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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 3, 2021 10:00:46 GMT
Another title win is in the pocket at York City! The slight change of formation has made us much more dangerous, and the free agents signed in the summer really strengthened the team. We beat two League 2 sides and Stoke City on our way to the 4th round of the FA Cup, where Leeds United took us out easily. This little run did make us some nice money though, keeping us away from the red throughout the season. Contrary to last season, when all players were on expiring contracts, most of the squad will return for next season and we'll run it back together. I'm eager to find out what we can do in League 2, as we have been pretty succesful in cup match-ups and friendlies against teams from this tier.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 3, 2021 10:16:06 GMT
Again, this is something that frequently confuses me with FM. One article/blog I read mentioned about it being unsuitable for a high press and another I have just read deliberately pushes everything up the field because they say that with 8 players in the midfield strata or deeper, it can easily be too passive as a formation. The lesson here is surely that I should stop reading other peoples' opinions of how a formation 'should' play and just muck around on my own until I find something that works. Yeah I guess you could come up with a rationale behind both of these views. I'd think that 3-5-2 is generally not a formation where enough players are naturally in a position to press up high properly, which may leave large gaps to be exploited by the opponent if you try to do so. In the FM reality though, I feel like pressing is a bit overpowered and can work well regardless of the formation.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 3, 2021 19:45:20 GMT
Biggest league domination I have ever seen.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 4, 2021 9:02:27 GMT
Damn, they would have still made it into Europe if their points were halved!
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 6, 2021 10:11:31 GMT
Aaaand up we go again! We were never really close to winning the league since Oxford had a nice gap to us for most of the season, but finishing 3rd and securing one of the promotion spots is great. Next season is probably where we'll start to struggle to finish in the top end of the league, but that wouldn't be a bad thing. An amazing FA Cup run saw us end up in a beatdown by Arsenal at Wembley, and brought in quite some money. The draw had been very favourable to us so I doubt we'll be back anytime soon. The Carabao Cup was much less of a success and we got eliminated in the second round. The board is looking to build a new stadium, which I'm not sure I should be happy about. The current one is old and only has a used capacity of 7.192, but up until now we haven't filled it once in the league. We might be better off waiting a bit longer till the fanbase got a bit bigger and we have some more money in the bank.
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Post by jawzy on Jan 6, 2021 18:56:31 GMT
York should be in a new stadium already?
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 6, 2021 21:00:13 GMT
York should be in a new stadium already?
Yeah true, I edited that out before I started haha. I'm not sure this is still the case, but I believe in previous versions you could only get 1 stadium every 20 years. I didn't want to be stuck with a League 2 sized stadium with little room for expansion for this entire save, since I never make it 20 seasons into a save (or even half of that). This certainly won't benefit me in the next few years, up until the plans for a new stadium materialize, but at least there is some more potential to grow.
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Post by jawzy on Jan 6, 2021 22:46:41 GMT
ahha, this makes nmore sense now LD
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Post by Reiver on Jan 6, 2021 22:52:16 GMT
Could the new stadium come from the league requirements?
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 7, 2021 9:10:38 GMT
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Post by Reiver on Jan 7, 2021 11:05:17 GMT
I'm pretty sure that league requirements trump the 20/25 year rule. My guess is that for the first year or so you'd be groundsharing but then you'd get a new stadium.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 7, 2021 11:43:04 GMT
I need new strikers, these are defective.
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Post by mrcool on Jan 7, 2021 15:09:06 GMT
What a miss that was
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 7, 2021 16:10:43 GMT
Oof, Gabigol's career went downhill fast!
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Post by Marshdweller on Jan 7, 2021 16:15:17 GMT
More like Gabimiss now
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Post by Reiver on Jan 7, 2021 16:32:24 GMT
To his defense, that is just a namesake - younger and with a career at Palmeiras, SPAL and Figueirense.
