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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 8, 2020 11:45:43 GMT
Volendam is on hold for the time being but I am enjoying FM20 so much I wanted a different challenge. The challenge I have chosen is ASD Marina di Ragusa. Why Sicily?To put this into a little context, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about myself outside of FM. When I'm not watching digital men kick a digital ball around a digital pitch (and all-too-frequently wide of a digital goal), I like to read. I'm a big fan of detective novels and my personal favourites are those of Andrea Camilleri, involving Commissario Montalbano. I would highly recommend both the books and the TV series to anyone who enjoys that sort of thing but has yet to discover them. These novels are set on the southern coast of Sicily and even though I have never actually been there I have a great interest in the island and a daft fondness for it (or the fictional version at least). Why ASD Marina di Ragusa?It took me a long time to decide on a club. A long time. Probably three weeks in the end (and I'm still not 100% sure I've made the right decision!) of starting saves, playing through a couple of weeks only to find that I wasn't too motivated to carry on. Originally my plan was to start way down in the amateur leagues and build a club from as close to literally nothing as possible and take them as far as I could. But then I started playing in the amateur leagues and I simply couldn't cope with the way the transfers worked. (On a side note, for future saves, if anyone has any advice about managing in amateur leagues without going mad then I would love to hear it.) I then looked at the professional leagues and flip-flopped between Trapani (with whom I had my last pre-FM20 save) and Sicula Leonzio without either really encouraging me to get stuck in. For some reason, Catania was a definite no-no without me being able to rationalise why. So then I was left with Serie D, Girone I. After a fair bit of poking around I eventually settled on ASD Marina di Ragusa. There were two main reasons for this - one, the town is used as a location for some of the TV adaptations of the Montalbano stories, and two, the club is expected to finish in mid-table, giving me moderate board expectations, a half-decent squad for the level and hopefully a reasonably stable platform on which to build a long-term save. Club backgroundMarina (as I think I will call us in the name of brevity) has a fairly sparse history. The club was refounded in 2003 as FC Mazzarelli before assuming its current name in 2008, and so hasn't had a great deal of time to accumulate a haul of trophies but has managed to work its way steadily up the levels in Sicily to reach Serie D. Impressivly, they have just managed back to back promotions as champions of Promozione Sicilia Group D in 2018 and then Eccellanza Sicilia Group B in 2019. The player records are equally sparse, with the highest goalscorer in the club's history listed as Nicola Arena with 19 and Guiliano Carnemolla leading the league appearances with 54. I like this situation as it gives me a chance to really make our mark on the club's history. It shouldn't be too difficult to create a situation where the vast majority of the club records were set during my tenure. FacilitiesThe stadium is the Stadio Comunale Aldo Campo and is a 4,500 all-seater. Other than that, facilities need a lot of investment.  Club VisionAs I'm not going to be down in the deepest, darkest amateur leagues, this won't be all that different from the Volendam save in the end. I have probably touched on this before but one of the aspects of FM20 that I really like is the Club Vision and while it is hard to influence it too much it does at least give the illusion of there being multiple definitions of success within the game. The Marina di Ragusa vision is as below:  Pretty basic and gives me a lot of flexibility. When the annual vision meeting comes around, I may experiment with adding a couple of constraints to the save but I like the idea of being able to shape the direction in which the club is going. Defining and measuring success, and aims for the saveKeeping it really simple, I want to do a number of things. - Establish a different tactical approach from the one I had with Volendam (i.e. I want to avoid an attacking 4-3-3 as much as possible). I'd love to build a successful 4-1-3-2 or 3-5-2 variant (tactical experts, feel free to chip in with advice or links to good articles on this one, I've never managed to get a 3-5-2 working before)
- Find the club's natural level (perhaps this is Serie C, or possibly B at a stretch - it will be interesting to see if the board are able to build a new stadium and how big it ends up if they do)
- Turn the club into a profitable production line of talent
- Win a couple of trophies (luckily, there's a Serie D cup so it's possible we could do this in the first few seasons)
- Set new club records
Finally, this being a club in one of the additional leagues, the graphical side of things is pretty basic. If anyone wants to make me some nice kits, that would be greatly appreciated!  This is what you get as a starting point in the game:
The real kits can be seen on the club's website.
I'll put up another couple of posts over the coming days with a closer look at the club, players, league etc. I anticipate that progress could be slow as I'm in the process of moving house, so there could be some long spells without much of an update, but I'm in this for the long haul (unless I get sacked of course!)
