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Post by chaodck on Jun 21, 2020 9:14:10 GMT
NEC NijmegenTakeover and 2019-20 Pre-Season ReportOverviewWell, it's time for fresh air. Sometimes, playing in a succession save make you want to quickly get back to your regular save, but sometimes when you go back to that regular save you find it a bit stale. Well my La U save was quite a bit stale as of late and I decided to put it on the shelf at least for a while but most probably for good, as the reasons were a lack of great newgen players for Chilean teams, coupled with a domestic dominance and inability to get past Brazilians on the Libertadores, that's not a good place to be after almost 10 years in game.Ok, enough about the past, let's focus head-on NEC. Since I was a kid, The Netherlands where always one of my favourite teams. I grew up with Chile unable to play in the 1990 and 1994 World Cup Qualifiers due to the disgraceful 1989 Roberto Rojas incident at Maracaná, where he faked an injury after a flare fell onto the field and Chile withdrew from the game. So I had to pick a team, and somehow the Clockwork Orange of Bergkamp, Overmaars, De Boer x2, Van der Saar, Rijkaard, Davids et al captivated me. They were my go-to team from the Arcade games on, since Super Sidekicks, FIFA 95, then Winning Eleven, PES and so on, yet I've never ever managed on The Netherlands in Football Manager, not on a single club save, not even a stint on a journeyman, not on a succession save, nothing. So I decided to come here, to this tiny land to try and get FM on that list.I thought of trying to takeover Ajax and try to win the Champions League, but they are a terrific side (despite the losses from last season) and I wanted something a bit more long term. I thought of taking over PSV or Feyenoord and try to surpass Ajax, but again, I wanted something a bit more challenging at least to start. I didn't want to go all the way deep down also as I wanted something fun to start and quick, so I settled for a second-tier team, someone who had been on the first-tier not long ago but also midtable. Taking a look, NEC Nijmegen was the pick among a few other candidates (Excelsior, NAC Breda, Go Ahead Eagles lost on the Final).Save DetailsThe idea is to have a youth save, not a kids save though I will be making transfers. I have to think about how I want to approach that, but I loaded a bunch of high prospects leagues (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Uruguay, Japan, Korea, Australia, Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Mexico and USA. Plus the 6 other big European Leagues, England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain) so I have a lot of young players to scout around the globe and try to form a multicultural youth/B squad from where to promote players into the Senior Squad. I'm not sure if I'm gonna restrict myself from having transfers directly into the Senior Squad (I'm thinking about it), but I will enforce an age restriction. No transfers in above 21 years old, the year of the transfer.Competitions, Facilities and FinancesAs I said, we start off in the Netherlands second tier, the Eerste Divisie (known as Keuken Kampioen Divisie for sponsorship reasons) and The Board expects us to get into the Promotion Playoffs, while the Media has us placed 8th. There are 4 non promotable teams in the division and the Promotion Playoffs rules are strange. There are 4 stages during the season and if I'm not mistaken, the top placed team on those stages gets onto the playoff. I'm not really sure, we'll see during the season.We'll also play in the Dutch Cup, the TOTO KNVB Beker, where The Board expects us to reach the Third Round, which means winning at least two games.We play in a 12.500 all-seater stadium owned by the team. The facilities are decent, but unspectacular, with Good Training Facilities, Good Youth Facilities, Adquate Academy Coaching and Average Youth Recruitment. This will surely be an early focus of the spending. Speaking of dolla dolla bills yo, the club is in a decent financial situation, with around €7.5M in the bank, I think we can make a monthly profit yet nothing too big. There's no prize money in this division and when we get promoted there's not much at Eredivisie as well, so we'll have to rely on being a seller club.Transfers, Squad and Pre-SeasonThe Board allowed a very generous €50k for transfer budget, while the wage budget is €160k per month. The squad is filled with youth and talent, so after a good look I decided against signing anyone right now. One of the team leaders decided he wanted to go and due to having a decent replacement he was allowed to. We sold Mart Dijkstra to PEC Zwolle for €575k and Randy Wolters to Dundee for €76k.As I said, there's a lot of potential in the squad, some of our top prospects include five 5-star potential players (AM has 15 JPA), Bart van Rooij, Ole ter Haar Romeny, Cas Odenthal, Ventichio Sint and Dirk Proper, with the first two being on the projected starting 11.Speaking of starting 11, I will play a 4-2-3-1 wit high pressing and quick tempo, similar to what I did with Depor in the succession save.The pre-season didn't really go as planned, as despite playing against a lot of lower rated teams, we didn't win all games and struggled at times. I left training to the AM to start the save and I'll take over once we have better players, facilities and coaches.Forecast and Future - We signed a sponsorship deal at the start of the pre-season, 2-year €625k per year decent for our stature so far. - In terms of my own expectations, I think we will get promoted right away. In my experience on this game, it's not hard to get up in the first season. Staying at Eredivisie will be a challenge, but again we've got a great group of young players and even more prospects in the B and U-19 side. - I wasn't sure to post the save before the first season, but I made the kits and said: "Well, the kits are for the forums posts, so be ballsy and post this without knowing if it'll stick". So yeah, if this doesn't stick, sorry beforehand.
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Post by dalenichol on Jun 21, 2020 9:47:36 GMT
Great stuff chaodck, Looking forward to seeing how you get on with this. I really like Holland but for some reason I've never really managed to make a save stick there that isn't with PSV or Ajax, and there's realistically only so much longevity you can get out of a save with those two. Is there still next to no restrictions on foreign players? Because if that's the case, you could build up one hell of a youth side with players from some of the nations you've loaded!
