Sheriff Skacel - Comments

I do fancy it and following your career has got me more interested in the league, I'm starting to think about FM16 and that's the only thing stopping me. Gonna try and hold off on Bulgaria and South Korea so I can have something to do from the off in FM16, that could change like if I start to race through the seasons in this career or if they announce FM16 ain't due out till mid-November.

Just in the process of adding and removing some leagues, I've had Colombia and Mexico loaded for donkeys and neither have massively appealed to me. They'll be removed, but what to replace them with? I definitely want to hit Eastern Europe so Poland is 100% in, other options;

Serbia - A league I've been meaning to get into for donkeys, will probably load it up
Croatia - Had one enjoyable game in Croatia on FM13 and there is always domestic talent to be had
Turkey - Never really done Turkey, 3 tiers to be loaded, would look to land in the 2nd or higher 3rd if I went
Hong Kong - Just for a total curve ball, I've never lasted in Hong Kong beyond a season, only thing putting me off is the fact I have China loaded. Don't want to over-Asia things, although South Korea does appeal

It hurts man, it hurts. I had a look at the annual salaries of the teams and Juve are at £195m, compared to our £60m. I have the money there to potentially get close to matching that but I'm pretty intent on keeping the Palermo youth push alive. I can feel myself getting a bit bored but I want to walk away with the CL or Serie A.

Anyways, in regards to the squad, we had 10 players pull under a 7 over the course of the season. I'm not too bothered about the youngsters because they will grow, these two do worry me however;

Jimenez DRL
Pinga DC

They will be sold and replaced, hopefully by Italians. I'm also losing Zunino and Natale to retirement and I'm gonna ship Simon Jan out for an Italian option. I may rejig my options uptop through cashing in on Sheridan, think I need a proper think about the team and to also have a look at what alternatives are out there. I've given out a few extensions and wage rises this season to keep players happy, nothing major usually just 20-30k extra but it does start to add up quickly.

Gah, sodding FM. I dunno man, we were all over them, Boukhari proved he is a big game player but for whatever reason it just wasn't our day. I had no CMs on the bench because of injuries, this is getting addressed this summer. I want more at MC and I don't want to ever have to worry about the CL squad quotas again. The problem is since I added Serie A only eight or nine seasons ago we're still struggling for players, a quick player search tells me there are only 46 Italian GKs in the game, of that only 29 are over 23. I usually wait 4-5 seasons before managing in a league I've newly added, but with Serie A I think I only waited 1. I'm hurting for it as things still aren't balanced

We'll come back again next season, we move on, I'm annoyed right about now but that's FM for you

Whatever gimp did this deserves a fine and expulsion from our CL team bus. The CL final is tomorrow and he is listed as an orange injury, my normal backup GK (Simon Jan) can't play in the CL as he ain't registered, so I'd be starting with 35 year old Alessandro Natale. Big call to make, I'll probably still go with Lopez, injury or not.

Agu on the double, he killed Artoumian. I rested Romario, Boukhari and Mauro as the CL final is in a few days time. Just trying to keep everyone fit and avoid injuries, we move on from this defeat. Was never our main priority

Did Juve 2-0 in the league but lost Vardar to injury in the process, that's 3 CMs now injured. Been playing wingers there again recently because of the problems. Needs solving next year, better squad balance, van Berlo returning from his loan is a start

Naps have him, he's an absolute beast and the fulcrum of all their success of the past few seasons. He joined Napoli from Vitesse who snapped him up from Enyimba for 230k. I'd love to be in the position to be able to do that with Palermo, find those real gems in Africa, but I've never managed it (I've always struggled finding regens in Africa thoughout all my FM playing time)

A 3-2 win vs AC at the San Siro seals the deal. I'll keep the players sharp before the two cup finals but the U18s will certainly now get more of a look in

Boom, absolutely beautiful. Luckily the injury to Boukhari isn't serious at all, from now until the CL final it really is a case of wrapping him in cotton wool, I think he's the player who gives us our real edge in the big games. He's been sorely missed this season because of his bad injury earlier on in the year

We'll be playing Napoli in the CL final (and the Italian cup final), not too happy about that, I'm never confident in Europe playing against my domestic rivals. We're currently 8 off them in the league and this season they've beaten us 3-1 and we've played out a 3-3 draw.