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Post by Robson on Jan 8, 2021 11:25:58 GMT
The 1st hints of some good FM21 news from me . In my 2nd season with Napoli I have won Serie A and come runners up in the Champions League. It feels as though I am slowly getting more used to it and figuring out the game more as I seem to be able to use different mentality approaches to different games. Anyway my results are beginning showing up now as consistent. If this keeps up I may start more of what I hope is a long term game.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 9, 2021 22:54:49 GMT
First time seeing this, a player choosing us because of how we play. Nice touch.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 10, 2021 12:31:15 GMT
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Back to back promotions for both us and Oxford City! Way easier than expected, since I actually thought we would struggle quite a bit more in League One. So far it has been pretty easy to field a decent team with free or cheap players that my scouts find, but I feel like the Championship really is a big step up financially. There is a salary cap in League One and Two so it's quite an equal playing field, but this is certainly not the case in the Championship, where we'll be playing teams like Aston Villa who spend 3 times as much on the wages of 1 player as we do on our entire team. A new stadium is being build with a capacity of 13.945, so I really hope it has some room for expansion.
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Post by jawzy on Jan 10, 2021 15:26:59 GMT
Whats your team look like right now, biggest outgoing transfer could be an interesting question to ask too I myself wanna start a save in England, but no team is really enticing me in to start this year
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 10, 2021 20:01:14 GMT
This was the team in League One. As you can see, I rotate a lot and basically just have 2 groups of 11 that I alternate between games. For next season I may change this approach a bit, if the difference in quality between players in the squad is bigger. Penker was brought in this season from Solihull Moors for €68k and he was highly prolific as an advanced forward. My biggest sale has been David Jackson to Burnley for €2.3m. He came through my youth ranks in the first season. I might try to loan him this season since we are lacking a deep lying forward, and I can't find anyone I fancy to bring in permanently for that position.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 10, 2021 21:55:26 GMT
Let's play guess the score?
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 10, 2021 22:29:50 GMT
That looks like an obvious 1-0.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 10, 2021 23:17:48 GMT
That looks like an obvious 1-0. Ahah, not even close. My advanced forward scored 7.
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Post by Reiver on Jan 12, 2021 16:05:00 GMT
I've stopped playing my game for a bit because I'm way ahead of where I last updated and i have a bunch of saved spots to post my updates, but I have to show this, as i had never had this kind of dominance in the player stats before - I'm not even in the top 3 of the league right now.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 13, 2021 9:07:16 GMT
That looks like an obvious 1-0. Ahah, not even close. My advanced forward scored 7. Advanced forwards are just insane on this version!
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 14, 2021 12:03:09 GMT
... Yeah, so I don't really know what is going on. We got lucky a few times and stole some points along the way, but we really shouldn't be this good. I'm tempted to say that morale and me rotating a lot so that we tend to have a relatively fresh squad every game has a pretty large impact, because in terms of player quality we were definitely not one of the better teams. Financially we also didn't come near the spending power of other teams, being ranked at the bottom at expenses for player wages (Aston Villa spent 13x as much). Also, Brentford just went and spent €61M in January, that's the kind of money some teams have in this league. Before the season I sold our best scorer Penker to Burnley for €11.5M, and I spent some of it to strengthen the squad. Some of the better players were Dinarte, Moretti, Ross, Santamaria and Westwood-Preston. To replace Penker I brought in Peque on loan from Barcelona, and he was on fire! I tried to bring him in permanently as his contract was running out, but he chose Troyes over us... The board gave me €27M and 300k in spare wages for the next season to spend, but I'm struggling to find good players that are willing to sign for us, since our reputation is behind compared to other teams. Some League One teams even have a higher reputation still. It's only June, but so far I have brought in an amazing look striker from River Plate who should bring loads of flair to York, and a very talented Colombian center back who unfortunately won't join us till January, but they should be of great help.
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Post by jawzy on Jan 14, 2021 15:02:17 GMT
Maybe game is too easy for most players? to try give that semi positive mental stimulus required in the current times?
Now I said this I will probably get sacked or struggle in whatever save i get invested in.
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Post by Dirk Nowitzki on Jan 14, 2021 17:48:13 GMT
So far it does feel like that to me to be honest! We might get crushed in the Premier League though!
The new stadium is finished and immediately too small, so it's being expanded already...
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Post by Reiver on Jan 15, 2021 18:04:56 GMT
This is really annoying - I just have a player that wants to leave the club, and lost his faith in me, because i did not loan him out - all this because there is no option i could find anywhere, before or after this point, where i wanted to tell him that despite the promise made last year that you would be loaned, I actually want you in the squad - you'll be starting games right here. Infuriating.
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