Thanks for reading!
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Post by Reiver on Oct 8, 2020 13:51:02 GMT
Hi, amateur leagues expert, what do you need to know?
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 8, 2020 14:05:27 GMT
Hi, amateur leagues expert, what do you need to know? Perhaps it was just the unfamiliar situation but my mind was blown by trying to keep track of my squad given that I couldn't refuse 'bids'/approaches for my players. Do you do anything different in the lower leagues? How do you approach recruitment when you have very few scouts etc.? |
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Post by Reiver on Oct 8, 2020 16:16:16 GMT
Hi, amateur leagues expert, what do you need to know? Perhaps it was just the unfamiliar situation but my mind was blown by trying to keep track of my squad given that I couldn't refuse 'bids'/approaches for my players. Do you do anything different in the lower leagues? How do you approach recruitment when you have very few scouts etc.? How to approach recruitment: trials. Lots of trials - from players recommending themselves to waiting for the end of season and offering trials to players from bigger teams in the area. Don't bother with players that play more than 150 or 200 km away, they won't accept to come - for both trials and free transfers. Trials are also good because then the reports won't depend on the few scouts you have but on your backroom. You should be able to have 10 to 15 players on trial at any time before affecting training (not that training is any good at this level), and a two week trial is usually enough to figure out stats and personality. You can speed things along by immediately terminating trials to players your backroom gives 1 or 2 stars the second they join the trial. That doesn't mean you shouldn't scout! You just need to be more precise. Because players on pro or semi pro contracts will most likely want to join you before their contract ends and players from too far away won't join either, focus your scouts on looking at specific amateur competitions and leagues around you, manually asking to scout stand out and players from surrounding teams, specially from teams with the best youth setups. About keeping players: Accept that you might end up losing your best players each season. If a semi pro or pro team comes knocking they will most likely leave. If they get an offer from another amateur team and they're satisfied, it's more likely they will stay, unless the other team is a lot more reputable. You can increase the likelihood of the player staying (by a lot) by offering him a new amateur contract in response to an offer for him. Warning! Fm20 has an issue that was never confirmed if it was a bug or working as intended, though I lean more on bug. If you turn semipro and your reputation is below 1500, you will only be able to offer rolling contracts with no wages or protection, only bonuses. There's two ways to fix it: use the in-game editor to set the team as professional, save then set it as semipro again, or powerthrough until your rep increases or you manage to turn pro. |
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Post by Reiver on Oct 8, 2020 16:30:48 GMT
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 8, 2020 19:05:04 GMT
Perhaps it was just the unfamiliar situation but my mind was blown by trying to keep track of my squad given that I couldn't refuse 'bids'/approaches for my players. Do you do anything different in the lower leagues? How do you approach recruitment when you have very few scouts etc.? How to approach recruitment: trials. Lots of trials - from players recommending themselves to waiting for the end of season and offering trials to players from bigger teams in the area. Don't bother with players that play more than 150 or 200 km away, they won't accept to come - for both trials and free transfers. Trials are also good because then the reports won't depend on the few scouts you have but on your backroom. You should be able to have 10 to 15 players on trial at any time before affecting training (not that training is any good at this level), and a two week trial is usually enough to figure out stats and personality. You can speed things along by immediately terminating trials to players your backroom gives 1 or 2 stars the second they join the trial. That doesn't mean you shouldn't scout! You just need to be more precise. Because players on pro or semi pro contracts will most likely want to join you before their contract ends and players from too far away won't join either, focus your scouts on looking at specific amateur competitions and leagues around you, manually asking to scout stand out and players from surrounding teams, specially from teams with the best youth setups. About keeping players: Accept that you might end up losing your best players each season. If a semi pro or pro team comes knocking they will most likely leave. If they get an offer from another amateur team and they're satisfied, it's more likely they will stay, unless the other team is a lot more reputable. You can increase the likelihood of the player staying (by a lot) by offering him a new amateur contract in response to an offer for him. Warning! Fm20 has an issue that was never confirmed if it was a bug or working as intended, though I lean more on bug. If you turn semipro and your reputation is below 1500, you will only be able to offer rolling contracts with no wages or protection, only bonuses. There's two ways to fix it: use the in-game editor to set the team as professional, save then set it as semipro again, or powerthrough until your rep increases or you manage to turn pro. Thanks for the advice, that's really useful to know. One of the big mistakes I made was in offering too many trials at once - in one test save I think I had 9 right-backs on trial simultaneously because their attributes were so hidden there was no other way of seeing if any of them would be any good. I think I was just in over my head and floundering around because I was in a bit of a rush to plug the gaps in my squad. Patience is a key thing too I imagine!
