Pippadoc - Comments

What a frustrating way to exit the Cup. We were expected to win the competition so obviously this is a big disappointment

We lost in the first round, so on the plus side we now have less games left to play which should help us compete effectively in the League and Continental Competitions!

Unlucky Dan! Good luck on giving it another go next time

Mid-Season Update - April 2017

Overall, a great start to the new season. We've won plenty of games again in the league, where we're favourites to win, by quite a way from the other clubs. We've done this whilst dealing with a fair few injuries, at one point all our right backs were out injured and I had to play some youth players for a couple of games. I think that was my fault for forgetting to change the team training settings after having it set to Fitness and High for pre-season. I certainly won't be making that mistake again!



Unsurprisingly our performances have us up at the top of the table, although we aren't quite as far ahead as we were last year. We've only just managed to take the top spot, but hopefully we can kick on now and start to open up a lead over the rest of the league.



We're qualified from out Confederation Cup with a game to go which is nice. I'm planning to rotate my team for the final game to let some of our promising younger players get some game time. The board are expecting us to make the Semi-Finals of the competition, so I don't think it's out of our reach to win the competition. Ultimately that'll be my goal in this competition!

2017 Pre-Season

So it was a quiet transfer window for us this year. Thanks to only having Asian Confederation Cup instead of Champions League football the wage budget was reduced from £23k p/w to £15k p/w leaving me without a lot of room to manoeuvre. However I did manage to pick up two more quality Singaporean starters to go with the goalkeeper we signed earlier on.



Hamzah will come in as our second best centre-back, just behind Faris Azienuddin. He's relatively young as well, so hopefully he'll be a starter at Tampines for years to come.



Amri is an excellent Singaporean striker. As well as being good enough to play already he will allow the club to have a longish-term Singaporean striker for when Noh Alam Shah gets too old (he's 35 at the moment). He's an ideal fit as a deep-lying forward in my 4-4-1-1, so all-in-all a great addition to the squad! Plus he gives us the breathing room to sell De Gregorio is a good effort comes in (we really need money )



I'm very happy with the depth in the squad. Noh Alam Shah is rated pretty lower as a striker, but given how impressive he was last season I still expect him to be a big contributor to our success.

I think my plan is to leave after this season and seek another job within Asia. I've added China and Australia to give me more potential vacancies. Fingers-crossed I will have done enough to earn a role somewhere else !

Three great signings Fola, you're definitely setting the club for long-term success and you could make a mint off them if you sell. Great story so far

Impressive start to you career mate! I used to love Pablo Aimar on some of the older FM's

Good luck in the Bundesliga!

Cheers Johno! Fingers-crossed we can win more trophies next year.

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I've had some odd news. It looks like I will be playing in the AFC Cup instead of the Champions League this season. With Suphanburi earning a place in the Champions League it looks like the Singapore Cup earns a Champions League spot whilst the S-League only earns a AFC Cup spot . Seems a little off to me.

I'm not sure whether to be pleased or disappointed with this news. On one hand we're now playing in a less reputable tournament, so my chances of growing my reputation enough to move to a bigger country are lower. On the other hand judging by the nations represented in last years competition I'll have a reasonable chance of getting out of the group stages and making a deep enough run to maybe boost my reputation a fair bit anyway.

Great job on 2nd place

Bayern look like they'll be a tough team to overtake though!

End of Season 2016

So all in all a great League campaign for us. We were pretty dominant this year and managed to score the most goals in the league as well as conceding the least - I fully expect to repeat as champions next year. Unfortunately we slipped up in the cup competitions, I'd love to win the League Cup next year to have won everything available in Singapore!



We made a good effort of the Cup Final against a team that play their football in the Thai Premier League. They appear to be a lot bigger club than us plus we had our entire first choice back 4 either injured or on international duty.Hopefully next year we can make up for it, by winning it next year.



We had a solid squad all-round and I managed to give some younger players some game-time in the hopes of developing some Singaporean starters. Noh Alam Shah was clearly our best player, he predominantly played as a deep lying forward for us and managed to score a TON of goals. In fact, despite us going out in the group stages his 9 Champions League goals were enough to make him the competitions top scorer!

Dominguez's average rating isn't too high, but he was crucial all season at smartly keeping possesion and putting other players in positions to doing something special.

On the creative side Jamil Ali obviously did a fantastic job at setting up chances, outside of him it was nice to see that we got good contributions from a lot of different players. My one concern is with Shahdan Sulaiman, he played as a Shadow Striker for us and I would have liked to see him show up more in the goals and assists columns.

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So next season I'm planning to stay for probably my last season in Singapore. I'm aiming to win it all domestically as well as hopefully having another trip to the Champions League group stages. Having said that, I won't be disappointed if we slip up in the cups. The league title however is a must!

Transfer-wise our budget has been cut thanks to our worsening financial situation. However our chairman is stepping down so maybe we'll get some more investment this year. We're still under our wage budget, and we have a few depth players leaving. However, most of them will need replacing so hopefully I can find enough Singaporean quality at a suitable price.

