Southampton - The European Dream

Southampton - The European Dream

The Targets -

• Europa League football within 2 seasons
• Domestic cup success within 2 seasons
• Europa League success within 3 seasons
• Top 4 finish with 5 seasons
• Champions League football within 5 seasons

So, for my latest game, I have decided to take control of Southampton, and go about bringing some much deserved success to a team that have quickly become a Premier League staple after only a season back in the top-flight. They have a good solid squad to work with, although a couple of areas do need strengthening. They're a challenge, as you have to find your own finances, as the board offer you nothing in the first season, which isn't surprising given the amount they spent in the summer. As it's the latest patch, I am also coping without record signing Dani Osvaldo, who is on loan at Juventus for the rest of the season. Morgan Schneiderlin wants out, and I'm lacking a left-back to offer competition for the highly-rated youngster Luke Shaw.

Disaster. First game in charge, and not only a rather disappointing 2-2 draw against Dunfermline, but 2 of my key players are injured in the first game of pre-season. Jay Rodriguez, out for 6 weeks with a sprained ankle, and talisman Rickie Lambert out for up to 2 months with a dislocated shoulder. Could've gone better. I've sold Schneiderlin off for £12m to Monaco, fans are pretty happy with that. I've also loaned in former Arsenal striker Eduardo for the season, to add some depth to my depleted strike force. Italian left-back Luca Antonelli has joined on loan from Genoa for the season, as back-up for Luke Shaw. Second game of pre-season, not much better - a 4-0 home drubbing by Viktoria Plzen. Perhaps a tinker and some transfers are needed.

If this is something people might be interested in following, i'll happily post some more? Feedback would be welcomed guys!

Pre-Season Continued & The Opening Day

Had a switch up of tactics, and a couple of new players and the team that drubbed Yeovil 8-2 looks very different to the side that was dismantled by Plzen. The 4-1 victory against Boca, also a very good result. Eduardo looks like he could be a decent signing, injury-prone but seems to be working well. Also signed Chris Wood from Leicester with my remaining transfer budget, as I want to move to a formation with 2 strikers, and Lambert still a few weeks away from full fitness. Signed Seb Larsson from Sunderland for just over £2m, very good as a RWB, and more used to that position unlike the other options in my squad.



The new formation. I find the Poacher/Target Man combo works well, although Woods is yet to have a decent game. Opening day of the season, a 2-1 victory over Arsenal thanks to a Jay Rodriguez brace. The pulled 1 back through Cazorla, but my defence held strong. Good start to the campaign, optimistic ahead of the next game vs Sunderland.

Got a great side already, be interesting to see if you can produce some of the form they had this season

A quick look at the results between August & January shows that it has not been all plain sailing on the South Coast. After a solid start, winning 5 of my first 7 games in all competitions, the 3-2 defeat at home to West Brom signaled the start of an extremely dark patch in my first season in charge. After that game, we went on a horrendous run of not being able to win any of our 8 games, and falling to defeat in 7 of those. The defence was shakey, we were conceding goals left, right & centre - the 6-3 drubbing by Liverpool and shipping 4 goals Swansea, Spurs & Chelsea during this period shows that. We topped the table after the first 3 games, winning all of them and performing well. But after this shocking run, we were flailing round the foot of the table, sinking as low as 16th. The pressure was mounting at St. Mary's, I'd been called in to a meeting with the Chief Exec and I was almost out of the door. Even the 4-2 win against Palace wasn't enough to kick-start the team's confidence. I firmly believe that we not had our little cup run to the quarter finals of the CO Cup, I would've been out by November.

The 1-0 victory at home to Everton - and incidentally, our first clean sheet in the league all season - was the start of the Southampton revival. From then on we won 6 of our next 8 league games, and managed to keep yet another clean sheet in one of them! We've made hard work of some of our games, West Ham and Hull, both floundering in and around the relegation zone, both proved more difficult than they should've been. But we've made it in to the New Year in good form, and after being given an extremely generous £21m transfer budget increase, I can now try and patch up the leakiest defence in the league.



