Luck o' the Irish

[dalenichol]

Top of the morning to you, and other harmful stereotypes... That'll be the last of that for the thread, enjoy it whilst you can!

Started a save with the once mighty Shelbourne FC of Ireland. The club are currently in the second tier of Irish football due to recent financial difficulties but were once one of the powerhouses of the league, with 13 league titles and a fairly strong European football history, having played the likes of Barcelona, Rangers, Lille and Atletico Madrid over the years.







First season was fairly straightforward as we won the league, which was the boards absolute minimum expectation. We were likely always going to be a bit too strong for this level, and we showed that with some big wins across the season, with an 8-3 hammering of Athlone Town being one of my personal highlights. 

Moving up will be a challenge, but I think we'll be alright. We played 4 top flight teams in the various cup competitions this season, beating relegated Longford Town, winning and losing against 4th placed St Pats Athletic (1-2 and 3-2), and losing to 1st and 2nd place Shamrock Rovers and Derry City 3-2 both games. So I think, realistically, we should be looking to stay up next season at the very minimum, whilst potentially looking at a mid table/push for European football campaign, it's only a 10 team league after all. 


As far as facilities go it's fairly standard of what you'd expect in Ireland: All facilities are listed as 'Adequate', we own our own stadium 'Tolka Park' which technically has a 9,680 capacity but only 6k is seated and thus this is the capacity used in normal games. I assume we'd be able to make use of the larger capacity if/when we make it to Europe. 



Our clear standout player is Jack Moylan:




16 goals and 10 assists in 34 games is pretty ridiculous for a winger and he's got some improving still to do. He does have a 375k release fee in his contract, but I'd take that for him. I'd happily take a little less if we could get a future fee included in the contract, but I think with the most likely destination being Scotland or lower league England if he does leave, there's probably not much worth worrying about there.




Finances are poor, as they were always going to be. Sponsorship should take us back into the black for maybe a month or two, but until we either start selling players or finish in a position that gets us European football constantly, it's never going to be a pretty sight looking at the finances tab!



As far as the save is concerned, I just want to do the standard achievements. I wasn't ever sure I was going to post about the save, which is why I'm doing it late and kinda haphazardly. 

I'd like to take the team back to the top tier: Achieved
I'd like to win the premier division, get back into Europe and reach the group stages of a European competition. Most likely going to be the Conference League, but I'd obviously still be over the moon with that. 
For transfers, and I spoke to Jawzy on steam about this a little, but it'd be interesting to try and be a sort of re-imagined Hoddle Academy. Look to sign mostly young players who've been released from clubs in the UK and sign them and develop them with the idea of selling them off. A fairly standard approach in FM terms, but potentially lucrative given the premium price of UK nationals in a post brexit Britain.

Anyway that's about it. It's late and I want to get into pre season before I go to bed.  Any questions, fire away. 

[dalenichol]

Oh...well this is a thing that happened. 

[jawzy]

Well that helps you from diving into oblivion before sales and europe comes

[dalenichol]

Apr 19, 2022 11:17:35 GMT jawzy said:

Well that helps you from diving into oblivion before sales and europe comes

Absolutely. There's a solid 4 months between the season ending and the new season beginning, so we were starting to look like we were going to be on very rocky ground financially.  We're already down to 875k after being on £1m and it's not been that long since the money came in, so it couldn't have come at a better time in fairness. 

[chaodck]

Good start here mate. That's a fantastic first season and the cash boost helps surely. Do you think you can mount a continental qualification campaign in the next 2-3 seasons?

[dalenichol]

Apr 19, 2022 18:21:15 GMT chaodck said:

Good start here mate. That's a fantastic first season and the cash boost helps surely. Do you think you can mount a continental qualification campaign in the next 2-3 seasons?

Cheers buddy, 

Yes is the short answer. I believe that we'll likely challenge for Europe this season. It's only a 10 team league and from what I can tell, top 4 all qualify for Europe. So whilst we might not make it this season, I think we'll push for that sort of position. We've played 2 games this season, winning both, scoring 6 and conceding 3, against teams that finished 4th and 6th last season, that might be the sort of level we're sitting at already. Maybe just early season luck, though. 