Thanks to the league win the board have given me a 1-year contract extension. I definitely want to stay in Tampines for at least one more year, so this is good news for me. Having said that if I get approached by a club in a different country I might change my mind

We've done it ! And with three games left to go in the season .

That's secured us Champions League football for next season and another opportunity to grow my continental reputation.



That second trophy was enough to get me into the Singaporean Hall of Fame, so not a huge achievement really .

Cheer Johno! We did make a lot of extra cash from the Champions League games, unfortunately it's basically just meant the board has had to put less money into the club to keep us afloat!



I've managed to snag a great Singaporean GK once his contract expires in November. Izwan Mahbud is a current international and comes from Singapore Lions who strangely play in Malaysia). He's as good as our current GK, so getting him in means we get rid of Pasfield and his pesky foreign nationality. The will let us play all the rest of our foreign players togeth next season

This is a crazy challenge :O

Congratulations on all the success you've had so far. Hopefully you can take Newcastle back to the Champions League and finally earn us some Silverware!!!

Good Luck

Mid-Season Update 2016

Obviously I'm delighted with how the season has gone so far, we're undefeated in the League and we I think we played pretty well in the Champions League to boot. I think our great form has come down to a couple of factors. Obvoiusly we've added some quality to the team which helps. Also, just prior to the end of last season I changed my MC pairing from a Box-to-Box + Ball-Winning(s), to Box-to-Box + Deep-Lying Playmaker(d). Then, a few games into this season I changed from using the 'More Direct Passing' team instruction to using 'Retain Possesion' and 'Lower Tempo. The result is us keeping a lot more possession, which has made us a lot stronger defensively whilst not costing us too much going forward.

The League has been going fantastically, we've been beating the top sides as well. That's really key for us, because the last couple of year we've had relatively poor performances in the final stage of the season, when we have to play the other teams in the top 6. All in all, I'm feeling quite confident of our chances this year.

I was happy just to reach the Champions League group stage. Then we did a great job against Renhe, from China, to take 4 points from them. I was especially pleased with the Suwon result in the final game - as we were locked into 3rd place in the group I made 9 changes to our outfield players, but the put in a hell of a performance to get a point from a far superior Korean side.

Our signings have generally all came in and performed well, although Esah hasn't seen much game time so far. De Gregorio also managed to fracture some ribs, after a promising start to the season that saw him score 6 in 13 games. Unfortunately for him Noh Alam Shah has stepped into the Striker role and is playing amazing, with 16 goals in 18 appearances. At the minute I'm now leaning towards leaving De Gregorio out of the match day squad once Butler finally returns from international duty.

Schreiber's got some great mental stats for a 15 year-old!

Also, I love Ocak's mohawk

Pre-Season 2016

First off, we got some great news! It turns out DPMM are from Brunei and as such can't qualify for a continental competition from any Singaporean competition. As a result we will playing in the Asian Champions League this season .



Thanks to the Champions League qualifications we've got an extra 10k per week in wage budget to play with and as you can see above we've got rid of plenty of dead weight this offseason. We also had two spare foreign player spots in the match day squad, and 3 spare slots until Jake Butler gets back from his 8 (EIGHT!!!) month international duty trip with New Zealand. So all in all it was an exciting transfer window for us ...

K. Govind Kumar



Shaiful Esah



Safirul Sulaiman



Ivan Radojkovic



Jordan Webb



Pasquale De Gregorio



Pablo Dominguez





Well there we have it, a (hopefully) very productive pre-season for us and fingers crossed I've added enough quality to win the League this season. As you can see from the depth chart, we've got a much more rounded squad the season, with a lot better depth than we had last year. One of my highlights has been the development of Fariz Azienuddin, over the past year he's become our best DC and certainly has room to develop further. He's certainly proved to be worth spending some money on!

If you were keeping count you may have realised that once Butler returns we will have 5 foreign players and we can only have 4 in the match day squad. I expect that will lead to Radojkovic being dropped and Esah playing DL, although that could be hard decision to make if Radojkovic has a great run in the first team whilst Esah is out.

Massively impressive career so far Fola. Good luck on getting a Europa League spot!

I was excited all season for my youth intake. I'd love to get some youngsters into the squad immediately to save on wages and hopefully develop some Singaporean stars. Our intake ended up pretty good with three promising players for the future - hopefully I can get them some game time and end up with some quality starters (if I stay here for a while).



First off, a promising DC. We're pretty average at DC so if he can reach his potential he'd definitely be a starter for the club.



Ismail is definitely an exciting prospect for us. I'm planning to turn him into a Deep Lying Playmaker to play in an MC role for us long term. He got a couple of games at the end of last season and managed to get an assist and a goal!



The definite jewel of this years youth intake. After beginning my reign playing a flat 4-4-2 I now tend to play a 4-4-1-1 due to most teams in the league playing formations with three players in the centre (MC's and DMC's). I've been using a Shadow Striker/Deep Lying Forward combination for my AMC/ST. Hopefully Taufik will be my long term Shadow Striker - I'll definitely be looking to get him game time this season.

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Cheers Johno

Looks like you've had a great start so far!

Fingers crossed you can get Champions League football next season

End of Season 2015

The 2015 season is in the books and it was a hit and miss season in the end.

