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Post by Nick on Aug 10, 2020 14:41:03 GMT
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Post by Nick on Aug 10, 2020 21:33:25 GMT
Club VisionI'm not sure happened the board's 'progressive' five year plan, but last year's slight over-achievement seems to have skewed it a bit. This was supposed to be the year we finished in a top half position, but the board expect a relegation battle and the players in the team meeting were thinking along the same lines. After last season's eighth place finish, I'm confident of more of the same this year. The media think we'll finish tenth, but I want to at least match last year's finish and even look at pushing upwards towards seventh and sixth. I think the top five is pretty nailed on, even after Besiktas' dreadful season last time out, but the order is less clear. The experts think we'll see a Fenerbahce, Galatasaray, Basaksehir, Trabzonspor, Besiktas top five with Sivasspor rounding out the top six. The club vision dictates that we become best of the rest next season, but if we can look at working towards that this season then happy days. The transfer window was hugely successful. I'd already settled on my targets long before the season finished, so it was a case of waiting until budgets were handed out and getting players in as quickly as possible. The board gave me €11m to spend which was a really good amount for what I wanted. Alperen Babacan (€2.1m from Akhisarspor), Huseyin Turkman (€2.3m from Trabzonspor), Emrah Bassan (€1.5m from Erzurumspor) and Adil Demirbag (€2m part exchange from Adana Demirspor) all joined as soon as the window opened, with Abdulkerim Bardakci (€1m from Konyaspor) joining shortly afterwards. Former FM wonderkid, Gokhan Tore, hasn't quite fulfilled the potential he had as a kid, and found himself at recently relegated Matalyaspor until we gave them €2.2m for his services. With the departure of Quaresma we needed an extra bit of quality outwide and hopefully Tore can find the kind of form that once saw him on the books of Leverkusen and Chelsea. Rounding out our transfer dealings were Fatih Aksoy (€2m from Besiktas) and Ahmed Kutucu who joins on loan from Schalke for the season on deadline day. I'd been looking at him all summer, but Schalke wanted to keep him until two or three days from the end of the window when they finally allowed him to leave for the year. Nothing huge on the outgoing deals, and no one left that I didn't want to leave, so that's a blessing. With some big earners leaving, I've actually managed to come out of the window spending far less on wages than last year. I'm really pleased with the quality we've brought into the club, especially as we've lowered the amount of loans. The squad is balanced with good quality in each position and adequate cover. I imagine it'll take a little while for us to hit top form as adding four centre backs and a right back should mean that cohesion will take a while, but once it does I'm really excited about our chances this season.
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Post by Marshdweller on Aug 11, 2020 6:04:54 GMT
Coming out of a summer with a stronger, possibly younger squad and a lower wage bill has to be one of the most enjoyable moments in the early seasons of an FM save.
Good luck with the new campaign!
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Post by Nick on Aug 11, 2020 10:32:50 GMT
I always find the first season such a drag in every save, but that first summer transfer window is the best bit about a save (excl. trophies obvs). It's usually the busiest and the first time you see real progress in stamping your own mark on the squad. This second season is flying along as a result.
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Post by Marshdweller on Aug 11, 2020 12:53:53 GMT
It always takes me a couple of seasons, mostly because I don't think I'm as bold as many other people when it comes to shedding the dead wood from the squad and the staff, but I think this point of a save is probably more enjoyable than the point where sustained success is achieved (if I reach that point!)
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 18:14:06 GMT
2020/21 Season Review I decided to let the dust settle on this season before posting about it. It was another season with plenty of positives, but they were dulled by a frustrating lack of consistency and points where we just didn't look interested. Goalscoring was a problem again, as you can see from the table, but we remain defensively strong overall. We just can't get it quite right. We we did score we inevitably conceded and when we didn't score, we kept a clean sheet. This resulted in 13 draws, 3 more than last season. On the plus side, we only lost nine games this season in comparison to last season's 11. We conceded fewer goals, but only scored one more than last season. We only lost twice against teams that finished below us, while of the 12 games we won, 11 of those came with a clean sheet. Another 8th place finish isn't any worse than last season at least, but I'd like to have seen us rattle off five or six wins in a row at least once in the season to put some form together. We won three in a row once this season, but the other wins were bookended by draws usually which ruined any sort of momentum. FIXTURES 1 | FIXTURES 2No-one hit double figures for either goals or assists, but Schalke loanee, Ahmed Kutucu, hit 7 goals as a Pressing Forward, while the top assister was Gokhan Tore with 6. Bear in mind that we also scored 4 from corners and was on them too. He was as useless as his average rating suggests, but I couldn't get anything from out wide men either as inside forwards or inverted wingers so I can't be too harsh on him. Let's end on the positives though: - We only relied on two loan players this season (down from six) - We didn't regress in the league - The average age of our squad is down from 29 to 27 - We are in a solid financial state The summer shopping list contains a goalkeeper, left back, centre midfielder and striker. Next up is a short post looking at club finances.
