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Football Manager 2021


FestiveJack

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Season one of my Glory Hunter challenge with Barcelona. 

Knocked out of the Champion's League at the first knockout round by Manchester United. 4-2 losers by way of Real Madrid in the Copa del Rey. 

Now I go into the last game of the season against Real Betis (away) two points ahead of them.

 

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I should note that Dele Ali missed a penality in the first minute of the first leg as well.

I had a look at the league table in England and Spurs (managed by Frank de Boer) were top for a while. Now they're in second, 6 points behind Arsenal (who themselves have been knocked out of the CL by Galatasaray). They have only won 1 of the 4 league games they've played since losing away to Parkvilla.
 

And Harry Kane was sold to Dortumund for €96 million a couple of seasons ago.

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Was losing 2-1 to Betis in the 83rd minute. Sat there thinking the first season of this glory hunter challenge would be a complete waste, but up step Antoine Griezmann and Coutinho to give us a 4-2 win in the end - scoring three goals between them in the final seven minutes to bring us the league title. 

I’ve managed to cling onto my job so I’ll be pushing for the Copa del Rey and European Cup next season, won’t worry too much about the league.

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6 minutes ago, FLiam said:

Was losing 2-1 to Betis in the 83rd minute. Sat there thinking the first season of this glory hunter challenge would be a complete waste, but up step Antoine Griezmann and Coutinho to give us a 4-2 win in the end - scoring three goals between them in the final seven minutes to bring us the league title. 

I’ve managed to cling onto my job so I’ll be pushing for the Copa del Rey and European Cup next season, won’t worry too much about the league.

I've never played this mode. Doesn't it make you stop caring about certain things/competitions that otherwise you would, and it would make sense to care? 

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33 minutes ago, Malenko said:

I've never played this mode. Doesn't it make you stop caring about certain things/competitions that otherwise you would, and it would make sense to care? 

I mean, I’m still going to try but I’ll really put focus on the European Cup and make sure certain players are fresh for it. 

It’s actually good fun so far - although I kind of feel like Mourinho just coming in and doing a job and then jumping ship.

Edited by FLiam
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On 16/05/2021 at 21:10, JasonM said:

After 12 seasons, 7 titles, an ECL Semi-Final, an EL semi-final, a CL Semi final and a CL final in my last season, I decided that I had finally gotten bored of Feyenoord and wanted to try something completely new... I knew I could've stuck around and tried for another Champions League final and maybe win it, but at the same time I got lucky and my personal interest was waning.

So I resigned from the job, and decided to take a completely different challenge instead by moving down the ranks to HNK Cibalia in the Croatian first league. A team whose best result was a 5th place a few seasons back but generally just hangs around the lower end of the first league.

My goals, slash the wage bill and make the club financially capable. And I went overboard, managing to have the league's lowest wage budget at the end of the winter break. Whilst also bringing in 6.3M in transfer fees.

Second goal: Try something new tactically. After playing with any variation of the 451 for so long, I wanted to try something completely different. And I ended up settling on trying to find success with a 5-3-2 (3CB/WB+DM) instead. There's not many people trying that, so maybe I can become the next tactical genius.

Third goal: Maybe get lucky and find myself fighting for a 4th position (and ECL spot) during the first season. But with the cuts I made, and the generally unimpressive side, it'll be mighty tricky... Especially since signings would have to be done on a self-imposed strict budget of low-fees and lower wages.

Anyways, big challenge, right? Also my manager doesn't speak a lick of Croatian, so that'd be tricky to team-talk my way out of things as easily as I did at Feyenoord...

The truth sometimes is a whole lot less challenging than I expected...

afbeelding.png

For the people wondering what kind of monstrosity I put together for this success to happen in the very first season, here's a picture of the tactic. Only change is the BBM dribbling and shooting less.

afbeelding.png

Cengic was a loanee from Dinamo who impressed, Sambol came in for 100K and scored 22 goals (if he can score 1 goal in the final game, he'll have the league record in hand!) And Zuljevic was a signing for 200K from Hajduk who took three tries before I could agree on a deal.

