Europe, from A to Z (or W, actually)

What a brilliant start you've made to life at Redbull! The cup runs on and the league is back in with a chance! you could do it this season!

Wow, great work getting that job and you could be out of Austria in no time.

8.5million transfer is just wow for that league!

Thanks Dan and BOWC, 8.5 M is about 8.49 M more than I had with Lustenau. So it wasn't very hard with this team. Thanks for reading and commenting, guys!
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As the league was nearing its end it was all about four teams. With 4 matches to go we all had 60 points (+/- 1), and things looked like they would slip out of my hands as we not only lost at home against Sturm Graz, we also got our goalkeeper and two starting central defenders injured for the rest of the season. But my old friend, Swedish veteran keeper Eddie Gustafsson, 39, played the last games of his career with total confidence. And as the other teams stumble, we did not.







In Eddie’s final match, where he was named captain, he lifted the ÖFB Cup trophy after an overtime goal by Salbitzer.

Austria is completed; I will now hunt Dan and Shedender in the Belarusian leagues.

Auf Wiedersehen Österreich! - Добры дзень Беларусі!

Top work in Austria pal! Maybe a season behind but its the first hurdle down, did you pre load Belarus? if not you have to go through what me and shedender did and wait till february to start Belarus and then the cups come in the year afte

Cheers! I did actually load Belarus at new year, as I was hoping on moving there during summer/early autumn. And by September 2016, I've already got myself a new job! I will write about it tomorrow, hopefully.

well done on beating austria

Thanks zan!
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I have landed safe and sound in Belarus, and directly I saw a job opening – Granit. But when I saw that it was a semi-professional club, I hesitated, there was some professional clubs where managers seemed too be on the verge of getting sacked, so I turned them down. My next target was Pinsk. They sacked their manager after I declared my interest in the job, I applied for the job, but they never returned my call…
A week later things happened fast. Another manager with a status of “very insecure” – I declared interest, he got sacked, I applied, I got the job!
I am now the manager of:





Looking at Dan’s and Shedender’s careers, Khimiki looks like a top team, if it wasn’t for the fact that almost half the team are out injured, I would be totally thrilled. Now I’m just thrilled…

Pinsk is still without manager.

Good luck in Belarus mate, as you said, in mine and Shedender's careers Svetlegorsk have been up the top end of the table, could be on to a winner here, what date did you get the job? are you waiting for the season to come around? Also could you look at the cup draw and see when it takes place, mine and Shedender's didn't come into play till 2017 despite us taking control in 2016

I joined Khimiki in September 2016, now I am in November with two matches left to play. No cup until 2017 here either. It might have something to do with Belarus starting the season in the spring and ending in December.

My first couple of months in Belarus have been quite all right. After the first 21 games Khimiki was in 12:th position, after my 9 matches we landed a respectable 8:th place with only 8 points to the top.





Now I will leave my computer for the entire holiday, and will rebuild this Khimiki squad next year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody!

Some great form there since taking over buddy! Good luck with the rebuild next year

Have a good one!

good luck at Khimik buddy

Nice carrer so far, completing Austria already.

Good luck in Belarus.

Thanks a lot, Dan, Zan and To_Madeira for following. One more week of holiday, then I will start playing again.

I'm back on FM and Susie and I really like this career. Following it! Cheers mate.

You have very nice career going on mate. I surely will follow it. Good luck!

Welcome back to the site and the game, pisto, and thanks for following!
Thanks lico, glad you like it. Hope you keep reading and posting.
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After a perfect start with a good preseason and three straight victories and no goal conceded and a Syrokvashko on fire, things were looking really good for Khimiki. Then our fortune change in the Slutsk match. It started as usual with Syrokvashko scoring two to give us a 2-0 lead after the first half, but the second half was horrible, and we let the Slutsks score two easy goals to tie the game.

Then it continued that way, we just couldn’t pick up wins anywhere. Only one defeat, but no wins in 6 matches. The only thing that stayed the same was Syrokvashko. The 32 year old striker scored 6 goals in 25 games last season, and has never scored more than 11 goals in a season, now he’s netted 16 times in 15 matches!

