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Post by jawzy on Oct 22, 2020 1:05:06 GMT
I am still following
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 22, 2020 13:51:14 GMT
Don't know if anyone's still following this, and yes I know it's been a long time since the update promised on the last post. But I've been toying aroudn with the Print Screen feature of the game and devising a way to make graphics and compare players and their progression on Excel. And I'm happy finally with what I did. I should have an update tomorrow, with the new graphics and player comparisons. I'm still following and I love a bit of Excel so I can't wait to read your post!
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Post by chaodck on Oct 22, 2020 21:16:56 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2028-29 Summer Window ReportOverviewNormally, this September update is quite short, as I only get to show the end of the transfer window, the first few games of the Eredivisie and the group draw of the UCL. But from now on I'll start doing a bit of squad report here, player development and the sorts. After learning from Guido that you could export data from FM to a webpage and from the webpage to Excel, I decided to expand further upon my current Excel works for the save (tracking of the youth pipeline basically), to use it as a tool to compare players attribute-wise and to track the player development something I tried to do manually with pictures at the start of the save and it really wasn't that exciting either to produce or read. I'll go a bit deeper on my method in the respective section. But let's start with the typical part of the update first.Transfers We continued our super busy activity during the window, as we sold a couple more players, in the looks of Santiago Rak who went to Parma for €2M a former senior squad backup who never materialised and also Colombian former starter Gabriel Murillo who was a key backup since last season after losing the starting job to wonderkid Omar Firpo, but I decided to cash in on him as Real Sporting came in knocking with a €34M offer and we have a great prospect in the "B" Team to take his place in the senior squad.
Regarding incoming transfers, we kept building our youth squads adding 10 more players to the 9 we added before September, totalling 19 new players in our youth sides. Exaucé Babélé (Failry Determined) came from Saint-Éttiene for €1.1M, Kevin Wegmann (Ambitious), from LASK for €850k, Alexander Adlon (Balanced) from Hannover 96 for €3.1M, Filipe Coelho (Fairly Ambitious) from Braga for €3.3M, Kike Jurado (Fairly Professional) from Villarreal for €7.5M and Daniel Claret (Fairly Professional) from Internacional for €1M will join our U-19 squad, while Jon Dyer (Light-Hearted) from PSV for €3.5M, Franco Escrivá (Balanced) from Belgrado for €5.5M, Ignacio Maslovski (Balanced) from Atlético Tucumán for €5.75M and Roelof van der Weij (Fickle) from Heerenveen for €5.75M will join the "B" Team.
Selling 120M was fantastic, specially considering we didn't sell any starters and also, from the list I would've only kept Murillo maybe as he was a quality backup, but as I've got a more than suitable replacement for him in the "B" Team I decided to sell. This allowed us to spend 66M without even blinking to secure good players for the future.EredivisieWe had a good start in the Eredivisie, despite not being able to win all games. We kicked off beating VVV-Venlo 3-0 with goals from Sebastián Noce and a brace from Raymond van Mierlo, before a boring 0-0 with Utrecht in a game where our offensive capabilities were denied by a fantastic defense by the Domstedelingen. We recovered quickly though and finished up September with 3 wins over ADO Den Haag 2-0 with goals from Mihran Nalbandyan and Diégo Reynders, a terrific 3-0 win over Ajax with goals from Noce, Steeven Sánchez and Nalbandyan and finally a hard fought 3-2 win over FC Twente with goals from Noce, Sánchez and van Mierlo.Good start, despite a disappointing draw against Utrecht, but great results in the other games. Atop the league in 5 games is good and paves the way for our Three-Peat.UEFA Champions LeagueAgain we were First Seeds and yet again we had a horrible draw. We landed against Tottenham (this save's "bestia negra" so far), Sevilla and FC København. I expect to qualify and with some luck we might top the group even, but it's a hard hard draw given our position in the rankings.
Squad Development As I said above, here I will report on how the players are doing. The method is as follow:
- I will track all players attributes, exporting them from the game to an Excel File. I will do this twice a year, the first week of September and the first week of March. If there's not much change between this two points, I will proceed with only the September one. - With the data on Excel, I will divide the players into positional groups, GK, FB, CB, CM, AM, WG and ST. I will then assess the attributes more important to the roles those players play. (I know I should divide my CM's into defensive minded and offensive minded, but for now I'm comfortable with them being well-rounded). Those attributes will be further divided in 3 groups: Key Attributes, Important Attributes and Desireable Attributes (if someone wants the details per position, let me know and I'll post them). - With that info, I'll compare the players per position (dividing FB's and WG's into their respective sides), with their average rating on the three groups of attributes (Key, Important and Desireable) and also in the average of all attributes on those 3 categories. This will be made into graphics. When there are decent player-to-player comparisons to have, from those group graphics, I might make an attribute-to-attribute comparison between them. - I plan on doing this report once a season in this same September update. - Also I will assess player development by comparing the attributes exported in September 1st season, in March 1st season and in September 2nd season. This will be made into a +- comparison using conditional formatting for automatic coloring of the cells. I'm not sure if I'll do graphics for this yet, as I still don't have any data to compare development.With that said, here are the first set of positional graphics for comparison.Albert Raven is the clear choice here, with Kanté being a good backup and Capalbo still a bit far, but boasting good potential ability so he might become a good GK down the road if he develops. In the "B" Team, Fintan Yeatman is better than Capalbo and almost level with Kanté, but I'd rather bring him slowly and he won't play much this season. In the U-19's, Dürholtz might be our best prospect, with already good ability, super well-rounded and a fantastic 5 star PA assessment, he's a wonderkid candidate without a doubt.
