Toffee Anyone? Take 2

So as stated in my previous failed attempt at this career i've become the Everton manager replacing Mr David Moyes in a quest to take top spot in the Hall of Fame.

I'm now about to start my 4th season as the manager of the Toffees and he's a quick look back at how i've done.

Season 1


Season 2


Season 3


Not been doing amazingly well in the league finishing 9th, 8th and 8th although that's mainly been to my team turning to shit after January and i reckon i could have finished in the top 4 during the 3rd season had Fellaini not got a 2 month long lay off with a torn hamstring.

Having underperformed in the league i have had some success in winning the Capital One Cup during the second season.


I've brought in quite a few players since i took over but here's the players who are still at the club that i've brought:
Mattia Destro, Ademileson, Adryan, Wellington Nem, Fabio, Vladimir Weiss, Simáo, Ruben Yttergard Jenssen and Jack Butland.

Ok so after reviewing the start of the career it's time to push on with the future!

Transfers for the start of season 4:


I decided to bring in Coentrao as i'm short of Full Backs and had to use Fabio as cover at both RB and LB last season with only having Coleman for RB and Baines for LB.
I then brought in Torres as i'm building my midfield for the future and also as i wasn't sure that Fellaini would sign a new contract as his was up at the end of the coming year. (He has now signed a new 4 year deal )
Finally I brought in Rodrigo on loan from Man United as i'm going to be playing a new formation this season which includes Wingers and i only had Nem as a decent AML.


Here's the team that will hopefully be challenging for the CL places this year. I'm happy with the players although I didn't have enough for a new CB but i'm converting Simao to play there as cover due to his high defensive stats. Also i'm looking forward to watching my 2 top quality regens improve again this season.

ST - Kruno Conjar - This kid has it in his locker to be top class, his Technical and Mental stats are brilliant for his age and i'm trying to get him to improve his quickness but having him train as a Poacher as i'm hoping he'll improve his pace and his striking stats at the same time.


GK - Bevan O'Toole - This is another kid who is destined for great things, unlike Conjar he came through Everton's own youth team, I will say that he did fuck me off though as he came into the youth team in the March after i had signed Butland and his stats aren't too dissimilar.


And finally here are the 2 formations i shall be championing this season:





Both of these tactics are from online, i tried using my own and nothing worked, i imagine that at some point in the season i will be making my own again as i really prefer using 2 strikers.

And that's everything for now so i'll be getting on with it and i shall post an update in 2 months time! (In game )

Fantastic this so far mate! Making progression in the league so its good to see a proper career like that!¬ Well done on the cup success too!

Your young croatian striker looks very promising!

Yeah he's hopefully gonna be the future of the club in years to come, I played him in the EL last season as part of a 4-3-3 and he got 4 goals against Nordsjaelland in a 6-2 victory

So since the last update i was supposed to go until the end of October for this post but i got a bit carried away and ended up going until the end of November / start of December.



As you can see we've had a hit and miss start to the season, we played well against Burnley and Reading in the league and also against Sheffield United in the cup but have been unable to beat the big teams in the league this is due to that spawn of satan............the 4-2-3-1 with wingers added with my teams inability to defend set pieces even with the Def. Set Pieces training set to high.

the only other result that is worth a mention is the 4-0 drumming we took at Blackburn as they were using a generic 4-4-2 and matter what we did we just couldn't get going or even stop them from playing. I'm pretty sure they got 2-3 or their goals from corners or IDF's with is a bit of a pain in the ass considering the problems i've already mentioned with the set pieces.

I'm thinking of trying a new defensive / counter formation when playing against 4-2-3-1 in which i shall have a flat back 5 with a DM in front set to tight man marking of the AMC and then having 2 wingers man mark the opposition FBs and then a an AMC and a Poacher to try and nick us a goal.



Our league position isn't the best but i'm hoping to get wins against the teams around us and below us and try and nick some draws off of the top teams and hopefully we'll push on for a Euro place but the end of the season.

The next update shall come after the end of January and will include any business is make in the transfer window.

Sitting in a decent enough league position pal and still on the cup run! Keep it going!

That's for the support Dan, hopefully our luck in the second half of the season is gonna change!

Transfers

I'm not gonna bother with a screenshot of the transfers as it's pretty much useless for this time of the year for my Everton team the only really big news is that i sold Vladimir Weiss to FC Bayern for an nice £12M and finally decided to let Tim Howard move on as even my assistant manager won't put him in the squad let alone team so he went to West Brom i believe.

