BOT Brad - Comments

Just a quick one. The scoring states that an 18th-9th placed finish scores 0 points, but relegation scores -10. The league only has 18 teams, so should probably say 15th-9th instead.

An interesting challenge for our fourth leg. I have only ever managed in Turkey for a few seasons, so will be a compelling proposition.

I have also put this small table together, correct (I think) as of the end of Round 2 (until the Budapest scores are added up).



Only disparity between this and the leaderboard topic is Franck's score, but I might have made a mistake there...

I really don't mind, I am up for the challenge wherever it may be.

Aww, really? I've really enjoyed these short 3-season challenges and would like a few more to do.
If it's a matter of not having the time to sort out the challenges, get pictures, scoring system and a description of the challenge up, I don't mind taking it over and keeping the format to a monthly challenge.

As Tikidazza said, FM is not very taxing on your GPU, but with all the number-crunching and processing it does, you need a decent CPU and a moderate amount of RAM.

Just as a benchmark, my current PC (not laptop) has 8GB of RAM, and a dual-core 3.3GHz processor. I can run the English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Brazilian & Argentinian leagues, all fully-playable and down to the lowest leagues, and with a large database with 3.5* performance. If you can find a laptop with similar specs to that you should be fine.

Wow, all those green circles are very impressive! Unlucky with the cup finals though, taking those and completing the treble would have been an outstanding achievement!

Impressive. Love it when you get on a roll and just seem to win-win-win!

For all my seasons playing FM (Around 100 seasons accumulative in FM14 so far) I have only had a few truly exceptional regens who actually went on to become fantastic world-class players. That probably says more about me than anything else. These are the best 3 I have had the pleasure of signing, as of a branch-off of my Barcelona save, where I am currently manager of Torino in 2028.


First up is Bruno Éverton, a 23-year old Brazilian leftback, who I signed with Barcelona when he was 19 from Sao Paolo for a laughable £2M with add-ons. He came in as a part of my 3-player mandatory foreign youth-intake 'rule', and I never imagined he would be this good. I got the sack from Barcelona the season after and he never featured in my squad, but he has become possibly the best leftback in the game right now.


Next is Pablo Pérez. Signed as a youth player from Guadalajara for nothing after I returned to Barca after Milan. He might possibly have been a 'wonderkid', as he was already an extremely competent La Liga player at 18. He eventually made a few appearances and scored a few goals. He never quite played great though, so as soon as Man City came to me with a ridiculous (at the time, for the 19 year old Pablo) £30M offer, I bit their hands off. I guess Man City had better judgement than us, as he has gone on to score lots of goals for them, and he also won the Ballon d'Or a few years ago.


Darol Ambroguetti, what a name. Signed him when at AC Milan for £5M, and he pretty quickly became my starting RM or AMR. I got lured away to Barca in 2023 or so and forgot about him. That was until he scored a hat-trick against my Barca team in the Champions League semi-final! Also the 2nd highest-valued player in the game (or so my scouts say).

No real prospects of note with Torino right now, alas my career has taken a bit of a downturn. I plan on starting a 1-team save soon where I invest heavily in youth to try and produce some great youngsters and watch them grow, rather than getting sacked/leaving when they have only just arrived.

I had this happen in FM12 in a long save with Dortmund, and recently in FM14 with Toulouse who I had only been managing with no major success of note for around 6 seasons but they named a new stadium after me.

I know for a fact I had something similar to this happen in FM13 around 20 seasons in, but I think that I was playing in Euros, and the exchange rate changed compared to the GBP (or whatever the 'base' currency is) causing a lot of wages/fees/bonuses to change quite drastically. I still have no idea if that was what actually happened, but roughly everyone's wage, bonuses and all previous transfer fees were increased by about 50%.

If there is no exchange rate variance based upon some standard unit of currency, then it is definitely some kind of bug.

Typical! The version of the edited DB I was using has a couple of crunching bugs when advancing into the 2014-15 season, and so despite now being in the Skrill South, only 1 team got relegated so the Skrill has expanded to 24 teams, and all the fixtures are messed up. If the thread could be closed please! I will probably start a new long-term save towards the end of the month once exams are done and dusted.

I think a team like Southampton or Newcastle would be a good fit for this kind of test. I have seen both Southampton and Newcastle relegated in various saves in the 2013-14 season, but also have seen Southampton win the league and Newcastle finished 2nd or 3rd a few times too.