Again, Galeza is clearly our top player in the position, a 19 year-old wonderkid who still could improve a lot. García is a sub-par backup, and in the "B" team there's a good positional fight between Arguinarena and Madruga, with the first being a more rounded player and the latter a more offensive minded player (and thus more suited to what I want and has a higher "blue" score which is key attributes). There's not much in the U-19's with Traoré being our only player a defensive minded fullback who has to improve a lot to succeed here.
In the left back position there's a lot more to talk about. Reynders is a great player, a homegrown lad from the academy who struggled a bit at first but cemented his place as the starting LB for a few years now. The problem is that he's not that good offensively and thus I'm always looking to replace him. Alan Ramos was promoted to the backup role this season, as the Argentinean kid has great potential but he's also on the defensive side. The best choice we have is José Manuel Escobedo, a Mexican newcomer who per policy will play in the "B" Team this season, but whom I expect to be our longstanding left back. Some might say he's already better than starter Reynders. Daniel Claret, another newcomer is also a fantastic prospect, but also on the more defensive side of the scale. Our first player-to-player comparison comes in the looks of this 4 players.
It's a bit blurry when you compare a lot of players, but I didn't really want to leave anyone out of this (I'll try to do them with less players haha). Reynders is well rounded with great mental skills, but nothing spectacular, while Escobedo already seems like the best player, at 18 and on the way up regarding his development. He might go from the "B" Team to starter next season if he develops.
Omar Firpo is our top player at CB, and this season I expect Dejan Ilic overcome Bertrand as our second starter. Paulo César is a great late addition to the senior squad, after Murillo left. In the "B" Team, Barrón stands out as he's a very apt BPD, but lacks a lot in the orange and gray lines, but the top players there are Jorge Luis and Pavlov. Two high ceiling prospects in the U-19's as Serrano and Marie aren't nowhere ready, but decent enough for their age (17 and 16).
Ilic is definitely on par with Bertrand and who to choose is just a matter of taste. I expect Ilic to improve during the season and become the surefire starter, as he's more suited to the BPD role I want my CB's to be.
Nalbandyan is arguably our best player in the team and for the 2nd centre mid, there's another positional battle, this time between longtime starter Steeven Sánchez and our youth product Adis Mesanovic, again I expect the youngster to win over the spot during the season. Fabio Cuoco rounds up the senior squad, being one of our top influencers and a solid backup player. In the "B" Team, Maslovski is our top prospect and Escrivá is quite decent as well, both Argentineans might make the leap into the senior squad next season, after their mandatory year in the youth teams. Caique and Coelho are also great prospects in the U-19's a bit further down the road.Another tight decision here, with two evenly matched players. Hopefully Mesanovic improves and ends the season as the starter.
Sebastián Noce is our starter but Jamelao is close by (typo alert, his CA is 2.5 stars, not 3.5 as the graphic states). A classic Brazil-Argentina battle for our #10 spot, but I think Noce's spot isn't in danger yet. Let's reconvene and discuss again next season. Pavlov (another typo as well, has a 2.5 CA) is another high PA prospect in the "B" team while Kike Jurado might be our most exciting prospect in the U-19's overall.This is a good graphic. Rojas is way better than Martinet, but the Chilean is more of an inverted winger, than an inside forward, and the attributes weight in the graphics favour the IF role. I'll show the full attribute comparison below and I expect to be comfortable with my choice after seeing it, as Rojas is one of our top players. There's not much behind them, as all high PA prospects are 16 and thus have a long way to go yet.
Ok, so it's not that clear. I still think Rojas is better. But Martinet's advantage in Finishing (19 to 14), Acceleration (18 to 16) and Pace (18 to 16) make the first graphic seem like the French is the top player. Maybe turning the French into a forward might be the way to go and take full advantage of his skillset.
Another battle between a longstanding NEC player and a newcomer as César Augusto seems poised to take the starting LW role from Aleksandar Todorovski. Behind them, Jon Dyer is another exciting prospect, maybe our top "B" Team player, and further down, both Franchi and Akin are good shouts but both are natural RW learning the position.
Todorovski is more of a traditional winger, while César Augusto is more of a finisher. The Australian is a better player right now, but the Brazilian might make the job his.
