Football Manager 2023

[Hobo]

 

[Szumi]

I started an April 2023 save and jumped in with Leeds. They were only 2 points away from safety, but had a terrible run in. In the final 9 matches, had to go away to Leicester (they were top 6 att), away to Arsenal, and home to Manchester United, to start. Plus still home to Liverpool. Had two relegation six pointer, home to Palace and then away to Southampton last match of the season.

Lost to Leicester 3-2, blowing a 2-1 lead and conceding a penalty in second half stoppage time. Drew Arsenal 2-2 after conceding an 89' equalizer. Finally got the luck with an 85' winner vs United, and then drew 2-2 to Brighton after being up 2-1 and Lamptey being sent off in the 3rd minute! Thankfully I then won 3 in a row to secure safety after my second to last match, even though it was losing 5-0 home to Liverpool.

 

Potential save killer though? I never got my next season transfer budget. Instead of getting the next season's transfer budget of £27m to try and bring in some quality, it still remains as next season, so I've been having to sell as many players as possible and back loading all transfers since my transfer budget started at only £250k. 

[Cymbols]

Owners in the football league are right bastards. 
 

Started out with Bolton in League 2 (FM21 here), financially unstable so objective was to balance the books. Managed to get an affiliate deal with Tottenham, got some class loans in, and won the league.

Second season and I make some smart free transfers, get a few loans in, and we have a decent amount of money spare in the wage budget. All going well until December, in the League 1 playoff positions…and the board decide to slash the wage budget - would have to sell 4-5 first team players just to break even again.

Pissed off, I applied for, and got a job with Championship side Huddersfield. Struggling at first, moved loanee Isaac Success from the wing to ST (and got Manchester United as an affiliate for easy loans), ended up starting in 18th, and finishing in 7th, missing out on the playoffs on the final day of the season.

Transfer window starts well, manage to get Anthony Gordon and Benjamin Sesko on loan, and tie my captain/star CM Lewis O’Brien down to a new contract. Until deadline day…when my chairman accepts on my behalf a £30m bid from Newcastle for O’Brien. I get 75% of the fee, but literally no time to replace him. Started the season well, but that has certainly made life more difficult. 

[Cymbols]

On 18/03/2023 at 21:21, Cymbols said:

Owners in the football league are right bastards. 
 

Started out with Bolton in League 2 (FM21 here), financially unstable so objective was to balance the books. Managed to get an affiliate deal with Tottenham, got some class loans in, and won the league.

Second season and I make some smart free transfers, get a few loans in, and we have a decent amount of money spare in the wage budget. All going well until December, in the League 1 playoff positions…and the board decide to slash the wage budget - would have to sell 4-5 first team players just to break even again.

Pissed off, I applied for, and got a job with Championship side Huddersfield. Struggling at first, moved loanee Isaac Success from the wing to ST (and got Manchester United as an affiliate for easy loans), ended up starting in 18th, and finishing in 7th, missing out on the playoffs on the final day of the season.

Transfer window starts well, manage to get Anthony Gordon and Benjamin Sesko on loan, and tie my captain/star CM Lewis O’Brien down to a new contract. Until deadline day…when my chairman accepts on my behalf a £30m bid from Newcastle for O’Brien. I get 75% of the fee, but literally no time to replace him. Started the season well, but that has certainly made life more difficult. 

Got promoted to the Premier League, but damn it was undeserved. Won one of my last seven games. Both of my starting CBs picked up three game bans in the 3rd and 4th last games, while my next two best CBs were injured. Assistant manager quit to take the Southampton job in the middle of this run as well.
 

Scraped 2nd place with 0-0 draws against Brentford and Hull, and got outrageously lucky as Cardiff threw away a 2-1 lead in the 88th minute against Blackburn to lose 3-2.

Got so much work to do to even have a chance of surviving in the division above. Gonna be tough I think.

[DavidMarrio]

I've gotten every FM bar this years one and I've been umming and arring over getting it but I've heard mixed reviews about this years version; especially after the last big update. 

Just wondering what people's views are about this version compared to last year's as I thought 2022 was the best one in a while

[The Lusophone]

3 hours ago, DavidMarrio said:

I've gotten every FM bar this years one and I've been umming and arring over getting it but I've heard mixed reviews about this years version; especially after the last big update. 

Just wondering what people's views are about this version compared to last year's as I thought 2022 was the best one in a while

The animation engine is the best it's ever been but beyond that I'm not sure it's as big a step up from 2022 as you might expect.

