Bull also looks ridiculous for that level and age.
Bull also looks ridiculous for that level and age.
I suppose I should in respect to Istra, but I definitely won't be there long enough to benefit from it. The one I really want the most is a loan back clause.
He's just bitten the bullet and asked to leave - I've agreed he can go for £8.75m. Whether I honour that is another story, but I suspect for that sort of money (it would pay the entire club's wage bill for over three years) my board won't give me a choice in the matter.
So gutting if he does go now, just six more months and we can win the league together. It is his boyhood club and all.
He's so fucking good. Scored 11 goals in 20 games so far this season.Originally Posted by Adramelch
Ventspils & Latvia 2030 Update
It turns out I was wrong about our chances of catching up to the big two, as we managed to secure our best ever finish this season, passing Riga for second place & somehow only missing out on the title through goal difference. It sounds great, but the reality is less encouraging. We did manage to be more consistent this year, and actually beat champions RFS three times out of our four league meetings, but they were always at least three points ahead until we played them on the final day, and thanks to the FM big team cheatbot kicking in when they played the shit teams (including a 10-0 win where they got four penalties, which is how many we had all season) we would have had to have beaten them 16-0 on the final day to have won the title.
Riga, meanwhile, randomly decided to fall off a cliff this season, losing nine times when they most they'd lost in a season before that was six games. I'm expecting them to get their shit together next season & maybe if we're lucky we'll be able to keep pace with them both.
I also have to mention the Latvian Cup for the first time in a few seasons, as stuff actually happened this year. Normally we just win our first game & get knocked out in the quarter finals, but this season we actually made it all the way to the final. Unfortunately, we had to play RFS.
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Lastly, Europe, where we rounded out our best season ever by making it all the way to the fourth qualifying round, and even more surprisingly didn't even get smashed by Fenerbahce. That run made us about £1.8m, which is obviously huge. I think we're still a bit off having a realistic shot of making a league phase, but on the bright side we did have the others pull their weight, with Riga in the Europa League (where they're getting beat every week), and RFS in the Conference League (where they're running wild). It looks like we're going to move up to about 24th in the coefficients for next season, and we should be able to continue to creep towards the group above over the next couple of seasons, so things are still slowly moving forward.
Things are slowly moving forward with the national team too, as we put together a good Nations League campaign, finishing second in our group behind a Scotland side that were obviously way better than everyone else. We've also broken the top 100 in the FIFA rankings for the first time, and currently sit 96th having been about 125th when I took over. We've also started to be able to nationalise the Brazilians I've been signing at Ventspils, with the first three - Rodrigo, Rodrigues & Mendes - now all Latvian internationals, and we should be able to get some more through the door next year too.
In sad news, however, I think we've probably seen the last of record goalscorer Roberts Uldrikis. He's 33, doesn't play much since he moved to Almeria & has started thinking about life after football, so with no shortage of options up front I'm planning on moving on from him next year. Hopefully he'll join our staff at some point in the future though.
We've had our draw for Euro 2032 qualifying, and it actually seems like we could have an outside shot at making the tournament. Croatia are clearly going to win the group, but I feel like we can probably compete with Belarus & Georgia, assuming Kvaratskhelia doesn't just destroy us on his own.
I joined a new club on a one-season contract and they've offered me a new one 2 months into the season. I think that's the first time I've seen it happen that early.
European Journeyman Game - 2027/28 - Istra 1961 - The (not quite) end of season update
The Bosko Delic Situation
Last update was that the absolute legend wanted to leave as soon as we hit the January window. Hoffenheim then came in with a bid for him, which I can't be sure of the exact composition of (as my dickhead chairman just accepted it), but it was somewhere in the region of £10m. I then moaned to the chairman and he un-accepted it. This pissed Bosko off as he felt I'd broken his agreement to sell him if a bid of £8.75m or more came in, when in reality I'd not even spoken to Hoffenheim.