As a fun pointer, van Mierlo scored the highest from our team in both the blue bar (15.36) and yellow bar (14.30), signalling he's our best player numerically speaking. Édgar Villa is another of our worst backups, but as I don't play him much I'd rather have him than to waste the development for a better looking prospect. The best player in the youth teams is Mohamed Nsabimana (again a typo in his CA, is 2.5) and while the Belgian is far away from van Mierlo I'll compare them both for you to see how good is this kid.
This kid is fucking scary. I want to make him debut this season in the Cup maybe, and I expect him to be in the senior squad before 19, which will make me give him some playing time and either start resting van Mierlo more, or shift to a two striker tactic for at least some games.Forecast and Future - We have €315M in the bank. I plan to keep investing in youth players, cutting the fat when players don't develop or have low PA. - There's a lot of interest in our senior squad players. Lucas Rojas is wanted from Arsenal and Monaco, Bryan Bertrand from Fullham, Mihran Nalbandyan from Tottenham and Real Madrid, and Raymond van Mierlo from Sevilla. I don't expect much offers to come though as none of them have release fees on their contracts and are locked until 2031 at least. - Not much news regarding facilities yet. We have almost filled our new stadium in all home games, with 2 sellouts and 1 98% attendance.
Sorry for the long post. Hopefully the graphics are interesting to take a look at.
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Guido
New Member
Posts: 100
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Post by Guido on Oct 23, 2020 8:28:17 GMT
Not entirely sure about the bar charts but I like the look of the line graphs. When comparing two (or more) players, you ought to give the spider graph a go.
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Post by chaodck on Oct 26, 2020 14:53:54 GMT
Not entirely sure about the bar charts but I like the look of the line graphs. When comparing two (or more) players, you ought to give the spider graph a go. Hi bud, thanks for the opinion. What's your gripe with the bar charts? The looks or the content? I'm actually quite happy with the content and how it shows what players are more apt to playing my style of football, while the looks are quite boring I know but I learnt I could customize them after I had already done them all haha. I like the spider graph, but as FM already has one I never really though about doing one. Maybe using all attributes instead of the categories FM uses might be worth a look. Cheers!
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Post by Marshdweller on Oct 28, 2020 12:55:00 GMT
Not entirely sure about the bar charts but I like the look of the line graphs. When comparing two (or more) players, you ought to give the spider graph a go. Hi bud, thanks for the opinion. What's your gripe with the bar charts? The looks or the content? I'm actually quite happy with the content and how it shows what players are more apt to playing my style of football, while the looks are quite boring I know but I learnt I could customize them after I had already done them all haha. I like the spider graph, but as FM already has one I never really though about doing one. Maybe using all attributes instead of the categories FM uses might be worth a look. Cheers! I think my opinion of the bar graphs is that it is hard to compare the individual players - as they're grouped by player it's not straightforward to compare key attributes to key attributes, while switching it so that you could compare like that would make it hard to keep on top of which player was which. Have you thought about stacked bar graphs? They do show if a player is well rounded though, which is nice and can help influence thinking about retraining. I like the line graphs though - I think they're as good if not better than the existing attribute comparison in FM.
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Post by chaodck on Nov 4, 2020 17:37:09 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2028-29 Midseason ReportOverviewI missed my midseason update deadline and decided to push the update to the end of the winter window. It's been an amazing season so far, maybe the best yet at least in the league where we've been amazing, dominating left and right. Another good season early in Europe, but another tricky draw and our luck just don't improve there.
Transfers Not much activity in transfers during the winter window. We sold Felipe a kid we brought from Real Madrid who never panned out. He ended up going to Real Sporting for €4M. In terms of incoming transfers we brought in 3 new youngsters, Khadim Dia (Light-Hearted) a blind youth transfer from Nantes for €800k who might end up becoming a decent alternative, and two homeruns in the forms of François Lemaire (Balanced) also from Nantes for €7.5M and Wilmar Villagra (Fairly Ambitious) from Peñarol for €3.6M. Both kids are primed to become wonderkids down the road and might feature in the senior squad as soon as next season maybe.Eredivisie After the first 5 games of the season, we had won 4 and drew 1, and sat atop the league with 13 points. Well, we never looked back and won all the rest of our games so far, in a fantastic first half of the season. We had a fantastic September, beating NAC Breda 4-0 with goals from Raymond van Mierlo, Diégo Reynders and a brace from Sebastián Noce, then beat Roda JC 2-0 with goals from van Mierlo and Mihran Nalbandyan, and finally smashed MVV 8-0 with goals from Reynders, Nalbandyan, Jamelao, Lucas Rojas and 4 goals from Steeven Sánchez. 14 goals for, 0 goals against. In October, once again we kept our conceded goals at 0, beating Willem II 2-0 with goals from van Mierlo and César Augusto, then beat RKC 4-0 with goals from Alan Ramos, van Mierlo, Omar Firpo and Rojas, then beat AZ 2-0 with goals from Noce and Nicolas Martinet, then closed out the month with a 3-0 win over Feyenoord with goals from César Augusto and a brace from van Mierlo. We conceded again at the start of November, with a 2-1 win over Gronigen with goals from Nalbandyan and Firpo, then beat PSV 4-0 with goals from César Augusto, Martinet, Édgar Villa and Matías Galeza, then beat Heerenveen 4-1 with goals from Dejan Ilic, Ignacio Masolvski and a brace from César Augusto, finally beat Willem II 2-0 with goals from Martinet and Ilic. December saw us concede more than 1 goal in a game, a narrow 4-3 victory over Heracles Almelo, with goals from Jamelao, van Mierlo, Ilic and Martinet, then we beat RKC 4-0 with goals from Reynders, Galeza, César Augusto and van Mierlo, beating Utrecht then 3-0 with goals from Reynders, van Mierlo and Martinet, finally beating Gronigen 2-1 with goals from César Augusto and Ramos. After the winter break, we had a pretty packed end of January, playing 4 games in 11 days, with a 2-0 win over VVV-Venlo with goals from Reynders and Adis Mesanovic, a 2-1 over Feyenoord with a brace from van Mierlo, a 4-1 win over PSV with goals from Mesanovic, Firpo and a brace from César Augusto, and finally a 2-0 win over Roda JC, with an own goal and a goal from Bryan Bertrand.