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Post by Nick on Jun 21, 2020 10:38:04 GMT
I feel your pain with a lack of youth players coming through and losing to Brazilian teams, chaodck. It's the story of my life at the moment.
We seem to see more Ajax saves than ever at the moment, which is a shame because Holland is a good place to manage in. My save with Groningen is still one of my favourites. NEC should be a good choice and Dirk Proper looks like he could be a top player. Only made it as far as Vitesse in my current save, but I think with some more care he could be better than that.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jun 21, 2020 13:21:57 GMT
Looking forward to this! As a PSV fan myself I can never get myself to manage any other team in The Netherlands, but it's a great league for FM! Seasons are quite short, very relax foreigner rules (I guess you only have to pay non-EU players quite a high salary, depending on their age as well), and loads of teams with decent youth setups. The playoff system is indeed strange, but this was the first season that the runner-up also automatically wins promotion, so now there is only one promotion spot up for grabs through the playoffs. I believe it includes the number 16 of the Eredivisie, each of the 4 period winners, and some of the higher placed teams.
Good luck with this!
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Post by chaodck on Jun 21, 2020 19:20:20 GMT
Great stuff chaodck , Looking forward to seeing how you get on with this. I really like Holland but for some reason I've never really managed to make a save stick there that isn't with PSV or Ajax, and there's realistically only so much longevity you can get out of a save with those two. Is there still next to no restrictions on foreign players? Because if that's the case, you could build up one hell of a youth side with players from some of the nations you've loaded! The idea was to try and bring whoever I wanted regarding nationalities, I'm leaning towards making a policy of bringing in players at 18, and have them play for the U-19 or the B team at least a season before promoting them to the Senior Squad. The big issue here is that there's a minimum wage for non-EU players that increases with age, so that might put a dent on bringing in the best players from those leagues unless they are EU nationals. Still it's what I'll try to do and we'll figure out the wages thing down the road. If that becomes an issue, I might end up loading more european leagues for players. The 2 rules for the save are no signings over 21 (no exceptions) and all transfers have to play a year either on the U-19 or the B team (this might have exceptions though, think of a player like Ruan on the Deportivo save, who was absolutely ready for senior football and scored 34 goals in his first 30 games at 18 years old). I feel your pain with a lack of youth players coming through and losing to Brazilian teams, chaodck. It's the story of my life at the moment. We seem to see more Ajax saves than ever at the moment, which is a shame because Holland is a good place to manage in. My save with Groningen is still one of my favourites. NEC should be a good choice and Dirk Proper looks like he could be a top player. Only made it as far as Vitesse in my current save, but I think with some more care he could be better than that. Yeah Proper might become something else, though I think all 5 of them might feature for a few years at least. Plus, there's a ton of good prospects (even some 15 year olds) on the other teams. Looking forward to this! As a PSV fan myself I can never get myself to manage any other team in The Netherlands, but it's a great league for FM! Seasons are quite short, very relax foreigner rules (I guess you only have to pay non-EU players quite a high salary, depending on their age as well), and loads of teams with decent youth setups. The playoff system is indeed strange, but this was the first season that the runner-up also automatically wins promotion, so now there is only one promotion spot up for grabs through the playoffs. I believe it includes the number 16 of the Eredivisie, each of the 4 period winners, and some of the higher placed teams. Good luck with this! Yeah I'm still figuring out the playoffs haha, but we'll see throught the season. I fully understand how you feel about PSV, I don't think I even could manage another team in South America other than La U, haha.
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stouters
New Member
@stouters79
Posts: 117
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Post by stouters on Jun 21, 2020 20:01:39 GMT
Good luck, Chaodck! Hopefully I can keep up with this thread. Do you think you will look to the likes of Ajax and PSV for loan deals?
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Post by chaodck on Jun 22, 2020 5:11:59 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2019-20 Summer Window ReportOverviewSo, I'mma try a different approach to the reports, making them shorter and more frequent. I plan on updating 4 times a year, with the Pre-Season, at the closing of the summer window, at the closing of the winter window and an end-season report. Don't know if this will end up cutting it for me though, but for now I'll start on that road. It's been a good start overall for the squad, not much movement, personnel-wise obviously as money is tight still and scouting haven't done its job, so this update will be especially short. TransfersAs I said, not much happened on this front, we only sold the two players I showed last update and ended up bringing only one new face in the looks of free transfer Millen Baars, a former Ajax kid who then played 3 seasons on the Man Utd. youth sides. He's not that much for a guy on those teams, but he might develop into a squad player due to his versatility and speed.
This is the full transfers sheet for the summer window, including those predetermined by real-life.
As a negative sidenote, we lost Zian Flemming. He tore his calf on the game against De Graafschap, and will miss 4-5 months so I decided to send him home to recover, despite not paying at all for the loan. He hadn't played that great, despite his obvious ability, scoring 1 goal and 1 assist on 5 games with a 6.76 rating. Belgian Paolo Sabak will take the starting #10 spot, but I'm thinking that given his great start off the bench, I might push Dirk Proper onto the #10 spot and try to re-train him as an AM.Keuken Kampioen Divisie So, onto the League, our main competition for the year. We kicked off unbeaten, with 4 wins and a draw, but with unspectacular football. We've dominated all games, with the tightest one being against MVV, where we outshot them 19-13 and won possession 61-39. Our first game came against NAC and we won 1-0 with a goal from Dirk Proper off the bench, then Jong AZ scored on their first shot and we only managed to get a 1-1 draw with a goal from Romeny. We then beat Excelsior 1-0, Flemming scoring, the aforementioned MVV game where we won 2-0 with goals from Romeny and Proper and de Graafschap 2-1 with a brace from Overtoom.
