Could this giant be any sleepier?

[Nick]

If you were to draw up a list of sleeping giants in English football, I imagine Newcastle would be in most people's top five. 50,000+ loyal fans turn up every other week to see a club that has promised so much since the mid-nineties, but delivered nothing in terms of trophies since 1969. Rivals Middlesbrough and Sunderland are going through their own rough patches which should allow me to further cement the club as the kings of the North East.

I've struggled with FM19 thus far, so I've played through the first season already. Here's a quick recap before I settle into more regular updates.



I've been setting the team up in a fairly bog standard 4-2-3-1 formation. The only roles that change are the striker, depending on who is playing, and the right inside forward changes to a winger if Jacob Murphy starts.

It's not perfect and I'm still not quite getting my head around the tactical side of this version yet. We struggle to create chances - proper chances, even half chances - and seem content to have pot shots at goal from unrealistic positions. Nevertheless, our excellent start to the season, particularly in defence, ensured we had as good a campaign as I could have asked for.



A goal difference of +2 isn't great and we took some proper beatings away from home against the teams that finished above us, but finishing 'best of the rest' is much better than I initially expected.

I made three signings in January, spending a bit of dough in the process. First in was highly rated Italian play-maker, Sandro Tonali for £10.5m. I can't speak highly enough of this kid. Didn't walk straight into the team, but constantly gets a 10/10 in training, almost on a weekly basis, and will almost certainly be first choice next season. Next in was Uruguayan striker, Maximiliano Gomez for £13.5m from Celta Vigo. I'll be honest, he's struggled since joining, but so have all my strikers, so I think it's more down to my tactical struggles than the player himself. I'm confident he'll come good. Last in was a young Czech (first season) regen called Marian Suchy for £500k. Big potential apparently, but he's not exactly taken to his immediate loan move to Sheffield Wednesday. I'll get him back with me next season and see if I can improve him.

Off the pitch, my season was dominated by takeover talks, but all three potential deals fell through, so Fat Mike is still here. There is a fourth one currently in the offing, with some geezer wanting to throw £70m at me, so hopefully it comes off. The trouble is, I'm under a transfer embargo so there'll be no activity until it's done.

Other than that, no real rules to the save, just looking to enjoy it and try and win some trophies playing decent football.

[Nick]

A nice little European tour next season. Not sure we've got the squad for it, but I do love an adventure!

[chaodck]

Good start here Nick, best of luck fighting the Woken Giants. Great first season, specially considering you're trying to play offensive fluid football. Transfers look fine, specially that Czech kid, hella fine really! Any short-term goals? Getting into the UCL soon ya think?
Best of luck.

[jawzy]

Considering you saying your struggling with tactics, 7th isnt bad for Newcastle and will you raid West Ham over the summer, that squad is surely gonna be way to good for championship? some of those players surely will request transfers too?

[Nick]

Nov 14, 2018 5:33:49 GMT chaodck said:

Good start here Nick, best of luck fighting the Woken Giants. Great first season, specially considering you're trying to play offensive fluid football. Transfers look fine, specially that Czech kid, hella fine really! Any short-term goals? Getting into the UCL soon ya think?
Best of luck.

I'd like to think we'll be in the Champions League in the next two or three years, but the top six are spending ungodly amounts of money at the moment, as you'd expect, so it really is going to be harder than ever. Off the field, I'd like to improve facilities and hopefully bring through some young players from the youth team. I'm struggling to name a 25-man squad for the Europa League qualifiers because I haven't got enough players that were trained by the club. At the moment, I'm having to leave three spaces blank just to register my squad.

[Nick]

Nov 14, 2018 18:36:32 GMT jawzy said:

Considering you saying your struggling with tactics, 7th isnt bad for Newcastle and will you raid West Ham over the summer, that squad is surely gonna be way to good for championship? some of those players surely will request transfers too?

The plan was definitely to raid West Ham, but I refused to spend £50m on Declan Rice and £25m on an injury-prone Jack Wilshere, so I looked elsewhere. As it's turned out, they've kept most of their squad, including Yarmolenko, Felipe Anderson, Fabianski, Hernandez, Lanzini, Arnautovic, Cresswell and Rice, so they should absolutely blitz The Championship and bounce straight back.

[Nick]

Poodling Into Season Two

Game time has been severely limited this week. Been on a new site at work and knocking out 12 hour days at the moment, so barely any time to play. I have finally made it through to the start of the 2019/20 season and it was a pretty busy summer.