Fearing I was fighting a losing battle I decided to take matters into my own hands and offer him out to clubs with a loan back clause for the rest of the season and a non-negotiable one at that. £20m + that clause and we had no takers, the same with £15m. I then tried £10m and Chelsea came in and they also agreed to the loan back clause. Great, I thought, this is now done and I get to keep him (of sorts) until June. Two days pass and Bosko hasn't wrapped up the terms with Chelsea yet, but enter from stage left my dickhead chairman who decides to enter into an agreement to sell the club and while the negotiations are ongoing all active but uncompleted transfers and cancelled.
At first thought this was great news as Bosko now can't leave, but in reality it wasn't as I have an unhappy player (my best player) on my hands that is stuck in limbo and still pissed at me for breaking a promise. There's also 3/4 weeks of the window left and if this takeover is wrapped up or fails by then I might be back to the Hoffenheim situation and the risk again of losing him now.
As it turned out the takeover failed with about a week of the window left and with Bosko's value set at £10m (by me from the failed Chelsea deal) I decided to remove that and set it back to automatic before deciding what to do next. You can imagine my surprise when his value then defaulted to £37m-£53m and stayed like this for the rest of the window, completely deterring anyone from making another bid. Window closes, Bosko is still here.
Fast forward to a bit later in the season and our qualification for the Europa Conference League via our league position is secured and he announces that he no longer wants to leave as a result. What a kerfuffle.
His form's not been as good as it was before all this shit kicked off, but at least I've kept him and with no deal done to date I'm also in the frame to sign him at whatever club I go to next - his value is now down to a more sensible £10m-£16m, despite being named in that xG top 50 youngsters thing, at number 39. But I'm definitely leaving at the end of the season after all of this, I need to be at a club that isn't so small time.
The Cup
I'll keep this brief but we drew Dinamo Zagreb in the semi's at home but they beat us quite comfortably, which was annoying. Shit or bust with the league now....
The League
...which has been a struggle. We're still winning a fair few games but nowhere near as much as before Christmas and Dinamo Zagreb have been relentless since exiting the Europa League.
The loss against them in March hit hard, we battered them all game but no matter what I tried we just could not score. The dropped points against Varazdin were enough for Dinamo to take top spot in the league and I feared at that point it was all over as for the first time this season it was out of my hands. However, Zagreb have just lost in their last game to Rijeka and the table looks like this with three games to go:
Our run in (fixtures above) is a bit shit, but we have the better head to head against Zagreb and as that's the first league separator used, two wins and a draw from those three matches will guarantee the title. Squeaky bum time.
Hold me.
One win or two draws from the last two games and the title is ours. Osijek up next at home (with no Bosko as he's suspended for getting six yellow cards), then Rijeka away.
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Just a casual promotion into title win. Child's play.
How many goals from corners?
I'm a twit
Just the one. I don't have any particularly tall players.
I may have ballsed up in not trying to set a job up with Basel or St. Gallen at the end of the season. I'm now in June and of all the available jobs that are around my rep there is only one I'm interested in, which I may well not get anyway.
I was expecting a rep boost if we won the Croatian title, but having done so nothing happened and given Croatia is the 11th highest ranked league in the game there aren't that many leagues to go to now that represent even a sideways step, let alone a forward one.
Nothing interesting available now in any of Switzerland, Ukraine, Holland, Turkey, Greece, Portugal and whatever else I'm forgetting about.
I may well be stuck here for another season.
Levadeiakos 2025/26 Season
So after deciding to leave Slovakia, I had a few options available to me, mostly coming from my home country and I thought that was a reasonable next step. The best opportunity that came my way was that of Levadiakos. A perennial yo-yo club between the top two tiers, they have just found themselves relegated to the second tier. It felt like a pretty safe bet really, as it is an established club, with the appropriate infrastructure in place to allow me to bring them some success and grow my career. After a first look at the squad, I found some really good players but also positions where the quality just wasn't there. Starting from the players already at the club, two immediately stood out:
Tsapras has been at the club since he was 16 and comes with a lot of experience in both the top league and the league we would be playing in. Him being Greek is also quite massive. On the other hand, he was already unhappy at the club getting relegated and wanted to leave.
