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hugobomb

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Everything posted by hugobomb

  1. Started a save with most of Central Europe and Scandinavia loaded (basically as many of the non big 5 as I could have without bogging down the loading times too much). Turns out I could have added a few more leagues since this years game breezes by. Began in Iceland with Fjolnir and won promotion at the first attempt on goal difference despite only winning one of my last 4 games (1 win, 2 draws and a loss on the final day). After getting an extra £7,000 a week in wage budget (£24k total) I've had a strange post season. I've agreed deals with 6 players to come in February when the transfer window opens, all on decent money for this level (£400-800 a week) thanks to getting rid of some deadwood (including a player/coach who was underwhelming at both but was getting paid £1k a week!) and the players I wanted to keep around all agreeing to pay cuts of about £200-300 a week each I'm approaching the new season with a stronger squad but will be spending about £1,000 a week less than the one that won promotion!
  2. He's being mugged off if he's paying £50 million for League One relegation battlers Reading. With the issues they are having surely Sheffield Wednesday or West Brom wouldn't cost that much more. Though it wouldn't shock me in the slightest if this is just a publicity stunt to get his name back in the news. If he does have the money he'll sail through the EFLs fit and proper test. It's somehow even more of a joke than the Premier League's one.
  3. FFS, no matter who owns us we can't resist appointing a "name" when things are going well. The statement they've put out is odd as well, banging on about installing a "no fear" attitude at the club. Hope Eustace gets the Rangers job and makes a success of it.
  4. If we lose Eustace for Rooney my optimism for this season takes a big knock. Unlike the last time we appointed a "name" we've got money to spend in January but do I trust Rooney to spend it? Fuck no.
  5. The fact that he's only 24 stuns me. Felt sure he was a few years older than that. Probably a combination of me forgetting just how young he was when he moved to Real and 2015 feeling so long ago at this point.
  6. We pissed the league as expected. Finished 1st with a record setting 113 points. Financially we were in rough shape come November/December, £4.3million in the red and rumours of administration but the combination of the board selling our youth facilities for about £7million (we're renting them so still have access to them thank christ, my heart almost stopped when I saw the inbox item) and me setting up a sale on our best young player (18 year old winger, already Championship quality by the time new year was coming) to Fulham, £7.5million up front, another couple of million depending on appearances, a loan back until the end of the season, a friendly for next season and most importantly 25% of their profit on him. My thinking is that depending on how the money goes we can cash in that sell on early to keep us ticking over and since he's now worth £25-35million as a Fulham player means we should get a good deal for that sell on. There's another player who had a sell attached to him when he was sold before I arrived, 40% of next sale and now worth £20-25million so hopefully those two will keep us going. Youth intake was nothing special but thanks to all the minutes the more talented ones got this season I have more than a few players ready to make the step up to League One. With the board expecting a top half finish I need to bring in few player but only 3-4 first teamers since most of the starting eleven are of League One quality. The extra money we should get in League One, season tickets, TV money and increased attendance should mean that so long I don't go crazy with the wage budget we should cover £2-3million of our loan payments right there.
  7. Heart leading head is always a mistake. As I was finishing the season with Rangers (Won the league, League Cup, knocked out of the Champion's League in the Knock Out Play-Off by Spurs), Birmingham got themselves relegated for the second time in four years to drop into League Two. So, charging to the rescue, I resigned from Rangers the day after winning the title in order to get the job. After getting my feet under table in bringing in some of my old Rangers staff and releasing everyone whose contracts were expiring (no-one who was in the starting line up), and moved some more youngsters into the first team squad to save money, Blues facilities are still in good shape so can rely on decent youngsters. However, a couple of weeks into pre-season I noticed the pre-arranged transfers and the season ticket money wasn't making as big of a difference to the club balance that it should have done and looked into the club debts. Turns out six years ago the club took out a £97 million loan which still has four years of repayments before it's cleared. Repayments that are costing the club £825,000 A MONTH. So I have to get promoted out of League Two while trying to find almost £10 million a year to keep the club solvent.