That being said, try the demo: https://www.footballmanager.com/demo

If you do get the full game, don't start any saves in that start December 2022, as they crash on July 1st.

[Hobo]

Parkvilla failed FFP and they sold several key players.

This could make things interesting as i look to defend the league title with Dundalk.

Im also ireland (current world champions) manager having taken over toward the end of world cup qualifying when the previous manager quit following a terrible confederations cup.

The League of Ireland is a summer league. So i will be attempting to retain the league and the world cup at the same time somehow.

[JasonM]

Ten seasons in and I am on the cusp of getting into La Liga, I finally decided to get off my lazy ass and create some custom kits for my custom team. Did have to get a license of FMRTE for it because for some stupid reason SI has made it so that C-A-C clubs cannot use custom logos/kits otherwise (it's because your club copies the GUI-ID from the club you replace), but I am pretty pleased with the end result.

The third kit has the added advantage of making it impossible for submarines to sink our boys.

[Hobo]

As Ireland manager with 6 players pulling out of the squad, I just oversaw a 10-0 win over the Faroe Islands which is now Ireland's record win. While as manager of Dundalk, we beat Bohemians 7-1 and are joint top with Bray (after just 4 games).

My old club continues to be in a bit of a transition. Unai Emery has left Parkvilla for Man Utd and Claudio Marchiso has been put in temporary charge. Despite the fact that they've sold a load of first-team players they still coasted past Barcelona in the Champions League knockouts with a 6-2 agg. win. They got Real in the Qtr Finals and drew the first leg 0-0 at home. If they lose the second leg that'll be their worst Champions League performance in several years - and they'll have to qualify for the group stages having not won the league last season.

I was offered an interview for the United job before Emery took it. Turned it down. I'll be curious if Parkvilla approaches me.  This got me looking at other clubs managerial history. I first looked at Bohemians and Cork as they have both kinda started poorly and they've got some of the longest-tenured managers in the league (Keith Long at Bohs has been in charge for 15 years, and Alexander Zickler has spent 14 years at Cork City). 

Pat Fenlon has been at Shamrock Rovers for 15 years too. There are one or two others who've been in their jobs for a decade. Lee Carsley has been Drogheda United's manager since 2021 and Stephen Carr has been St Pats Atheltic's manager since he replaced Damien Duff in 2020.

None of the clubs in the Premier Division has sacked a manager since 2027. Most managerial changes are people moving on of their own accord. If you get relegated you'll probably get sacked.

EDIT: So, Marchiso's 3rd game as interim manager was against Dundalk and...

[Twist]

You need some better penalty takers.

[Hobo]

8 minutes ago, Twist said:

You need some better penalty takers.

I hadn't noticed until this game because we never seem to get penalties

I should also note Chris Lovegrove is the Parkvilla goalkeeper. So while he did save 2 penalties he also scored an own goal.

[The Lusophone]

Think this is the first time I've ever seen both teams getting a 10.0:

Spoiler

 

[The Lusophone]

Ok this is my favourite reality:

[Meacon Keaton]

...well you can't say Tunisia didn't earn it. 

[Naitch]

What year was the Create-a-Club feature introduced?

[The Lusophone]

2 hours ago, Naitch said:

What year was the Create-a-Club feature introduced?

I think 2018?

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

I've gotten back into FM20 again because I still haven't bothered buying a newer version, might finally take the plunge for 2024. Back to the journeyman save it is!

Kobenhavn was a mixed bag overall. So, so, so many draws. I think the second season I drew half the games I was there, and typically the only league game I actually lost was to Midtjylland, who won the league. We took home the domestic cup though, so I managed to leave Denmark with one of each.

Looking back at the past clubs at the end of the 24/25 season, Sporting *stunningly* won the league by a point after Benfica lost to Porto on the last day of the season. I'm taking credit for the building blocks being put in place. Chesterfield have settled into being a mid-table League 2 side with a 9th place finish, and Cardiff came 7th in the Championship and missed out on the playoffs by one point. Now, the playoffs are important here, because once it became obvious I wasn't winning the Danish league I took a punt at heading back to England and applied for the team who, at the time were 8th-9th and I thought would be a nice rebuild project, ultimately finished 5th. And then won the playoffs. What luck.