I'll admit, while quite solid, Doumbouya is not quite all that, but I thought he deserved to be here based on how he performed this season, so here you go.
As is tradition in my career by now, there was a significant overhaul of the squad, with 12 players joining us in the summer. I also tried to offload a handful I didn't need but to no avail. Among those who joined us, the following 3 were undoubtedly the star signings:
Midfield was by far the weakest part of the squad and I was elated that I found a Greek player that looks like he might well be of Superleague standard should we eventually manage to get promoted. Comes with tons of Superleague 2 experience, as well as one season of top flight football under his belt.
Our sort of "marquee" signing if you will, Azaz joined to also fill the midfield void. He hasn't had the best of careers mostly playing for League One and League Two clubs, but he looked like he would be a level above the rest of the league so it was no-brainer.
Another great Greek player that came to play on the left wing, where our alternatives were subpar at best. He's had 3 consecutive seasons of top flight football, which helped him develop into a well-rounded winger (apart form his finishing, but oh well).
So with all the transfer business done, let's get on with the action. Superleague 2 is a 20-team league with two automatic promotion spots. As is somewhat common with smaller nations, it has a few of the big club reserve teams in it, but, seeing as they can't actually get promoted, our task really is to be the best of the rest. The board actually didn't even expect us to get promoted and they would be content with a top-3 finish, but obviously that just wouldn't do it for me. And even though we had a shaky start, we made it to the top 2 after just 8 games, and then occupied the top spot from the 12th game until the end of the season.
In the end we got promoted with 4 games to spare, and 2 games later we also won the championship. We were by far the best team in the league, only let down by how easily we conceded. Or well, we actually had the second best defensive record in the league, but we conceded 8 goals more than the all-accurate xG metric, which felt a bit annoying at times. We did it make up for it by scoring 15 goals more than we were statistically expected to and you'll soon see why. In other news, we had an ok run in the cup, as we made it to the last 16 where we were drawn against Olympiakos. We actually won the home game and were just 4 minutes away from going through at their place, but they grabbed a late goal to sent the tie to extra time, which was eventually just too much for us and we were eliminated. Nevertheless, a massive set of performances and nobody can actually be disappointed.
I said you'd see why we overperformed our xG and here it is. 44 goals by Doumbouya, with 40 of them coming in the league. What an absolute beast. He wasn't the most consistent player, but when he was good, he was bloody amazing. The downside of that being that we somewhat struggled when he didn't have a good game, but what can you do. The other outstanding performer was Pilios who was the creative genius behind Doumbouya. Between them the broke the league\s scoring and assist records. Just incredible.
And with that said, the coming summer is bound to be interesting. Given how dominant we were in the league and how well we held our own against Olympiakos in the cup, I'm more than confident that we have what it takes to survive in the top tier even with the current squad. But I'm of course not going to settle on that. Our wage budget has almost been doubled going into the new season so I'm expecting quite a few additions, to replace some of the players that won't be seeing their contracts renewed. All in all, a great first season that just makes me excited about what comes next.
Last edited by Adramelch; 15-04-2023 at 02:41 PM.
2039 with Ajax and I've led them to a long awaited fifth European Cup, beating Barca, City & Madrid en route. Two seasons ago we were playing the likes of VVV Venlo & NAC Breda in the KKD. Has to go down as one of my greatest ever FM feats. Now to build a dynasty.
I'd love to manage Ajax on this save and bring them some European silverware.
The problem I've always found with those type of saves, is how you cope plugging away with those years where you have the league wrapped up before it starts, yet aren't yet capable of a deep CL run.
Mind you I struggle with the more recent versions of the game being way to OTT on keeping your squad happy.