In the league we went into the final day of the season in 1st, level on points with DPMM. We managed a draw in our game and things were looking bad before DPMM let an 89th minute equaliser in. Unfortunately they then went on to score a 94th minute winner to give them the title.



It's a bit of a punch in the gut, but I'm confident with some better squad management during the season, we've got a strong chance of winning the league next season.

However, to make up for the disappointment some what, we did win the FA Cup! Allow me to have completed one of the boards goals for the season and hopefully give me a good reputation boost!





We've got some big changes coming to the squad this off-season!

Martinez ended up getting bough for Foreign Club Release Clause before the season ended and Aleksander Duric is retiring, so that's both our top strikers gone for next season. To pile on the struggle Jake Butler (my captain) went on international duty with New Zealand in October and apparently won't be back until June 2016 - wtf . On the plus side we are getting rid of a lot of dead wood to give me wage room to find a replacement.

I ended up going back on my decision to get rid of Mukthar the trouble maker. I managed to get him to sign a one-year extension for half his previous wages, so he can remain as a stop gap whilst I find his long term replacement!

Overall, I'm excited for the chance to really shape this squad in the off-season. I'm going to have some room for two first-team foreign players and plenty of wage budget to bring in some Singaporean players as well. Next year, hopefully we'll have a League Championship to show for it.

Next Up - 2015 Youth Intake

Thanks Gendo! Definitely need some continental football to build a big enough reputation to move to a league with better prospects in the Champions League!

Okay, after a little struggling I've worked out how to screenshots \o/ (for some reason the print screen button was not playing nicely)



First off here's our squad depth. We're sorted up-front and we've got good first team options at GK, MC, and DR. We're very weak at DL as we've just had to sell one of out foreign players who was great there - so finding anyone to play there is my current priority. There rest of the first team could do with upgrading if possible, and hopefully come the end of the season we can get rid of some dead-weight and invest more effectively in some quality starters.



As you can see the season started off fantastically, before we hit a patch of awful form! The poor form has a lot to do with me having a player revolt. Mukthar, the ML, decided he'd like to skip training, so I gave him a warning. Then he decided to do it again, and when I fined him 1 weeks wages the entire team threw their toys out the pram about it!

Hopefully we're getting past that now, although Mukthar is continuing to skip training (I'm ignoring it now). He's out door at the end of the season, we even had a personal chat where I said I'd pay him as a key member of the squad (he does play well) then when I tried to offer him a contract it said he wasn't interested. Suprise, Suprise, when he didn't receive a contract offer he had another strop lol. Definitely no worth the effort of having around!



Finally, the league table. We're expected to win both the league and the FA Cup this year

We were cruising before our patch of poor form. But at least we're still in the hunt for the title now. We've got a lot of the bottom half of the table to play before the league splits, so fingers crossed we can get ourselves back in the league.

In the cup we play Woodlands next - and I expect to qualify. In the :League Cup we've been drawn in a group with Warriors FC and Niigata Unicorn, so hopefully we can progress there as well (although the board don't care about that)

So the off-season begun with the club's finances dropping badly and a club with a lack of talent in defense in particularly! Unfortunately, the league rules limit the squad to 4 foreign players in the match day squad and we already had 5 foreigners, all on pretty high wages! I made the hard decision to sell the clubs top scoring striker from the previous season, with 2 top foreign strikers, one had to go and my top scorer was the oldest.

The level of Singaporean free transfers is pretty damn low, so major squad improvements didn't look promising. My strategy for the transfer window was to replace some of by awful players with probably equally awful youngsters who might have a little potential. This let me cut down on some wages whilst adding some depth at ML/R, a suprisingly area of the squad for a team that played 4-4-2 before I joined.

I did manage one useful signing, a young D(RC) called Fariz Azienuddin, He cost me £32k from Young Lions, but he's pretty decent already and should become a great player for this level.

Up next - we get to the 2015 football games

It's been a long time but I'm back with a new career!

So, I'm on FM15, my first version since FM12, and I've decided to have a crack at the Pentagon. My previous attempts ended with no Champions' League trophy's, fingers crossed this one goes better.

Career Overview

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After a few months of unemployment and a few job interviews, I got my first break at Tampines in Singapore. I took over with the side in 2nd place, 12 points of top spot with 6 games left to go, and already in the 3rd placed playoff in the FA Cup. Despite that the board expected me to win both competitions .

I started off with a promising win, however after that the league split in half and I only managed one win against the other top 6 teams. Not an impressive start to my career, and it also left the board a bit annoyed with me.

Up next - the 2015 pre-season

Great win for us, nice to have a couple of promising performances back to back (even of we lost to City in the end) !

Not heard of that one before, who's it about?

Next Man Up is a great read if you want to get an insight into the workings of an NFL team - kind of an NFL version of Friday Night Lights (also an excellent book).

Been meaning to get round to that. I loved Van Zandt in The Sopranos and I'm huge Springsteen as well.

Worth a watch?

Got a link for it?

Ahh fair enough, I didn't get a chance to watch the game.

Just because one player played well in midfield doesn't mean the midfield as a whole wasn't disappointing.

Seems pretty simple