10 Goals Against in 24 games is brilliant. We win on average 2.95 to 0.42. A 16 point gap with a game in hand means the three-peat is practically ours. UEFA Champions/Europa League We drew yet another tough group, alongside Tottenham, Sevilla and FC København. We started off in London against Tottenham and lost 0-1 in a tightly contested game, then beat Sevilla at home 1-0 with a goal from César Augusto. We managed to beat FCK back to back, with a 3-1 win in Nijmegen, with goals from Nalbandyan, Ilic and Ramos, then narrowly with a 1-0 in Denmark with a penalty goal from van Mierlo. We sealed our qualification with a fantastic 2-1 win over Tottenham at home, with goals from César Augusto and a last-minute goal from van Mierlo, then sealed our 1st place with a 2-2 draw in Sevilla, with goals from Bertrand and Rojas. We kept our horrible draw luck, as we'll face Barcelona in the Knockouts. KNVB TOTO Beker We've played the Cup with a mixed team of young players and reserves and still managed to have a good easy path to the Quarter-Finals. We beat VVSB (third tier), 5-0 with goals from Stephan Bachmann, Jamelao, Ramos and a brace from Ilic, then beat FC Dordrecht (second tier) 3-1 with goals from Sánchez and a brace from Martinet, then beat FC Utrecht (Eredivisie), 3-0 with goals from Cuoco and a brace from Martinet. We'll play NAC Breda in the Quarter-Finals.
Youth Intake Preview We had a decent intake, with another promise of a golden generation. There's a striker with high PA coming through which is good, but not great as I have recently bought a couple of 5 star PA strikers who look like the real deal, so the position might be a bit crowded.
Player Performances Central midfielder Mihran Nalbandyan has been our top performer with a fantastic 6 goals and 8 assists with a 7.43 rating over 34 games. Raymond van Mierlo has been great as well, with 22 goals and 5 assists and a 7.40 rating in 34 games. Other great performances have come from Dejan Ilic, Omar Firpo, Lucas Rojas, Bryan Bertrand, César Augusto and Matías Galeza. We have had a fantastic first half of the season, playing a lot of young players, and with some bright kids rising up to replace some familiar faces in the starting XI. César Augusto and Adis Mesanovic have won over the spots from Aleksandar Todorovski and Steeven Sánchez, with Dejan Ilic also on the verge of winning it over Bryan Bertrand.
Forecast and Future- Finances look great, with €278M in the bank. - We just upgraded the Youth Facilities, and they are now "Superb", which matches our "Superb" Training Facilities and maxed out Exceptional Youth Recruitmend and Juinor Coaching. We've been granted a new upgrade on the youth facilities due for next season. - We moved into our new NEC Stadium this season and we've been filling it up nicely, with an average on the League of 37,847 fans per game good for third in the league behind Ajax and Feyenoord. This amounts to 97% of the stadium capacity. In the UCL the numbers are similar, with 38,142 fans per game (also 97%). I plan on asking for an upgrade on the stadium at the end of the season.
Our best season so far, we've been fucking amazing.
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Post by Marshdweller on Nov 4, 2020 21:15:24 GMT
Wow-oh-wow. So many green dots. I love this thread - it'll be a shame when FM21 turns up and this comes to an end.
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Post by richruzzian on Nov 5, 2020 13:45:00 GMT
Would be zo great, to stay unbeaten this season. Hope i didn't jinx it now
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Post by chaodck on Nov 5, 2020 14:21:27 GMT
Would be zo great, to stay unbeaten this season. Hope i didn't jinx it now If we stay unbeaten, I'll probably end the save here, despite probably not winning the UCL haha. I planned on waiting on FM 21 until next year, but I'm quite excited by some features, so much I'm already thinking of a possible save idea. If that materialises, I will pre-order FM 21 and thus this save has an expiration date. I'm powering through the end of the season and will have an udpate hopefully late tonight or tomorrow.