It's definitely sort of a struggle. I don't do them often (I typically do either a Jman save or take a small team in a big nation and go for a long-term save), but when I do I just tend to set side-goals for myself. Usually youngster/academy related goals.
I started a game unemployed but with a decent reputation and after 18 months I’ve pitched up at Lyon.
I have to say though the AI does an impressively shit job of signing players. A 31 year old Lucas Moura on 80k a week for 3 years was not what I was hoping for.
@Adramelch Doumbouya! he was my lucky charm at livorno on fm22, just about good enough for the Italian fifth tier, but ended up hanging on to him for serie D and even serie C for a bit cus he had a good knack for getting late goals off the bench. good lad
He's still holding his own in the top tier. Nowhere near last season's numbers of course, but more than 1 in 2, which is all I can ask for really.
European Journeyman Game - 2028/29 - New Job Time
With the season having drawn to a close I was keen to see what options we had. From the available jobs it was clear we've reached the stage where only 3 star clubs are now of interest, but not sure we have enough rep to get a gig at a 3.5 star one. As it happens I didn't get to find out as the available jobs were almost non existent after a month of continuing the game through June, which left this lot as the choices:
Istra 1961 - With a month left on my contract the board had been offering me a new one almost every week, which up to now I'd been routinely rejecting, but there was a time when staying on to play in the Champions League did appeal. By this point though I was rejecting bids left, right and centre for my players and despite automatically qualifying for the group stages of the Champions League we only had a transfer budget of £800k, and the thought of fending off clubs through two more windows with my idiot chairman and his scattergun approach to accepting bids was too much. It'll be a sad to leave, but that is what shall happen.
Dynamo Moscow - I didn't ever actually apply for this job but as a 3 star rep club I fancied getting it had I done. After looking at the state of play in Russia it was clear there were three teams all better than Dynamo Moscow (with Zenit being miles better), so I ruled this one out on the basis of not wanting to be stuck in a league for a few years before I could realistically win a trophy that didn't even include European football in the ride.
Blackburn - Relegated from the PL the season before last, IIRC they did interview me at the time but decided against hiring me. 12 months (and an idiot who got the job delivering an 11th place finish) on they were gagging for some Yev Binman action and as the season drew to a close I was bang up for it. Interview done they then came in with a decent offer accompanied with a £101m transfer budget and a £1.3m wage budget (with £400k p/w spare). Now this on face value sounds like amazing fun, spending all that money on the players I've added to my shortlist over the years that up to now I could neither afford nor attract or both is the stuff of
But as I was doing some last minute due diligence it dawned on me that there were some problems with this:
Firstly, no European football. I really want to experience that properly and ASAP. The failed qualifying round attempts with Istra clearly don't count so as far as I'm concerned that's a hole in the CV.
Secondly, managing in the Premier League with a newly promoted team sucks arse (had I been promoted, which let's face it would have been quite hard not to achieve in one season with their squad and that budget). I just find it quite tedious unless I'm doing a long term project, which in a journeyman save this job is never going to be.
Thirdly (or secondly b), if things in the Premier League did go well I'd be an established Premier League manager, which would realistically bypass jobs in a load of the leagues that I'd still like to manage in.
Fourthly, I kinda want to avoid the Premier League until I can get a job with a big club there. Joining the British Managers Lunch Club doesn't appeal, but nailing it across Europe and coming 'home' definitely does.
Fithly, that leaves the option of a one and done season. I'd almost settled on going for this but then it dawned on me that if I did that I'd be locking a whole host of talent on my shortlist into contracts with a Premier League club that I was now no longer managing.
That all might sound a bit mental, but for a combination of those reasons, I rejected the offer and instead went with....
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I might or might not also be heading to Romania at the end of the current season. At Rapid Bucharest.
The structure of the competitions is absolute arse (a league that splits with 50% of points retained and a group stage in the cup, which is just the worst), but despite this I am quite excited to get going. Intrigued to see how it goes if you take the Rapid job.