Huddersfield got a bloody bargain! Hopefully can help push them for promotion, as Reading didn't seem interested in playing me and sent me out on loan too much.

So the team that won the Belgian 3rd Division Group B ended up not getting promoted, and the team that finished 2nd ended up going up as automatic promotions, and 3 other teams in the division entered the playoff system.

Anybody know of any reasons why the champion didn't automatically get promoted? Playing as RC Mechelen in the Group A, I finished 2nd but ended up gaining promotion via the playoffs. So in the end the Group A champion, Playoff winner, and Group B runner-up ended up getting promoted. Is there anywhere to see the reason for this in-game. I thought possibly they were not granted a license or possibly were in financial difficulty, but cannot find any info if this is the case.

Thanks! Looking forward to see if anyone else manages to win the league, as I feel a little lucky because 61 points is a rather low total for a 30 game season. Gyor are probably the strongest team in the league as they got took-over sometime towards the end of the 2nd season and were signing players for £3-4m. Fortunately they slipped up towards the end and dropped from 1st to 3rd in the last few weeks.

There really needs to be a "Fine All Players X Weeks Wages" button somewhere for this very purpose. Fines for everyone!

I finished my final season earlier today, however my PC is acting up a little so I probably won't have screenshots up until tomorrow. From what I remember, I won the league on the final day of the season, won the Hungarian cup, and also won a fair few games against the rival teams, as Vasas got promoted the season prior and they were the league's whipping boys. I exited the Europa League pretty early on (2nd qualifying rnd?) and also got dumped out of the League Cup in the quarter-finals or so.

I managed to get rid of him for a small fee in January of the first season. Also sold one of the youth players for about £1m to one of the Qatari teams who often pay ridiculous money for average players.

For anyone else, I highly recommend getting rid of Emiliano Bonazzoli as soon as you can, as he takes up around ½ of your wage budget. There are quite a lot of good, young & free agent Hungarian players at the start of the game who you can sign for no more than £500pw, meaning you could get 20 players in for the equivalent cost of Bonazzoli''s wages, which are around £10kpw if I remember correctly.

Unlucky there MarkC1984. Sometimes you just get dealt a bad season. Hopefully you will get given a bigger wage budget 2nd season, as mine went from £20k to £40k for the second season with promises that I will make the top 4. Also, get rid of the Italian on massive wages if he is still there. He very quickly declined for me, and was quickly sent packing once I could get rid of him.

I played a lot in Hungary in FM13 with Soproni Vasutas, so will be good to return. Looking forward to getting started on this.

April 2014

We needed a good month, and boy did we do it!
A comfortable 3-0 win over Totton was well deserved, and Banbury proved little competition with an easy 2-0 win.

We were now 3 points clear, knowing that if we were to beat Chesham, we were virtually guaranteed the league as we had superior goal difference. We went 1-0 down within 7 minutes, but 3 late 1st half goals sealed a great 3-1 win. And what's better was that Biggleswade lost, meaning the league was won with a game in hand!

The pressure was off now, and we went into the Worcestershire Senior Cup full of confidence. Despite riding our luck, we rode out 1-0 winners to win a cup along with the league!

The final game against Hitchin was irrelevant, and we just coasted through the game and eventually lost 3-1, but I couldn't care less!

We are heading for the Skrill North/South, woop!

Table

We did it in the end, pulling our socks up and just about managing to win the league. Cambridge also got promoted via the playoffs, as they dumped Hemel Hempstead out on penalties, before doing the same against St. Neots.

Going great! Calum Ferguson is banging them in for you!

March 2014

So a trip to Poole Town to open the month. The highest scorers in the league, I decided to just try and nick a point. It was going well, as Mattos scored an early goal and Poole struggled. A goal for Poole on 68 minutes turned the game on it's head though, and Poole were now well on top. In typical fashion, we conceded a late penalty and it was promptly converted for a 2-1 defeat.

Next were Hemel Hempstead at home. We were dreadful, and were 2-0 down at half-time. Although better in the second, we could only nick a scrappy goal late on and still ended in defeat.

St. Albans was now a must-win game, and win we did. Abdellah with a glorious chip over the keeper sealed an important 3 points.

A tricky away game against Corby ended in a pretty unlucky 2-1 loss. We were controlling the game and both their goals came on counter-attacks. A late goal to level the game was disallowed, which resulted in some verbals aimed at the linesman.