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 18:40:50 GMT
Club FinancesI've not touched upon club finances until now, mainly because I wanted to give things a chance to develop after the game started and I can see how the finances are affected throughout an entire season. Firstly, I'm a massive fan of the prize money per game way of doing things in Turkey. €402,000 for a win and €201,000 for a draw. Last season we received €7.23m in prize money. This season it was €7.43m. I think if you looked around Europe at some of the other leagues, that kind of prize money stands up really well in comparison. The top six also receives prize money up to €5.18m. Unsurprisingly, player wages are our biggest expenditure at €10m per season, although that is mostly offset by TV money which is around €8.5m per season. With the prize money added, it means that if we're able to keep our wages in check, we can at least break even each month. Something we can build upon is our merchandising, which currently only brings in €60k per season. Although there isn't anything I can do to make this a quick fix, it puts a bit more pressure on us to succeed to build that up. Season tickets (€12k) and sponsorship (€1.5m) are other areas that should improve as we do. Turkish clubs have a bad reputation for being financially unstable. The lower leagues are littered with teams that are list as financially insecure, while Bursaspor are a high profile absentee from the Super Lig due to money issues and, looking in-game now, Besiktas are also looking in trouble, but for the most part everyone else seems to be fairly comfortable with Fenerbahce and Galatasaray a step ahead of the rest in terms of spending power.
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 19:43:27 GMT
Big news for the league early in the third season.
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 20:13:53 GMT
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Post by chaodck on Aug 14, 2020 20:16:41 GMT
What a helping hand by your Turkish rivals Nick to thrust you up the rankings. Direct entry to the Group phase is tremendous. That's a good season by all means, are you too worried about the lack of goals? You're doing a great work defensively, so with a bit of a push you're surely gonna get into europe. Financially that's pretty neat looking. In the Netherlands by 2026 prize money is up to 10M for the 1st placed all the way down to 4.5M for the last placed team, factoring in the league prize money and the match money you're around at a similar level in 2021 so the comparison it's looking good for you.
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 20:39:52 GMT
Never seen this before.
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Post by Nick on Aug 14, 2020 20:43:47 GMT
What a helping hand by your Turkish rivals Nick to thrust you up the rankings. Direct entry to the Group phase is tremendous. That's a good season by all means, are you too worried about the lack of goals? You're doing a great work defensively, so with a bit of a push you're surely gonna get into europe. Financially that's pretty neat looking. In the Netherlands by 2026 prize money is up to 10M for the 1st placed all the way down to 4.5M for the last placed team, factoring in the league prize money and the match money you're around at a similar level in 2021 so the comparison it's looking good for you. I'm only worried about it if the defence decides to open it's doors to individual mistakes and watching opposition players walking through them! I'd like to have a bit more consistency with scoring. We can win 2-/3-0 and then go three games without netting. We have a lot of shots, but they're all snap shots, not even from range, and we create very few clear cut, and even half, chances. A few more goals would have turned a handful of those draws into wins and all of a sudden we're knocking on the door of the European places. That's the frustration.
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Post by Nick on Aug 15, 2020 12:01:29 GMT
Club VisionI'm slightly confused by the expectations this year. Which is it? Avoid a relegation battle or become "best of the rest?" If it's the former, great. If it's the latter, we may be in for a rough ride. The media think we'll finish 8th, but the players in the pre-season meeting reacted terribly to me saying that we can finish mid-table and are happy just avoiding the drop. The board's expectations and reality aren't aligning at the moment. They gave me €6.46m to spend this summer though, which is decent and allowed me to strengthen everywhere we needed. I've made much more of an effort to have our transfer plans laid out early door so everyone came in before the first friendly, allowing for maximum game time together. On top of the players that had their contracts run down, this lot left to free up some room in the wage budget and make way for the new lads. Only Depe and Hajradinovic were in the first team meaning we kept our better players and, if truth be told, there's been little interest in them so far. Fenerbahce are just starting to take an interest though, so I don't know how long it'll remain like that. I extended the loan of Ahmed Kutucu from Schalke and hope that he can build on his 7 goals from last season. Eren Albayrak (€600k from Antalyaspor), Mehmet Ozcan (€1.4m from Adana Demirspor), Umut Nayir (€1.2m from Kayserispor) and Musa Cagiran (€1.9m from Alanyaspor) joined as soon as the window opened, while Demir Palas (€400k from Antalyaspor) and Okan Kocuk (€1.5m from Galatasaray) joined shortly after. Palas comes in very highly rated and will spend a year in the youth team to develop. We beat off some pretty fierce opposition to get him so I'm excited to see how he does over the next 12 months. Cagiran was arguably the best player outside of the top seven clubs last season so I swooped in for him early, while Albayrak is nearing the end of his career but was quite literally the only decent Turkish option in his position.
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