Perhaps I'll see how the first season or two goes with Marina and then if it hasn't got me hooked - or I've been sacked - I'll either (a) quit and look for a job in the (even) lower leagues or (b) start again at the bottom. One of my enduring FM ambitions is to take a side from rock bottom to the very top.
I also saw that the stadium in Marina di Ragusa itself looked a little shabby for a Serie D side. Hence my guess that they'd been obliged to move to Ragusa itself. One of the things I really liked about Empedoclina, my original choice for a club, was that they played on a sand pitch. It looks great in the 3D highlights!
PS. Is there a way of setting a radius for the players? You mention ignoring those that play 150km+ away...
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Post by Reiver on Oct 13, 2020 7:35:18 GMT
Most of them won't even appear in the player search if you filter by players interested.
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Post by mrcool on Oct 13, 2020 14:38:03 GMT
A nice start, KUTGW
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 13, 2020 19:11:24 GMT
Thanks both - first update incoming! Season 1 - pre-season and early matches
Tactics
We'll start off with tactics as that drives the recruitment which I'll cover in the next section.
When I took over there was a decent team at the club with the versatility to play a couple of systems. However, there was no real depth to speak of so once I had decided on my formation, I went looking for bodies to fill out the squad. We had a decent goalkeeper and plenty of forward options, which suited my desired 4-1-3-2 formation well.
The tactic I have gone for is this:
As you can see, I have started with very few team instructions. I think I covered this in the Volendam thread, but my goal is always to think in terms of the roles and hopefully have the players' behaviour cover most of what is needed. Then, add a team instruction if there is something specific I want the whole team to do. In this case, I want them to play out of defence after a few too many long balls from back to front in pre-season; I want them to counter-attack whenever we recover the ball just because I think it is a good idea in almost any tactic and I want them to stay on their feet while tackling just to avoid exposing team-mates with badly judged tackles and/or earning cards unnecessarily.
One approach I am taking more and more with FM is trying to think in terms of the negative impact of instructions too. The way I look at it, while every TI you add encourages your team to do something, it also discourages them from doing something. Stating the obvious, I know, but it is something I forgot all too often in the past and would leave me hissing at the screen in exasperation when a player didn't do something I wanted, only to find I had added a TI or PI which was the root of the bad decision. For example, opting for shorter passing may seem like it makes retaining possession easier, but I find it also reduces the likelihood of a ball over the top for an onrushing pacy striker, which is a route to goal that I personally love.
Obviously, if I notice certain trends appearing, I will add instructions but for now this seems to be working.
Transfers
With the 4-1-3-2 in mind, I needed a bit of cover at the back and a lot of reinforcements in midfield. I took Reiver's advice on board and offered trials to a lot of players and did my best to sign those rated 3.5 stars or more. I think I have possibly already witnessed the bug Reiver mentioned as almost all the players I signed have agreed deals which only see them paid bonuses rather than a basic wage. In some ways that's great as it doesn't add to my standard costs but I think it also leaves me exposed to predatory bigger clubs if any of them have a good season.
Lots in, very few out. To be perfectly honest, the first transfer on either side was already arranged, so I can't take credit for either.
Juan Manuel Cobelli - according to reports, my star player. Quite why a 31-year-old Argentinian would leave South America to play semi-professional football in Italy's fourth tier is beyond me, but I'm quite glad he's here. Pietro Romano - my first signing and a solid centre-back who can cover at right-back too. Salvatore Novara - I needed some creativity in midfield and this guy should help to provide it. Seems to have lots of potential to develop too. Davide Ciotti - a backup goalkeeper. The coaches liked him and he was willing to join cheaply so it seemed a bit of a no-brainer. Rosario Costantino - another decent midfielder with room to grow. A little older than many in the squad but still very young. I liked his physicals, his determination and the fact that while he's a tackler he can also take care of the ball with decent attributes for passing and first touch. Mattia Garofalo - potentially a star - good mental and technical attributes for a playmaker role and decent physicals too. Stefano Boncaldo - a good option at right back, which allows my other right back to cover for the left back. I like his personality too. Rosario D'Allessandro - recommended by my scouts and Palermo allowed him to come to me at no cost. Pretty versatile and allows me to shuffle my midfield.