Our goalkeeper didn’t really impress me, so after the two 3-3 games, as the transfer window opened, I decided it was time for action. The Smorgon keeper Vladimir Zhurov had only conceded 3 goals in 9 matches and I used my whole transfer budget (9K) to bring him to Svetlogorsk. The best thing with this deal was that we faced Smorgon the day after his arrival, leaving them without their number 1. He kept a clean sheet against his old team and didn’t concede until his fourth match, when Torpedo’s Yakubovskiy scored after 12 minutes.

We finally lost, as we couldn’t stand up to league leaders Vitebsk with Bokhan sent off early in the second half.



With half the season played, we’re 3:rd in the league, and promotion does not seem unrealistic. The league is very tight and a couple of wins will see us sail up, but a some more bad results and we’re mid-table.

Got off to a flyer mate and looking very good at the halfway stage in the league! I'm sure promotion will be yours!

Looking good itchycoo! Belarus will not be a problem for you!

Well done on the strong start, keep that up and you will be fine

Despite a pretty decent second half of the season we couldn’t cope with Vitebsk’s 9 straight victories and Torpedo’s unbeaten run of 12 matches.





And after a loss in our historic first Cup final, I feel I need a break from this. I don’t really enjoy the FMC mode either. I might return here later on, we’ll see.

Thanks to everyone who has read and commented in this thread.

I do hope this isn't the end pal, but I understand with the whole 'FMC' problem. It does annoy me to!

FMC mode is indeed a step back to the older FM games. You get speed and lose control over your team. I takes a different approach to manage a team in FMC. I also play FMH (handheld) and that's also completely different. There is scouting and training so much different and still it can be fun to play with.

I hope you will continue the run (or start a new one in normal mode) because I enjoy reading these stories with there successes and luckely also failures. Because you won't enjoy successes if you never fail once in a while.

I agree, it takes a different approach to the game, and I have enjoyed it from time to time. But in the end of this season, that was very tight, I missed the team talks and the closer feeling you get to your team in the "real" mode. I don't really mind not winning every year. And I certanly enjoy reading about other peoples "failure" (even if I do enjoy reading about Dan's success as well ) However, our season was productive - reaching the cup final is huge for a second division club. The squad needs a re-haul, though. Most of my top players are 32-33 years old - and here I would love to send out some scouts...

Well well, we'll see. Now I'm managing in Chile - a parallell game with Bloodshed, let's see how that turns out.
And thanks Dan for the constant comments, I'll keep following your and Shedende's march through Europe!

such a shame, I cant stand FMC!

While managing in Chile, I got some ideas for how to play Khimiki, so I just had to try them out. And this is how we fared:






My first Belarusian trophy in the cabinet (though it’s not a trophy, really). That leaves me thinking about not aiming for ALL the trophies in Europe but only the top league one. To be able to say, “I’m the champion of Austria, Belarus, Belgium…” etc, and not care about the lower leagues and cups. We’ll see.

To my delight Syrokvashko continued his impressive form from last season by scoring 29 goals in 30 matches including the two winning goals in the play offs.

And here he is:

fantastic to see this back alive and promotion mate!

Thanks Dan! Maybe I need a break from FMC time to time...
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Going into our first season in the highest league we needed to strengthen the team. And with no money we need to find free players. And I can tell you, finding free players that want to join Khimik Svetlogorsk who are good enough to play in the top division in Belarus ain’t easy. So I went through all the teams in the league to see whom they released. So now I’ve got a team mainly consisting of BATE, Soligorsk and Dynamo Minsk rejects. Lovely.

But they did their job brilliantly the first third of the season.





Then I realized that now that we are in the highest league we are allowed to sign foreigners! I immediately signed three exotic guys, two from Russia and one from Ukraine!

Great first half of the season! You could be in with a shot of the title but just competing for a high finish will do you wonders!

Going well mate, looks good that your back playing!