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Post by chaodck on Nov 9, 2020 16:25:13 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2028-29 Season ReportOverviewSorry boys/girls as this will be a concise and short report as I had a full written one and lost it. So I won't go into much detail, as I really really can't be arsed. Sorry again. EredivisieSo yeah, green dots all over the place as Marshdweller said and no, richruzzian didn't jynx it at all. We managed to stay unbeaten all season, only drawing 1 game early and finished the season as champions with 6-7 games left in the calendar. It was an amazing performance and shows what a strong side we have become.
23 clean sheets, 101 goals for, 16 goals against, 100 points and a 27-point differential with the 2nd placed team is a fan-fucking-tastic performance in a 34-game league.UEFA Champions LeagueWith the fantastic performance in the league, plus coming off a UCL Final last season I expected us to at least reach the Final again. We had tough draws all over the place though, as despite finishing 1st in a hellish group, we drew Barcelona in the Knockouts. We beat them 1-0 on aggregate after a good win at home and a lucky draw in Spain. In the Quarter-Final we faced Liverpool in a re-peat of last season's Final. We smashed them at home, 4-1 before narrowly slipping into the Semifinals after a 0-2 loss in Liverpool, and a 4-3 aggregate win. PSG played us in the Semifinals, and after a petty 1-0 win at home (we deserved far more...), we got destroyed 0-3 in Paris and got eliminated on aggregate 1-3.
I think we're gonna need a bit of luck to win the UCL. And we didn't have ANY luck this year.KNVB BekerAnother good Cup showing this season, despite again getting to the Final and losing against Ajax. We played almost all the Cup with a mix of backup senior squad players and B/U-19's players, even the Semifinals against Feyenoord. It's disappointing to lose again, and more so losing to Ajax, but I'm not too worried about it. Besides, we lost on 2 VAR penalties (I was on the verge of punching the screen...).
Youth IntakeAnother bad intake, despite the promise of a golden generation (this needs to be fixed by SI ASAP, or remove it from FM 21). I didn't even take a pic of the intake and only ended up signing 3 players, with just Romario Tempo being worth of a screenie so far (mainly due to his AWESOME name).Squad and PerformancesWe had a great season overall obviously. We scored a ton of goals and had 6 players in double digit scoring, including 2 defenders (Ilic and Reynders). Raymond van Mierlo and Mihran Nalbandyan were out top players, and both are wanted by big clubs. The senior squad conformation for next season is gonna be challenging (in a good way though...), as there are a lot of players in the "B" Team ready for more senior football and some of our "veteran" players are quite either peaked or past their peak and will probably need to be shipped out.
Youth Team News Both youth teams won their leagues by a big margin. The U-19's won their 5th straight U-19 Eredivisie.
Forecast and Future- Finances look amazing of course, as we have around €250M in the bank. - There's a lot of movement in the facilities front, as The Board has agreed to upgrade our Youth Facilities again, which will propel them to the maximum level. Also, on their own, The Board decided to upgrade de stadium capacity, only a year after breaking the new ground in. This will take a year, and make us play for next season in a 32,743 capacity stadium (down from 38,979). The expansion will take the stadium to a capacity of 54,979.
Top season, it's really hard to top this I think. With FM 21 coming in a couple of weeks (I don't bother with the Beta, and won't start my first proper save until the full game releases, with the editor), I think this save has maybe 1-2 more seasons into it. I want to give it a shot on the UCL, plus next season we play in the Club World Cup due to our UCL Final from last season. If I play quickly enough, I might sneak two more seasons in. Again, sorry for the mediocre post.
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Post by Marshdweller on Nov 9, 2020 21:54:46 GMT
Not a mediocre post at all! Great going, you're an inspiration to me with my Volendam save.
100 points is a lovely round number and that's a great season to build on for an assault on the Champions League. Good luck with the next season, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you!
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Mikey
New Member
Wales
Posts: 100
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Post by Mikey on Nov 10, 2020 8:29:14 GMT
chaodck This is my first post in here but I have been following since coming back to the forum. What a fantastic season, finishing on 100 points is so fitting as well. Shame about the Champions League but you have given yourself another year (maybe 2) to win it. I think you will. Also I liked the update, maybe I'm lazy but that was just enough information for me, probably be the length of my FM21 updates.
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Post by chaodck on Nov 10, 2020 12:43:51 GMT
Not a mediocre post at all! Great going, you're an inspiration to me with my Volendam save. 100 points is a lovely round number and that's a great season to build on for an assault on the Champions League. Good luck with the next season, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for you! chaodck This is my first post in here but I have been following since coming back to the forum. What a fantastic season, finishing on 100 points is so fitting as well. Shame about the Champions League but you have given yourself another year (maybe 2) to win it. I think you will. Also I liked the update, maybe I'm lazy but that was just enough information for me, probably be the length of my FM21 updates. Thanks for the comments chaps. I might go with shorter, less-detailed updates for the remaining of the save in order to go quicker as time is running out.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Nov 10, 2020 14:33:33 GMT
Wow, you properly demolished the Eredivisie! Now go get that Champions League trophy!
