Sheriff Skacel - Comments

I've come to step on the toes of your Internet legacy.

Final post of the night, my starting eleven. Basic 433 setup, usual spiel.

GK;



Defenders;









Midfielders;







Attackers;







My attack is by far the strongest element of my squad, any of my wingers or strikers are more than capable of playing. Borges is my guaranteed starting ST, Miguel always gets a look in cos he's been here since he was 15 and he's my homeboy, the other players get played whenever they are my flavour of the month. Chokito is my least favourite.

On the loan front I basically loan players who are 18 and above, unless they are one year from getting club grown status and if that's the case I keep them in the U19s. I then keep loaning the players until I either sell them or promote them to the first team.

Most of my players don't even get a game for the first team, but I nigh on always make a profit on my players. I've recently started to splash more on youngsters and undoubtedly some of them will be huge busts. But I have full faith in a handful of them going for 40m+, so that will more than make up for the flops that will inevitably come.

Now for everyones favourite thing; scouting.

Obviously at the start scouting was a strictly Portuguese affair, I didn't really expand the network until I won promotion. Once that came about I moved into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe and found some absolute gems, I then made my way to North and Central America and found some quality players. Countries such as Honduras, Jamaica, the USA and even Panama provided me with players who went on to be worth a good few million. When I started the game I made sure the DB included players from North and Central America and the Caribbean, I wanted a new talent pool to tap in. With my scouting I tried to avoid Central Europe and South America, I knew the players would be good from those regions, but they would also be costly. Most players from Central America and the Caribbean can be secured on a free and then sold for a few million quid if you are lucky.

I got a lot of joy from approaching American youngsters on pre-contracts and snapping up talents from Jamaica, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama for next to nothing.

Fast forward, a bit and I took a scouting approach based upon competitions. I literally had scouts at every competition going, Toulon tournament, Asian cup, Pan-American games, U19 Copa Libertadores, but they just weren't throwing up the talents that I wanted. So heading into this season I revamped things, here's how my 31 scouts now line up;

Region - Number of scouts

UK - 2
Scandinavia - 2
Central Europe - 3
South Europe - 2
Eastern Europe - 5

North America - 2
Central America - 3
Caribbean - 1
South America - 4

North Africa - 2
Central Africa - 1
Western Africa - 1
Southern Africa - 1

Middle East - 1
East Asia - 1

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Heavily focusing my efforts in Eastern Europe, South America, Central Europe and Central America. Pretty much the footballing hotbeds in this game, I had some success in Africa when I was a second division side but tbh I've always struggled to crack scouting Africa. Kind of just scout there for the sake of it now, we've got to the stage where I'm only signing youngsters who are at least 4 star PA, so for the most part they are coming from established academies and are costing me anything above 500k.

Scandinavia truly is a heartless mistress, especially the lower divisions, there is no more demoralising place in FM.

Some elements of it I could never enjoy, the mid-season break for example, I hate those in FM. But the whole having to sell players to keep the finances in check and being able to develop youngsters on the regular you should relish, because once you get a promotion or two things start to change and become far easier. At that level at least if you are selling your best player you know its to help take the club forward long term, higher up in the leagues you can sell your best players on a whim.

If you can strike lucky once in Scandinavia you are sorted though, one promotion should give you a decent enough rep boost to land semi-decent jobs across the region. Its just getting out of the basement that is the hardest part, you don't want to get stuck in a cycle of going from shite Scandinavian club to shite Scandinavian club. Unless you're into that kind of sick, twisted, sadistic thing.

Best thing to do off the back of a disappointing season is play through the next one as quick as possible. Get your signings lined up, get the tactics sorted, fanny on with as few things as possible during the season and just play and play and play. Once you come to the end of that season you'll either still be pig sick and want out, or you will see a glimmer of hope and want to continue.

That glimmer of hope can come from the strangest thing, setting your eyes on playing a new formation, getting a good batch of youngsters, signing a good player or two, or maybe even winning promotion. Who knows.

Some history;






Obviously it took a hell of a lot to get the club off the ground. We were in the third division for so long simply because I didn't want to do the easy thing and throw money (relatively speaking) at a promotion push. I tried to operate at a profit, I tried all sorts of new tactics and I liked depending solely on my youth team for long periods. Once we got into the second division the money came in a little more and I started snapping up some real prospects who were sold for ok prices, the top division brought the rep boost and I begun selling players for a few million. No real looking back from there, once you have money, everything is easy.