So, onto the league rules as far as I understand them: Top two league table teams get promoted (exceptuating all "Jong" teams), Then there's a Promotion Playoff with 7 teams, the 16th placed from Eredivisie, the 3rd and 4th placed teams from the league table and the 4 period winners. The 38 games from the league are divided into 4 9-game "periods", with the first 2 games of the season not being on any period, the top placed team on each period already not qualified for the playoffs, qualifies. I'm guessing the playoffs is played on 3 ties, then a Semifinal (adding the Eredivisie team) and Final. We're currently placed 1st on the League Table, and also are leading the First Period table.Forecast and Future - We had a decent month financially, losing around €75k. The bank balance currently is at €7.5M and for the season we've made a €1M profit. I find that good forecast on the financial stability of a club is the relation between Gate Receipts and Wages, and for August it was +148,493, as we racked around €330k while spending around €105k on the player wages and €82k on staff wages. - We ended up with 6,180 season ticket holders almost 50% of the stadium capacity which isn't bad to start off. We've played 3 home games, with 1 sellout, and two games at 95% capacity. I think we're great candidates for a stadium expansion or a new stadium not far down the road if we manage to be successful and progress as a club. - Not much more to say, short update with good on pitch results and a decent economic progression.
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Post by Marshdweller on Jun 22, 2020 19:43:28 GMT
I love managing in the Netherlands, it's probably my favourite country. Outside the big three, there's not a great deal of variation in the quality of the clubs, so I think you can quickly become the best of the rest and build from there. It also produces loads of good newgens and I like the fact that as a second-tier nation (no offence!), it's quite easy to sell those bright youngsters off to bigger leagues for big money and then reinvest, so there's the opportunity for you to focus on youth, or wheel-and-deal, or splash the cash if you're a bigger side. Or even do a bit of all three.
Edit: I also have fond memories of Tom Overtoom being a key player for me with FC Volendam in a previous version, so I'm keen to see how he does for you.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 23, 2020 21:48:21 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2019-20 Midseason ReportOverviewAt first I wanted to have this report at the end of the Winter Window, but I decided to push it to January 1st as it'd be too much games in between the summer window and this report. So this will cover almost half of the League matches, a couple Cup Rounds, the Youth Intake Preview and the first transfers from the Winter Window. I expect another short update which really have me going and pretty entertained, compared to my long-winded season reports from other saves. I'm thinking it'll stick. TransfersSo, I poached my first kids (that sounded awful). Two players from Atlético who cost us a bit of money in the form of newgen keeper Juan Manuel Muñoz who set us back €50k and striker Marc Tenas who cost €100k. Both of them have enough potential to become a decent senior squad player in a few years and will be stashed on the B team for the rest of the season, with Tenas most probably jumping into the Senior Squad in the summer. The other two transfer were newgens Sergio da Conceição (unrelated to the Portuguese legend from the early 00's) who was at the U-19's from Excelsior and jumped ship on a free and with an amateur contract and Australian Jarrad Grubb who came in from Perth Glory on the same terms. They'll both be at the B team as well.
We have a lot of players entering Bosman and I hope we manage to keep the ones I want to keep. I'll report on that at the end of the season. Also, I'll try to poach players on Bosman as well, despite our teams being super crowded.Keuken Kampioen Divisie Right after the amazing unbeaten start on the first 5 games we managed to get a 0-1 loss against Den Bosch on a game where they shot 3 times, 1 on goal and it went in. We then played our two best games of the season beating Dordrecht and Helmond 4-0 and 3-0 with Tom van de Looi playing at a great level. Then we had to face another of the Jong teams and PSV demolished us 0-4 despite us dominating the shots and possession, it was just a bad day in front of goal. After that mixed September, October was again a great month and our best part of the season. We had a 6-game unbeaten streak onto mid November, with wins over TOP Oss 3-1, Almere City 4-3 and Volendam 1-0, while drawing with Cambuur 1-1, Telstar 0-0 and Jong Utrecht 0-0. But then again, football is cyclical at this level and we balanced that good run with a terrible spell of football that even had me questioned by the media and the players. We closed November with straight losses against FC Eindhoven 1-2 and Go Ahead Eagles 1-3, meaning we just won 1 league game in the month. We started off December facing Jong Ajax and I feared we'd make 3 straight losses. But we managed to get a good game and recover a bit with a 2-2 draw effectively ending the bad spell as the rest of December brought only wins, 2-0 over Roda, 1-0 over Jong PSV and 2-0 over Dordrecht.Thanks to our great first part of the season, we managed to Qualify for the Playoffs on the First Period, ending up in 2nd place behind Jong Ajax who cannot qualify. This fullfills The Board's objective for the season and thus I think complacency might have hit us a bit on that rough patch in November. The Third Period has just started as well, with 1 game played so I won't put the table yet haha. The title is very much at hand as well, as the top 4 teams are tied on points. It'll be a nice race to the title on the second semester.
KNVB TOTO Beker We had a nice draw on the First Round, facing Oss'20 a lower league team. I played with a full rotated squad and managed to get a narrow 1-0 win to qualify us for the Second Round, where our draw luck effectively ended as we had to go to Gronigen and face an Eredivisie side. We played a good game, but narrowly lost mostly due to the stature difference between the sides. The Board expected Third Round and are disappointed we didn't make to it, but understand we had a tough draw.