I wasn't able to do much with the money though as the board saw fit to only allocate my 45% of the transfer fees and that was after some persuasion but i did manage to find 2 young players to bring in the first i have really high hopes for is this lad.



At only 16 he already has some great defending stats, i saw him just after the summer market closed and tried to get him then but I only had £1M then and they wanted at least $2.5M, also he was a CB then not a DM but nevermind i eventually got him for £4.2M and was applauded for getting him so cheaply!

Second lad to be joining us is.



This lad is another to be joining us from Koln, he's got some alright stats and is joining for free at the end of his current contract and should provide form cover / competition in the right midfield slot with a regen from my own youth system.



The last piece of transfer news is about another player that is set to join the club he's been on a pre-contract for about 2 years nearly and shall be joining from Argentina in the summer.



Another quality looking CB regen and i was after this player since he spawned but for about a year he was refused a permit and then i scouted him one day and boom it said permit would be accepted on appeal and so i snapped him up, i'm hoping he's gonna from a great defensive partnership with Leeuw in a few seasons time.

Results and League Position

During the last update i mentioned about our goal of trying to steal some points via draws from the "Top" teams and i think in the last 2 months we've managed to do this.



2 fantastic victories against the 2 Manchester clubs plus a respectable draw against the Gunners has helped us to keep place with the teams around us and leaves us 7 points form the final CL place.



Our change in form comes from a new formation i made to try and combat the 4-2-3-1 used by the bigger teams, i first used it against Man Utd and then changed back to a 4-1-2-2-1 but after the loss to Swansea i decided to go back to it and in the 8 games since going back we've won 6, drawn 2, had 4 clean sheet and scored 16 while conceding only 5 so it's working so far.

And here is the tactic in question.



I'm probably gonna stick with it now until the end of the season and hopefully we'll have a crack at Europe next season and possibly even the CL..........well you can dream, can't you

You seem to be finding some top regens matey! They could develop into ace players for you! Nice to see you reach the cup final to! Tottenham are beatable!

Yeah they do look pretty tasty, my regen Keeper that came through the youth team is now stats wise better than Butland and has become a wonderkid by description.

Yeah Tottenham are probably the easiest of the big clubs but they have got some good players, they've still got Bale but brought Subotic, Lucas Leiva, Tom Cleverley, Sime Vrsajlko, Tiote and Douglas Costa

Basically this season was one of hit and miss. My main goal for the season was to challenge for a place in Europe and to be honest we gave it a bloody good go but as so often seems to be the case on this new version of Football Manager the FM gods were against us.

Now before i go on to the rest of this post I would just like to take a moment and voice my own opinions on the ME, first of all I like it there are a few bugs but there few and far between compared to the release version but my main issue is that of the AI tactics. I don't like that every AI team can learn your tactics if you use them for more than 5 games where as the AI for your own team can't.

Case i point during my season i played Man Utd twice, the first time i used a brand new tactic i made which was 5-1-2-1-1 and got them on the counter and won 2-1. The second match i used that tactic and went into half time 1-0 down with 0 shots at all and about 30% possession so i switched to a more attacking 4-2-3-1 that i hadn't used since my second season and it was worse with the score eventually ending 3-0. On the other hand Man Utd have used the same tactic since the start and my players still can't get close to them.

Also the switch between your players being in great form to them being rubbish is unbelievable, now i can understand a striker scoring 3-4 on the bounce but then to suddenly not be able to hit the target at all for 4-5 games in a row is a joke.

Rant over

Results and League Table



No a terrible end to the season but not the best either, if we'd have got a point against either Southampton or Wolves, or managed to keep our 1-0 lead at Villa, which we lost thanks to a fucking awful pass........well i think it was a pass by Nem to, well god only knows it was halfway between the keeper and the defensive line and in between the 2 most central defenders but nowhere near any of our team, then we would have finished higher than we are.



In the end we finished 7th, normally a good enough place for the last EL spot but this year Swansea had to go and win the FA Cup.........Bastards!And so for another year Everton are cruelly denied the chance to have a crack at the EL.

I will admit that there was a small period of the season where had we won games that we (the tactics part of the AI) threw away then the final CL spot was ours for the taking. I'm still not sure whats going wrong defensively as we have a better selection of defenders than most of the other teams in the league except for the "Top" clubs but we just can't keep many clean sheets.

