FM15 Arbroath FC

We're a couple of swiss guys playing FM for almost a decade now. Every year we select a lower league team and try to lead it to the top league of a country and check out who's performing better.

This year we decided to take over Arbroath FC in the Scottish League Two. Why Arbroath FC? Well, speaking for me: While traveling through Scotland I've had lunch there once, and I like the stadium being so close to the sea

While this is meant to be a long term save, I don't intend to post updates much more than twice a year, but to keep the end of season statistics up to date with uploaded screenshots.

Find much more updates at the automatic twitter/youtube feed for this save here...

PS: Yep, I'm not natively english speaking :/

League Setup

22 (twenty-two!) countries in europe seem to have a better top league than the Scottish Premiership! Even Austria and Switzerland (when the hell did that happen Scottland?!) So, we add the top leagues of these countries as VIEW-ONLY leagues to our game. Mainly to get their best players and getting rid of our worst grass hoppers

Manager Setup

Since FM 2015 we're allowed to customise our attributes, and I do exactly as proposed by the FM for a club like Arbroath.

Good luck with Arbroath

GL in Scotland!

I like the looks of this. Have fun and good luck!

Good luck mate!

Saison 2014-2015 is over, and ended with HUGE success, though more about this later, because first I was about to loose my job!

Well, Arbroath is a decent team for Scottish League 2 and I thought about rushing through the season, grab enough wins to earn (deserved) promotion and head for better things! I've even transferred some players, to make things more stable in defence!



Though coming christmas, things looked bad, and club management wanted to have a chit chat!



They: "Well boy, you're doing really bad! We'll fire you!"
Me: "That's not fair! I just flew in from Switzerland, and didn't even had a pint in every pub around!"
They "That would take years! We still fire you!"
Me: "But I've hired Owen Hargreaves as Under 20s Coach! That has to count for something!"
They (smiling): "Yes, he'll make a good first team coach, but we'll give you a chance: 10 Points in the next 5 games or you're history!"



So I checked what was going wrong, and after going through the tactics, I thought to myself: "I would have definitely fired me!"

A main problem was, that my left/right backs tried to do some wide crossing during triggering the next attack. Having crossing attributes in the range from 2 to 4, this was looking particularly stupid on the pitch, and we were loosing possession over and over again. I even told them to cross less often, do shorter passing and so on. THEN I realised, that I've set them to support duty and telling them to do exactly so



So, after we've fixed that, and did train "Match Tactics" before every single game (oh they ain’t fast learners I can assure you), things changed ... A LOT!



We won pretty much EVERYTHING, with great stats for wingers & strikers.





Yes, we ended up winning Scottish League 2 with a margin of 8 points, and both, Owen Hargreaves and Club Management had a fight who was allowed to sit next to me during promotion celebrations

Great turn around mate! Well done on your first promotion

Great work on the promotion mate

Saison 2015-2016 is over, and we were expected to fight relegation this season, but we've done a lot better

The transfers: Again I was tryinng to bring more stability to the defense and attacking midfield.



During the frist part of the season, the team did good, and the dreaded relegation was most of the time a good piece away.



In the second half, we did even better, and thanks to great finish with 3 wins out of 3 games we even made it into the playoffs! But the dream of a second promotion in two years was gone soon, after loosing the first leg match at home playing Dunfermline with 1:3.



At least we managed to play 2:2 away, and ended the sason with a smile



Again, no luck at all in Cup ...



The team / player stats:

Saison 2016-2017

For the first time, i didn't try to fix something but to really improve the team. We've done some good & important transfers. Ian Smith & Cem Felek, despite their age, played a *great* sason, and also the new Goalkeeper Ryan Goodfellow (+1 for name) did impress me.



But, the season started like always: Early and shamefull exit in all cup competitions:



Though, for most of the time I was in the top 4, which lead my management to think of winning the promotion. WTF ? But, (again) we did good in the second half of the year, and we landed safely on a playoff spot being 3rd after qualification:



The first leg game went REALLY wel, we won 4:0 against East Fife at home:



The second game started really bad: 0:2 down after twenty minutes, and I was really affraid to fail again in semi finals, but .. everything ended fine:



The finals we played against Stranrear, and we've won the away game 1:0 :



The home game was pretty much under control. 0:0

!!!! SECOND PROMOTION IN THREE YEARS !!!!

The stats:









After more than a decade, Arbroath will play in the second highest league of Scottland again! It shall rain full time contracts soon!

It's been my 4th year at Arbroath, and for the first time I was able to offer full-time contracts in the hope that my (very) young team will be able to improve their current ability and might even reach their potential. As usual, the year started with a bunch of transfers to further stabilize the whole team and to be less dependent to some of the key players when they get injured over and over again. Yes I'm talking to you Adam Hunter!



It was quite a hard first half into the season, but we've been able to avoid relegation places for quite the whole season:




At the end we reached a noteworthy place 7! That said, I was under the impression that if we wouldn't have always lost a couple of games in a row, it could also have been place 6 or better :/



I've uploaded the usual screenshots and statistics to the career section at http://sortitoutsi.net/careers/season/645

Twitter account: https://twitter.com/3bfm15_arbroath

BREAKING NEWS !!

We managed to win the Scottish League Challenge Cup 2018!



After being 1:0 down after first half, we came back to level the game and win the cup with a breathtaking goal from our new & beloved greek winger Tryfonas Kazviropoulos (called John Smith by his team mates)!

Season 2018/2019 was meant to be one of two (maybe three seasons) to prepare ourselfs for possible promotion. So, basically give the very young team futher time to develop, and get one or two new players into our line up.

The transfers are again very young, though Marcel Neuer (what a name!) and Dean Hawkshaw made their way into first team football right away.



The first half of the season we realized, that again, we wouldn't be affected by relegation, and we've done very good in the (sadly ignored by our management) Challenge Cup! (See video before).



In the second half, we managed to even reach place four (not bad for a media prediction of place 10) by the end, and were nominated to play promotion playoffs!



We knew, we weren't meant to be promoted, though the two losses by one goal each were hard to swallow. Especially when we had more and better chances



Second game, away:



The statistics looked good, especially in goal scoring:







It's been a great year for Arbroath, and with the right one or two transfers (Looking for a good "False Nine" and perhaps better goalie), we could try to go for promotion next year

Season 2019/2020 ended with HUGE Success!! So huge, they even call me a Scottish Hero on steam now

As planned, I wanted a good "False Nine", and I found one in person of Lewis Small, and a good goalkeeper too: Robbie Brown.



As we started to the league, the goal was promotion, though we've lost the two first games!



But soon, things were getting better, and by the end of the year, we were even able to defend the (sadly underrated) League Challenge Cup!



Direct promotion was becomming obvious after new year, and it was easier as we predicted (or the press expecting us to land on place 8 have thought).

Statistics:







Notice: Celtic Glasgow defeated us twice in League Cup and Scottish Cup by a two goal margin. But in the future, we'll see who can't get enough of whom

Until then, I remain the man in blue underpants