Addickted To Winning (A Charlton story) IIIIIIIII

Gonna play for a bit tonight, first game is a 1-0 win over Porto, Borges goal. 26 league games unbeaten now, only real targets for this year are the CL and getting money into the bank for a new stadium.

Slew of contracts up at the end of this season, so I'm gonna wade my way through the shite and retain my hottest prospects.

Champions League recap. Since the CL win I've usually coasted through the group stages and then got absolutely thrashed in the Quarters, step one of that process is complete;








Hard group on paper but no real difficulties, I rotated the squad just to keep things fresh. Kasapis is my normal starting GK but he picked up two injuries in quick succession. van der Ende has come in and done great, if I can be bothered I'll post up some of the more interesting player histories from my squad. Some of my players have lovely stories to tell.

Looking at the squad and some of the youngsters available to me I think I might have a bit of a cull this summer. Its a possibility at this point, don't put her on lock. Would give the squad a new face and a new feel, will also give all of you a chance to get to know the team.

I think that's another thing that keeps thing fresh, I keep rejuvenating the team and it begins to feel like managing a whole new club.

Really hard CL draw, not had the best of it against Man City when I have played them. Hoping for some Borges magic.

What kind of state are your finances in now? Wage expenditure?

And have they built you a new stadium?

Have about £70m in the bank, sources of income are CL money and player sales. If I do cull the squad I will easily pull in 100m+ with transfers.

Wages are a 1.1m a week, Porto are on 60m a year so are slightly ahead of me on wages. In third place Sporting are on 26m, so its a two horse league.

Stadium wise I got my current stadium in 2066, board still think that was too recent to merit a new one. But we really need it, we need a 60k or 70k stadium, could make a killing on CL match days with sellouts of that size.

Halfway stage, league is wrapped up. Becomes a question of can we go unbeaten?

Also coasted through my League Cup group, straight into the Semis.

Good luck against Man City.

Do you have a plan like how long a player can stay at the club for before they get sold?

Players used to stay for four years as I'd always hand out five year deals and sell the players instead of giving them new deals heading into the last year of their deal. This was because I didn't want an inflated wage bill and I liked keeping the squad fresh.

Now I sell players when a good price comes in or just when I get bored of them. For example, I signed an Egyptian MC two years back, great player, got him for 2m, heading into this season he was to be my starting MCR. Out of nowhere Man City bid 44m for him at the very end of the window, since it was a great price and I had younger MCs at the club I let him go. If this had been last years FM I would have kept him no matter what, I used to keep my players no matter how much money came in for them. Now I see the value in selling, obviously your club gets good money but it also helps keep the squad fresh and therefore the game fresh.

Not bad plan. When it comes to selling them, do you double their value as asking price or whatever they valued at?

Judge it myself, I set every player in the first team squad an asking price. The highest right now is Borges on 65m, I like to keep it semi-realistic though. If you set backups at £50m you'll hardly get any bids, concrete or speculative. So if I have a backup player who is a good age and valued at £8m, I'll ask for £20m+.

Into early February now, just offered a few first teamers out without transfer listing them, trying to see what kind of bids I can attract. Pretty committed to a squad rehaul this summer, may even move towards Nationalistic Management just to add a little more to the fun.

So whose your 'The BIGUN' in this series ye cunt.

There was, is and forever shall be, only one BIGUN. But we do have three players close to my heart;

1. Carlos Santos, played 550 games for me and played until he was about 41. His whole career was spent in the third division with me.
2. Pedro Miguel, first real talent our academy brought through. Has a contract for life.
3. Armindo Borges, the best player talent wise to ever play for the club, has scored some important goals. Will make a pretty buck once I cash in.

Great read Skacel.

Game crashed, she's getting slower and slower. Back to weekly autosaves, should have the season finished regardless come Sunday.

Obviously an absolutely huge result, the ball is most definitely in our court for the return.

Heading into my game I lost my usual starting RB, Kristo, to a four week injury, so Ladic had to come in and he played a great game.

The game before the return is a home game against Arouca who are bottom of the table, so it means I can rest my players and everyone should be fully fit to play, and see off City.

3-1 league defeat to 4th placed Belenenses, first defeat in 36 league games, only two games off Porto's record.

Hard to believe City still haven't built a new stadium!

Its because I haven't loaded the EPL, always annoys me that in FM. If you don't load a league it goes nigh on untouched, nothing changes. Would be nice if rep changes took place and new stadiums could be built in non-loaded leagues. Or at the very least in the major leagues in each continent.

Porto are determined to make a title race out of things, 12 wins in 14 games, dropped points to us and Sporting.

Standard game, no worries, no hiccups. Surprised how well we managed to coast through the City games, lets hope for a nice QF draw.

Porto have a 3-1 agg lead over Juventus, hopefully they see that through, its all good for the Portuguese coefficient. We're currently third in the rankings but Germany are due to overtake us next year, so we need some good European runs from the domestic clubs.

6-0 League Cup semi final win against Guimaraes sets up a final with Sporting.

CL draw has also come through, we have Barcelona, Porto have got Madrid. Far from ideal. Barca have three of four of my ex players as well, five quid on Mark Urban scoring a free kick against me.

A shifting of Iberian power.

Two huge results, for us Mogi tore it up. Normally I'd play him from AML but I fancied him at AMR for this game due to Pedro Miguel being iffy lately and my distaste for Chokito. What a game he had, a goal in the the first minute and he won our penalty.

Semi-interesting side note; both of Chelsea's goal scorers are products of the Mirandela academy and Man Utd's scorer played for us for a good few seasons.

Porto away in the league next, if we we win, we win the title.

Played a rotated squad and they got the job done, another CL game where the opposition cause us next to no problems.

We play Man Utd in the Semis and Porto will play Chelski. Would love an all Portuguese final, if we got Porto and I dicked them, I'd probably move straight into an FM14 career.

League Cup in the bag, 1-0 win over Sporting in the final.

Been looking over the squad and thinking about possible ways to reshape and rebuild. I think I might let go of some experienced pros as well as some of the younger players, just for a total refresh. Players like Alvarado and Pedro Miguel have been here for well over a decade, but it could be time to move them on.

You followed through and continued the save. Well done, Rossy boy.

Latest update: I may download an FM13 skin.

Well I certainly didn't see that coming, I can only put it down to me switching to the FM13 dark skin. This obviously unsettled my players and handed Manchester United a huge advantage.

Huge work to turn over the first leg defeat, but home advantage could power you forward!