Needless to say, I am genuinely surprised at our success. I had assumed the 532 wouldn't be as offensively potent due to the lack of wingers or AM's, but it couldn't have been farther from the truth with 67 goals in 35 games. Whilst also keeping it tidy at the back.

Now the real challenge is next season, when I get thrown into the Champions League First Qualifying Round and have to find a way to survive long enough to either get into the Europa League, or the Champions League proper...

And my quest to run a very tight budget shall not change either!

Second season with Cibalia was enjoyable, although a definite dip in form as teams started to treat me with more respect than usual, in the end we managed to get a 3rd place against a resurgent Dinamo crushing everyone and Hajduk doing their role as perennial runner ups.

Most fun part was playing in three european leagues and having Ivan Sambol be a top 3 scorer in all three. (Although he got snubbed for the CL golden shoe because they don't count pre-group goals, booooo). Eventually washed out of the second KO round of the Conference League.

Third season though, it just all kinda started getting annoying and I just didn't feel like I was clicking with the team or the project. We got a stupidly tough conference league group (Wolfsburg, Red Star, FC Utrecht) but still managed to get 3rd place. But other than that, it was a sloggy year.

So when I found St. Pauli having just lost their manager (which I totally didn't have a hand in causing through shit-stirring), I made the move to the 2. Bundesliga in the winter break, and find myself in a new country looking to bring St. Pauli (back) into the Bundesliga and establish the team as the greatest team in the north, then the rest of the nation, and so on.

With Cibalia being the proof of concept for my 5-3-2 ravings, I brought it along to St. Pauli and upgraded it a bit to work with the quality of St. Pauli.

Biggest difference, two absurdly blistering strikers already there, only 20 and 17(!) years of age, too. And they quickly proved that it definitely wasn't just Sambol being a good player, but the tactic being extremely good.

So good in fact that 1 of the strikers has found themselves in an unlikely fight for top scorer of the league after scoring 11 goals in 10 games since the winter break. We've shot up from 10th place into 2nd place fighting for that sweet promotion spot.

So yeah, immediate excitement at St. Pauli, and I hope to continue those good tidings by getting into the Bundesliga and seeing how my 5-3-2 works against the best that Germany has to offer.

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Been busy in the summer transfer window with Barcelona. Trying to shape the squad to go as far as possible in the European Cup. 

Ins:
Memphis Depay (Lyon - free)
Stevan Jovetic (Monaco - free)
Eric Garcia (Manchester City - free)
David Alaba (FC Bayern - free)
Kalvin Phillips (Leeds United - £42m)
Nuno Mendes (Sporting - £50m)
Hecor Bellerin (Arsenal - £55m)

Outs:
Ousmane Dembele (FC Bayern - £46.5m)
Emerson (Atalanta - £28m)
Riqui Puig (Leeds United - £10.5m)
Sergino Dest (Dortmund - £7m)

Leaving squad depth fairly handy now:

GK: Ter Stegen, Neto
DR: Bellerin / Sergi Roberto
DL: Jordi Alba / Nuno Mendes
DCR: Araujo / Pique / Garcia
DCL: Alaba / Lenglet
DM: Busquets / Phillips
MCR: de Jong / Pjanic
MCL: Coutinho / Pedri
AMR: Messi / Trincao
AML: Greizmann / Fati
FC: Depay / Jovetic

Coverage all over the pitch with a fair few players being able to play in multiple positions / roles. Could not shift Umtiti though and he's on £210,000 a week sitting in the B team.

European Cup draw has commenced and I am up against Juventus, Dortmund and Krasnodar - so that should be a nice battle to get out of the group.

Edited by FLiam
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image.png


it was almost made better by Porto scoring an own goal but it was disallowed for offside.

Have lost James McClean to injury along the way though.

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Current champions Real Madrid in the next semis. Home advantage in the first leg.

Other semi is Galatasaray vs Atletico Madrid

 

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So I played around with the data a bit and deducted 30 points from all the ESL clubs in the Premier League as a punishment scenario.

Liverpool still won the league by a few points over Leicester. City managed to get Champions League. Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham all just scraped survival and United were somewhere in the middle doing not much of anything.

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