Oh and they have that thing where "All African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States nations" count as EU, so despite there being a limit of four non-EU players that's no problem whatsoever.
Despite having a Nigerian and a Ghanaian in my squad I think the only player I have that counts as non-EU is a Serb.
This guy, that Mancini called up to the Italy squad in real life, is still here.
They are bound to have a mid-table finish this season so it's gonna be a challenge for sure. They are actually in the relegation group (which consists of 10 teams, what absolute madness) so if things go really shit, my "transfer" will be cancelled even.
Last edited by Adramelch; 16-04-2023 at 12:42 AM.
There's a Supercup, which I'm in as we won the FA Cup, but it's held on 1st July. What in the actual fuck?
Levadeiakos 2026/27 Season
After a quite dominating performance in the previous season, we found ourselves in the top division. Most of the times that I've found myself in that position, it was with a club that seemingly didn't belong there (like in my previous job at Slovakia). But this time it was a different. We are a semi-established (for lack of a better word) Superleague club and therefore we had the infrastructure and reputation to have a go at survival. On top of that, with just two clubs going down and the league format leading us to a relegation group, I was quite confident we could survive the drop. The club gave me 70k euros p/w to spend on wages, a notable increase over the 37k we had the season before. In what I could pretend was my plan all along, but in truth was just how things work in those divisions, most of our players were on season-long contracts, so I had the option to keep the players that I wanted, while removing all the dead wood from the squad with no effort. In the end, we had 14 players in the squad and something like 45k p/w of wages left to spend. We signed 10 players with 5 of them going straight into the first XI, and we still were under budget which was nice to see. When the transfer window closed, I was actually quite content with the state of the squad.
The Greek Superleague consists of 14 teams, leading to a regular season of 26 games. After that, the league splits into a 6-team championship group and an 8-team relegation group, with teams playing each other twice. From the get go, it looked like we would be relatively fine. We didn't really set the world alight, but we were significantly ahead of the bottom two teams and in the end of the first round we had amassed a very respectable 18 points from 13 games, sitting at 8th place. The general consensus is that any team that surpasses the 30-point mark is considered safe and we were on track to reach that milestone, before the league even split into the two groups. But then something changed:
To save you from doing the math, that's us gathering 31 points out of a possible 39 in the second round. I don't know exactly what happened, but things just clicked and we looked unbeatable. We only lost away to Panathinaikos and Olympiakos and had a draw against PAOK at home, which was already one point more than I would have expected out of those three games. On the back of that incredulous run, we not only ensured our survival, but somehow made it into the championship group. There I generally expected us to struggle, but with Atromitos being a quite massive 10 points behind us and 5 out of the 6 clubs getting European football, I thought our chances were quite good.
That's 17 points out of the 10 games against the elite of Greek football, with only PAOK gathering more than us. Just insane. Mind you all of the points were very hard-fought and for the most part we just had to hang on for dear life towards the end of the games, but I'll take that situation every day of the week. In general I think we showed that not only do we belong in the league, but we can butt heads with the best of them. Our positive goal difference even shows that we just weren't often outclassed as one would expect for a newly-promoted club. In fact we only lost two games by more than 2 goals, a 3-0 loss at AEK where they were actually quite lucky and an inexplicable 5-0 loss at Panathinaikos, when we had already guaranteed 4th place and just seemed to switch our minds off.
We also played in the Cup but once again we only made it to the last 16, going out in a very similar fashion to last year, conceding a late equaliser and ending with an extra time loss, this time at the hands of Asteras Tripolis.
This time around it was more of a team effort compared to last season. Doumbouya still held his own, finishing second on the goalscoring charts, but we had a lot of people carrying the torch at different points of the season. I was also quite content that 7 out of the 11 players are home-grown, something that is actually very rare in Greece, since the Superleague only has restrictions for non-EU players, so you're not even forced to have a single home-grown player.