Youth Intake Preview On the words of the preview, this might be good, despite while looking at it, it doesn't look like much. The term "Golden Generation" is thrown around a lot on these news items so I don't have much expectations, but given our current stature, if 1-2 players end up being good enough to feature on the senior squad down the road I'll be happy.Player Performances Not much to report here as we've been fairly inconsistent. Tom Overtoom has been by far our top player and one of the best of the league so far (cc Marshdweller), with 4 goals and 4 assists on 22 games and a 7.23 rating. Veteran CB Rens van Eijden is our only other player above 7 with a 7.01 rating on 15 games. Ole ter Haar Romeny has been our top goalscorer with 8 goals in 23 games followed by Etien Velikonja with 6, Dirk Proper and Overtoom with 4. Assists have been far too scattered to pinpoint haha.
Forecast and Future - Financially we're sound, with still around €7M in the bank. We've been losing a small amount of money all months, including when we paid for the transfers, nothing to worry about though. - We're averaging 11,848 fans per game good for third in the League, this makes up for 94% of the stadium filled, good for second in the League. - I'll do another report in a couple of in-game months. After the window closed but before the Youth Intake which is late, in April. I'm targeting mid February or early March.
Thanks for reading lads, this has been fun and I'm expecting it to stick for a while at least. Here's hoping for a good intake!
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Post by Marshdweller on Jun 24, 2020 10:56:23 GMT
I'm pleased to hear Tom Overtoom is leading the way for you!
I had a look at your tactics again to remind myself how you're using him and I was surprised to see you don't have a Defend duty in midfield - what's the thinking behind that?
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Post by chaodck on Jun 24, 2020 17:08:33 GMT
I'm pleased to hear Tom Overtoom is leading the way for you! I had a look at your tactics again to remind myself how you're using him and I was surprised to see you don't have a Defend duty in midfield - what's the thinking behind that? Yeah Overtoom has been great so far, he's attracted a bit of interest from Eredivisie clubs, I might sell him though to push some youngsters to the starting 11. Regarding the tactical question, it's an attacking tactic and as thus I only use a defend duty if the other is an attack duty, I feel two support duties are equally balanced, specially if one of them is a DLP-CM combo as both have some defensive responsibility on support duties. I've delved a bit onto other roles, and now find myself using a CM-A and CM-D for both central mids. I'm at the start of March and am debating on whether to do a report or not, as I might push onto the end of the season and do one final season report. More news during the afternoon haha.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 24, 2020 19:11:31 GMT
NEC NijmegenMarch 2020 ReportOverviewAnother quick update sees us play around 8 league games, plus the end of the transfer window. This will mostly be a table update and brace yourselves because it wasn't pretty. TransfersNot much news on this front as no other players arrived later on the winter window. Regarding the contracts that run up in July I managed to keep almost all players I wanted to keep, losing around 5-6 players on free deals, none of which were really important either for the team or realistic sellings down the road, so no harm done. I have a few players listed to check if they want to move on a free in July, but nothing confirmed so far.Keuken Kampioen Divisie Well, after the amazing start we had in the first period and a bit of relaxation on the second period, the third period has been hell-ish. We came back from the break beating Cambuur 2-1 with a late goal from Kvida and I felt confident we'd have a good second semester, but we've never managed to get into a rhythm, as we drew our next game against Helmond 1-1 on a last minute goal, then lost 0-1 against Roda. We then, again a draw against NAC 1-1 with a late goal, then a 0-2 loss against Jong AZ. The bad run was halted with a 1-0 win over Jong Ajax, again on a last minute goal but then again lost against FC Eindhoven 0-1. We finished the third period with a 3-2 come from behind win against Go Ahead Eagles with a great second half performance after a terrible first half.
We're still 4th on the league table, but the hopes of direct promotion have faded into the distance and we would require a miracle to do so. We're already secure onto the Playoffs due to the first period table and we'll see if we manage to get promoted from it, but I'm not building my hopes up and I think another season on the Keuken Kampioen Divisie will do us great for the youth development style of the save.
Forecast and Future - Financially we're sound, with still around €6.5M in the bank. We're quite secure on the money front, but nothing spectacular really. In order to get real money aside from player sales, we will need to get into Eredivisie, attract higher profile sponsors and expand the stadium. - The media has been bashing us a lot lately. I've been having reporters ask questions that say we aren't doing good by our expectations, in spite of the team exceeding both The Board (qualify for the playoffs) and the media expectations (8th). The only thing we haven't done really is get into the Cup Third Round as we lost on the Second to an Eredivisie side. The low of reputation from my manager (Local Footballer + Best Coaching Qualifications) has made gelling with the squad a bit hard as well, as they still don't listen much to me and also the lack of a good dressing room atmosphere has hampered the tactical side of things with players not showing green links. - I will implement a new training scheduling for next season, based a bit on what hokster's doing on his own thread. This season it was managed by the AM and I'm not happy with it as it's not brought the desired development for our talented young players. - As I said on the post above, the youth intake is yet to come as it's on April on Holland.
Thanks for reading lads, despite the tough start to the second half of the season I'm confident of this sticking for a while at least.
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Post by hokster on Jun 24, 2020 19:39:35 GMT
- I will implement a new training scheduling for next season, based a bit on what hokster 's doing on his own thread. This season it was managed by the AM and I'm not happy with it as it's not brought the desired development for our talented young players.
