Snapshot Of Your Story - FM 11

Captain Havoc

Another season over with Paris FC, spent most of it in the relegation zone. A few freebies came in at the start of the season and I was hoping to build on my brilliant 10th place finish the season before in Ligue 2. Kerlon had spent too much time injured and had droped in the pecking order, by the end of the season he had gone from €1.5m to €500k. Having completed the season, I may have gone without a physio which resulted in my scratching my head about why injuries were an issue.

At Christmas things were looking bleak and I was well in the relegation battle and not looking a good. During the break I organised a few friendlies against very small teams to boost moral. It worked, a hard fought second half of the season saw unexpected draws and wins against top five teams, a couple of dodgey results against teams in the lower half but a wins against teams in the relegation battle left us safe with a couple of games to go and we finished one place below our predicted finish of 12th (out of 20).

During January, I decided not to hunt players coming to the end of their contract as I didn't know if I was going down or not and I didn't want to be paying those wages in the Ligue National. I think next season will be OK as some of the players that came in at the beginning of the season will have a year under the belt with us and a couple of them are young. I've signed three forwards and they may not be as hot as I first imagined, I primarily got them to bring up the reputation of the team as they all have international caps. Hopefully, I'll offload a lot of the deadwood and free up the wage budget for some important signings.

focus_mad

Decided to take back up a save I had been doing with St Pats.. Best day of the season (player release day in England) so picked up a few lads on trial...

Was also playing as Chelsea manager and it wasn't going at all well so resigned and now manager of the mighty Murcia in Liga Adelente haha

Reganio 2

Well after finishing my 1st full season as Hereford manager expected to finish 12th we get into the play off's but lose in the final to Exter. Sad times.

But happy enough as I am building for the future thinking I can make a great team, win League 2 and then have a hope of staying in League 1. But cause I can't get any money from the board a lot of my players contracts expired, and obviously all the loan players are gone back to their clubs. So for the 1st friendly of the new season this is my 1st team



The way the players are picked is how I started the Play Off Final. So I have no goalkeepers, and my starting midfield is gone. Its gonna be a tough slog now with extra pressure as well.

Anyway that's my little rant out of the way . Any of you have similar?

HalloweenJack

I've had a season going with Bury, I'm into my sixth season.

I started off in League 2, won it by two points on the penultimate day of the season. It was an incredibly tight season. IIRC, we got 99 points, the runners-up got 97 and the teams in 3rd and 4th got 96 points each. The gap after that was massive.

Survived the first season in League 1 rather unimpressively, finished 16th. Next season started horribly, we were deep in the relegation fight for the first half of the season, eventually turned it around and amazingly finished fourth. Got trounced 5-1 by Colchester in the playoffs, though.

The next season, we started badly again, though not as bad as the previous season and climbed up the table after November. We finished in fifth and were there from about January onwards. Got Roy Keane's Charlton in the playoffs. Won the first leg 1-0 at home and was under the kosh for the entire game at Charlton. They took the lead after six minutes but couldn't get another. In the 92nd minute, we scored from a corner. The final was against Barnsley. Went up through a penalty after 10 minutes but ended up losing 3-1.

So the next season, I was determined to avoid the play-offs and we started off on a amazing run. We were unbeaten until Christmas when we lost 3-2 to the MK Dons, which was the first time we'd conceded more than one goal in a league game that season. Won the league with about six games to go. Our final record was 30-11-5 and we finished twelve clear of Wycombe in second.

I'm currently at the start of March in my first year in the Championshiop. We're in 20th but seven points clear of Peterbrough in 21st so I'm reasonably happy. Unfortunately, the club is so small that I've had a few players sold from under my nose when an "offer too good to refuse" comes in, which is frustrating but I've put so much effort into building the side that I don't want to resign or tell the chairman off, I just want to get on with my job and hopefully realise the dream of playing in the Premiership.