  8. At the end of the season (won the league and cup again) I moved on to Rangers, wanted to avoid England so Scotland seemed like a decent idea. Raided Viborg for my young Danish goalkeeper who comes in as the long term replacement for the current keeper and since the Danish lad is 3* current ability at 20 with 5* potential I could be tempted into selling the current keeper who is 30 and apparently worth £18-20million. Managed to make the League phase through the qualifiers (since they finished 2nd last year I had to start in the 2nd round, Molde, Antwerp and Sporting were negotiated), 4 games into the league phase we are 2nd (home wins against Sparta, Benfica and Chelsea plus a draw away against Dortmund) but have played three home games so expecting to slip into the 8-24th range by the end with games away to Leverkusen, Rosenborg and Real Sociedad and Porto at home. Domestically we are top but Celtic are only three points back. We also have Celtic upcoming in the Premier Sports Cup semis, the amount of games we are playing is really stretching my squad. Not helping is my decision to revamp the squad mid season. Got some big bids for a couple of fringe/aging players from Saudi clubs and sold them to fund the purchases of some wonderkids (2 from Argentina since their players are cheaper than Brazil, plus one from Man Utd and a winger from Partizan) along with a 26yo from Argentina who will come in as our best midfielder (and had better be since I'm paying him £76k a week), all arriving on the 1st Jan. The sales plus a few injuries left me with a bench consisting of FOUR players for one of my Champions League games. Fortunately there is an International break after the following domestic game, so 2/3 of the injuries should be back for the next European game. This should be the only season I have this problem since I've moved on most of the aging players and have four of the highest earners contracts (all 30+ and only 2 1/2* to 3* at best so not convinced about offering contracts to them) ending at the end of the season so can free up almost £160k a week from the wage budget
  9. Some iffy domestic form early on means we come back from the winter break 3 points off the back of Midtjylland but the main focus was the Champions League, I'd bought some good young Danish players to fill out the squad and cover for domestic games after European ones and the game time they've been getting it means we now have 5 players under 21 with 2 1/2 to 3* current ability and plenty more room to grow (including a defender I found for just over £1 million who has Model Citizen and didn't want a release clause so he'll see plenty of minutes). After the Inter game we drew our next two again Mainz and Galatasaray before losing to Man City, fortunately we followed that up with wins against Malmo and Club Brugge before losing to Barcelona and beating Ajax to finish in 14th and easily make the knock out round. Our reward for not only making the knock out round but being seeded in it? Chelsea 😨. To the surprise of no-one, they beat us. However my main take away was the money involved. Last year we made the last 16 of the Europa League and in total made £8.5million from it. Making the knock out round of the Champion's League brought in £33.4million! And thanks to moving into 10th in UEFA at the start of this season the league winners will go straight into next years league phase so we can now concentrate on that.
  10. Won the title in my 2nd full season with Viborg. Only had to make it past the Play-offs to make the Champion's League League Phase, where we beat APOEL 8-2. Got a decent set of fixtures with two or three winnable games, though I admit I wasn't expecting to start by beating Inter 4-1 at the San Siro!
  11. Having a fun time my new save. Loaded up the major leagues but sticking around Scandinavia for the moment. Started in the Icelandic First Division with Por, won promotion my first season but the second was weird. Thanks to large promotion wage rises that were included in most of the first team contracts before I arrived, my extra £4k a week budget quickly became just over £1k so I could only bring in a couple of players (my signings were on £2-400 a week, the established players were pushing £1,000 a week! And all of them had no intention or talking about new contracts because their agents knew I would be offering reduced terms). I was expected to fight bravely against the drop and that's what we were doing, coming up to the split we were 2nd last but only a point away from safety but managed to win the Icelandic Cup which meant we were on course to do a Birmingham and get relegated but qualify for Europe! However a couple of weeks after we won the cup, last season's champions Valur, who had managed to qualify for the Conference League group stage off the back of that, were having a nightmare domestic season and were last in the table and sacked their manager (I played a role in that, thanks to a re-arranged game early in the season we played them twice in the league and beat them at home and a got a draw away which was his last game in charge). I applied for the job since their wage budget was 3 times out and got the job. Too late to do anything more that avoid relegation, I won 6 out the last 7 games to escape (Por went down as expected). First full season as Valur manager saw us win the league by a point but during the loooong Icelandic off season (seriously, the Premier Division finishes in October and doesn't return until May! There's a league cup in Feb/March which we won, but it doesn't qualify for Europe so it's pretty much just fitness building) I got a interview in Denmark with Viborg who were in pretty the same situation Valur were in, bottom of the table with a couple of games left before the league splits. Took the job and managed to get them to finish top of the relegation group, which got us a European play-off against Brondby for a Europa Conference League spot, which we won (I'm assuming the fact we were in much better form helped us there because they're squad was much better than ours). In my first full season at Viborg we made the Conference League Quarter Finals, losing to eventual champions Aston Villa (😒), finished 4th in the league but didn't need the European Playoff because we won the Danish Cup which means we get Europa League football this season! This season we're top of the league after 14 games, looking good for a top 8 finish in the League Phase of the Europa League but expecting Kopenhagen to still take the title as they made the Champions League League Phase last year and have had a £15m+ transfer out of the club in each of the last two seasons so are throwing money around. Fortunately, thanks to Danish clubs having a good couple of seasons in Europe, this year there's an extra Champion's League spot available from the league so finishing 2nd will be fine with me.
  12. Oh joy, we've brought in a guy with the business skills that have allowed him to lose a load of money in crypto/nfts. Because we were worried that we hadn't looked silly for far too long
  13. I've got one of those souvenir mini cricket bat from a county championship game me and my brother went to in the mid 90s that we spent the day getting autographed by whichever player was fielding by the boundaries. Main two are Graeme Hick and Glenn McGrath.
  14. Luca leads 9-8 after the first day. Selby scored the first ever 147 in a World final.
  15. For Birmingham my choice is usually Nikola Zigic. While we've had worse players, none of them cost £6 Million. He was unplayable on his day (the League Cup final being one of them) but that day didn't come round very often and he spent three years in the Championship looking very ordinary for someone on around £50,000 a week.