Normally, I would be a bit disappointed that I had already agreed to leave the club, especially seeing as we will be in Europe next season, however it was a well thought-out decision. Even though I stayed within the wage budget and spent no money on transfer fees, the club lost more than 2 million euros this season, and with there not being an end in sight, I just didn't fancy continuing here. As I've already mentioned, I'd already agreed to join Rapid Bucharest at the end of the season. The club was expected to finish 4th (following a 3rd-place finish the season before), but found themselves in the relegation group, after finishing 10th in the regular season. Thankfully, their quality was more than enough to keep them up, as they finished top of the group. And that's where I come in. Could I have waited for a better opportunity to show up? Sure. But you have a club with great potential, lowered expectations, financially stable, in a league that will allow me to advance my career quickly, so what's not to like?
Last edited by Adramelch; 16-04-2023 at 01:23 PM.
At a first glance it would appear that's not working properly either. I'm in a group where all 6 teams are expected to finish in the top half and there's another group where there's only a singular first division club (who are expected to be in the relegation fight), 3 second division clubs and 2 third division clubs.
I was literally just about to post the exact same thing.
My group has 6 of the current top 8 in it.
This country is a complete shambles. I'm at the end of September and I've played 19 competitive games already.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E..._Rom%C3%A2niei
What a format that is. Makes county cricket look sensible.
@Yevrah I went watching Rapid Bucharest early this year, missus' family live right next to the stadium. They're fuckjng rabid for the game over there despite it not being much better than League One, should be a fun save.
The one you are with is the 'fake' Steaua btw, if you want more info just ask.
Cheers DS, it's a ludicrously long season and I suspect SI have got some things wrong with it, but I am enjoying it now. Update to follow shortly.
The formats seem correct, it's only the seeding for the Cup groups (which only got introduced this year in real life) that seems wrong.
European Journeyman Game - 2028/29 - FCSB - The (not quite) end of season update
Long season is long was never a more accurate description of events here. We've reached early March and I've already played fifty-three competitive matches and there will be at least another thirteen to go.
Summer Transfers
The squad wasn't bad and possibly had enough about it to win the title without any major moves, but there was hardly anybody who stood out and worse still we had a number of older players who were either homesick or flanging out for various other reasons. As a result, we needed to go shopping.
£3m from Red Star Belgrade (or whatever they're calling themselves now). Echoes of my Man Bosko, but unlike Bosko this chap is an arsehole. Constantly falling out with teammates and getting upset with me praising his good performances, both on the pitch and in training, of which there are many.
£775k from Olimpia, this guy has been cracking value.
£2.5m from Chindia (a title challenging rival in Romania). He's been very solid and also has the added benefit of being Romanian under the hood and therefore meets the criteria of the one u-21 Romanian I have to play in every match.
I felt I needed to be more of a threat on set pieces as almost every job I go for cites my teams as being shit at them. This chap has 5 goals to date, so some improvement.
Armed with these signings and some departures we got straight into the games, which in Romania just do not stop.
The Charity Shield
We were in complete control of this game at 1-0 and clearly my right back didn't like that as he proceeded to hideously mis-control the ball under no pressure whatsoever, before adopting a two footed lunge at the oncoming opposition player to get it back. Down to 10 men we lost solely as a result of that, which pissed me off. The two footed lunges would become a theme as I watched no less than five of them play out over the first two months in Romania, which was just absurd. I joined the club too late to set the code of conduct so I don't know if this played a part, but fuck me it was ridiculous.
Europe
We started in the qualifying rounds of the Europa League where we surprisingly (given the calibre of their players) fairly comfortably beat Dnipro. We then played AEK Athens and took a slender lead to Greece after the first leg. We were hanging on, so may have lost anyone, but another one of the aforementioned two footed lunges made sure we didn't and to the Conference League we headed. We drew Dnipro again, which was fairly comfortable for a second time and my first taste of group stage European football was secured.
