Football Manager 2017

[King Ellis]

That's all well and good but they're no JOD BODYSLAM.

[MDK]

SPIKE CHUNSOFT

[JasonM]

TRUNK SLAMCHEST

Yes, I also have watched MST3K

Edited June 10, 2017 by Jasonmufc

[JasonM]

I think my team might be a tad on the young side...

Ajax, eat your heart out.

Edited June 22, 2017 by Jasonmufc

[Gorka]

Who hurt you, Tony?

[Bobfoc]

Middlesbrough, probably.

[The Lusophone]

Gone back to my Ajax game, and on-loan James Wilson does nothing but score. Top scorer in the Champions League thus far with 10 in 6 and he's up to 17 in 12 games. Signing him on a permanent deal will be my top priority in the summer.

[JasonM]

4 hours ago, Mad Jack said:

Gone back to my Ajax game, and on-loan James Wilson does nothing but score. Top scorer in the Champions League thus far with 10 in 6 and he's up to 17 in 12 games. Signing him on a permanent deal will be my top priority in the summer.

The one thing I really don't like about FM is that AI squadbuilding immediately goes batshit crazy when there aren't any squad rules to adhere to. So i'm looking at Ajax/PSV/Feyenoord all running around with a shitload of South Americans, Africans, and even South Europeans that in no realistic scenario would even go to the Eredivisie.

Meanwhile. I'm stuck in a bit of a upper-table purgatory where I adhere to (loose-ish) squad building rules, and I just can't for the life of me get past those big three that are tossing close to 40M a year in wages at players. 

Feyenoord is playing Wilfried Bony (on a fucking free!), and PSV is running Raheem Sterling (on a loan), and Ajax takes the cake with 8 blokes getting paid more than 45K a week (which is a shittonne in Dutch footie).

For extra silliness, here's the top 15 rated players in the league to give a good example of how ridiculous Ajax and Feyenoord are...

And you see, people say 'Big Eredivisie teams sign foreigners all the time', and you'd be right. But they sure as hell don't get a 32 year old Gil from Shandong, or a 31 year old Wilfried Bony. They sign u24's that they can flip for a good fee after one/two seasons.

And really, that's one of the things still lacking in FM. A really strong sense of team identity, because certainly in the Eredivisie team identity is a huuuuge thing. With teams like Ajax finding the next big player to sell on, and Vitesse being the Chelsea training camp... or Heerenveen (which i'm playing with) often finding Scandinavian talent.

[MDK]

Heh heh, dong

[Adam]

I didn't even notice Shandong, too busy laughing at "Slagveer".

[Benji]

Got tired towards the end of the second season of the BTSV board selling my great youth prospects, despite the fact that they mandated I bring youth players into the first team, so I quit despite having the team in 6th and probably ready to get promoted next season.

Bode my time and wound up back in England at Brighton in League One, who were first with ten games to go. Got them over the finish line, so now I'm back where I was four seasons ago with Barrow, but with a stadium more than 6x the size, incredible infrastructure, and a shitload of money.

Sometimes you gotta move sideways and then down to get where you want to be.

[MDK]

6 hours ago, LiBenji Belle said:

Sometimes you gotta move sideways and then down to get where you want to be.

Like a crab

[Liam]

5 minutes ago, MDK said:

Like a crab

Or a crab prostitute.

[Adam]

5 hours ago, Liam said:

Or a crab prostitute.

A crabstitute!?

[Benji]

There's a mild chance of us getting back-to-back promotions, just like I did with Barrow. What do you guys think?

[Liam]

No.

[JasonM]

Finished my fifth season today, still hanging around with SC Heerenveen. The gravy train has rolled through town over the past two or so seasons with some monster sales with the pinnacle being a 31M sale of a newgen to Liverpool. But also many more, leaving the team with 67M in the coffers.

Sadly, other than a few blips and close calls real success has been hard to come by as i've always slumped into mediocrity in the league.

16/17
League: 6th, won Euro Playoffs
Cup: Lost in best of 16 after pennos against PSV

17/18
League: 7th, no euro's
Cup: Lost in Semi's after ET against FC Utrecht
EL: Lost in Playoff against Big Sam's 1-0 grindboys

18/19
League: 10th, no playoffs
Cup: Lost in 1st round after pens against Achilles 29 ;_;

19/20
League: 5th, no Euros's!
Cup: Lost in QF against Vitesse

20/21
League: 11th! (Fucking terrible start)
Cup: Won the cup after ET against Heracles! Auto Quali for Europa League!

So in season 6 i'll finally get my second shot at getting a good Europa run going. But I honestly am not expecting a lot to be gained. League wise, I'm struggling badly with the team being often inconsistent.
And whilst my board have given me a YUGE transfer/wage budget to fuck around with, I am first of all too stingy to really spend big, and there's simply not enough talent out there that would improve the team greatly compared to the outlay it would cost. So I'm stuck in recruitment purgatory.

At least my team continues to crap out mad amounts of talent, and with three affiliates (with junior coaching) it gives me Aussie/Dane/Croat talents too. But it's hard to break through the league ceiling due to those same talents wanting to move to foreign teams once they start knocking on the door. And smashing transfer records every year is fun, but again, it's kinda useless in my situation.

[The Lusophone]

Refuse, wait until the clubs drop out so they don't want to leave any more, offer new contracts with massive buy out clauses, tends to work for me. But then I'm usually at the Ajax or PSV level.

[JasonM]

Eh, It doesn't matter anymore. I've accepted an offer from Frankfurt to bring them back up to the Bundesliga now that they've made the drop two times in four years. I feel managing in Germany will give me more upward mobility in the long term.

[Benji]

Went up with the best goals for and against. Absolutely stunned it happened so fast. I knew Brighton had enough about them to get promoted, but I honestly expected a season or two and going up by play offs. To have trounced the league is unreal. So here's 10 years in management:

I've put in some major reconstructive research and am carefully buying players needed. So far both the first team goalkeeping unit has been demolished, one is being kept on as a mentor, I'm working on buffing the defence as they're getting old, but not enough talent out there for my tastes so I'm holding out for winter/next summer, and a bit of rebuilding for midfield which isn't particularly weak, but needs some backup as they're very thin and one of them is over 30 (Lewis Baker, who weirdly enough was one of my "legends" in my long running Leicester save a couple of years back).