So we're now sitting pretty in 6th thanks to our little pre-Christmas run. We're still shipping goals though, worryingly - the 7-0 defeat to United particularly bad, managed one shot at goal all game. It's thanks to defeats like that we have conceded the most goals in the league, and have a goal difference of 0. I signed German GK Tim Wiese on a free in October, he has been horrendous. Also in October, I arranged the transfer of Jose Fonte to West Ham for £1.1m, he was out of contract in the summer and I didn't want to hang on to him. Of course, since the transfer was arranged, he's been one of, if not our best defender, FM can be cruel sometimes. So with my bulging transfer budget, I have brought in Bruno Ecuele Manga from Lorient for just over £5m, as well as French 'keeper Benoit Costil, signed on a pre-contract agreement, for £1m to get him in before the summer. I have also, rather surprisingly, been able to arrange the transfer of Jeremy Menez from PSG on a free in the summer, and also have the possiblity of signing Victor Valdes and Nemanja Vidic, but their wage demands are rather too high right now.



I can't have any complaints about the attackers in my squad, we have the 3rd highest goals tally in the league, behind United & Chelsea (who thumped Fulham 10-0 earlier in the season, Diego Costa of course getting 6 of them!)

So there we are, halfway through the season and we are well in range of getting European football at the first attempt. Will update more later in the week!

good start mate and good luck be interesting to see how this Develops

Forms not expected to be sky high so its not all bad matey!

No, I guess you're right. So used to playing FM with big clubs, I don't often start with smaller teams, but I have to say I'm enjoying this!

Cheers for the comments guys, I'll keep you updated

So, as you can see from the above image, since the last update, not an awful lot has changed. Form has been mixed, we've been shipping goals, but we're still smashing them in as well. Going into the final stretch, we're well in contention for a Europa League spot, and if we win our game in hand we will go within a point of Liverpool in 5th, so I'm still confident of getting European football at the first ask. Our poor defence is still worrying me, we're still only just scoring as many as we're conceding. I've strengthened up my GK and DF, and even hired a new defensive coach in Alan Stubbs, who has a defensive coaching attribute of 18, but we're still conceding way too many goals.



My final transfers from January. Demba Ba has been poor, and Sulley Muntari has done well but is struggling to stay fit. But Benoit Costil has been a bit of a revelation. He's been quality for me so far, he's had a couple of shakey games, but he seems to have sured up my defence. As has Joleon Lescott, who was a steal at under £200k, and has an average rating of 6.89 in 11 games, contributing 2 goals. I lost Bruno Ecuele Manga for 3 months thanks to a torn hamstring after just 4 games, so Lescott was a last-minute purchase to provide cover. Annoyingly, his wages are astronomical for a player of his level, £80k p/week, which instantly made him my highest earner, £18k ahead of Gaston Ramirez, and £10k ahead of Dani Osvaldo!



Form, as seems to be expected, has been up and down. The consecutive 3-2 defeats to Liverpool & WBA were hard to take as we dominated both games and certainly deserved at least a draw in each of them, and we were also unlucky to bow out of the FA Cup at the quarter finals stage to Everton with the same scoreline. The 4-0 demolition of a a decent Newcastle side was one of the high points, as was the 1-0 win over Arsenal in the FA Cup 5th round, they sent out their schoolboy XI, so it really should've been more. The stand-out result in the Premier League has to be the 1-0 victory over Chelsea, settle thanks to a 36-yard lobbed effort from Gaston Ramirez. Incidentally, I've never played with a 'smaller' club that has totally outplayed a big team like we did vs. Cheslea. We completely dominated from start to finish, and were unlucky to only win by the one goal.



I switched up our tactics for the Chelsea game, switching to a flat 4-5-1 counter-attacking formation, which worked a lot better against one of the strongest sides than my 4-4-2 WB formation did, as it allows us to soak up the pressure and then hit them on the counter. I stuck with this formation for the trip to Goodison Park, and we tonked Everton 4-1, so it's obviously working!

So, with 7 games left, I'm hopeful that we can gain a European spot, and with the extra money that would bring in, strengthen up for European battle. But we've got 7 cup finals to play for that, so I will update you all at the end of the season!