Nicely done, chaodck! This looks like it'll be a great save. I actually have some new thoughts on the training schedule construction based on an updated understanding of some of the components of tactical periodization. I was going to implement them after this season, but maybe it's worth outlining them in the Training thread. I think I'll do that tonight or tomorrow morning (in the US). I'm also definitely going to make sure that I take over the 2nd team and U19 training, because I want them to start being molded by the club DNA and principles ASAP.
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stouters
New Member
@stouters79
Posts: 117
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Post by stouters on Jun 24, 2020 19:56:53 GMT
I'm loving the ages of your players. I imagine you'll have a job on your hand either hanging onto them or getting the most out of the vultures bidding for them.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 24, 2020 21:58:48 GMT
- I will implement a new training scheduling for next season, based a bit on what hokster 's doing on his own thread. This season it was managed by the AM and I'm not happy with it as it's not brought the desired development for our talented young players.
Nicely done, chaodck! This looks like it'll be a great save. I actually have some new thoughts on the training schedule construction based on an updated understanding of some of the components of tactical periodization. I was going to implement them after this season, but maybe it's worth outlining them in the Training thread. I think I'll do that tonight or tomorrow morning (in the US). I'm also definitely going to make sure that I take over the 2nd team and U19 training, because I want them to start being molded by the club DNA and principles ASAP. Cheers Hok, I'm eager to read up on your findings, great if you're able to do it tonight as I'll finish the first season soon and will probably get on playing to the second season right away. I'm loving the ages of your players. I imagine you'll have a job on your hand either hanging onto them or getting the most out of the vultures bidding for them. Cheers Stouters! The players ages was the first thing that really impressed me when I started the save I wasn't expecting it. Regarding the save, I had a relaxed work day and folded early, so I'm just two games away from finishing the season. All I'm gonna say is that this has been a flerken rollercoaster. I'll post the update later tonight.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 25, 2020 1:49:46 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2019-20 Season ReportOverviewSo, first season done and pretty quickly. It was a strange season, with ups and downs and then some, which in retrospective was expected due to the makeup of our squad with a lot of youngsters and some experienced voices to guide them through the season. Keuken Kampioen DivisieI'd left you at the end of an atrociously inconsistent third period, and then right after I wrote the report and told the world that I would need a miracle to get into the direct promotion battle, we hit an incredible run of amazing form, finding our scoring boots and dominating teams left and right. We started off cool though with a 0-0 draw against Jong Utrecht, then followed the rest of March with 4 straight wins, a 2-0 win over Telstar with goals from Kvida and Overtoom, a 2-1 win over Volendam with goals from Proper and Musaba, a 2-1 win over Almere City with a brace from Ter haar Romeny and finally a 2-0 win over Top Oss with goals from Overtoom and Velikonja. 13 out of 15 points make for a brilliant March and with that we were pushed right into the Championship Battle, with things looking like this before the last 4 games of the season.
As tight as tight can be. More tight and it'd be an article of Shakira's wardrobe. MVV had a nightmare run, but we were close second on difficulty. We kicked off at home against 2nd placed MVV and found ourselves quickly a goal behind. There's me thinking, there we'd bottled it. But in a tremendous second half effort, we managed to turn the game to our favour and won 3-1 with goals from Kvida, Okita and Velikonja. The game catapulted us to the 1st place of the table as feeder club TOP Oss (allegedly aided by the "Man of the Briefcase", a term used in South American football for when a low rated team "gets paid" to play better and beats a team amidst a title battle) beat Cambuur. Our second "Final" was played against Excelsior and again had to fight from behind, beating them 2-1 with goals from van de Looi and Musaba. Again, the other contenders played for us and we were atop the table with a 5 point advantage and two games to go, meaning we just needed 2 points to secure the title, and thus the game against De Graafschap was an oportunity to seal it. But again we had to swim against the current, as an early goal put us on the back foot, only managing to find a tie with a terrific Dirk Proper free kick at '85. The title would have to wait a week. But it came, as we professionaly handled our second title game, beating Den Bosch 1-0 with a goal from Ter haar Romeny.
It really was a freaking rollercoaster of a season, we had a good start and an amazeballs finish, but in between we were super inconsistent. In the end I feel the title was a bit too big a prize, but I'll take it gladly. In maybe the most strange thing I've ever seen in FM, Roda JC got promoted, despite finishing 17th on the league table, after a great run on the fourth period made them qualify for the playoffs where they beat Cambuur, NAC Breda and Almere City to get into the Eredivisie.Youth Intake Well, as I said after the preview, "Golden Generation" my ass. It's not a bad intake by any means despite the personalities not being great, but it's far from a good one as well. Cees Veeneman looks like a lad who could make it into the senior squad and with a Balanced personality plus decent Determination he can surely reach his potential, while the other is Elvin Mämmädov, but the Azeri keeper has low determination personality and will need serious tutoring to improve it. I also signed the other 4 better rated players who might become something but most probably won't. It's worth mentioning that Mämmädov got a senior Azerbaijan NT callup in his first window after being on the team.Squad, Performances and Development It was an inconsistent season, despite us winning the title in the end we only had one player who averaged above a 7. Tom Overtoom was great all season and ended up being a candidate for the League Player of the Year, playing a total of 39 games, scoring 6 goals and had 8 assists, with a 7.14 rating. Rens van Eijden finished close 2nd with 32 games played, 3 assists and a 7.00 rating. Other interesting performances were Josef Kvida with 39 games, 3 goals, 1 assist and 6.92 rating and Ole ter Haar Romeny with 39 games, 12 goals, 2 assists and 6.89 rating.