Fat Mike finally left the building, selling up to a Romanian consortium that promised £70m in investment and delivered absolutely nothing. *Sigh*.

Still, I was given £58m to spend on new players and managed to do pretty well in the market. Mohamed Elneny and Erik Lamela were both transfer listed at Arsenal and Tottenham and so I spent £17.25m and £12.75m respectively. I can't shop at the top end of the European market, but European football allows me to attract unwanted players from the Top Six and that should see me right, certainly in the opening stages of the save. Jules Kounde joins for £15m from Bordeaux. Not a player I've noticed before, but one that looks like he could be pretty good in a few years. Bit of a ball-player, good mentally and physically and has the basic defensive technical attributes needed to succeed. A future international hopefully. Speaking of which, Mason Mount has joined on loan for the season. I wanted him permanently, but Chelsea wanted £111m for him and that just wasn't realistic.

In terms of outgoings, we made £19m from the sales of players like Fabian Schar, Mo Diame and Henri Saivet. Nothing massive, but it keeps the bank balance ticking over and gets a few unwanted players off the books.

I've managed to get the youth recruitment network upgraded, as well as the data analyst and youth facilities, so progress is being made in that regard. Pre-season was largely disappointing as I'm becoming increasingly frustrated with the current match engine. To the point where I'm thinking about shelving the save until it's sorted out.

[Nick]

It looks like breaking into the top six is going to have to wait for at least another season. True to real life, we just can't compete with that at the moment.

[chaodck]

Hey Nicko, any news on this save?

[Nick]

Nov 26, 2018 14:33:43 GMT chaodck said:

Hey Nicko, any news on this save?

Slowly making my way towards the end of season two mate. I've recently started working on a new site, which means 12 hour days at the moment, so playing time is severely limited compared to what it once was, but rest assured we're still plodding along and I should have an update out in the next day or two.

[chaodck]

Great to hear the save is still going strong, but even better to hear that you've started working someplace new (albeit working 12 hours a day isn't that great).

[ttgb]

Good choice of club and some shrewd business.

[Nick]

Season Two: Progress or Consolidation?

Our start to the season was a bit of a shambles. Our Europa League campaign didn't even reach the group stage as, despite beating Maccabi Haifa and AZ, we lost to Braga 3-0 on aggregate in the fourth qualifying round. Domestic football didn't start much better. Winless in our first three games, albeit two of them were against Tottenham (1-2) and Man City (1-1), we had an inconsistent September, losing away at United (2-0) and Liverpool (5-0). At least we were getting the big teams out the way early on eh?

We struggled for goals all season long - I just can't get any of my strikers firing. Only 39 goals scored in the 38 league games, I guess the good news is that we only conceded 36. Its not like I'm trying to be overly cautious. Well, I don't think so anyway:



Our form was pretty patchy throughout, but our ability to keep clean sheets meant we were always likely to pick up points. December saw us concede just once in six games, January saw us winless and without a clean sheet. It also saw Houssem Aouar join us from Lyon for £11.75m. March, April and May were undefeated.



No stats to rock the world, but enough to finish 'Best of the Rest' for the second year running and that'll do nicely. Less defeats, less points and less goals scored that last season, but I can't shake the feeling that we actually played much better.

It'll come as no surprise to you that non-one managed double figures for goals or assists - Gomez top scoring with nine and Lamela the top assister with seven. Only four players averaged over a 7 for the season (Yedlin 7.01, Shelvey 7.02, Manquillo 7.28 and Dummett 7.33)

Summer plans, naturally, depend on what kind of transfer budget I'll be given. We have around £40m in the bank at the moment, but I expect that to go up a little. If I can get £50m, I'll be happy. It's getting increasingly difficult to compete with the top six, even at this early stage:

United: Isco £138m, Brozovic £45m, Ruben Neves £59m

City: Danilo Pereira £54m, Varane £75m, Immobile £66m, Thiago £59m, Fekir £48m, Nacho £40m

Liverpool: Thauvin £68m, Angel Correa £50m, Kovacic £50m

Tottenham: Depay £83m

Arsenal: Sidibe £46m, Gabriel Jesus £66m

Chelsea: Icardi £99m, Milinkovic-Savic £62m

Ouch!

[ttgb]

Decent season seeing that you can't score for shit. Any changes to the tactic for next season

[Nick]

Dec 5, 2018 20:55:43 GMT ttgb said:

Decent season seeing that you can't score for shit. Any changes to the tactic for next season

Indeed. The worry is that if the defence starts to crack, then we're in real trouble, because without it, 39 goals scored is relegation fighting sorts of numbers. On the other hand, I'm loathe to change anything due to the fact that what we have is working (to an extent) and I'm very much from the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' school.