My transfers are ridiculous, here's a quick recap;

Season - Transfers In - Transfers out

76/77 - £53m - £120m
77/78 - £38.5 - £55m
78/79 - £5.75m - £94m
79/80 - £47.5m - £142m
80/81 - £106m - £164m
81/82 - £86m - £86m

I pretty much just spend a load on youngsters and sell my first teamers. Can't remember the last time I signed a player to go straight into my first team. Every summer I promote players who were out on loan or if they aren't good enough I go out and sign a 19-23 year old who will hopefully grow into a first teamer.



I hated Eduardo Agues and I still do, shite midfielder. Shouldn't be in that list, shouldn't be partnering Carlos Santos. Pedro Miguel is the only modern day player there, this is a shame. As most of the players there were shite, my strikers practically had 1 for finishing and my defenders had -7 for tackling.



Won something like eleven trophies in the last three seasons, just shows for how long we (I) were (am) shit.



A long career, very long. Only really started to spend money properly in recent years and that's because I made it my mission to sign every best youngster in the game. Ah what boredom can do.

This was basically the last thing I've ever wanted to do in FM, build a club up from absolutely nothing and take them to CL glory. Its why I've struggled so much to get hooked into other games. Just gotta battle on through, I think its good to leave a save for a few days or weeks and then return to it. Always nice to return with a fresh perspective.

Think my DOB was like 85/86, so nearly there.

Best thing about being this far into the game is watching a player go through his whole career at your club. I've only had the two players that have started and ended their full careers at the club as first teamers, I've had loads that have stayed for over a decade though. The club has evolved from depending solely on our own youth products to snapping up prospects from other clubs. I'm constantly signing 14-19 year olds, the transfers vary from free transfers from Panama to £20m deals for teenagers from Arsenal (riddles with clauses of course).

We're now a club with a Worldwide rep and we are on our way to hopefully overtaking Porto as Portugal's biggest clubs. Think my remaining targets with Mirandela pretty much are;
- Win another CL
- Get a new stadium
- Topple Porto
- Get £1b in the bank

Depending on how much game time I get in I could achieve none, I could achieve them all. I've kind of got into the habit of just playing for a few hours every night and it leads to steady progress. So most of my updates will probably come at night.

I'm gonna pick this shit up again. Don't currently have FM open, but here is what I remember;
- I'm now in the year 2081
- I won the CL for the first time in like 2078, and that was the target I first set myself when I started this career
- Transfers wise I've been selling my best players to rebuild the squad, hit over 100m in player sales quite a few times in the past five or six seasons
- I've started making some clause ridden transfers for the games best youngsters, shite like 5m after 10 league games, 100k per league appearance, etc, I've done this for two reasons, firstly I want the world's best talent passing through my doors, secondly, most of the youngsters I sign don't even get a game for me, they get sold without every progressing so only the best of the best will see their clauses met
- I plan on starting an FM14 career in a few weeks, so lets enjoy this while we can

So the next few posts will cover;
A) Our history
B) The current squad
C) My transfer policy
4) My current scouting setup

It is ridiculous just how much talent can be snapped up from some of the B teams across Europe, Porto are criminal for dumping players in the B squad and their values plummeting. Happens in the Netherlands too with the Ajax, PSV and Twente reserve teams in the Eerste Divisie.

I'm liking this career, good read.

I'm debating trying to rock up on a FM14 career along a similar vein. Was debating taking three leagues from each continent, a weak league, a medium strength league and one of the stronger leagues, was thinking of something like;

Americas;
Brazil down to 3rd div
MLS with maybe NASL
A league like Guatemala, Honduras or Jamaica

Europe:
Dutch divisions down to like the fifth or sixth tier
Not sure on a medium league, maybe add some extra tiers to somewhere like Croatia
Maybe somewhere like Andorra or even Gibraltar

Africa:
Egyptian league for sure
Maybe somewhere like Angola or Cameroon
Some real backwater like South Sudan or some shite

Asia:
South Korea
Australia with some lower leagues or maybe an Oceanic league
Mongolia

Tbh the most fun I have with new FM games nowadays is debating which leagues to pick.

I have a career going with Mirandela, I'm by far the best thing to hit the town since zombie Jesus (I'm in the year 2081, he came about in the 2060s), but the club overlooked me when naming the new stadium. Once more they overlooked our best ever player imo (Carlos Santos), our best ever striker (Alex Oliveira) and instead chose Joao Pedro and called the new stadium the Joao Pedro stadium, or the ESTADIO JOAO PEDRO for those familiar with the Portuguese tongue. Now don't get me wrong, Joao Pedro was a good little player, he was an AMR, ST, played with us for about a decade and I think he got nearly 200 goals. But still, he's no Carlos Santos.