On face value that seemed a bit of a harsh draw, but I remained confident of at least accruing the eight or so points it would take to finish in the top 24 of this 36 team shitfest.
The win over Toulouse was a brilliant start to the group and probably the most high profile win of my career so far, we followed that up with an expected loss in Holland and an incredibly disappointing 2-1 home defeat against some goat herders that put paid to any hope I had of finishing in the top 8 of this group and easing the fixture congestion. In the end we amassed seven points and finished 19th to secure European knockout round football. Upon taking this job my rep had dropped from 60% to 55%, but I think qualifying for the knockout playoff put it back up again.
The Cup
Domestic cups with a group stage must be the most unnecessary thing in football and this one is no exception. It also comes with the added bonus (as Adra pointed out) of being broken in game - the five teams I faced are all title challengers, leaving the other three groups full of absolute shite. On the plus side, I guess if you qualify (as we did) it takes a lot of the competition out of the equation.
The League and Winter Transfers
I don't have a screenshot of the position in the league at the winter break, but IIRC we were about 4th and struggling for any sort of consistency due to Europe, the never ending cup and a sea of red cards for two footed lunges. Our form had picked up towards the end of the year so I was hopeful we could still win the title, but reinforcements were needed and with some more whinging oldies leaving we had another £8m or so to spend in the window.
We needed some more strength at centre back and I finally got to snap this chap up who'd been on my shortlist for ages. A bargain at £350k, he also comes with a second nationality of Italian.
Another winger from Serbia. £2.5m, rising to £3m.
£2.5m, rising to £3.7m from Istra. Tyunis came in towards the end of my reign in Croatia and I think is the first player I've bought having managed before.
With Campagno homesick I needed another striker and I just couldn't resist going for the massive Latvian.
The League Part 2
With the new signings in, our form from Nov/Dec continued and we managed to claw back to second in the final table of the first stage.
The league now splits, with the top 6 moving to the Champions section and the bottom 10 moving to some relegation thing. Weirdly and surely this is another SI mistake, you can still qualify for Europe from the relegation section, so it'd almost be better to deliberately tank into that if you think you'll finish no higher than 5th/6th in the championship group - if you finish in those positions there is no opportunity to qualify.
Europe Part 2
Our first taste of knockout football and it's gone very well so far.
Luzern was close but we were always in control and the win against Vitesse was a cracker. Massive Latvian doing his thing to see us through.
These are the teams left in it:
Jesus this update was long. TLDR is, we're still in the hunt for three trophies.
Is the European qualifying correct then? Seems batshit if it is.
"European play-offs
In the semi-final, the 7th and 8th-placed teams of the Liga I typically play a one-legged match on the ground of the better placed team (7th place). In the final, the winner of the play-out semi-final will play the highest ranked team of the play-off tournament, that did not already qualify for European competitions. The winner of the final will enter the second qualifying round of the 2023–24 UEFA Europa Conference League."
Nope, just Romania things.
It's the same in Wales. League splits after 22 games into a championship and relegation group. 10 more games are played and the top team in the relegation group enters the playoffs for a European spot.
Qualifying for things from a lower tier has become quite in vogue, see also Asian Cup qualifying and nowadays even Euro qualifying (from the Nations League). It's a great way of getting clubs/nations to vote you back in as President if you're giving everyone a shot at glory no matter how shit they are.
I don't know much about this Portuguese team we face in the quarter-finals, but if they don't knock us out (which I assume they will) we're in with a shot of making (and obviously losing) the final.
Mate minimum wage there is about 400 quid a month if you win in Europe you'll be slathering yourself in five quid hookers.
TTH Meet in Bucharest?
What's that film where Shia LaBeouf goes? Let's do that.
I'm a twit
Go Cluj. Bucharest is a shithole.
The five quid hookers are a step closer...
