[FM24] Thundercats Ho!

Thunder… thunder… thunder… Thundercats Ho!!!!!!

What more needs to be said lol

Following on from my first post about what needs to be said, well there really isn't much to say about this team, they play at the bottom of the Northern Mariana Island football pyramid, they play on a primary school pitch with room for only five hundred spectators and they don't even have any players. I can't do much about the team's station in life or their facilities just yet, but one thing I can fix, is the somewhat empty roster.

I joined the team at the start of August, I have just two months to assemble a squad and get them ready for the new season, I have every faith in my ability to build this team from the ground up, I have faith that I can mould them into a competitive outfit, and I have faith that we can win our group and gain promotion to the Second Division. 

[The reason I have faith is because this will not be my first time doing this, I previously managed this team back on FM21 and managed to get them up to the First Division thanks to back to back promotions, still, this is a different game and no-doubt, I will have different players this time around, so who knows what will happen.]

Pre-season is over, we picked up some big wins and one rather embarrassing defeat, the team I've put together will hopefully win us the league, just so long as I don't go with the tactics I used in that last friendly.

Our first team squad for the forthcoming season, on the surface it doesn't look that great going by the star ratings alone, you would be forgiven for thinking we just have two star players and a bunch of mediocre-at-best guys [but when you consider that most of the other teams in the NMI have only greyed-out players, we now have a strong advantage, especially when you also consider that this squad, including the youth team players, is now larger than all the other teams in this territory combined, hell, you could probably throw Guam in there as well, the joys of managing in obscure nations lol.]

Below I have have the profile pages for some of our better players, they won't look like much to most people, but here in the third tier of the Northern Mariana Islands, these guys should make a serious impact as we attempt a rapid rise through the divisions.

Ten games into our Division 3 season, we find ourselves, not entirely unexpectedly, in first place in group B. We have dominated the league so far and I am confident we can continue to do so for some time yet to come. With the strength of our squad right now, I would be devastated should we not end the season in this position, even losing a game would be highly disappointing.

Thundercats are crowned champions in the Northern Mariana Islands M.League - Division 3 Group B, winning the league with six games still to play.

Thundercats end the 2023/2024 season unbeaten, winning twenty-six out of twenty-eight games and drawing the remaining two. Along the road to victory, we racked up an impressive tally of one hundred and fifteen goals and only conceded twenty-eight, leaving us with a goal difference several times better than any of our nearest rivals.

While we lifted the trophy in Group B, Sun Palace won Group A, and will join us in promotion to Division 2. I had hoped the Women's National Team might have been the team to join us in moving up, but alas, despite leading their group at one point, they fell behind in the final few games and couldn't manage it this time around.

It's normally an impressive feat for a Division 3 side to reach the final of a main national cup and for both teams in the final to be from that level, is almost unprecedented, that said, this is the Northern Mariana Islands in FM where most teams have either just a couple of players or none at all, so really it wasn't that much of a challenge. As the only team with a full squad of players, it was only natural that not only would we reach and win the final, but we would also dominate in the league as well.

As you can see by our results, we had some quite large wins over some of our opponents, annoyingly however, though we went undefeated in both the league and cup, we lost a random friendly that breaks up an otherwise rather nice looking wall of green circles.

Moving onto next season, the plan is to do it all again, I'm aiming to win Division 2 and possibly even the Marianas Cup, a perfectly reasonable and achievable aim that will only be prevented by either a fluke loss in the cup or if the opposition teams can start making some serious improvements to their line-ups.

In terms of long-term goals, the plan is to reach and win Division 1, after that, I might make the move to Guam or possibly seek fame and fortune elsewhere, perhaps at a higher level.

The 2024/2025 season is now underway in the Northern Mariana Islands.

At the Thundercats, we have improved our squad a little over the pre-season break, our friendlies went okay but the first match was not our finest hour, losing to a reserve team from Guam 5-3, though in my defence, we did get two players sent off in the first half.