Regarding progression of the five 5-star lads from the beginning of the season, four of them kept the Potential evaluation, while Venitchio Sint lost half a star. All, except Haar Romeny improved a bit, but not that much and some of them lost some determination points as well. As I said I want to take charge of training, as I left it to the Assistant Manager and really the results weren't what I expected given the potential of these youths. Here's the comparison from the screenies at the pre-season and at the end of the season.van Rooij played 37 games with a 6.83 rating and shows little to no improvement. He only won 1 point in Concentration and 1 in Stamina.Haar Romeny played 39 games, with a 6.89 rating and regressed, losing 8 points in technical skills, 1 in mental skills and 1 in physical skills. He didn't improve on any skill.
Proper improved a lot and might be our top prospect as Nick correctly identified quickly on his first post here. He improved 7 points in technicals, 8 in mentals (losing 2 determination points, though), and 4 points in physical skills. He played 35 games, with a 6.84 rating and his value skyrocketed from €200k to almost €1M.
Odenthal played 16 games, with a 6.72 rating. He improved 3 points in technical skills (also losing 1), 1 point in mental skills and 2 points in physical skills.
Sint played in 27 games with a 6.77 rating and almost didn't improve, only earning a point in determination.
Here's the full squad stats Forecast and Future - The end of the season was less gentle to us and we ended up losing €1M during the whole season, ending up with €5.5M in the bank, before taxes and sponsorships. Speaking about sponsors, we currently have a €625k per annum deal that expires at the end of next season, hopefully we can tie up another one during this offseason. - I'm super happy with the title win, specially because it'll impact heavily on my world reputation which will make managing the players a lot easier and thus preventing drops in form that heavily affected us this season. - Regarding the squad makeup for next season I think we have what it takes to survive the drop, specially as we'd only have to beat Roda JC and MVV to ensure at least the Relegation Playoffs. The Board expectation is to "Stay in the Eredivisie", and we've been given a €2M transfer budget and doubled our current wage budget to €300k per month. I think we can attract a few interesting young players to try and develop and maybe if we find a gem, we might apply the exception to put him directly onto the senior squad.
All in all it was a great season I think, despite the ups and downs. Here's to surviving the drop in Eredivisie!
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 5:58:02 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2020-21 Pre-Season ReportOverviewAfter last season's promotion it's time to take this save seriously as we have a super tough task ahead of us in order to stay up in Eredivisie. I decided to take over training duties for all three squads and have been reading a lot of guides regarding youth development and youth scouting (mostly from Oliver Jensen's blog, which is an infinity gem for FM veterans) which is exactly what I intend to do on this save. This update will cover the pre-season and a bit of blah blah about the Team DNA and what I want to achieve with said development of players from as early as our Academy and into the Senior Squad.Team DNAHere I'll talk a bit about what I want to achieve with the team on the pitch, how I want my team to play down the road, 5-10 years into the future, this obviously includes what kind of players I want to develop either fully on our Academy or via transfers and grooming them through our youth teams. I'm a big 4-2-3-1 fan and as most modern teams I'll start on this tactic to begin with and develop players to play in those roles, which are as follow: Sweeper Keepers, Attacking Wingbacks, Ball-Playing Central Defenders, Ball Winning Defensive CM's, Box-To-Box Offensive CM's, Advanced Playmakers at #10, Inside Forwards and Complete Forwards in the middle. That's the tactical role fraiming I want to develop into, with a secondary tactic or long-term project to transform the 4-2-3-1 into a much more fluid 3-2-2-2-1, with an Attacking Libero, two Ball Playing Defenders, two Attacking Wingbacks, a Box-To-Box and a Playmaker CM's, two Inside Forwards and a Complete Forward up top. If I find the right player to develop into the Libero I might shift to this down the road. Besides the tactical shape, I want to play attacking football. Something similar to what Jorge Sampaoli did at La U in 2011-12 and with Chile in 2013-15 also similar to what Klopp does with Liverpool right now. High Pressure, quick short passing, possession football and a lot of triangulation between players. This means that I'll be targeting the following attributes to develop as early as possible: Crossing, Dribbling, Finishing, First Touch, Marking, Passing and Technique on the Technical side of things, Aggression, Anticipation, Composure, Determination, Off the Ball, Teamwork and Vision on the Mentals and Acceleration, Agility, Natural Fitness, Pace and Stamina on the Physicals. Obviously this will vary role from role, but at a general look I will value rounded players with those skills. PPM's will also be an important side of development and I'll try to touch upon them on some post in the future once the team is better developed.Competitions, Facilities and FinancesWe will play in two competitions this season, the Eredivisie will be our main focus and our big challenge. The Media has us placed 16th which actually means they think we'll survive the direct drop, and The Board expects us to "Finish in the Relegation Playoff", which is mostly the same. I think we can survive the drop and with a bit of luck try to hold our own at a mid-table position.