The only thing that's thrown me off slightly is the calendar league dates, which I'm not as used to. So I'll need to remind myself to look for released players on the 1st of July as I always do, but it'll be the middle of our season as opposed to the end/beginning of the next season. 

[dalenichol]

Half way through season one and it is looking good! We'd made 0 changes the side that got us promoted last season and whilst I knew the quality was there, and that FM does seem to tend to favour teams with high reputation, regardless of current historical positions, it's nice to be at the top. It's clearly tight and we only need a few more slip ups to fall down a good few places - After winning 4 on the bounce, we've drawn 2 and lost 1 of our last 3 games so it shows there's no room for complacency. 

It is now the 1st of July, so there's going to be plenty of time to start scouting the British leagues to see who's been released and who might be willing to come here. We're definitely in need of a striker, as most of our best choices in that area are wingers who can also play up front and whilst Sean Boyd is doing well enough with 9 in 18, he's also injury prone and he can't really do it all on his own. Wages for potential signings will be a sticking point too I think, as players want higher wages to come here. We tried to sign Jamie Barjonas from Scottish League 2 side Kelty Hearts at the start of the season and he wanted to triple his £450 p/w wage to come here, which just isn't feasible. My highest paid player is on 750 p/w and even that is higher than I'd like!





Finances have slowly dwindled since our cash boost and we've not spent a penny on players, which shows just how important getting some European appearance money is going to be to our continued survival, as it's going to take a wee while to build up to the point where we're consistently able to sell players on for profit, I think. I think club visibility and international football plays a big part in this, so until we start getting players in the national set up, or start playing in Europe, that's going to be some way off for now. 

[dalenichol]

Oh...Oh well then!

As I said after we won the 2nd tier last season, I knew we were probably good enough to do something decent this season, but I didn't think for a second that we'd win the league, so that was a very nice surprise. We performed well throughout the season but ultimately won due to teams below us having poor seasons, such as Derry's 16 draws or Shamrocks 14 losses, but you have to accept the advantages that you get!

The season took it out of the players which unfortunately meant that we came unstuck in our two post season competitions, losing the FAI Cup Final against St Pats on penalties, before losing the All Ireland Cup against Linfield where we were without our two first choice strikers, left winger and centre midfielder. I feel like we could, and probably should, have beaten Linfield over the two legs but it just wasn't to be.





Transfer activity was minimal as I didn't see the point in wasting money when we were already performing well and clubs hadn't really released anybody in July as I had expected and most of the players I did like the look of were asking for way too much in wages, however we did pick up a couple of players:

Dara Costelloe joined from Burnley as a backup option, Adan George comes in from Birmingham, performing much better than his attributes would suggest, whilst Kacper Smorgol was the big signing; released by RB Leipzig, he was recommended to me in my scout centre and by his agent. Probably too good for this league but his injury problems have kept him out a bit more than I'd like, he's the Aaron Ramsey to my Rangers essentially  






Money is once again tight, so I'm hoping for another wee financial windfall like last pre season, as despite qualifying for the Champions League it's going to be midway through our season before we actually play those matches. The money from losing in the qualifiers and then again in the Conference League should be a decent financial boost. 

So yeah, it's been a good season with clear room for improvement. Not sure where that improvement comes from with our current financial situation, but we'll see what we can do. 

[jawzy]

Smogol looks like a nice young player, did he play anywhere else before Leipzig?

[dalenichol]

Apr 25, 2022 14:45:53 GMT jawzy said:

Smogol looks like a nice young player, did he play anywhere else before Leipzig?

Yeah he's decent, just hoping he's a bit more potential to grow into and he could be a decent wee profit maker for us. 

[dalenichol]

Obviously not going to allow myself to get too excited by this, because it is Ireland after all, but that's a pretty nice message to wake up to!

[Mikey]

Just read through this. Congrats on becoming champions mate! Looks like you're getting some quality youth players too!

[dalenichol]

Cheers Mikey


We just did this against Galatasaray too, although we lose the first leg 3-0, but still!