7th Achievement would be a great position and great Capture Jack Stobbs hes a great little player hes tipped to a great player for us in a few years

good ,luck in the final 7 games

Echo what Jamie said, a top seven finish would be ace

WE DID IT! We finished 5th, and guaranteed ourselves Europa League football at the first time of asking!



First and foremost, Joleon Lescott is a goal scoring machine! The centre back notched up 4 goals in the final 8 games, and 5 in 16 overall, which is more than Demba Ba and Chris Wood managed. The whole team seemed to really pick it up in the final stretch, as we won 8 of our final 10 games, keeping clean sheets in 5 games.



Rickie Lambert was joint Premier League top scorer, along with Luis Suarez & Diego Costa, although Suarez won it on the fact he'd played less minutes throughout the season. That form won him a place in England's final WC squad, although somehow Adam Lallana, Jay Rodriguez & Luke Shaw didn't even make the initial squad.

I got set a a decent budget of £22m for the summer, although that had to be decreased due to my wage budget not being increased, but I have persuaded the board to increase my percentage of transfer revenue available up to 90%, so that's a bonus. I have already arranged the transfer of Jeremy Menez on a free from PSG, as well as loanee Luca Antonelli on a permanent deal. As well as this, I have signed Porto midfielder Fernando for a total fee of around £6m, his wages are SO low, about £11k a week, it'd be stupid not to sign him as he's a quality player. Juventus have decided to make their loan deal for Dani Osvaldo permanent, netting me £16m. I did debate holding on to him, but the bid met his release clause so it was out of my hands. I've also arranged the transfer of Jack Cork to Hull for £3.5m, and am still looking to improve the squad before our European adventure!

Well done on securing a Europa League place. Some nice additions to the squad too.

Free scoring Joleon Lescott! Well done on securing european football!

So, pre-season is done. Final changes have been made to the squad and we're ready for the PL opener against Fulham. Some decent results in pre-season, 5 wins out of 7. The Carolina Railhawks was just a training camp friendly, to start to improve the fitness, and the 3 games in Japan were a marketing thing as Tokyo Metro Feliz are one of my feeder clubs. But, the 4-1 win over Copenhagen, and the 4-4 draw against a Barca side that included Messi, Fabregas, Delofeu & Pedro were both good results.



So, as of early August, these are my inbound transfers.Delighted with them, the signings of Nemanja Vidic, Bojan Krkic & Diego showing how far we've come in a season. Getting Nemanja Matic on loan was also a cracking signing. John Guidetti is a bit of FM hero for me, especially on this version of the came, he is quality, so a steal at £1.1m. Some of the bigger deals like Vidic, Bojan & Menez have messed up my wage structure a bit, as before the Board has 90% confidence/happiness with the wage structure, and it has now dipped a bit. But getting Diego for just £40k a week was a touch, as when I scouted him originally, he would've ask for £99-£120k p/w. Can't imagine I'll be doing too many other deals, maybe looking to loan Tom Ince out as I can't guarantee him first-team football. I've also decided to loan Chris Wood out to Notts Forest. He only scored 8 goals last season, and with the arrivals of Menez, Bojan and Guidetti, as well as Lamber & Rodriguez, he wouldn't be getting enough football

I'll update you more once I'm off and underway!

Some Great Signings There Chewy And great Preseason cant Argue with a 4-4 Draw Over Barcelona

This! Be interesting to see how they gel together!

Well done on getting 5th. Fernando is a good signing, used him before and he's solid. Looks like you might have to shore up your tactics in Europe. The 4-4-2 tactic looks completely unbalanced (4-2-3-1 isn't as bad, but could certainly be tightened up). Although I suppose that's your philosophy, score more than them!

Haha, it's not meant to be my philosophy, but it seems to work. Might have a tinker before the European run in. Not had a lot of time this week so I'll update next week!

Cheers for the comments guys!

Teams starting to shape up real nice with not even much spent!

Sorry about the lack of updates, guys. I work every weekend and last week was obviously a manic one with Easter and that so I've not had the time! Got 5 days off now so will try and get more of the season done.

Right, so we left our story at the end of a fairly successful pre-season. But disappointingly, we haven't taken any of that form in to the regular season.