I haven't yet improved the facilities as money is quite tight still. I have all the options available and I'll look into upgrading both the Youth Recruitment and Junior Coaching soon, before stepping into bigger investments regarding the proper facilities. I think we'll fill our stadium this season and if we don't get relegated I'll probably ask for an expansion. Finally, regarding money, we currently have around €6M in the bank with projections being to stay somewhere around that number for the end of the season.Transfers, Squad and Pre-SeasonThe Board gave us €2M to spend and doubled our wage budget, so I went to hunt some kids (shit, again that sounded awful). I used up two exceptions to move transfers directly onto the senior squad (I don't know how I will limit this in the future, for now 2-3 a year seems reasonable), signing italian Valerio Labriola from Napoli on a free transfer and Portuguese António Ferreira from Académica for €300k (plus €200k after 40 league games and €200k after qualifying for the Europa League). Labriola is a decent prospect who could develop into a good squad member. I really didn't want to promote him directly onto the Senior Squad, but I had a bit of a lack of readier players on the reserve/youth team. Ferreira is a kid who needs a ton of development in his mental skills (and also to improve that horrible personality/determination), but has a strong combination of technical and physical skills to have an impact regardless of his progression. Other players who came into the reserve/youth side were Dentinho who cost us €20k, Fabio Cuoco for €120k (plus €150k after 40 league games and €125k after qualifying for the Europa League), Sandro Villani for €90k and Luis Viamontes on a free. I've also secured two future transfers in a 17-year old South Korean winger from Daegu and a 17-year old Japanese Striker from F Marinos. They'll be my first Non-EU big wages and both big bets, to kickstart this multicultural team I'm trying to breed. I'll introduce them when they arrive in the winter window. I won't report on the sellings as no outstanding players have left so far. I'll also show the in/out screenie when the window closes on the next report.
I'm pretty happy with the squad. Just like last year, there's a ton of potential and some interesting veteran players to lead the way both on the field and also as mentors. We have an astonishing 11 players rated as 5* PA by our (16 JPA) assistant, with Dirk Proper being our top prospect still. Besides the 5 I showed last season, I want to showcase both newcomers, Ferreira and Labriola, plus Vince Duits (who's being converted into a RW IF), Job Schuurman and Marc Tenas who we bought in the winter window from Atlético and most probably will be our starting striker. Tactically, I made a few changes right before the great run from last season that secured the Eerste Divisie title, and I'll keep it like that for the start of the season. I want to try and play on the front foot on all games, and I think we'll get our share of big losses against bigger sides, but in the long run I think we'll do well against similarly rated teams or even teams a bit better than us. My main worry is that we don't really have a good defensive minded CM, and while the two Mezzalas in the middle work fine on paper I might end up changing them to CM-S's.
We did good on the pre-season, with a heavy regime based on what hokster 's been doing on his own Le Havre save. I scheduled some easy games on which we demolished the opposition and two tougher friendlies against top european league teams like Dinamo Zagreb and Club Brugge and we played fairly well as well ending the pre-season unbeaten.
Forecast and Future - No new sponsorship deals came in the summer and we'll receive around €3M during the season for TV Money. The Prize Money from Eredivisie ranges from €3.5M for being placed last to €7.89M for being Champions. - As I said, my expectations are to try and get into the midtable, avoiding a relegation battle as early as possible. #FingersCrossed
Thanks for reading, I'm really excited with this.
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stouters
New Member
@stouters79
Posts: 117
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Post by stouters on Jun 26, 2020 8:43:34 GMT
First you poach your kids and now you are hunting them, I am enjoying this progress. Looking forward to how you are going to season them. Congratulations on the title win. I think you'll be great this season. Its bad enough to get a poor intake but to get those personalities is a little soul destroying. I'm liking the before and after pics of the players and seeing the difference your training making on the players. Keep it going! Also.....Shakira's wardrobe.
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Post by Nick on Jun 26, 2020 9:48:36 GMT
Well done on the title win Chaodck - I think you needed it. Players like Proper will need to play at a higher level than the second division in order to improve, so hopefully you can get the best out of him before the vultures start circling.
I like your approach to both transfers and playing style. I think it will serve you well. This has the makings of a very good save.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 14:34:09 GMT
First you poach your kids and now you are hunting them, I am enjoying this progress. Looking forward to how you are going to season them. Congratulations on the title win. I think you'll be great this season. Its bad enough to get a poor intake but to get those personalities is a little soul destroying. I'm liking the before and after pics of the players and seeing the difference your training making on the players. Keep it going! Also.....Shakira's wardrobe. Thanks for reading Stouters. Yeah not looking very good on those personalities but hey, it is what it is. We have a few good ones on the team right now and hopefully they can steer them into the right direction. I think right now at this moment of the save you have to get what you can, from the first intakes and of the transfers you can lure your way. It's not the time to leave out a potentially good player due to his lack of mental skills or bad personaility. Well done on the title win Chaodck - I think you needed it. Players like Proper will need to play at a higher level than the second division in order to improve, so hopefully you can get the best out of him before the vultures start circling. I like your approach to both transfers and playing style. I think it will serve you well. This has the makings of a very good save. Cheers mate, glad you're enjoying the read as I'm having so much fun with the save. Yesterday I played until 3 AM, it's been a long time since I felt the "one more game..." FM addiction. You're right about Proper, he's developing into something special, I don't think we'll be able to hold him for next season unless we sell and get him back on loan, good thing he doesn't have a minimum fee release clause.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 14:38:30 GMT
Also, a couple of posting questions arised. First, when I multi-quote like I did on the post above, do both users get the notification (if enabled)? stouters and Nick? Secondly, I've seen some of you guys do spoilers and I just can't find the code to do it (there's no button on the bar above I think). How do you do it?
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Post by hokster on Jun 26, 2020 14:44:07 GMT
Secondly, I've seen some of you guys do spoilers and I just can't find the code to do it (there's no button on the bar above I think). How do you do it? There's no button, but if you surround the relevant bit with spoiler and /spoiler tags, it'll work. I've found it a bit buggy to do in the preview mode, but if you do it on the BBCode everything is fine.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 14:47:51 GMT
Secondly, I've seen some of you guys do spoilers and I just can't find the code to do it (there's no button on the bar above I think). How do you do it? There's no button, but if you surround the relevant bit with spoiler and /spoiler tags, it'll work. I've found it a bit buggy to do in the preview mode, but if you do it on the BBCode everything is fine. Cheers hok, seemingly it works, despite as you say it looks weird on the preview.
