in the Euro Super cup. Had an interesting summer. Signed our world class CB that we needed and we had to spend big to do it - £65m spent on Dayot Upamecano. We then also picked up:

Lucas Tousart - £3.4m - Perfect for our Half Back role and will allow Holgate to move back to centre half alongside Upamecano
Gerard Deulofeu - £36m (£15m up front) - Love Deulofeu IRL, Watford got relegated and he was transfer listed so had to pick up him
Becir Omeragic - £8.5m - Quality backup centre half with tons of potential, won't be CL ready this season but has so much potential
Leon Goretzka - Loan with £28m option to buy - World class centre midfielder but no major obligation to buy him with an optional future fee
Jesse Lingard - Free - Needed another winger, only paying him £37k a week, decent backup option and he's home-grown
David Raya - £6.25m - Lossl's contract is up at the end of season 3 so went in early and picked up my old Brentford GK. Only 25 and a quality GK, perfect backup to Pickford that can step up when needed.

In terms of departures, we've sold:

Bernard - £22m
Anthony Gordon - £20m
Gylfi Sigurdsson - £11m
Fabian Delph - £4m
Yerry Mina - Loan to Porto with £33m fee after 20 games

Still gonna be tough to battle Liverpool, City, or Chelsea. Liverpool have spent £229m on Frenkie, Boadu and Dest; City have spent £100m on Zaniolo and David; Chelsea spent £157m on Havertz and Everton; but United and Spurs have spent nothing which is weird, so could break top 4 but need a good season.

I got offered interviews at Barcelona and Lazio as well in the summer, accepted the Barca one and had the interview but ended up missing out to Luis Enrique unsurprisingly. Probably would have gone, but glad to get another season at Everton to try and build something decent, just hope we get a friendly CL group

 

[Orikoru]

FM was being it's usual annoying self last night. We were on a great run of 5 wins that put us to within 5 points of the leaders, but then the game decided to punish me for my wishful thinking and we got 1 point from the next four games to drop us into 4th. Managed to win and reclaim 3rd just before I turned it off though, there's only about 4 games left I think. Somehow we got Liverpool in the Europa League 2nd knockout round, we managed two away goals in a 3-2 defeat, but were beaten 2-1 at home sadly, we made a decent go of it at least. We're in the Italian Cup final as well, but that's against our arch rivals Lazio, who annoyingly are top of the league and looking likely to win it! They just beat us in that poor run of form with 10 men.

I'm working on making my tactic slightly less gung-ho for next season, as it seems like we need to score 3 just to win the game at the minute. We're the top scorers in the division but we leak a lot of goals as well. And we're losing Smalling of course since he's only on loan, so I'll have to find a top centre back replacement for next to no money. Not to mention trying to replace Kolarov - even though he's nearly 35, he's our top scorer from left back with 15 bloody goals! Lots of penalties, free kicks, and screamers from open play - it'll be nearly impossible to replace that kind of attacking input. Roma is a funny team, aside from trying to win football matches, sorting out the wage bill is a massive challenge, and three of my first choice back four are leaving at the end of the season, so season two is almost like starting again. Florenzi comes back from loan to replace Zappacosta so I'm ok there, but yea, finding a top CB and LB on little money is going to be very difficult. The rest of the squad should be ok.

 

[TheDiablo]

Rattled through a few more seasons with Colchester save, just finished 10th year. Have managed to stay in Prem now for last 4 of those and we're fully established.

I've enjoyed it as it's been incremental gains and patience, clever transfers, being prepared to sell anyone for the right price etc. Got the 'wrong-end' of the Brexit draw so its largely been UK based players as I can't attract good enough foreigners with such a small stature, although that has changed slightly in the last couple of years. Built Prem side originally around players such as Reiss Nelson, Rhian Brewster and Tom Davies, although these have been largely replaced and sold on now.