The players I've bought in were frees, loanees or regens at a low price. My biggest buy was 375k and he was sold six months later for 450k. Some of the best were: Stewart Greacen, Scottish CB who was my POTY three years in a row, scored the equaliser/winner at Charlton. He had just turned 33 when we were promoted to the Championship and he was already going downhill so I released him. Clive Dealaney was available on a free at the start, he was one of my top scorers in the first season but faded out after we moved up a division. Paddy McEleney and Micah Evans are another two good free signings that worked wonders in League 1.

Sgt Pepper 64

focus_mad wrote: »

Decided to take back up a save I had been doing with St Pats.. Best day of the season (player release day in England) so picked up a few lads on trial...

Was also playing as Chelsea manager and it wasn't going at all well so resigned and now manager of the mighty Murcia in Liga Adelente haha

How can you not go well as chelsea manager??!!!

You get 30 mill to spend in Jan, but when you start, ship out Drogba (15mill), Anelka, Yossi and Kalou and you have a nice pot of gold.
Once you get Jones, Sanchez, Aquero, Hazard and Howdes you are pretty much unbeatable

HalloweenJack

Into my third season in the Championship with Bury.

Finished 19th in the first year, a fair few points clear of relegation. Conceded 91 goals! :eek:

Second season, we finished 14th. First half of the season, we were poor. Picked up in the second season, when I (reluctantly) switched to more defensive tactics. Ended with 2+ GD, only conceded 64, massive improvement on the previous year. Bristol Rovers finished the season with 13 points, iirc. Three wind, four draws and 39 defeats!

Eleven matches into the third season: five wins and six defeats. I can't explain it. I was getting my hopes after we'd won three of our first four (including the LC) then both my strikers were sidelined for four weeks, my left winger was put out for two months and his loanee replacement's performances are terrible considering his ratings. I have had quite a few bans too which has interrupted any rhythm we could've got into.

On the plus side, the stadium's being expanded by five thousand seats or so.

gnfnrhead

gnfnrhead wrote: »

Finished the qualification campaign and damn near gave myself an aneurysm in the process. Won the Carling Nations Cup crap, 3-3 vs Scotland and 3-2 against both Northern Ireland and Wales. Friendly victories over Uruguay (2-1), Bahamas (3-0) and Palestine (7-0) in the midst of a rollercoaster ride.

Beat Macedonia 3-0 at home to go top of the group, lost 3-2 away to drop to second. Beat Slovakia 6-1 at home to go back to the top before getting played off the pitch by Russia and losing 2-0 and dropping to third. Beat Andorra 4-0 to set up a very tense final day. If Russia and Slovakia win, it doesnt matter what I do, I'm out. Russia win 7-0 against Andorra while Slovakia lose to Montenegro. Meanwhile, in Dublin, I'm on the verge of resigning as I'm 2-0 down to poxy Armenia at half time! :mad: Came back to win 4-2 and steal second place to set up a tricky play off with Romania.

Home leg finished 2-2 with their first goal taking about 15 deflections before hitting the net. As if conceding two away goals wasnt bad enough, Stephen Hunt - suspended, Stephen Ward - suspended, Chris McCann - injured, Shane Long - injured, Robbie Keane - injured. Not looking good but from somewhere we went to Romania and smashed them 4-0! Dunne, McGeady, Walters and Doyle (His 15th of the tournament!!!). Ireland are going to the Euro's! :D:D

20th in the World Rankings as well now. That should be enough to get me a second seed spot for the World Cup right?

Thought I was deadly after getting to the Euro's and even thought I got a nice enough group (Croatia, Denmark, Ukraine) but it all went disastrously wrong. Drew 3-3 with Ukraine in the opening game, lost 2-1 to Denmark (Who are somehow number 3 in the FIFA Rankings????) meaning I had to beat top of the group Croatia to have any chance of advancing. 1-1 at halftime and Ukraine were holding Denmark 0-0 in the other game. A win and nothing less will put me through so I go gung ho and lose 3-2 to crash out in the group stages. Denmark ended up winning 2-0 so I would have been out even if I had won.