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Post by Nick on Jun 26, 2020 14:52:58 GMT
I got a notification, chaodck. Both for the tag and the quoted message.
I don't know why the spoiler tags don't like the preview. I've looked on the Proboards forum and it seems like it's a common thing, but there's nothing to do to fix it. There's no plug in I can add to fix it, it just doesn't exist. It's obviously not a major issue, but it is pretty annoying.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 14:57:53 GMT
I got a notification, chaodck. Both for the tag and the quoted message. I don't know why the spoiler tags don't like the preview. I've looked on the Proboards forum and it seems like it's a common thing, but there's nothing to do to fix it. There's no plug in I can add to fix it, it just doesn't exist. It's obviously not a major issue, but it is pretty annoying. Great, because your post is the one I used as a secondary quote, pasting the code on the BBCode tab. Don't worry about it not showing mate, it won't be hard to adjust to it. I'll try to use it on a few of my updates now, and see whether I can or not, haha.
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Post by jt on Jun 26, 2020 16:53:24 GMT
Great read chaodck. Nice to see you venture away from Chile! Also enjoying the more frequent updates as it gives the side a nice momentum to read. Keep it up mate. I think you will get mid table fairly comfortably with that young nucleous.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 18:11:22 GMT
Great read chaodck . Nice to see you venture away from Chile! Also enjoying the more frequent updates as it gives the side a nice momentum to read. Keep it up mate. I think you will get mid table fairly comfortably with that young nucleous. Thanks for reading mate, glad you're enjoying it as I'm really having a blast. I'm preparing the summer window update right now and will be ready during my afternoon. It's safe to say we've had a start to the season I didn't expected. More to follow, soon.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 26, 2020 19:50:02 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2020-21 Summer Window ReportOverviewShort update with the wrap-up of the Summer transfer window, plus the start of the Eredivisie. TransfersWe brought in 3 more players, in the looks of Colombian Esteban Restrepo who came in on a free from Alexis García, he was a bit of a dark transfer as it was on a free and for low wages, I didn't even scout him beforehand and he looks quite decent with a good personality and with some luck can develop into either a decent squad player or a decent selling asset. I'm much more excited about South African Andile Zondi, who came in from Orlando Pirates for €75k, Zondi somehow isn't counted as Foreign for the wage rules (despite him not having a 2nd Nationality) and looks like he can become a great player down the road. Finally, one of my two big wage foreign projects arrive in the looks of winger Lee Min from Daegu for €150k (plus €150k after 40 league games and €150k after qualifying for the Europa League) and a massive €20k per month wage. Min has a great future ahead of him and getting him at 18 will ensure he'll end up counting as homegrown and can be retrained to play on the opposite flank as an inside forward. All three newcomers will be playing in the "B" side, with both Min and Zondi being in the Senior Squad shortlist in case of injuries. Regarding outgoing players, I ended up covering all transfers in with 3 players sales, Terry Lartey Sanniez left to MVV for €47k, Jonathan Okita to Cambuur for €350k and we lost youngster Rickson van Hees (without much opposition from us) to NAC for a compensation of €425k.
Eredivisie So, onto the start of the season. I felt we had a great schedule to start off, playing against recently promoted MVV, and then facing VVV-Venlo, Heracles Almelo, Willem II and Sparta before the window closed. A big 5-0 win over MVV in the opener put us right on top of the league after the first game, an absolute brilliant perfoamnce, capped with goals from Marc Tenas, ter Haar Romeny and a hattrick from Tom Overtoom. Then we destroyed VVV-Venlo, 4-2 at home generating 7 CCC's, and winning with goals from Tenas, van Eijden and a brace from Antonio Ferreira (both Tenas and Ferreira scored on their debuts, there seems to be a nice competition here). We then cooled off a bit, only beating Heracles 1-0 with a free kick goal from Proper, then finished the month with two draws, a 0-0 boring game against Willem II and a 1-1 draw against Sparta Rotterdam.
An unbeaten month to start is truly amazing and I'm pretty sure that with 10 points in the first 5 games we're pretty much with a foot on next season's Eredivisie, and maybe with a bit of luck we can secure qualification for the first ever UEFA Conference League in 2021-22.Forecast and Future - Financially we're still on good ground with €6M in the bank. Our wage bill is much larger than last season at €250k per month, a bit below what we're makin from gate receipts at €191k during August. - We improved a lot on season ticket holders with 8,931 this season around 2,000 more than last. On the 3 home games we've played, we havent yet got a sellout but have averaged over 12k fans per game.
Here's hoping to keep the good form!
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Post by Marshdweller on Jun 27, 2020 10:19:35 GMT
Hopefully, Lee Min will also boost your income from shirt sales etc. in Asia, even if not straightaway.
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Post by chaodck on Jun 28, 2020 1:33:10 GMT
Hopefully, Lee Min will also boost your income from shirt sales etc. in Asia, even if not straightaway. Yeah, the idea of this save is to try and form a multicultural side, with players from around the world. I'm eager to see whether having players from "big markets" that aren't that good could surpass in shirt sales to the ones that are better yet from more normal markets. I'm starting November, with a bit of luck I should leave a midseason report before going to bed tonight.
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