Oh and Dan, Tottenham did us over in the Cup thanks to a nice big Fuck You from the game. We were winning 1-0 until the 75ish minute when Carlos Vela came running from the halfway line on the left to the right hand side of the D on the edge of the penalty box before smashing on past the keeper, the only problem is that the ME or the game or even the gods decided that the RB who was set to man mark him tightly just left him go without following and then 2 of my 3 CBs who are set to close down anything in my half decided to have a tea break and the other CB just didn;t bother to put a tackle in.

Then 5 minutes later the game decideds to set of Jonny Heitinga for a second yellow after he'd only made 2 fouls all match, yet Sandro had scythed down my striker and AM on multiple occasions without so much as a yellow and then about 5 minutes after that Adebayour put them up 2-1 which is how it stayed, oh and neither Destro who started the match not Fierro who finished the match could hit a barn if they where locked in it throughout the match and Destro was lucky to score from the spot.

Finally we come to the last section of this post and that is to look at 3 youngsters i've stolen from elsewhere.



Firstly comes in Ben-Hemo who i've taken from the Chelsea youth candidates after being with then for approximately 3 days he signed a contract with the Toffees, i'm planning on getting Fellaini to toutor him as soon as his move is complete in the summer and i'm hoping he'll go on to great things as he has the potential to be a leading Prem DM.



Next up is Timonah who will be joining from Nantes and i'll be using him as a LM/AML, his mental stats aren't brilliant but hopefully with some tutoring they may improve a bit, depending on his performances and his growth he may be shown the door before some of the other youngsters.



the last youngster to be joining us is Eder and at 14 he looks like he could be a decent back up between the sticks and with the right training and tutoring he could become a world class keeper and at a mere £7.5K compensation i think he's gonna be one of the bargins of the game.

A fine finish mate, not the worst season thats for sure but missing out on a spot in europe is always hard to take! But again you've found some very handy regens!¬

Yeah i was happy that we finished in our highest position since i began with Everton. Yeah they're some pretty good looking regens and hopefully they'll follow in the footsteps of O'Toole and Conjar and push for places in the first team sooner rather than later.

Also i've got some pretty big transfer news to report upon in the next update, just trying to complete some deals and hopefully we'll be alot tougher to beat in teams of goals scored and conceded next season.

As the start of my 5th season in charge Everton nears it beginning i thought i'd quickly update the transfers that i have made.

There have been 2 arrives at Goodison Park in the summer, not including the players i mentioned in the last update.



The first arrival was Belgian international defender Toby Alderweireld, I brought him in as a direct replacement for Jonny Heitinga who i've decided to let go as he's 32 and had about 2 years left on a £65K p/w contract, where as Toby is 27 and on a 5 year contract for only about £5K more.



The second arrival was comes from Reunion via Lyon. He's another top looking regen who has the stats to excel as a LM/AML once he increases in pace. He's gonna be the understudy to Wellington Nem this season and hopefully will be able to shine when given the opportunity.



I decided to get rid of some of the older players in the squad where i have younger players spare so Jenssen was allowed to leave since i had Fellaini, Adryan Torres, Barkely and a few regens who can all play in CM. I also decided to sell Jagielka as he was playing 2nd to 3rd fiddle behind Dawson and Duffy in the center of defense with Heitinga.

Also i was trying to sign Ryan Shawcross but the Stoke manager was being a prick, i offered £15M and the bloke wouldn't accept and then Shawcross said he wanted to leave and the manager put his price at £25m which i didn't have and then 3 days later Shawcross signed a new improved contract so i'm gonna stick with the defenders i got

We come to this post at the start of December 2016 this is mainly because i fucked up and went too far again and decided to continue from December.



As you can see we've had a great start to the season in which we've beaten Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea as well as getting a draw against the Gunners. Obviously with the good must come the bad and for us that came in the form of a 5-1 thrashing at Old Trafford and then defeats to Swansea and West Ham in the league as well as a 1-0 lose to Derby in the Cup.

I was still using either my 5-1-2-1-1 or a 3-1-2-1-2 formation up until the Derby loss this was due to the team just playing very inconsistently with these formations and with both of them we created almost nothing in most games and so i decided a change was in order so i've now got a variation of a 3-5-2 from another site and it's worked well with us created alot more chances even if we are missing a fair few, as in the Newcastle game we had something like 26-27 shots and made 7 Clear Cut Chances.

Player wise Carlos Fierro has been on fire this season so far scoring 9 goals and getting 3 assists, also our defense and 1st choice keeper Bevan O'Toole have been outstanding with goals mainly being conceded when i change from having Alderweireld, Duffy and Dawson as my back three to give on of my 2 young CBs a start.