Luckily, the few wingers I had can either play as strikers or central midfielders so I am not left with any obviously redundant players.
Staff
Staffing is pretty minimal and I needed to plug a couple of gaps on the scouting and medical side of things but as money is tight and we aren't in any rush to get anywhere I will largely see how we get on with the existing staff and then when contracts expire I will upgrade.
Key things for me will be to get some sports science staff in as soon as we can afford them, and also to boost the numbers in the recruitment department. Training is only two sessions every other day, so while the coaching staff is poor, I don't know that spending the time upgrading the coaches would be a worthwhile investment of my time at the moment. If anyone has any advice in this regard, I'm eager to listen!
Finances
Financially, things aren't wonderful. Wages are the main reason for the losses, so I will have to look at what we are spending in that area and see if any of the fringe players are costing more than they should. I think there are a couple of players who were already at the club who aren't up to scratch but are on decent money.
Early results
Finally, we're on to the important bit - how it's all going. Well, it's very early days, but results have been good.
A lot of these teams are weaker than us but we looked pretty solid. The cutting edge could be improved, but given the standard of player and the lack of training, I'm not too disappointed. I'd rather be solid and miss chances and go home with a 0-0 than score a couple and lose 3-2 at this point in the save. Starting off both the league and cup campaigns with a win was a great relief and gives us something to build on. The 2-2 draw with Nola was interesting as we came from behind and then squandered a lead.
With only 16 teams in the division I should rattle through the season pretty quickly, so I may or may not do a mid-season update. I'll re-drop my unsubtle hint about wanting someone to make me a couple of beautiful kits  (pretty please!)... or maybe I should just learn myself?
Thanks for reading!
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 13, 2020 20:46:45 GMT
Looked at the contracts to see why we're losing so much money. Didn't take me long to find the culprit...
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 14, 2020 19:43:32 GMT
PS. Same player - clearly Marina moved bent over backwards (and forwards potentially!) to get this guy to sign on the dotted line.  Unfortunately, given his performances have been average to say the least, I will be offloading him ASAP. |
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 17, 2020 20:05:39 GMT
Season 1 - mid-season update
We've reached the halfway point, even though it isn't quite Christmas yet. The calendar is oddly unbalanced - we play every Saturday like clockwork up until this point, then three Saurdays in December, back to every week in January and February and then only twice each in March and April.
The season is going pretty well really.
As you can see, we've already got two players into double figures for goals, which is something I like from my strikers. It took me a couple of seasons to get a Volendam player into double figures so I'm very pleased to have multiple players in this position by the halfway point of the first season.
I can't complain about 4th position, particularly given that the clubs ahead of us are the massive Palermo and the two sides from Messina. Promotion is not going to happen this season and we'll have a job overtaking both Messina sides and whoever comes down from Serie C next season. The real challenge lies in the fact that only one team gets promoted out of this league, so it's not really a promotion you can fluke.
One big feather in our cap is that we are the only club to take a point from Palermo this season.
Serie D
Serie D Cup
We're through to the quarter-finals and dumped Palermo out here too, so we've faced them twice this season and come away with two 1-1 draws.
Player performances
Performances have been pretty good and several of my signings have been among the best performers.
Transfers & Finances
There's only one to mention at this point - I sold Juan Manuel Cobelli to Lanus in Argentina for the princely sum of €26,500. He was the player whose contract details I shared above and was costing me far more money than he was worth. As you'll see from the second screenshot I posted above, he pocketed every cent of the fee too. Hopefully this will help stem the flow of money out of the club as it has become a little worrying.
Bizarrely, the board are happy for me to pay out €13,000 a week in wages and even though my total wage bill is under €10,000 a week, we are still losing €40-50,000 a month. I can only assume there will be a bumper prize money pot at the end of the season to make this viable.
Youth intake preview
Let's see... Reputation housekeeping Given Reiver's comments above around the bug for semi-pro sides with low reputation I was curious to see how we would be affected. I splashed the cash on the in-game editor and had a look. Marina have the second-lowest reputation in the division and are one of only three clubs with a reputation below 1500. At first, I noted how much it had grown (1000 at the beginning to 1038) and then upped it to 1501. I still couldn't offer finite contracts and so (unless I've missed something key) the reputation is only part of the puzzle. I hate messing about with the background data as it feels uncomfortably like cheating, so I reset the reputation to what it was before and I will carry on, bug or design, with the current situation. The big problem I face is that this will cost me both my starting strikers and my star left-back, however given the success of some of my summer signings I am quietly confident that I can find competent replacements. This may well help with the financial situation too.