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Post by richruzzian on Nov 13, 2020 11:37:35 GMT
Jeej i am dancing on the table for not jinxing your unbeaten season!
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Post by chaodck on Nov 13, 2020 22:39:35 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2029-30 Summer Window ReportOverviewThis post puts us officially in the sunset of this save. Last season was absolutely fantastic, bossing the league winning an undefeated title and advancing to the latter stages of the UEFA Champions League. I expect to play a couple seasons more, to try and win that elusive UCL while developing more of the talented crop of players I've managed to amass here. This update will be fairly lengthy, as I'll cover quite a few games (it was a busy offseason), and transfers. I'll pass on doing a development report, as I didn't have much to show over there.Transfers It was yet another busy window here in Nijmegen. I wanted to sell a few of our starting players who had lost footing against a more talented youngster in order to free up more playing time. And we did fairly well on that front. Diégo Reynders went to Lyon for €31M while Bryan Bertrand went to Burnley for €40M. Sebastián Noce went on loan to Freiburg and will net us a decent €5M during the season, while Aleksandar Todorovski also went on loan, to Valladolid netting us around €4M for the season. Our only bad piece of transfer was Steeven Sánchez who ended up leaving on a free to Werder Bremen, despite being on contract as no teams offered for him. Still getting his wages off the team is decent. Finally, near the start of the season, Inter came knocking for star Raymond van Mierlo. They offered around €85M, I negotiated to €120M and they offered €115M which I accepted. I didn't want to sell him, but his replacement is nearly at his level and has a ton of room to grow so for that price, you just have to pull the trigger.
We brought in 15 new faces to boost both our "B" and U-19 squads. For the "B" team arrived, Natanael (Fairly Ambitious) from Fluminense for €4.8M, Carlos Alexandre (Balanced) from Flamengo for €28k, Chancel Diba (Unambitious) from AS Vita Club for €600k, Ángel Fernández (Fairly Professional) from Cruz Azul for €4.2M, Antonio Tacconi (Determined) from Bologna for 3.5M, Lirim Haxhijaj (Fairly Determined) from Young Boys for €5M and Alaa Darragi (Balanced) from ES Tunis for €350k. Meanwhile for the U-19's came in Giacomo Poli (Fairly Determined) from Friotentina for €5M, Cláudio (Professional) from Flamengo for €15M (he might be the best youth prospect to arrive to the club, at least in contention with Andreas Hansen, Mihran Nalbandyan and Mohamed Nsabimana), Shawn Ortiz (Unambitious) on a free from LAFC, Stephan Dreyer (Balanced) from Dortmund for €8.5M (plus €1.5M in clauses), Alexander Marseiler (Fairly Determined) from RB Salzburg for €1.5M, Francesco Santi (Balanced), from Inter for €5.5M, José Behringer (Balanced) from Köln for €4.9M and Giulio Monti (Fairly Determined) from Bologna for €5.75M.
Club World Cup In a strange development (as this is my first occurence in the game), we qualified for the FIFA Club World Cup after appearing in the Final of the UEFA Champions League in 2027-28. This new format is quite favorable for the big european sides as groups of 3 teams means a good win in one of the two group games almost ensures qualification for the Quarter-Final. We drew a decent group, alongside Seoul from South Korea and Monterrey from México. The tournament is played in June like the World Cup and most international tournaments and as such cuts short the player's holidays and means playing with super low match fitness (unless you schedule pre-tournament friendlies, which I didn't do to try and focus on fitness preparation for the season).
The lack of match fitness made us struggle in our debut against Seoul, and we only managed a 1-1 draw with a single goal from Adis Mensanovic. We recovered against Monterrey and easily beat the Mexicans 3-0 with goals from Raymond van Mierlo, César Augusto and Mesanovic. We qualified from the group and drew Liverpool on the Quarter-Final. I was confident as we beat them quite decently in last season's UCL, and we again dominated the game, beating the reds 3-1 with goals from van Mierlo, Alan Ramos and Mohamed Nsabimana. In the Semifinals we drew Hertha BSC and again I was confident as I deemed them less powerful than Liverpool. But in reality it was an incredibly tough game and it took everything from us, after 90 minutes things ended up 1-1 and after 30 minutes of extra time, 2-2 (goals from van Mierlo and Juan Arguinarena). In the penalty shootout, Albert Raven made himself a giant and stopped two penalties to secure our passage to the Final. There, we met Barcelona. Again a team which we beat last season, but it's always a tough ask to play them. Again the game went to Extra Time, after a 1-1 draw in the first 90 minutes, with our goal coming from Daniel Claret. In the E.T. we managed to score twice quickly via van Mierlo and Nsabimana, but collapsed from that two goal advantage, conceding at 107' and 120'+1'. With momentum going their way we went again to penalties. Again Raven was fantastic, stopping three penalties, which meant our two misses weren't super important as we WON our first International Tournament!!!!