Had a friendly with the Ivory Coast up next and decided to try out a few new players since it was only a friendly and wasnt important. Got hammered 4-1 and plummeted down the FIFA Rankings

Decent enough group for the World Cup qualifying. Holland, N. Ireland, Moldova, Luxemburg and Bosnia. First game, away to Holland and it was some game...... for the neutals 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3!, 2-4!!!!!, 3-4, 4-4, 5-4, 6-4, van Persie scored four times in eight minutes. :mad: In my defence, Dunne was supended and Given had a shocker just like he did against Croatia and Ivory Coast. I think his time may be up. Gave him another chance against Moldova and he conceded two soft goals to leave me 2-0 down at halftime. Jon Walters steps up and scored a hatrick to give me the 3-2 win and save my ass. :cool:

Useless Four Nations cup has just started with a 4-3 loss to Northern Ireland. Dont really care about it so I decided to give a few young lads a try out and it cost me. Have some rebuilding job ahead of me now. Duff is retired (Replaced by Hunt in the starting line up, Stokes has taken Hunt's place on the bench), Given has gone to crap, and Robbie isnt far behind him. Dunne is the only one of the old guard still doing it for me. Doyle and McGeady have stepped up big time and Walters looks good too so I'm okay going forward. Goalkeeper is the problem.

Third in the group now behind Holland and Bosnia. Northern Ireland (4th), Luxemburg (6th) and Bosnia (2nd) are my next games. Wish me luck

HalloweenJack

I didn't play for a while but went back to that Bury season and it's been great.

The season I last mentioned, I got promoted. I had a really strong run where I was unbeaten in 15 games, iirc, and won ten in a row at one point. We shot up the table in the second half of the season and finished second. At one point we were challenging for the title and even beat West Brom, who would go on to win it, to close the gap to a point but then hit a bad run starting in the next game and, in the end, only secured automatic promotion on the second last day with a 2-1 from behind against already relegated Bristol City.

So, first season up was tough. Had to ditch some reliables from the Championship and bring in some better players. Had a decent enough start, lost one of our first ten then hit a bad run and were hovering around the relegation zone until the end of March when we finally pulled clear and ended the season in 14th. Though, the season turned out to be a great one when we won the FA Cup. Beat Stoke 1-0 in the final in a classic smash-and-grab game, which came on the back of identical performances against Man U in the semis and Arsenal in the quarters.

So next season, made it to the quarter finals of the Europa before losing heavily to Fenerbahce. Finished fifth in the league and got back into the Europa, didn't do as well, finished third in a group of Udinese, Braga and St. Gallen and only picked up five points, even lost 5-3 at home to St. Gallen in the final match. The league went a bit better, though. We were competing for the European spots all season long but then in March and April we hit a good run and pipped Newcastle to the final Champions League spot.

So in eleven seasons, we've gone from League Two to the CL. Definitely, my biggest success ever in FM.

We're still progressing as a club, over the summer I strengthened some weak areas (GK, CM) and bought in some hot prospects for the other positions. We beat Braga 6-1 in the qualifiers and got drawn as third seeds with Lyon, Galatasaray and Steaua. It's going to be tricky.

In the league, we've been bipolar. Think we've played four games, won 2, lost 2. Beat Sheffield Wednesday 4-1 at home and Blackpool 5-0 away but lost 3-1 at Goodison and 4-0 at home to West Ham. The last result really hurt as their team is a heap of ****e.

This guy has been my saviour:


Signed him from Marseille for £9.75m after our first season in the Premiership. Had lost our best striker (stupid Minimum Release Clauses) and needed to replace him. Tbh, he was a bit of a panic buy and I was very uncomfortable about spending so much money but we needed a striker. Luckily, he's been outstanding. His stats for the three seasons have been:

Apps. Goals Assists MoM Avg. R
48 35 9 9 7.32
43 43 14 9 7.48
6 4 1 1 7.35

He scored 34 goals in the league last year and only missed out on the top scorer and UEFA Golden Boot award because he'd played a game more than another guy who'd scored 34 goals.