I'm hoping to get a new stadium soon like, stadium was built in 2066 and we've maxed it out at a 38k capacity and we sell it out in nearly all our games, even pull 36k in home cup games against non-league sides. Board aren't budging on the matter though, I think its time for a new chairman with some real ambition.

Just one of those things, with players it could be down to a bad relationship with his agent or maybe the player has your club set as disliked or your rival as a liked club.

With Thompson it could be one of a few things;
1. He won't return after recently leaving
2. In the editor he is set to dislike Celtic
3. There's some sort of new setting saying a player/staff member won't go back to a club(Dunno about this, haven't messed on in the editor this year)

Chances are he appears on the staff search because it doesn't take into account his club preferences, same with players, the search probably doesn't take into account club preferences or agent relationships.

What I've found is if you untick 'unrealistic staff/player' option you can bring in some players and staff who your Ast Man considers to be unrealistic, so don't live or die by that filter otherwise you could be missing out on some right gems.

Never seen a player change his mind on a Bosman, but that's usually because once they make their mind up I punish them for it and banish them into the reserves.

To avoid this kind of thing I always sell my players 12 months before their deals are up, heading into a new season I see which contracts are up in 12 months and then I make the call as to whether the players will be sold or retained. Sometimes you have to sell your best players to progress, if a player is asking for too much you may as well sell him and reinvest the money. Even if a player is asking for too much and you're playing in a league where you won't get a fee for him, its better to move him on so you can reshape the squad as opposed to him leaving in 12 months anyways and then you rebuilding the squad.

Bought it, played about 12 seasons in one save game, took me from the MLS, to Russia, to Greece and to Korea but I just wasn't enjoying it. I had my successes, MLS titles, Uefa Cup wins, K-League titles, but the tactics system I loathe. Hate the shouts, can't be arsed to sit and watch the engine and see what everything does to fully understand things. I'm an FM pensioner with set views and a To Madeira framed shirt, can't be had for new fangled features.

I will return to FM14 though, seeing some of the careers here like Fanny's and re-reading my old Mirandela days when we struggled financially has wet my lips.

Look at those gay wee graphs I made in the first few posts, my graph skills are still revered to this day within some small rural communities.

Dude, I'm still playing this career.

Looking at that last squad I posted here's what I remember;
- Paulo Dias is the second GK I've ever had
- Peixoto is a beast, holds the record for my highest ever season average, something like 7.95
- Marcal is a club legend cos he had one good season, overrated in my opinion
- Alex Oliveira is still the highest scorer in the history of the club

First person I ever saw do this was my homeboy Zoli. Shoutout to that Romanian G.

Hey, yo.

I'm not gonna rock up and shit on Susie, used to do my tits in when I was staff and decrepit dinosaurs from the pre-HD era would come back to the site and go on about how shite the current crop of staff were and preach about everything that was going wrong. I'm here to back a brother up. Plus an old friend told me FMGod was back so I wanted to see that.

FM discussion ain't a hard thing in my opinion, I've looked at the Gen Disc forum (which should be the heartbeat of any FM site imo) and its far more active than I thought it would be. Ain't rocket science to get it ticking, staff have got to lead the way. Just five posts a day keeps former Susie staff away. If the current staff could make five posts in the Gen Disc every now and then it would make the world of difference. Simple shite, post in questions, reply to queries, make new members feel involved like VP was saying. Once you do that start making the generic threads that whip up talk; 'Post your best regen', 'What's the first thing you do at a new club?', 'How do you set your scouts up?', etc. You have to create artificial activity for it to become natural over time.

The Careers section is a pain, that needs one or two cornerstone careers to be updated on the regular. That keeps the section ticking and gets other people involved. Back when, that was usually the likes of me and Fanny screwing around with the Pentagon. We updated daily, people commented daily and people wanted to start their own careers off the back of it.

Challenges wise I've always thought that they need to be short and sweet. Half season, one season tops. Holiday save teams from relegation, teams in the title race, all that crap. Mix it up by splitting challenges into short and medium term, so keep the short term goals but also put in some longer term goals for people who get hooked on the saves. I like the Melbourne Heart challenge, good club, in a underplayed league, nice to see things away from the norm of England (WHO CAN REMEMBER APLA?, probably just me).

What wee Tyrion is doing in the Players section is commendable, good little work horse and he's taking the Player section back to what it should be; player recommendations. I think its best to keep Player discussion in Gen Disc just because it gets more exposure, the Player section really should be for people to nip in and out of when they are stuck for players or just want some youngsters to snap up.

So yeah. FMGod is back, I'm bored, GK4Lyf, Bian is the single most underrated entity in the history of the scene and Throw In was always shit.