EredivisieAnother great start in the Eredivisie, this time again winning 4 games and drawing 1, just like last season. Here's hoping the rest of the league is the same haha. With this start, plus the campaign from last season, we broke Louis van Gaal's 1994-96 Ajax's record for most games unbeaten that stood at 52. Our current streak stands at 55 and counting.
UEFA Champions LeagueIn what seems like a trend on this save, we drew a nightmare UCL group. We'll play against Juventus, Monaco and Young Boys.Forecast and Future - We have €388M in the bank. The idea is to keep investing on young players, and our facilities. - The Board expanded the stadium on their own will. It'll be ready by the start of next season.
Interesting start to the season with our first international tournament and a strong start to the league.
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Post by chaodck on Nov 17, 2020 15:28:35 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2029-30 Midseason ReportOverviewFirst semester of the second to last season of this save done. Good semester overall, albeit not as good as last season.
Transfers No outstanding players arrived or left in the start of this window. I'll report if anything happens in the end of season update. Eredivisie Well, after last season expectations were sky high, and it was kinda obvious we weren't gonna be able to top what we did last year. Our start was the same as last season, which meant that in order to match it, we would need to win all the rest of the games. And in our first game of September, we managed to fuck that up as we drew 0-0 against Heracles Almelo giving us our second draw of the season. We managed to beat VVV-Venlo and Heerenveen to close out the month withou conceding goals. October was similar, as we won 2 (SC Cambuur and Almere City) and drew 1 (Fortuna Sittard), not conceding a single goal again. November saw us concede our first goal in 10 league games, but we managed to win all 3 games, beating ADO Den Haag, Gronigen and Utrecht. December came and a ton of fixture congestion. We beat PSV, but NAC Breda surprised us, handing us our first defeat in 64 league games (almost 2 years! From January 2028 to December 2029). We closed out the semester with 3 wins, beating SC Cambuur, Willem II and Almere.
We still have had an amazing season so far. I know I'm complaining a lot for those good results, specially as our defence has been amazing. UEFA Champions/Europa League Nightmare group again. Story of our lives in this save. We started off beating Juventus and Young Boys, before drawing against Monaco at home and losing against them in Montecarlo. We closed out the group beating Juventus and Young Boys again, to finish in 2nd place. We drew our "bestia negra" in the Knockouts as we'll face Tottenham.
KNVB TOTO Beker Another good start in the cup, as our younger players beat Swift and UDI'19 on their way to the Third Round where we'll face Feyenoord.
Youth Intake Preview Decent intake preview again. A DM and two forwards with good potential.
Player Performances Having lost star Raymond van Mierlo hurt us, surely. I felt that we were a much much more boring team than last season, when exciting football was played at almost every match. This might be because of the departure of our top goalscorer, but also as I tweaked the tactics a bit, playing Mihran Nalbandyan much lower in the pitch (changing him from a DLP-S to a DLP-D), resulting in less offensive firepower. I ended up reverting this change and the team feels better now. Mohamed Nsabimana has filled van Mierlo's shoes perfectly well, but he has struggled to score on the UCL. The Belgian wonderkid has been our best player, with 20 goals and 4 assists in 27 games, with a 7.38 rating. Adis Mesanovic has been fantastic as well, with 6 goals and 5 assists from the CM position in 26 games, with a 7.37 rating. Meanwhile our top creative force has been Brazilian César Augusto with 6 goals and 10 assists in 26 games, with a 7.33 rating.
Nalbandyan struggled playing behind the midfield line, as his passing was far less critical from there. Moving his role to a support stance allowed him to improve a lot. Still two assists is dreadful for him.Forecast and Future- Not much to report here. Finances are amazing with €377M in the bank. - The last upgrade to the Youth Facilities was complete in the summer and now we boast State-of-the-Art facilities. We're currently upgrading the Training Facilities to reach that same level. - We've filled our reduced capacity stadium in almost all games. The expansion will be finished by the end of the season and we'll play in a 54k all seater stadium in the next one.
Good season overall, albeit I fucked it up a bit with the tactical tweaks. The decision to let go of van Mierlo has paid for sure as Nsabimana is a beastly player.
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Post by chaodck on Nov 19, 2020 22:13:46 GMT
NEC Nijmegen2029-30 Season ReportOverviewSeason finished. And this save is coming to an end as well. This was a fun season, I played super fast at times but still played it like it wasn't the last (I made a few deals for players that'll arrive in 2 years time haha). Again I'll keep the report brief as I really want to play the next season quickly as well and wrap up everything before Tuesday hopefully. EredivisieIt wasn't unbeaten, but we walked the Eredivisie again. Fourth title in a row, fifth overall and there's no dutch team that dares oppose us. We were crowned champions with 5-6 games to go and we played the rest of the season with a reserve-ish side still dominating.
