Football Manager 2021

[Hobo]

The dream is over.  

[JasonM]

Found what has to be the most rounded 17 year old ever. And I only had to pay 1M for him to take him from 4th division Zwickau where he was destroying the lower levels. And he immediately went and scored a goal on his debut, making him the youngest ever Bundesliga goalscorer.

Just absolutely immense. Can see him become a monster before his 20th birthday.

[Kyle]

Playing an FM11 game as England. This makes me feel a bit daft for having been knocked out of the 2013 Confederations Cup by Argentina:

Spoiler

 

[Szumi]

Playing MLS with my Philadelphia Union and FM absolutely fucked me for the MLS Cup Finals. They inexplicably moved the Finals weeks after the Semifinals, so I had to do all the hokey Drafts, including the Expansion Draft where you can protect 12 players on your team from being drafted by the new MLS team. Well I get to MLS Cup Final day after the drafts and Club World Cup and.... My registration now only lets me use 12 players still. It's locked into the registration I did for the stupid Expansion Draft, and I now enter the match with only the 12 players I protected, one of whom is injured. So all my subs are greyed out shit regens, and I have to play multiple players out of position.

Fuck FM. I will now absolutely cheat and play the game no matter how many times it takes to win. Ridiculous this game continues to fuck over attempts to play MLS.

[Hobo]

Consistantly having 4 games in hand all season thanks to having spent most of the year playing in the champions league.

I went a bit OTT on transfers in summer and signed Alex Texeira, Joe Allen and Robbie Brady as well as a load of South American kids. Probably going to have to reshape the squad a bit as Aloisío, my now 32 year old record goalscorer, has fallen off a cliff thanks to injuries. Matheus Pereira is leaving on a free after refusing to sign a new deal. Basically, the squad is enterting a transition.

Notable transfers during this season by clubs who aren't me:

Aidan O'Brien, Gary Hooper and James Tomkins to Cork City.

Lukas Jutkiewicz to St Pat's Athletic

Padraig Almond and Simon Cox to Drogheda United

Stephen Henderson to Bohemians

In terms of fees the other clubs are spending on players:

Shamrock Rovers spent €5million to sign Kian Flanagan from Southampton

Cork spent 1million Aidan O'Brien from Millaway. And 2.1 million Ryan Meara from New York Red Bulls.

Bray Wanderers spent 1.7 million on Rob Keirnan from Bristol City.

Dundalk spent 1million on a regen called Anthony Lynch from Galway Utd. Galway had previously bought Lynch from Shamrock Rovers for €400K. Lots of this goes on between the LOI clubs.

Also, Ethan Ebanks-Landell, who I bought from Wolves in 2015 and sold to Bohemians in 2020 has declared for Ireland and been called up for the national team. Which may be the first example of that happening in so far in this game.

 

 

[King Ellis]

Pictured is a former player of mine who was amongst the foreign legion of youngsters I signed in my first summer in the Premier League, he'll have only been 18/19 and that year most of his appearances were off the bench. Never really gave him a fair shake after that, probably due to a lack of patience on my part, having my head turned by all the shiny new toys in the 2nd summer window, him not being all that great or some mixture of the 3. He went back to Paraguay on loan before playing in Serie A for Empoli for another 2 years before I cut ties and sold him to Boca Juniors for 15m (about 10m profit). He had a pretty good year there, got a hat trick in his first game of his second season and for some reason Barca spent 22m on him? They've already got bored of him as he's put a transfer request him since they're not playing him but I can't fathom why they bought him in the first place. Especially since they have their own superstar regens at this point, including a Bulgarian that I baulked at paying 50m for from Championship Brighton and is now a monster. Am I missing something?

Spoiler

 

[FLiam]

4 hours ago, King Ellis said:

Pictured is a former player of mine who was amongst the foreign legion of youngsters I signed in my first summer in the Premier League, he'll have only been 18/19 and that year most of his appearances were off the bench. Never really gave him a fair shake after that, probably due to a lack of patience on my part, having my head turned by all the shiny new toys in the 2nd summer window, him not being all that great or some mixture of the 3. He went back to Paraguay on loan before playing in Serie A for Empoli for another 2 years before I cut ties and sold him to Boca Juniors for 15m (about 10m profit). He had a pretty good year there, got a hat trick in his first game of his second season and for some reason Barca spent 22m on him? They've already got bored of him as he's put a transfer request him since they're not playing him but I can't fathom why they bought him in the first place. Especially since they have their own superstar regens at this point, including a Bulgarian that I baulked at paying 50m for from Championship Brighton and is now a monster. Am I missing something?

  Hide contents

 

AI squad building is still pretty naff….

Meanwhile in my glory hunter save with Barcelona - I managed to win the Copa Del Rey at the second attempt, beating Atletico in the final 2-0 thanks to goals in the 87th and 92nd minute from Fati and Messi. 

Still in contention for the league title but it’s looking unlikely as I currently sit 6 points behind Valencia with about six games to play. Either way, I should be done with Spain now having already won La Liga last season and now the Copa Del Rey. 

European adventures took me to the Europa League after being knocked out of the group stage of the Champion’s League. Inter Milan await in a big semi-final. A win in the Europa would mean three trophies down in the first two seasons. Although I imagine the bigger challenges are to come. 