I'll do another update at the end of the season and decide where to go from there. On the one hand, I was looking for a different challenge from Volendam and so the idea of spending a few years gradually working this club into shape really appeals, but I'm also wary of the precarious finances and strange contract situation rendering this save unviable in the long-term. I don't want to be fighting fires constantly in order to tread water.
Thanks for reading!
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Post by Reiver on Oct 18, 2020 12:51:13 GMT
You need to manually change the team to professional. Save it. Then change it back to semi-pro and save it again. Should do the trick.
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 18, 2020 15:22:53 GMT
You need to manually change the team to professional. Save it. Then change it back to semi-pro and save it again. Should do the trick. Obviously completely misunderstood your original post! I've ploughed on another couple of months and the bug has cost me one of my better players but I'll give this a go and see what difference it makes. Will doing this once fix it for good, or do I need to do this repeatedly? |
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Post by Reiver on Oct 18, 2020 19:43:08 GMT
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 18, 2020 20:31:31 GMT
Cheers again Reiver - I'm just having a bit of a brainfart about this clearly. First I did the reputation and then I did the status. Of course, I did both separately and neither seemed to work. Now I've done both together I can finally tie down my better players for a whole 12 months!!
I may just leave my reputation at 1501 now as it makes very little difference relative to the other clubs in my division and hopefully protects against any random reoccurrence of the bug.
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 24, 2020 16:24:53 GMT
Season 1 summary
I got all the way through typing this up originally and then the forum crashed on me, so what you're reading is a somewhat abbreviated version 2. My first season in charge of Marina has been a pleasant surprise. We finished 3rd, well clear of Savoia in 4th. Two players scored 16 goals for me and Francesco Bonfiglio has extended his contract with us so should become the club's record goalscorer next season (he's only got 19 to beat I think, so not a huge challenge for him!) 
League results Results for the second half of the season are above. There was a great winning streak in the middle, even if it was bookended by two narrow defeats. What I'm very pleased with here is that we only lost three league matches all season - once to Palermo and both league matches against FC Messina, meaning we were unbeaten against every side who finished below us. Cup resultsMy biggest source of pride for this season though is the cup run. You'll have seen many of these results in the earlier post, but here is the cup run in full.  We knocked out Palermo and also our league bogey side FC Messina before falling in the final to Foggia, a side with much greater pedigree than us, so I feel no real shame in this performance. Player performances Performances are pretty good and you may notice (part of) the secret to our success - we managed to keep much the same team throughout the season. Apart from some rotation in the strikers, the other nine positions were pretty settled almost from day one. Part of that is down to a complete lack of injuries. Here's the end of season injury summary:  I think one of the medical reports stated that injuries were 86% down on what we would have expected, which is a major success. However, I think it is random variation and so I expect to suffer more from injuries in the future. This will influence my recruitment as we have got through the season on the thinnest of squads and I know I need more strength in depth. Youth intakeThe youth intake was pretty terrible really - the worst in my six seasons on FM20. I left it to the HOYD and I think he signed one of the players. Given that our facilities are terrible too, it would be a waste to have a decent newgen come through, so I'm not really that bothered. FinancesThe finances are my one area of concern. We earned a lot of prize money from our cup run and still lost over €400,000 this season. I will be looking to trim the wage bill as much as possible while retaining a strong squad. Given the poor youth facilities, I will probably ditch all but the very best from the youth set up and try to run with a very small overall squad. I've asked the board for a parent club twice and they've agreed twice, only to fail to find one (seriously? How hard is it - Trapani, Palermo and Catania are all now higher up than us and could surely help out!) which would help with the money as we could loan in some good backups for free.  Looking forwardI wanted a new challenge and I've certainly got that! With the contract bug Reiver highlighted, recruitment and retention has been a challenge at times. We lost our best centre-back on January's deadline day and had to scramble to replace him. The learning curve has been steep but I think I'm getting there. I doubt I will get promoted this season so I have another year or two at least to get to grips with the signing, scouting and staffing at a semi-professional club. I am looking forward to eventually getting promoted and turning professional but this save is going to be a 'slow and steady wins the race' affair - we're in the worst financial shape of any club I've ever managed on FM, we have the worst facilities and lowest reputation (even with the slightly dodgy boost I gave it to circumvent the contract/reputation bug) in my personal history too. As for the game itself, I have managed to find logo packs and kit packs that give me something prettier to look at than the game generated graphics, so I'm a happy bunny for the time being. I'll put together another update at the end of the summer detailing my recruitment and plans for sorting out the finances. Thanks for reading!