We're currently 3rd in the league 5 points ahead of 4th. although both have games in hand and we're only 5 points off of top spot but again they have games in hand, hopefully if we can stay clear of any major injuries and carry on with our form then we should be bang on course for a top 4 finish and maybe even higher if the top 2 start dropping points!

doing well mate! keep it going

Cheers for the support Zan

Ok so after the great start to the season we had in the league we were hoping to follow it up was the same kind of results and push from a EL spot.



We had a terrible result against Huddersfield just after New Year and so we spent the rest of the season concentrating on the league and boy did it pay off. With some fantastic wins against Sunderland, Blackburn, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man City and we only just lost to Man Utd after being 3-1 up at the break but some problems with corners was our undoing. But the wins that we racked up thanks mostly to the little mexican Carlos Fierro helped to fire us towards the top of the league and for awhile we did have a chance at taking the league all the way against the 2 Manchester clubs but the loss to Chelsea and the results against Villa and Stoke meant that we had to settle..........



For CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL! I still don't believe that we managed to keep our form going all season and not only doing that but dominating against most teams and scoring heavily, we were the third highest goalscorers after City and Utd with Fierro finishing 3rd in the golden boot on 29 with Rooney second on 30 and Falcao breaking the record to net 37 times, although he does have Gotze, Hamsik, Gaston Ramirez, Nasri, Aguero, Tevez and Yaya Toure providing the ammunition for him.



And here is the main man as he stands in the team now he scored a fantastic 30 goals in 38 starts and 3 sub appearances, provided 9 assists and was Man of the Match 8 times. To be fair the lad carried us at times with some amazing individual goals that help to open the floodgates in some tough matches and he also managed to score 10 in 4 matches during January.



Bevan is another player worthy of mention this season having come through our own youth system he has just got better and better, having become an full England international during the season, he then got the Golden Gloves award for having 17 clean sheets during the season and has cemented his place as the No.1 choice in goal.




Thought i'd quickly post the tactic that i've used pretty much all season and which will now be my tactic of choice in the future.

Speaking of the future i'm in great shape player wise as they are all on long contracts and the average age of the team is only 23 (when it's rounded up) so this is a group that can be successful in years to come and can hopefully put in a decent attempt at the title next time round. I've also got some great youngsters coming back off loan who will be in the first team next season to add to the quality that we already have and so i don't feel the need to spend anything in the summer unless someone special comes along.

Finally as the more eagle eyed among you may have noticed i'm now the manager of Ukraine, i did try get the Poland job but i cocked up and holidayed through the accepting the offer bit and so they wouldn't speak to me again. Anyways there's not been any internationals yet so i can't comment on them until then so until next time....

Thats a very good season mate! And all in all not far off the two manchester clubs!

Yeah we had a great year hopefully we'll be closer to them in the coming season

doing well mate !

So after the jubilation of finishing in the Champions League places last season we entered this new season with the prospect of bringing big European sided to Goodison and aiming to qualify for the Champions League next year.

With that in mind I was given a choice of destination for our training camp either USA or China and due to already going to America for training camps twice since i took charge then China was where we were headed.



We did well on the training camp and the other friendlies that had been arranged, as well as playing matches against Madrid and Barca which i arranged both for the monetary incentive.

The high point of the friendlies was our destruction of Kaiserslautern in which Fierro got 4, Destro got 3 and duffy got another 2.

Having stated in the last post that i wouldn't be buying anyone unless they were special and to be fair i lived up to this as we had 3 players join us in the summer, 1 was already on a pre-contract agreement and the other was brought by my head of youth development with the 1 signing that i sanctioned coming in as he was to good to pass up.



This is the lad that i got on the Pre-contract before the transfer market opened and once his pace, acceleration and composer are improved he could become the best striker in my game.

]

Zelenka is the next signing that was made by my head of youth development and to be fair he is another top talent in the making, i've already got him training to be a DM and once that's done i'm gonna get him to learn to be a CB.



Perks is the final signing costing a small £13M which is peanuts compared to the fee he could command in the future, with great tackling, marking and Passing stats plus his decent mental and physical stats he just screamed ball playing defender and that his what his shall be and hopefully he's going to be the captain of the future.

Finally he's our Champions League group:

At the moment Photobucket won't let me get the img for the champions league group but i can say that in our group we have, A.C. Milan, Sevilla and Benfica, not an easy group by far but not a difficult one either.

Pre season looked good mate, hopefully take that form into the league!