To improve the squad on the field, we have signed a new goalkeeper John Bucayo from MP Utd, Chan Wai Hin a centre/right-back from the Chelsea Soccer School in Hong Kong, and two wingers, Devan Mendiola who can play on either side of the field and Ashton McMahon who can also play up front.

Aside from the new players, we have also revamped our back-room staff, replacing the assistant manager, head of youth development, the goalkeeping coach, the director of football, chief scout and both the head physio and our regular physio. Hopefully this new line-up in the backrooms will allow us to maintain and develop our playing staff more efficiently and it is my hope, that we can see some improvements down the line both in terms of squad development and improved youth prospects in the next few intakes.

On the field, we kicked off our first game of the season in style, absolutely thumping Bangladesh FC 8-0, our next game is against Island Star and it will be interesting to see if we can do this again.

Right now, the media have us predicted to finish in seventh place out of ten teams but I'm going to assume the media are as clueless as the players in the Northern Mariana Islands lol I'm fully intending for us to try and win the league and I am fairly confident we will be there or thereabouts. My main concern is down to the fact that there is only one promotion spot, so if another team goes on a winning or unbeaten run, they might well challenge us for that spot, that said, I firmly believe we are the best team in the league and our win in the Marianas Cup last season does go a long way in proving that.

The next update in this save will be at the half way point.

With most of our squad being called up to the national team, we might need to call on the janitors and catering staff to play in our next league game lol.

We've now reached the halfway point in the 2024/2025 season, as things stand, we're currently top of the league with a three point lead over Saipan Utd.

At first, we were playing great football, winning the first game 8-0, followed by three 4-0 wins and a 6-0, that's five games without conceding a single goal, the last four games however, we have conceded eight goals and two of our matches ended in a draw. As we move onto the second half of the season, and with new players joining us, I'm hoping to try and get things back to how they were at the start, I want us to hit another nice run of wins if we can and see out the season as champions.

As far as transfers go, I am delighted to welcome Singaporean legend Shahril Ishak to the side, he will take up a place in the centre of midfield and add some much needed experience and leadership to the side.

Joining us along with Shahril Iskah are two Malaysian players, right-winger Wan Muhd Aqil Hakimi Wan Ahmad Hazmi and centre-back Muhd Faris Akmal Azman. The former joins us from Malaysian University F.T. and the latter is a former player of Kelantan United in the Liga Super Malaysia.

The 2024/2025 season has come to a close and as expected, my Thundercats team lifted the Division 2 trophy, gaining promotion to Division 1, the highest level in the Northern Mariana Islands.

As you can see from the league table, we went unbeaten, winning fourteen games and drawing four, with last season included as well, we are now undefeated in the league for two whole seasons.

Now when I started the game, most of the teams in the Northern Mariana Islands had no real players and their squads were made up mostly or entirely of greyed out players, my team on the other hand, while starting out the same, was boosted greatly by me offering contracts to all the greyed out players and working them hard in training to improve their skills, and then bolstering the squad with some real players which we poached from other teams in the league or from teams in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

By having a more complete squad than the rest of the competition, we have at time, walked over the opposition, but now that we are a couple of seasons in, and with other teams having had two youth intakes, their rosters are starting to fill out somewhat, going forward, what this means is that we should start to face more serious competition and perhaps next year, we might even lose our first game in the league, hopefully not but it could happen. Despite the improvements in the other teams around the territory, I am confident that we can still do well next year, even in the higher level and it is my aim, to challenge for the Division 1 title and make it a clean sweep of the domestic leagues.

As far as my plans go, in the short-term, I'm going to look to strengthen the senior team, we are going to lose Ko Pak Yu who is going back to Hong Kong to join Central & Western, as such, replacing him will be a priority. The second choice for his position could take over and I think he is probably the best local player in his role, but we are going to need another player in the left-back position just in case of injury or fitness issues.