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 28, 2020 20:57:59 GMT
Season 2 - off to a bad start
Five matches into the new season and I am thoroughly hacked off with this save, I've got to be honest. Pre-season results were fine, but since the competitive matches started we have been poor all round.  What's worse is that I know the majority of this is my fault and the seeds of this were sown back in January. Basically, as mentioned before, we lost our best centre-back on deadline day and I scrambled to replace him with a couple of youngsters on loan. I knew I would struggle to keep them, but then, at the end of the season I lost both my right backs (one was only on loan, so returned to his parent club), my left back (who was probably my star player) and one of the two centre backs I owned too. So over the summer I needed to replace pretty much my entire defence. I knew this was coming - I even mentioned it in my previous post - but what I didn't forsee was that my goalkeeper and best striker (also captain and vice captain respectively) would kick off about the lack of depth in defence. Cue a team meeting in which I had to apologise and promise to rectify the situation ASAP when I was already doing my best to do just that. What I really wanted was an option to scream "I KNOW WE'RE FUCKING LIGHT AT THE BACK BUT IT'S NOT LIKE I COULD STOP NON-CONTRACT PLAYERS LEAVING IS IT YOU STUPID PRICKS!?!". So then I determined to make sure there was loads of depth and have made the mistake of prioritising quantity over quality. Which didn't impress the two disgruntled (and highly influential) players, who saw right through my mistake.
So here I am, lumbered with a bunch of duds, entirely down to me, trying to replicate last season's successes in a division that somehow has inherited five relegated teams from Serie C.
I know I sound self-pitying, but I feel like I have to spell this out. There are three divisions in Serie C and as far as I can see three clubs get relegated from each one. So nine teams get relegated from Serie C into the nine divisions of Serie D and somehow five of them find their way into my division? Groups B, C, D, E and H don't contain a single relegated club.
We're also still losing money far too fast for my liking. The wage budget was cut from last season's €13,000 a week to €10,300 a week and I have cut the expenditure from €11,000 a week to €7,500 a week. However, player and staff wages alone cost the club €45,000 a month which is more than they ever manage to bring in. Without turning amateur again, we will continue to lose money at an alarming rate. In theory the challenge really appeals to me, but in reality it is pissing me right off. I now need to labour through a tough season in a stronger division with a weaker squad, haemorrhaging money, just for the chance of correcting all my mistakes next summer and then hopefully mounting a decent challenge for promotion in front of the 200 people who want to come and watch each week. However, I think it is unlikely that I will remain Marina manager for that long. I can feel the dressing room slipping away from me and to be honest, given the turnover of players this summer, it doesn't feel like my team and I can feel that I don't really care that much. Volendam hurt when we lost, here I've reached the point where each goal, each defeat is already greeted with a resigned shrug. I don't really want to give up on the save, but it might need parking for a little while until I get the hunger back, or at least the desire to pick over the wreckage of my car-crash defence and see what I can salvage.
I've learnt a lot of harsh lessons over the last season or so of football manager - possibly more going back to the mistakes I made with Volendam - and it has shown me that the big weakness in my FM playing is really in my recruitment and squad management. I'll do some thinking and probably go back to Volendam for a little while to lick my wounds.
Thanks for reading!
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Post by Marshdweller on Nov 4, 2020 20:47:48 GMT
Sigh. Screw up your recruitment and reap what you sow. |
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Post by Marshdweller on Jan 7, 2021 12:00:01 GMT
I've been reading another book set in Italy and it has got me itching to manage there again. I felt like I have a point to prove at MdR so I had a poke around in the editor (just looking for now) and I think I was screwed over to some extent by the game's randomising of stats and attributes. Only about four clubs in the division actually have an attendance set and MdR aren't one of them. Even the smallest clubs in the division have attendances of 1,300 and 2,000 so the 200 who were regulars at the Aldo Campo were a fraction of what I should have been getting. I'll have a deeper dig into the data over the next couple of weeks and once the house move is sorted I might start this again with a slightly more level playing field. I'll probably use fake players etc. to avoid the temptation to simply sign the people who did well for me the first time around and avoid the flops.
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(pretty please!)... or maybe I should just learn myself?