Yeah we had a great pre season, just realised that photo bucket has cocked up the pictures the it was supposed to load up, I'll see if I can sort that out in the morning

So after the friendlies of the summer are over it's time to get to the hard part and get on our way to what should be at least another trip to europe in some capacity for next year.



We had a bit of a poor start to the season with a home loss to West Brom before finding our form again right through again until we lost to City.

The Southampton match was a definite high point as the 5-1 score makes it look closer than it was and also getting 2 victories against Tottenham is pleasing as well. To be honest the City match is 1 that i really hope i don't end up looking back on thinking if only we'd finished our chances as we should have won it comfortably.



So after dropping 6 points out of a possible 18 i was very happy with sitting in 3rd and being within 4 points of the leaders.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that i think we should easily take 3rd at the least this year as we have a very good squad, the only problem i'm going to have is with consistency as the average age of the team is around 22-23.



We've only played 1 match in the CL so far and we had a great victory over Sevilla, again it was another flattering scoreline as we went into half time 3-2 up and had Craig Dawson sent off after 60 odd minutes but still managed to sneak another 2 goals before the match ended, if we carry on like this qualification should be a doddle.



Our 5 goals scored was enough to ensure that after the first round of games we top the group above A.C. Milan and Benfica who played out a 1-1 draw. We play Milan next and then Benfica and i'd be happy with at least a draw in both games to see us on 5 points by the half way stage.

Shame about the West Brom result, was an expected loss against City but very good apart from that! Tough CL group but a good start!

Great start to the season buddy, fantastic result in the CL as well against Sevilla! As long as you win your home games, you should be able to get through that group, maybe able to nick a draw away from home?

So after our impressive start to the league we had 7 League matches and 1 cup match in this 2 month period. Due to photobucket not working at the moment i can't upload the images yet but will do as soon as possible.

Of the 7 matches we won 6 with our only loss coming to Wolves in a game where the strikers just refused to put the ball in the net and we missed something like 3 clear cut chances. Of the 6 matches that we won we beat both Chelsea 2-0 and Liverpool 1-0.

In the Capital One Cup we played Crystal Palace and the score finished 2-1 which was mainly due to bad finishing from us rather than good defending.

Our form gave us 18 points out of 21 and left us sitting at the top of the pile on 30 Points, level with Man Utd but ahead on goals difference, also we've played 1 more game than them and City are in 3rd with a game in hand on 26 points.

In the CL we've had had a hit and miss time in which we lost to A.C. Milan 2-1 again due to not finishing our chances and then beat Benfica home and away 3-1 both times, before losing to Sevilla 3-0 due to not being clinical enough in front of goal.

That left us top of the group on 9 points ahead of Milan on 8 and Sevilla on 7, we only need a point against Milan in our final game to qualify, or failing that if we lose we need Benfica to get at least a point and then we're through to the next round.

Premiership and Cup Results:


Champions League Results:


Premiership Table:


Champions League Table:

Fantastic league and champions league position mate! Doing very well this year indeed!

Cheers Dan we are doing well, hopefully we can continue this into the dreaded New Year as this is always our worst part of the season.

I'll get the Champions League out of the way first as we only had one match against A.C. Milan to decide if we made it through the group stages. Unfortunately we struggled with putting our chances away and lost 1-0 on the night. Meaning that for us to qualify Sevilla had to draw or lose against the group whipping boys Benfica who had drawn 3 and lost 2 (both to me )



We got lucky and Benfica pulled out a great result not only for themselves but us as well, allowing us to take 2nd place in the group and book ourselves a great tie in the next round with the Old Lady, Juventus.

Back to the league and we remained unbeaten, although unimpressive for 11 matches and also progressed to the 5th round of the FA Cup after wins over Wigan and Villa respectively and also to the final of the Capital One Cup thanks to a 7-3 aggregate victory over Brighton where we are to face Wolves in my second trip to Wembley as Everton manager.



Our highlight of the Xmas period apart from the cup progressions would have to be the 1-0 victory over title rival Man Utd.



Finally in the table we are second this is due in part to our dire lose to Tottenham and also our draw with West Brom in a match that we should have won.

Oh yeah there have been no transfers this market time although the board did give me a budget change and i chose to aim for EL as a minimum and they gave me £25M plus up to £1.1M wages, im only using about £850K so i changed it to my transfer and had about £39M, unfortunately the only players that i think can improve the side are both to high at the moment but hopefully a cup win, or even winning the league will get them asking for a transfer during the summer if i come calling.

Well done qualifying in second place mate, Juventus will be a tough tie! Still competitive at the top of the league table mate as well as going to the capital one cup final! well done!