[jawzy]

May 1, 2022 9:56:22 GMT dalenichol said:

Obviously not going to allow myself to get too excited by this, because it is Ireland after all, but that's a pretty nice message to wake up to!

best ive ever seen, would loved to see all the 2 n half star potential come intake day

[dalenichol]

Season 2023 Complete!

Sorry, haven't been playing as much recently between work and other games, but finally got a decent wee stretch of FM time over this weekend. It was a solid season, all things considered. We obviously weren't able to retain our title, with St Pats pretty much running away with it from the very start, but I'm so used to my saves falling away in the third season, and I seem to especially find the 2nd season post promotion to be extra difficult for some reason. So ultimately, whilst I'd have liked to be sitting here having won a second straight title, it just wasn't to be...and that's fine.  We did, however, manage to win the Leinster Cup, beating UC Dublin 1-0 in the final, but didn't fare so well in the other two Irish cups. 




There were some pleasing performances over the course of the season with Adan George, the player we signed last season after his release from Birmingham, kicked into gear with 15 goals and 13 assists, along with his strike partner Sean Boyd on 13 goals, but most impressive were the contributions of our wingers Dan Hawkins and Jack Moylan, who contributed a combined 28 goals and 21 assists between them.  As good as it is though, it's clear we need to get more goals throughout the team, as we actually finished with the lowest goals scored in the top 4, and only eventually champions St Pats conceded less than us, so that's likely going to be our key area as we move forward. 





Nothing overly exciting on the transfer front. I don't know if this is a more recent thing with FM, or if it was just inflated in previous versions of the game, but clubs aren't releasing as many youngsters as they usually would? And the the ones that are available seem to have a largely inflated sense of self worth! But with money being generally tight over here, I'm not prepared to break the bank on wages for some kid that's never played a game of professional football!

So with that said, we did bring in 3 players in the summer window: Jordan McEneff rejoins the club after his release from Arsenal. A combination of his nationality and previously spending a season and a half at the club on loan definitely contributed to making this deal possible. 

Young striker Ben Andreucci joins as a backup option from Leeds, whilst Irish winger Tyreik Wright joins after previously being on the books at Aston Villa. Neither of them are going to set the world on fire, and we weren't able to replicate a coup similar to Kacper Smogol (who has started to attract some interest from the continent) but we're looking alright. There'll be some chance to look at players over the winter pre season window (it still feels weird) if we need to, but I'll need to do a bit of a squad evaluation and see where we really need to focus. 

The highlight of the season so far though, has to be...





Irish clubs in Europe ftw! We managed to make it past Maribor only to fall to Galatasary in the Champions League, before dropping into the Europa league, defeating Slovan Bratislava before once again losing to Galatasaray because why not, eh? That was enough for us to make it directly into the Conference League group stage and all the prize money that has come with it. We currently have £1.8m in the bank after spending £1.5m upgrading the youth and training facilities, which is fantastic. Two more games to play, a chance at some prize money if we can beat Ferencvarosi again and some solid home ticket revenue for when we host Napoli. Really can't ask for much more than that to end the season!

[dalenichol]

Youth Intake report:

I realise I missed this out from the update, despite having that lovely screenshot. So we ended up with 4 standouts:








None of them jump out at me as massive future stars, but they're all solid enough. I don't play with an AMC, so I'm trying to retrain murphy as a centre mid and we'll see how that goes.  I'm pleased enough with that though, the board put required emphasis on developing youth and I can definitely see these 4 making the senior squad eventually even if they don't end up setting the league on fire. 

[jawzy]

Having a young dutchman could be beneficial, though initially like you, they dont spark me with joy.
also playing gala twice seems odd?

[dalenichol]

May 2, 2022 18:28:06 GMT jawzy said:

Having a young dutchman could be beneficial, though initially like you, they dont spark me with joy.
also playing gala twice seems odd?

Yeah just luck of the draw eh? They beat us in the CL and must've went out in the next round, so after we'd dropped down to beat Slovan Bratislava, they were now in the Europa to meet us again. Bastards