Browsing the league tables and jobs that may come up look to be Napoli and Tottenham as both as outside the European places. Both would represent a challenge but opportunity to really go for a domestic cup in the first season at least and then build for a league title push in a couple of seasons.

Edited June 21, 2021 by FLiam

[FLiam]

Ended up dispatching of Inter 6-1 on aggregate in the Europa semi-final setting up a final against Sevilla. Ended up comfortable 2-0 winners - despite both goals coming in the last ten minutes. 

Meaning I have Spain wrapped up on my glory hunter challenge and one European competition. I realised I should add the Conference League to the challenge as well.

Anyways, I resigned as Barcelona manager and had three job offers from Monaco, Lazio and Leverkusen. Ended up taking the Leverkusen job, they’re already in the Champion’s League but very unlikely I’ll challenge for it but will give the German Cup a good go as well as pushing as high as possible in the league. 

Squad size is bloated, 36 players. Have Moukoko on the books though as well as Marcus Edwards so should be exciting and I also have £89m to spend. First piece of business was buying Sergino Dest from Dortmund (a player I sold at Barcelona) as we were lacking in the right-back area. Also looking for a centre-back and goalkeeper. The fact we have four pretty decent strikers means I’m leaning toward playing a Antonio Conte style of 3-1-4-2 but still not sure as I do have a couple of decent wingers in Edwards and Diaby but I could always play the latter as a marauding left wing-back. 

[Hobo]

The Europa League has come home to the 5th largest town in Ireland

[FLiam]

4 hours ago, Hobo said:

The Europa League has come home to the 5th largest town in Ireland

What’s your XI look like? 

Sokratis and Joe Allen. Amazing.

Edited June 26, 2021 by FLiam

[Hobo]

1 hour ago, FLiam said:

What’s your XI look like? 

Sokratis and Joe Allen. Amazing.

I signed both of them midway through the last season, I think. After I lost James Tarkowski to Crystal Palace and my Coloumbian regen, Edwin Diaz to Deportivo.

Generally speaking, the starting line IX is something like:

 

GK Kiko Casillas

RB Piotr Pietras (a polish regen I have on loan from Monaco)/Brian Lenihan/Cyrus Christie

CB Sokratis

CB Danny Batth

LF Yuri/Sean Kavanagh/Robbie Brady

CM Joe Allen

CM Jayson Moloumby

AMR Josef Martinez/James McClean/Robbie Brady

AMC Alex Teixeria/Chris Forrester

AMR Jordan Graham/Daryl Horgan

Haris Seferovic/Alen Stojcevic (a Serbian regen I got from Porto)

 

The side for the final was a little different. Teixeria did his achllies in for a start. The bench for this game also had a load of kids on it because I've kinda run short on home grown players. Especially once Deportivo took Edwin Diaz away. (I'd signed him when he was a teenager from Columbia and he counted as homegrown by the time he left)

Generally speaking, in European games, the team is set up to defend. Waste time. And counter attack. Seem to have a knack for keeping the ball against bigger teams (I think the Joe Allen/Jayson Molumby partnership brought this about).  Ended up with more possession (had 54% possession in the final and 8 shots in total to Roma's 20.

The run to the final was fairly helpful. We avoided PSG and Barcelona and decent home results helped us against Leverkusen, Dortmund, Milan and OM. In all my attempts at doing this rich LOI games, away form in Europe has killed the team. But this time, this team, has been able to handle going away in Europe to a degree.

I just noticed this gives Ireland 2 champions league places for 2021/22.

So I guess, Bray Wanderers will get a go at the Champions League now. Shame they seem to be having a terrible season after spending much of the previous one gunning for the title.

[Malenko]

5th?

[Hobo]

12 minutes ago, Malenko said:

5th?

[Malenko]

21 minutes ago, Hobo said:

Did you update the Wikipedia page, yourself? 

[Hobo]

His agent came to me and so I had to sign him

[Gorka]

Bit frustrated that my time managing Ireland is punctuated with a handful of good youth players, born in Ireland, willingly switching to England at 18 years old.

Like that would ever happen.

[Malenko]

18 minutes ago, Gorka said:

Bit frustrated that my time managing Ireland is punctuated with a handful of good youth players, born in Ireland, willingly switching to England at 18 years old.

Like that would ever happen.

It used to be as easy as having them play 2 minutes in a friendly vs San Marino when they're 16. Not anymore. 

[Hobo]

Winning the supercup and then getting the following in my inbox:

getting knocked out of the least important competition but we got the last laugh by winning the least important European trophy - What a feeling!

[Hobo]

For the first time in this game Parkvilla are not the only LOI club in the group stages of European competition.

Bray Wanderers are in the Champions League groups. While Shamrock Rovers are the Europa League.



While the Ireland national team's now mostly playing in Ireland
 

Sean Kavanagh was playing for Parkvilla until I sold him to Reims. Tafari Moore has recently switched his allegences to Ireland from England. Following in the footsteps of Ethan Ebanks Landel.

 

[JasonM]

How has the league status been affected by the upswing in Irish football? What's the ranking for the LOI?