Next up were Cambridge City, a team flirting on the edge of the playoff places. A rather drab first-half was contrasted with a second filled with chances. We struck first with a bullet header from Haworth in the 79th minute, but straight from the restart they got a half-chance and their striker managed to clip the ball of the inside of the post and in. I'll take the point!

Finally, Frome away was a game I was more than prepared to take a point from. They had won their last 2 games, against St. Neots & Poole Town, both decent sides. So obviously we go and thrash them 4-0. Abdellah with a 11 minute hat-trick, and then Haworth with a typical bullet header secured a vital 3 points.

The Table

Yet another poor month. We stay top for now, although most sides have a game in hand on us. We have 4 games left in the league, v Totton, v Banbury (who are now relegated), @ Chesham and then @ Hitchin on the final day. We also have the Worcestershire Senior Cup final against Worcester U21's too inbetween the Chesham & Hitchin games. It's tense!

February 2014


So a trip to Weymouth, who were in 21st. We looked good for the first 45 minutes, then we looked like relegation fodder second half as we surrendered our 1-0 lead to eventually lose 2-1...

The Red Insure Cup 4th Round game against St. Neots was a tricky game, as they were now 2nd in the league and on a good run, and we were well out of form. It shows, as we got spanked 3-0.

Next up were Bashley, a decent team who have scored a lot of goals for a mid-table team. Fortunately we played quite well, and I was getting frustrated we hadn't scored, until Haworth scored right at the death to take all 3 points. Much needed.

Arlesey away was a tough ask, but another decent performance, but the goals have really dried up. Earlier in the season we would have won this 3-1, but I will take 1-1 for now.

The 0-0 against Hitchin was a non-event, so I'm not even going to talk about it.

A close game in the Worcestershire sauce Senior Invitation Cup against Kidderminster Harriers U21's saw us eventually nick a goal in the 117th minute during extra-time. We are in the final of a competition (how?!?).

Birmingham U21's were pretty good, and the 1-2 loss is probably a little favourable to us, as they carved us open quite frequently. We were close to the final though!

The Table

We are slowly limping over the finishing line of a 100m race with about 30m to go it feels like. Just 5 points between us and St. Neots who are in great form. We really need to find some consistency.
I'm starting to feel like the 17-match unbeaten run earlier in the season was some sort of hallucination I had.

January 2014

The league's whipping boys Banbury were easily dispatched 2-0 away, especially as they had 2 players sent off in the first half, making my job easier, but how did we not win by more than 2 goals?

Aylesbury in the Red Insure Cup 3rd Round were also easily beaten. Mattos with 4 goals just to take the biscuit as well as he has a high goal bonus.

Next were Truro away, who had somehow ventured into playoff contention. They gave us a decent game, and despite being the first 0-0 of the season, it was actually a good game with us having 17 shots on target...without scoring. Should have won in all honesty. Sean Geddes sprained his ankle and is out for 2 months though, my first real injury longer than a week.

Another cup game, this time in the Birmingham Senior Challenge Cup Quarter-Final. AFC Wulfrunians were the unlucky team who faced us, and the game was pretty comfortable. Two up early on, and despite a goal straight after we scored our 3rd, they never really threatened again.

Back in the league, and Bideford at home were our next victims. Or so I thought. They BATTERED us. 1-0 to them makes it sound respectable, but they took us to bits and could have won by 4 or 5. Our best rated player finished the game with a 6.1 rating. Our right-back James Dyson finished with 4.2.

Next up were Redditch for the 8th time this season (or so it felt). Again, for some reason I still can't quite put my finger on, we were attrocious! A comedy own-goal and a late goal from our centre-half earned us a point, but we were poor!

And finally, the bloody Biggleswade bastards came and robbed us. We played much better this game, as I switched to a more conservative 4-2-2-2 to try something different. It worked (kind of), as we dominated possession and should have been winning at half-time. After the break they came into the game more and more and scored a goal with only their 3rd shot on-target in the 88th minute. I hate Biggleswade Town.

The League

Still top, but dropped a fair few points and others are catching up. A poor month for us in terms of the league, as we won 1, drew 2 and lost 2. 5 points from 5 games, not great.

Transfers
No signings or sales. Only Sean Geddes is out for the next month or so, but we have plenty of cover in midfield.