So, the 2025/26 season is being spent with West Ham. Nice budget on the table after getting promoted and a lot of work needed to upgrade the squad. Enter...

• New starting goalkeeper Jordan Pickford from Everton for £16.75m
• Jude Bellingham from Birmingham for £20.5m (Stunned he A. hadn't left Birmingham yet and B. was that cheap)
• The man, the myth, the journey-so-far legend Ethan Laird for £28m (potentially £36m but worth it for me)
• Journeyman Bruno Petkovic on a free as I had one striker option
• Denmark Season 2 Loan Star Tyrese Omotoye from Norwich for £10m (Potentially £24m but this man is the only reason I won any games in the second half of the 24/25 season)
• Cristian Romero from Boca Juniors for £17.5m
• Alphonso Davies from Bayern's Reserve team (?) for £12m (No idea what was going on there but fuck it sure)

All sorts of mid-table mainstays left to balance the books (Wilfried Zaha, Seb Haller, Felipe Anderson, that sort of level) leaves me stacked in defence and light up top so I did something I wouldn't normally do and broke away from my normal formation choices, going for a 5-2-2-1 (wing backs, 2 CMs, 2 Wingers, 1 striker) to focus on Issa Diop and Romero as lynchpins, with Bellingham and Szoboszlai (love that he was already here) running things in the middle, Curtis Jones and Jarrod Bowen on the wings (both surprisingly good) and one of the two striker signings up top. Neither are really Prem level so they'll do for now but I'll have to improve on it.

SO, where does all of this new fun and excitement leave me? I'll tell you readers: 3rd. Somehow, some way, the new system is working. 15 games down, Pickford has kept 11 clean sheets, and we've only conceded 4 goals total. Not going to get too excited as I've got Chelsea, Man City, and a return trip to Arsenal in December, along with Burnley who Sean Dyche has somehow turned into a team that consistently qualifies for Europe? Fully expect we'll fall out of the Champions League spaces given we were aiming for mid table but I'm gonna enjoy it whilst I can.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Yeah, so Chelsea, City, Burnley, and Arsenal were all losses, which has thoroughly derailed momentum before the January window. Beat Everton and Newcastle to stop December being a total write off, but it made me do something drastic early in January.

We've signed Naci Unuvar for 58m. Curtis Jones' form dropped off through November and he was ineffective in all the big games, and it was the only position I didn't have real cover in (Davies ended up playing a few games there for me). That 58m might rise to 84m - big money, which saw a 34 year old Kostas Manolas and three regens leave for about 30m to facilitate.

So far though it's paying off; in four league games he has four goals and two assists, which has been a great start. The only blemish on a near perfect January was a stunning 5-5 draw with Southampton which Jarrod Bowen rescued with an 88th minute free kick.

14 games to go, 50 points and still sat third despite the poor December form, and we're 16 points above 8th, so a European spot is looking good against our original mid-table prediction.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Well, that could have been a smoother ride, but we've qualified for the Champions League!

We had to settle for 4th in the end. Cristian Romero got injured for 3 months right after the January window closed and our form tanked. We only took 15 points from the last 14 games as a result, which was annoying after such a good start to the season. Think I'll have to invest in a good striker and re-jig the formation, Petkovic and Omotoye were both very average and Bowen's 12 goals was the peak, and he's playing hardball on contract talks so might have a battle to keep him.

Regardless of any of that, 4th is a huge overachievement for a team who got promoted via the playoffs, so it's a success of a season. City couldn't maintain their title charge and bottled it to United in the final three games, whilst Chelsea had some good fortune and jumped from 7th to 3rd on the final day due to other results going their way (it was really tight between 8th and 3rd, so I got lucky). No play-off to worry about either, I think, so I doubt there'll be any great expectations for the Champions League itself - I'll take third spot and a backdoor Europa spot happily - and they only want a top-half finish in the league. I think there's a little project to build here, so might stick around for a few more seasons, but we'll see.

Around the cups in England, United took the Carabao earlier in the season to make it a double for them, City lost the FA Cup final to Norwich, which is just wonderful. 

Elsewhere! Sporting settled for second in the Liga Portugal so could potentially be a Champions League opponent, no cup success so a bit of a dud season. Kobenhavn ended the season 2nd again, but they have retained the cup! Cardiff devastatingly lost the Championship play-off final to Swansea of all teams, and likewise Chesterfield couldn't get the job done against Gillingham in the League 2 play-off final. A shame for both.

[Malenko]