[Nick]

Striking while the iron is hot.

[Nick]

Summer 2020 - Transfer Window Update

For the last two years, we've managed to finish seventh in the Premier League and, whilst I'm clearly delighted with that, I want us to start thinking about that next level and breaking into the top six. I've already mentioned a couple of times, that it's looking pretty difficult. The spending power those six teams have in comparison to ourselves is worlds apart at the moment, and this window was no different. True to real life, it's perhaps harder than ever on FM to make that jump up in stature.

The board armed me with about £50m to spend this summer, which is about what I expect each season now in order to compete. If you've read the thread you'll know that I've been playing a diamond formation recently. With that in mind, my first signing - Julian Draxler for £9.75m - might be a surprise. He was transfer listed, interested in joining, incredibly cheap, has a good personality and felt like a bit of a marquee signing, certainly in terms of reputation. He's direct and creative and a good technician - he just ticked a lot of boxes. Elijah Dixon-Bonner came in on a free after being picked up by my Director of Football. He looks fairly solid, with a decent bit of potential, so the plan is to train him up and see how he does. He's gone out on loan to Bury in League One for the season. Dummett and Manquillo were excellent last season at fullback, but I didn't trust either Lazaar or Yedlin as Premier League players, so I decided to bring in Aaron Martin from Mainz (£30m) and a transfer listed Almamy Toure from Monaco (£8m). Both are fairly similar, but obviously play on opposite sides. I'm a big fan of fullbacks and love mine to be as good going forward as they are defensively. Both of these two are pretty 'complete', with Toure having the added bonus of being a danger in the air as well. Admittedly, I probably overpaid for Martin, but he was comfortably the best I could afford, so decided to just go for it. Hilario Quesado and Tom Davies came in on deadline day. Quesado was found by my DoF again, and will be allowed a year in the U23's to develop, while Davies is only in on loan for the season to cover the midfield position vacated by Mason Mount's loan ending.

It was a busy summer window all round. Harry Kane finally got his move away from Tottenham, with Man Utd paying £131m for his services! Elsewhere, Man City paid £78m for Moussa Dembele (the striker) and Chelsea paid Dortmund £71m for Jadon Sancho. Real Madrid swooped for Firmino (£71m) and Eriksen (£58m), while Arsenal signed Munir and Bernat for £43m and £39.5m respectively. Liverpool also spent £61m on Federico Chiesa.

Big rumours going round that Tottenham are lining up Salah with the Kane money, but given that Liverpool have finished above Tottenham in both seasons so far, and play in the Champions League this season, while Tottenham don't, it seems unlikely.

(coloured player names link to screenshots)

[Nick]

Pre-Season Round-Up

Draxler's arrival, and the return of Matt Ritchie from a damaged cruciate ligament, meant that I've tried to devise a new tactic over pre-season.



This is the more attacking, 'home' variant. It's a bit different than what I usually use, using inverted wingers rather than inside forwards. Early signs suggest that those two players get much more involved in the build up, while still breaking forward into space between the lines, alongside an enganche, whose job is to sit in that area and either look for through balls to the striker, the inverted wingers, or out wide to the fullbacks that should be attacking the space left by the wide men.



Pre-season was decent enough, but it took us a little while to get going and even then it was a bit stop/start, with players at the Euros, the Olympics, the Toulon tournament or returning from injury. It wasn't until the away leg against Titograd that I felt we really came together. I'm hoping to at least reach the group stage this year, having fallen short against Braga last season. Lviv was a difficult place to go, but we performed well against Karpaty and deserved more than the one goal we scored. I'm confident we can see that through back at St. James' Park.

Our Premier League start is tough though - Man United at Old Trafford, followed by Man City at the Etihad. In fact, our first five away games are United, City, Burnley, Tottenham, Liverpool. Sigh.

[Nick]

At the second time of asking, we've made the group stage. Our reward is a group of Zenit, Gent and Osijek, where we were third seeds. I think we've got enough about us to qualify, possibly second behind Zenit, depending on our results against them.

Our league campaign hasn't got off to the best start, as expected. Successive 3-0 losses to the two Manchester clubs saw us bottom of the league, but our involvement in Europe meant we had three games in hand. We won one of those 1-0 away at Burnley to get us into lower mid-table and hopefully that can kick-start our season, albeit with a couple of tough away games coming up.