Safe to say, we've had a poor start to the season. Can't buy a win and players aren't performing. Still struggling to find an XI that I can use week in, week out. Players like Diego, Bojan & Nemanja Matic have seriously struggled for form, Bojan didn't score in hist first 6 games, despite regularly finding the net in pre-season. We've scored only 7 goals in out first 10 games, with no one getting having more than one goal to their name. My tactics, which had long spells of success last season, now seem to have become obsolete. Players just aren't performing, no matter what I try and tinker & change. Because of the sqauds poor form, I've chopped and changed players almost no end, I don't think I've used the same starting XI in consecutive games so far. We're currently lying 18th in the PL table, taking just 6 points from a possible 21, with Everton up next in 12 days. I might try and work out some new formations and tactics and try and them trained before then.

I've overhauled my coaching staff, sacking off some of the coaches that we're here under Pocchetino, and replacing them with the likes of Rene Meulensteen, Pim Verbeek & Richie Williams, who all have high coach attributes, to see if that can help boost the players' attributes and confiedence.

Losing to City seven nil...ouch! a very tough run there chap!

Right, first off, let's have a look at the Premier League standings a few days in to 2015...



A fair bit of improvement since the last update! After the 0-0 draw with Huddersfield, we were floundering 18th in the table, struggling to play any form of attacking football. Now, as we enter the New Year, we're 11th, 2 places behind our predicted finish of 9th, and playing some good football.



Some real stand-out performances in this run. The 3-1 victories over United & Arsenal particularly satisfying, as was the 2-1 win over Liverpool at in front of the Kop in Rafa Benitez's first game back in charge at Anfield. Thanks to the extra-time win over Arsenal, we've got ourselves in to the Semis of the Capital One Cup, where we'll face Man City. The 3-0 win over Celtic means we finish top of our Europa League group, and we've drawn Spartak Moscow in the first knockout round, with a potential trip to either BATE Borisov or Atletico in the next. The hard-fought FA Cup game against local rivals Brighton was something special, as it was won by a 92nd minute wonder-goal from 16-year-old debutant Chris Haddow, one of my re-gen youngsters.



So here's the squad going in to the New Year. John Guidetti has become my favoured striker in a 4-2DM-3-1 formation. My top scorer, he's got 8 in 20 games in all competitions. Adam Lallana & Gaston Ramirez have been in sparkling form this season, although their average ratings don't suggest that, I'd be a lot worse off without them. Nathaniel Clyne has been an absolute beast on the last couple of FM games, and on '14 is no different. My best performer this season, he was rewarded with his first England cap against Slovakia earlier on in the season. He's been the subject of a minor interest from Man City since August, but it'd take something special for me to let him go. Dejan Lovren could be on his way out in January, Bayern Munich & Juve amongst others are in for him, but again it'd take a large sum of money for me to let him go. Can't see me bringing in too many new faces in the transfer window, unless a player leaves. Unfortunately don't have the funds, but our squad is good enough to see us through the rest of the campaign.

Not doing too bad at all pal, very good in Europe

So we've had a mixed couple of months. One of the highlights obviously was the 4-0 drubbing of Everton to end a run of 5 PL games without a win. We were desperately unlucky to drop out of the Europa League on away goals to Spartak Moscow, two gash goals in injury time, one of them an OG from Johnathan Schmid, in a game we absolutely dominated was ridiculously harsh. On the opposite end of the performance scale, we were horrendous against Newcastle, completely fell apart in the 2nd half, despite going in level.

Oh, and I completed my 2nd objective, as we lifted the Capital One Cup after a 3-0 win over Spurs in front of a packed Wembley.



This also means that we've qualified for the Europa League for next season, which is a bonus as I don't think we'll finish inside the the qualifying places given our league form.

Our January transfers...