  16. I really enjoyed that video, Lady Emily and Sarah Z (who Emily co-writes for) are both really good at deep dives into fandoms. Sarah's new video about West End Caleb is also good. Oh god I remember how bad Spoonys comment section was before he disabled it. Just utter hatred against anyone collaborating with Spoony to the point people were twitchy about working with him.
  17. UK Bans Russian drivers from competing I assume this means Mazepin gets the boot.
  18. Went back into my unemployed save where I had taken over at Kettering just before Christmas when they were hovering around the drop zone when they were expected to be around the play offs. Only told to avoid a relegation battle. By the time the youth prospects came through in March I'd gotten them to mid-table. Said youth prospects included a defensive midfielder who might break into the first team squad towards the end of next season 9(1.5 stars current ability) and a couple of others who might the grade the year after that depending on what division we're in. The stand out prospect though is Nick Crawford who looks like this at 15 years old: Because of this talent (and the fact my current strikers weren't scoring regularly) he went straight into the first team where he proceeded to score 6 goals in the last 8 games as we finished 11th just 2 points outside the play-offs (making a 0-0 draw in the 2nd last game that much more frustrating). Had decent summer transfer wise, fixed my midfield which was a problem the previous year (two half decent starters and no depth below them) and started the season with a 3-0 away win at Curzon. Board expect a play-off finish which the press agree with, suggesting a 5th place finish for us pre-season.
  19. Ah, turns out I'm confusing you for Peterborough the season before who went down on 54 points. Which they season you went down would have been good enough for 16th!
  20. Didn't you go down with a points total that would have saved you in most other seasons? I remember reading articles saying that whoever went down would consider themselves very unlucky. It's still a toss up between Clark and Zola as regards to who was the worst Birmingham manager in my lifetime. It took Clark two years to take us from the playoffs to near relegation, Zola did it (well just outside the playoffs when he arrived) in four months before we turned to 'Arry. Though now that I think about it, my uncle might argue Barry Fry might have been worse, Clark and Zola nearly got us relegated to the 3rd tier, Fry actually did it (then got us back up and kept us there so he has that in his favour).
  21. I can vouch for Lee Clark being shit. 1 home win in a year and took us to within two minutes of relegation. We were so bad at home I distinctly remember looking up our last few fixtures during the run in and seeing the last game of season and saying "oh thank christ we're away! We've got a chance"
  22. A VERY long winter if the first 10 overs are any indication
  23. We ended up drawing APOEL in the first knockout round and managed to win 2-1! Then drew Chelsea in the 2nd knockout round who beat us 2-0 in a game where we didn't register a single shot but the fact we got that far was a minor miracle. We made about £5.5 million in total from European prize money. First set of facility upgrades were finished on time at the start of March, giving us Average training and Good youth. Pretty much as soon as we cut the ribbon on the new training set up the board agreed to upgrade it again(at a cost of £1.8million) but said no to upgrading the youth system again. Finished unbeaten in all domestic competitions thus winning the treble of League, Welsh Cup and Nathaniel MG Cup, which did TNS a favour as they got the extra league Euro II spot after they finished 3rd behind Haverfordwest and therefore didn't have to take part in the play-offs Third season has seem us lose our best keeper for £20k (and 40% sell on) and one of our best young centre midfielders for £10,000 (minimum fee release, I tried being clever and negotiating their initial £3k offer to just under it with a sell on but they just responded by activating it), which focusing on the good news should cheer up our number 2 keeper who got moody last season over playing time. Europe wise, made the play-off round of the Champions league before losing to Ludogarets which sent us into the Europa League group stageand made us more than £7million! £4.7 for losing in the play-off round £2.4 for making the Europa league groups. Somehow our exploits last year made us 3rd seeds but didn't help as we got Atalanta, Sporting and Nice. I wasn't confident even before the draw was made as out of the 4th seeds there didn't seem to be any winnable game, only one or two we might of snatched a point at home against. Nice were who we got and beat us 2-0 at our place in the first game despite getting a man sent off after 4 minutes. We were unlucky not to score and our xg was better than theirs but I get the feeling that was our only chance at winning a game and our hopes to snatch 3rd place have already gone.
  24. Speaking of, one of their players is now doing a great job for me with Connahs. Luke Young has been key for us so far either as DM or CM, 16 goals from 34 in all competitions so far, mainly from penalties and free kicks along with 14 assists.
  25. How it went: Also, didn't realize that wins in the EURO II earned you nearly £500,000 (draws get you about £150,000) so thats another £1.4million overall which did lead to the board agreeing to upgrade the facilities. Training is only going to cost £400,000 to upgrade but the Youth facilities? That'll be £2 million thank you very much (so the board may have had a point in saying no earlier). Both will be done by the start of March. Pissing the league, 18 games in, 17 wins 1 draw. TNS have fallen off a cliff, my league win last year got the manager fired and the new guy has them 5th so far already losing 6 times, only 2 of which were us. In fact having just looked they are winless in 7 league games. Haverfordwest are currently looking like the most likely to take 2nd.
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