Aside the left-back position, I would also like to possibly improve the centre of midfield and the right back positions. As far as the central midfielders go, we have two fairly decent players who are better than what any of the other teams have, but compared to some other players in our own team, they are among the weaker players in our typical starting line-up, I'm not likely to find improvements locally, but I think we can find somebody suitable in the lower levels of Hong Kong, Singapore or Malaysia that would be willing to join us. For the right back position, I have one guy from Hong Kong who is good enough for the starting XI but he is more proficient as a centre-back, the second choice is reasonable and has played well for us when called upon, but like our first choice, he is a centre-back that has been retrained so I would like to find somebody that can play the role more proficiently, I need a natural full/wing-back.

For other changes to the team, I might look to thin out what is currently a fairly sizable under 18's team. The youth intake from my first season at the team was not a particularly good one and the more recent intake has provided a much better crop of youngsters with some of them looking to have the potential to one day make the senior team. The senior team too is a little large, so there could well be one or two fringe players that are cut from our roster over this coming pre-season period.

My next update is likely to be at the end of pre-season and then after that, at the halfway mark, as per usual.

Two and a half seasons now and still undefeated, just ten more games to go in order to make it three, and if things carry on as they have done, we should be lifting the M.League - Division 1 title at the end of the season, at which point, we will have won all three divisions back to back.

In my first season at the club, we managed to lift the Marianas Cup despite being in the third tier, last season for some reason we didn't enter so we weren't able to defend the title, this season however, we are back and right now, we are through to the semi-final against Sun Palace from the league below (the team that gained promotion from the third tier with us in the first season).

After losing Ashton McMahon on a free transfer to Sydenham Park during pre-season, I am pleased to be able to welcome him back, he had a fairly decent spell back in Australia and I wasn't sure he would be interested in returning, I just happened to check the transfer market and it became apparent we would have a chance at bringing him back to the team. Right now, we don't really need another left-winger as I already found two suitable replacements for him after he left, but I'm sure we can find a role for him over the second half of the season.

Disappointingly we have lost our captain Anthony Fruit on a free transfer to German side FC Gundelfingen, we did manage to persuade him to turn down a number of offers from other sides in the lower leagues of Germany (5th-6th tiers), but in the end, it was a loosing battle. I did wonder at first how they even knew about him, given that I can't imagine many German sides would be interested in scouting a tiny island nation that is literally the lowest ranked nation in Asia (in fact we are unranked) but it turned out he played there for a couple of seasons. At the point of his leaving, the transfer window for us in the NMI was already closed so we will have to wait until start of next season before we can replace him.

And that's it, we're officially done with the 2025/2026 season, not only are we champions of the M.League - Division 1, but we also got to lift the trophy high in the final of the Marianas Cup once more, our second time doing so since I became manager of the Thundercats.

Starting at the bottom of the Northern Mariana Islands footballing pyramid with no players on the books, we have now won back to back promotions, winning both Divisions 3 and 2, then on our first attempt, we have won the highest division, a marvellous achievement when you also take into consideration that we are still unbeaten in the league after three years.

The game that saw us crowned champions of the Northern Mariana Islands, we were losing the game 2-0 at one point but a strong fight back saw us not only go level, but we even managed to take the lead for a while, only to end the match 3-3 thanks to a late equaliser from Paire FC.

Just like in our first year under my management, the final of the Marianas Cup saw us facing off against a team from Division 3. I had ever confidence that we would manage to beat Bangladesh Youth but they actually managed to take the lead in the second half, luckily my team are not easy pushovers and after communicating my displeasure and making a few alterations, we came back strong, scoring four goals in reply.

There were a few times during the season where I thought we might pick up our first loss, perhaps because of skill and determination and more than our fare share of luck, we managed to pull back to a draw or even win the matches were the opposition scored first.

The question now… what next. If I stay another year, we have the AFC Cup to content with, I don't expect to get very far in that competition but even entering it, will make for an interesting challenge. Alternatively, I could look to move onto a new challenge and that is perhaps the option I am most considering at the moment. Naturally, a move on to Guam would be of interest to me, but failing that, I could either try my hand elsewhere in Asia or look to move back to Europe, given the reputation I no doubt have from managing in such a low ranked league/nation, I can't imagine I'll be in huge demand, but I might be able to pick up a job in say Wales or Ireland, whatever happens, right now it's a case of looking to see what comes up in the job market over the post-season period.