Sean St. Ledger was brought in just as back-up as Dejan Lovren went to Bayern Munich for £12.5m. Luca Ante is a highly-rated Italian u-21 centre back, looks an exciting prospect. As does Solly March, a bargain signing from Brighton, got a 4-star potential. Steven Jovetic on loan has been a good little signing, out of favour at City and with an agree future fee of something like £5m so he could be a great signing. My Brazilian attacking midfielder Diego has departed back to Brazil with Gremio until the end of 2015. Had a bust up with him on the final day of the transfer window so he was out on his ear. Jeremy Menez on the other hand, has come into his own over the last few games. I transfer listed him back in November after a poor run of form, but I bought him back into the first team with Diego departing, and his put in some cracking performances.



The PL table as we go in to March. Not having as good a season as we did last year, but a good run for us over the next few games could really boost the players to finish on a similar level as we did last year!

Congrats on beating Spuds in the final

Yeah well done on the Capital One Cup Final but unlucky losing in Europe on away goals!

Unlucky with Europe, made up with the Cup though!

Well, safe to say I'm glad this season is over. It has been the most frustrating last few months of a season I've ever had on FM. Here's a quick look to see why



So, since the last update, we only managed to win 3 games. THREE GAMES! IN ALMOST THREE MONTHS! And perhaps even more infuriating than that, the games against United, QPR, Liverpool, Arsenal, Stoke & the FA Cup semi-final against City were all drawn or lost from me being in a winning position. Most of those games I was 2-0, or 2-1 up, and yet we didn't manage to win a single one of them. Unbelievable. But on the plus side, we got to another cup semi-final, and despite spunking away a lead, reaching the FA Cup semi was a big task, and we took a few scalps along the way. Despite our poor run of form, our final day 2-1 over Villa gave us enough points to finish in the top half of the table.



A bit of a disappointing season, especially after finishing 5th last year. But we've got European football for another season, so that's a bonus.

As far as the squad is concerned, there will be a big overhaul in the summer. Boruc, St. Ledger, Schmid, Matic & Jovetic will all be leaving due to the end of their contracts/loan deals. Fernando has already agreed a deal to move to Inter Milan in the summer, and Jeremy Menez & Victor Wanyama will probably also be on their way out, as they don't like my methods! I've already arranged the transfers of Will Hughes from Derby and Zakaria Bakkali from PSV, and I'll hopefully get the funds to improve the squad even more!

Here's to a more successful season, and I'll update in pre-season!

So, here's our pre-season and early season games. Some good performances, barring the games against Sivasspor & QPR. The opening game of pre-season was really encouraging, a 4-2 victory over the newly-crowned Champions of Europe, Porto. and two solid wins over Vaduz in the Europa Legye qualifying should've set us up for a good start to the Premier League season. But, FM can be a harsh mistress sometimes, and we ended up shipping a 2-0 lead against QPR and needed a late goal from Bojan to snatch a 3-3 draw.

Here's the new additions to the squad so far this summer:



As you can see, not a lot of major investment. I've got a big squad, and have decided to try and adopt the Louis van Gaal approach and focus more on the youth squad rather than blowing money on big foreign names. Will Hughes was a no-brainer of a signing, Derby are now floundering in League 1, and were more than happy to cash in on Hughes, who has always been brilliant for me on the FM games. Tom Huddlestone was also a smart signing, adding some more bite to the my midfield, as I decided not to take up the buy option on Nemanja Matic's loan deal. Andrea Pirlo was a bit of an impulse buy, at 36, he's probably only got one decent season left in him, but he's a big-name player, and for £600k, you can't really argue. Connor Wickham, Yann Sommer & Elliot Hewitt were all free transfers just to help bulk out my squad, and Tomas Kalas was a cheap buy to help provide cover for my slightly injury-prone centre backs. Zakaria Bakkali has a 4&half star rating, and has played a lot for PSV, so he's providing competition for Lalla/Rodriguez/Ramirez/Bojan out wide.

A few big-name exits this summer, Victor Wanyama has flown off to Gladbach, Fernando departed to Inter Milan after just a season, and Jeremy Menez was sold to Cardiff. All had become a bit frustrated with lack of playing time and poor performances, so the smart decision was to sell them now.

We've got Hamburg SV in the Europa League Play-off game next, a tough ask, but I'm confident we can beat them.

So now you're up to date with the beginning of the 2015/16 season, I'll update again soon!

Pirlo