Sadly we lost the 2nd leg at home 4-2 and we bow out of Europe. In better news though a huge turnaround in our 5th game in the Championship Playoff sees us move top for the first time all season. The league and cup double is on!
Uldrikis
Rapid Bucuresti 2027/28 Season
I've already talked about my decision to move to Romania. A great basis to build upon and very low expectations from the board was just too good an opportunity to pass up. In fact, the board only expected a mid-table finish, which in itself was bonkers. The squad had some really good players, but was also clearly lacking in certain positions, so I set out to correct that. I can't quite recall the exact numbers now, but we were given around 4m to spend on transfers, together with a 90k p/w wage budget of which we were spending around 75k. In the end I shuffled the money around and ended up with a 120k p/w wage budget, which gave me a bit more room to attract good players. Speaking of players, let's see the three more important ones that joined us in the summer:
Left wing was one of the positions that needed strengthening. Radulovic joined us on a free to provide backup in that position, but very quickly showed that he should be starting and so he did for the rest of the season
Likewise Gboho initially joined as a squad player, but taking advantage of injuries broke through the first team and showed his quality. Great value for another player that joined us on a free.
The big signing of the season. He cost little more than 2m euros, but boy is he worth every penny. Sadly, the only way he'd join is if we agreed to a ridiculously low release clause of 3.3m, so chances are we're only getting a single season out of him. There's a small hope that he stays at the club, as the clause is only for clubs in continental competitions, but I'm just prepared to lose him next summer.
With those three players, and another three that joined to bolster the squad depth, we set out to make our mark in the league. It became evident quite early on that we were more than good enough to make it into the 6-team championship group, and, in fact, before too long we were fighting it out for top spot. And that's exactly where the end of the regular season found us:
A pretty massive lead to take into the championship group, but sadly teams only carry 50% of their points, meaning our lead would be cut in half, or rather cut to 4 points since numbers are rounded up. Nevertheless, I would confidently say that we were the better team in every single game we played, so I was feeling more than confident that we could keep our lead and claim the title. And claim the title we did:
In fact, we claimed the title with 3 games to spare. Props to Farul Constanta who beasted the group, and in fact beat us in both games, even if undeservedly so. Talking about undeserved results, we went out of the cup in that weird group stage, where we dominated every single game, yet somehow only mustered 7 points in 5 games. It might well have been a blessing in disguise though as we had a very relaxed schedule compared to every team around us, especially Cluj who went all the way in the cup, while also progressing into the knockout stages of the Europa League.
What's there to say. You can't but be happy with the squad performing like that. Our defence could surely be better, as could our goalkeeper, but in general I'm very happy about my squad. And of course, Delibasic. What a beast he was. He scored 40 goals in the league, with the second in the charts having 28 goals. Class.
So with that done, and my first proper title won, we start looking at bigger things. I expect us to lose Delibasic and I also expect us to get knocked out of the big European competitions, but surely we will make it into the Conference League or something. That means the squad needs strengthening. I'm quite happy with the midfield and the attack, so I don't expect big changes there (bar possibly a replacement for Delibasic), but the back half of the team could sure use some improvements, starting from the goalkeeper. Sadly we don't quite have the money to go for many changes (3.3m for transfers and a 140k p/w wage budget), but we'll do our best.
Well, we clinched the league in the end. I thought we were going to fuck it as we lost at home with three games to go but then beat Rapid to secure the title in the penultimate game.
Onto the cup final where this utterly monstrous bullshit occured.
Seriously gents, when it's obvious you're having one of those games (and this was obvious) what do you do to change it? I set passing to work the ball into box but that only made the chances we were missing even easier ones.
One trophy from the three we should have won is annoying. Worse still the league win did nothing to move my rep, which is firmly stuck at 3 stars. I don't know whether the cup would have made a difference had we won it but it's clear, I think, that we need to get out of this league to push the career on.
Scores on the board to date:
Weirdly enough I'm at 3.5 with a lot fewer achievements. What level is your coaching license at?
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