Conceding half a goal per game is just amazing. Despite being the most offensive team in the league in terms of shots, possession and volume.UEFA Champions LeagueSo, I said we needed luck to win the UEFA Champions League. We didn't get luck, as we navigated through a hell of a group, finishing 2nd and drawing Tottenham in the Knockouts. We played first at home, and managed to claw out a 1-1 draw that had me worried on our visit to London. But the team rose to the occasion and we managed to pull out the qualification after a 3-3 draw, with an 88th minute goal from Nsabimana. Again, the draw was a bitch and we drew Manchester City and again a 1-1 draw at home to kickstart the series. But this time we managed to pull out a win in north England to make it again to the Semifinals. We drew Liverpool and despite again being a tough draw I was confident as we've outplayed them every time, including our past UCL Final some years ago. In Liverpool we played fantastically, specially in the 2nd half and managed to overturn a 0-2 deficit to win it 3-2 with goals at 90'+1 and 90'+5. Back at Nijmegen, we completely destroyed them, and made it to our second UCL Final after a 4-1 win at home. Once again, the UEFA Champions League Final. We faced Chelsea, making our whole road, an English road. The game was played at Olimpico in Rome and after 3 minutes we were already down 0-1. We managed to pull ourselves together after the tough start and managed to retake control of the game by '25. Chelsea was hanging by the end of the first half, but we couldn't manage to score. We kept pushing and finally found our prize at '52 with a goal from Jamelão after what seemed like 37 rebounds. We completely outplayed them for the rest of the game, but things didn't move. 1-1 after 90 minutes. Extra time was a bit more calm as neither team wanted to risk much. 1-1 a.e.t. They started the shootout: Pedri... In 0-1. François Lemaire... In 1-1. König... In 1-2. Nico Martinet... In 2-2. Riccardi... In 2-3. Moha Nsabimana... In 3-3. Hünemeier... SAVED!!!!! 3-3. Cláudio... IN!!!! 4-3. Boni... In 4-4. Ilic... GET THE FUCK IN!!!!!! 5-4 AND UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!
We defeated "half" the Premier League, and won our third shootout of the season (CWC Semi Final and CWC Final as well).KNVB BekerRemember when back above I said no Eredivisie team dared oppose us? Well I forgot about fucking Ajax who sometimes remembers that they are fucking Ajax. We only got to the Quarter-Finals in the Cup, as we lost on two last minute goals from Ajax after 2 VAR ruled out goals for us.
Youth IntakeNothing. Zilch. Zip. Nada. A goose egg. Diddly-squat. Bupkis. Bugger all. Sweet Fanny Adams. Bagatelle. Not even a showable prospect whatsoever.Squad and PerformancesAnother fantastic season for individual performances, despite some players like Nalbandyan and Rojas not at their best. Adis Mesanovic was our best player and Mohamed Nsabimana stepped nicely into the goalscorer shoes, netting over 30 times, including 26 in the Eredivisie. César Augusto rounded up our top three performances.
Youth Team News Again, a clean sweep of the youth/reserve divisions. But also this time our fantastic U-19 squad managed to win the UEFA Youth League, also beating Chelsea (although far easily) in the Final.
Forecast and Future- Tons of money to throw around, with €396M in the bank. - Not much else to report here, we'll play in a 55k all-seater next season as the expansion will be finalised. Hopefully we can fill it up.
I've accomplshied everything I set out to do with this save. I still want to play the final season, to see if we can manage to re-peat the UCL and try and win another unbeaten league. I'll probably shorten the update to just one though.
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Mikey
New Member
Wales
Posts: 100
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Post by Mikey on Nov 20, 2020 5:37:46 GMT
Congrats on finally winning the Champions League! You had a tough route to the final as well, so shows how talented your team is.
Ironic that your Under 19s won the Youth Cup by beating Chelsea, they must hate you now. 😂
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Nov 20, 2020 15:31:51 GMT
Nice! Well done on winning the UEFA Premier League!
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Post by Marshdweller on Nov 21, 2020 15:45:02 GMT
Congratulations! A great way to finish off the save
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Post by chaodck on Nov 22, 2020 5:12:50 GMT
Cheers for reading gents. Anyhow, remember when this happened? Well, this happened... I really didn't want this to be a C&C, at least not in the genesis of the save as while it's a youth save, it's focused on acquiring talent from other sources (besides the youth academy) and developing it, rather than only relying on our youth setup. But, I'm a C&Cer at heart and just couldn't refuse this oportunity. Besides, as I said when I started this save, I fell in love with football in the nineties watching the terrific Netherlands side of that decade. I'm not sure how much I'll feature the NT setup in these posts, probably not that much, not even an update per year only focusing in the competitions. Well, this happened: We had won the Nations League in 2029 and now we can add the World Cup to the list of achievements (and yes, I beat England effectively becoming a persona non grata in the Commonwealth). It was a fun stint, and while I doubt I'll do a report on this, and I've effectively resigned the post after winning the World Cup so I can dedicate the final season of the save only to N.E.C. I can say I'm super happy I did end up taking the job.
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