We've always been pretty good defensively but struggled massively with goals - not sure anyone has ever got more than 12 in a season for us. I've stumbled on an awesome gk, def and dm and the result was just 22 conceded in the last season! Lots of 1-0 either way or 0-0s, but having finished 9th 2 years back the extra clean sheets and couple of surprise results see us nick into 6th. I've got such a thin squad though, only ever needed to build for a 40ish game season so Europa League will really stretch us. Happy with the summer window though, made a couple of good reinforcements and signed an exciting striker from Dortmund.

Such a good save, can see it going on for a while.

 

[Orikoru]

Rattled through a few more seasons with Colchester save, just finished 10th year. Have managed to stay in Prem now for last 4 of those and we're fully established.

I've enjoyed it as it's been incremental gains and patience, clever transfers, being prepared to sell anyone for the right price etc. Got the 'wrong-end' of the Brexit draw so its largely been UK based players as I can't attract good enough foreigners with such a small stature, although that has changed slightly in the last couple of years. Built Prem side originally around players such as Reiss Nelson, Rhian Brewster and Tom Davies, although these have been largely replaced and sold on now.

We've always been pretty good defensively but struggled massively with goals - not sure anyone has ever got more than 12 in a season for us. I've stumbled on an awesome gk, def and dm and the result was just 22 conceded in the last season! Lots of 1-0 either way or 0-0s, but having finished 9th 2 years back the extra clean sheets and couple of surprise results see us nick into 6th. I've got such a thin squad though, only ever needed to build for a 40ish game season so Europa League will really stretch us. Happy with the summer window though, made a couple of good reinforcements and signed an exciting striker from Dortmund.

Such a good save, can see it going on for a while.

Sounds a bit like my Norwich save, I had us in a 4-3-3 with an Anchorman, we were defensively solid in the end but it was hard to score goals with one striker, and if we won it was usually 1-0. The only times I've scored decent goals in saves have been with two strikers really. I usually find the AMC position a bit hit and miss as well, so having an attacking player there behind a lone striker doesn't always help.

 

[Orikoru]

Well we scraped over the line in third, needing to better Atalanta's result on the final day, we had a ridiculous 3-3 draw with Fiorentina, but Atalanta also drew, so 3rd it is. Champion's League qualification which is all I wanted really.

Loads of ins and outs with loan deals ending and me having to get replacements with next to no money. Sold a bunch of reserves like Gonalons and Nzonzi to scrape enough money to buy Takehiro Tomiyasu - a wonderkid defender who will start at CB and can also cover RB. Needed a left back and managed to bring Luca Pellegrini in from Zebre on a two year loan deal, so that plugs a hole. And I needed wing cover so I did a loan deal for Thorgan Hazard as well. Florenzi and Schick returned from loans as well and go straight into the first team. Best of all I just managed to shift Dzeko on deadline day. Took £1m for him and we're contributing 31k towards his wages... but the alternative was him earning 155k to play for the reserves!

Had a big tactical reshuffle as we scored 75 goals last season (good) but shipped 50 as well (bad). Have now gone to the classic 4-2-3-1 shape as follows:

PF(a)
IF(a) - AM(s)* - W(a)
DLP(d) - BBM(s)
WB(s) - BPD(d) - BPD(d) - IWB(s)
SK(d)
*added instructions to get further forward and take more risks​

So far in four friendlies (against pants teams) and two league games we've won them all and not conceded at all. Sure that won't last!

 

[Orikoru]

Game does my head in (again). We were ticking along nicely, just smashed Sassuolo 4-1. All of a sudden it's seven games without a win after that. The 7th being a 3-0 defeat to arch rivals Lazio. I figured the game was trying to tell me something's wrong (even though it wasn't before), so I changed formation to a 4-4-2 - and smashed Juventus 3-0 in the next game, plus we had ten men for most of the second half. What the hell?? Next game smashed Basel 4-0 as well. So yeah, we play 4-4-2 now I guess.

PF(a) - CF(a)
W(a) - DLP(s) - BBM(s) - W(a)
IWB(s) - BPD(d) - BPD(d) - IWB(s)​