4 league games, 1 Italian cup final, 1 CL final to go.

I'll be honest, if we pull off the CL win I'd be quite tempted to walk from Palermo and try my hand in Holland, USA or China. Can't get too excitable though, a long way to go, plenty chances for my players to get injured.

I'll take it, quiet game, not much going for either of us. I have a league game vs Sampdoria and then the second leg, few injuries in the squad so the Samp game will feature some U18 players and the B team. No title run so CL gets precedent

Fancy it, Benfica are decent (3 CL Semis in 5 seasons), but we should have enough to pull through as long as injuries don't befall Romario, Boukari or Mauro.

LUCKKKYYYYY

We should not be going through, before the game we lost Boukhari for 3 weeks and I think that really hurt us here. Real were all over us and for the last 10 mins it was just an onslaught, we were fortunate to not concede again

In the league we're now 21 points off Juve after a defeat vs Parma, back-to-back defeats now, need to bounce back to solidfy 4th and hopefully a CL final.

HAJJJJIIIIIIIIII

Look at those stat shots, I was shitting it incase we had nothing to take into Madrid, least we have something to cling onto now. Created chances galore but their RB just seemed to be planted on the line and clearing shots left, right and centre.

Who were buying your players? Surprised there's such a consistent market for South African players at that price I've never really had a prolonged stay in South Africa beyond scraping around in the 2nd division for a few years at a time.

Just drew 1-1 with Catania, why is this post worthy? Took me till the 71st minute to realise I was playing my third choice GK at AML.

A new level of Calcio skullduggery, a murky world indeed.

2 year contract extension signed and the scouts have been redeployed. All but 5 in Europe, really want to tap more into Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, there is talent to be found there. Also got them doing some continental competitions, want to get a presence built in the summer international tournaments once they come around too.

As part of me reassigning the scouts, lets look at where all of my signings have come from over the past seven seasons;

Italy 12

Brazil 6

France 5

England 4
Portugal 4
Spain 4
Holland 4

Belgium 3
Denmark 3

Germany 2
Turkey 2
Chile 2

Croatia 1
Switzerland 1
Argentina 1
Austria 1

What does this tell us? Well god damn I'm just wasting my time trying to find rough diamonds. The limit of 2 non-EU signings a season also means I'm looking to fill those spots with starting quality players and genuine gems, rather than the rough, rough diamonds. Can't afford to take non-EU gambles with that limit in place

Think I might just stick 4 or 5 scouts in the Americas, maybe 1 in South Africa and the rest in Europe. Going to get the scouts scouting in competitions too, see if we can unlock some talent through doing that. Domestic, youth, international and international youth competitions.

Planning on the same again, or I was until news came through that my starting GK would miss the 1st leg through injury vs Real.



New boys doth come good, first Italian cup final for us. This win takes out unbeaten run in all competitions to 19, Catania away in the league next and then the CL QF 1st leg.

Best thing to do is probably post up an image of your formation and team instructions, the more I think about it the more potential things that could be stopping Lamela and Chadli doing what you want, the low Teamwork stat will contribute but as Crane said there will be other external factors we can compensate for (the side the players are on, potentially changing their roles, etc)

I can mind on another forum(LosWonderkids, RIP), we tried recreating Barcelona's tactics. We struggled a lot in regards to positioning because what we found was that changing one player's position would get him doing what we wanted, but it would cause another player to do the total opposite of what we wanted. So perhaps its your STs or CMs roles who are stopping Lamela and Chadli from coming inside, maybe the space just isn't there?

Even now when I play with Inside Forwards I find them to not cut in enough and just chuck far too many crosses to the back-post. They don't do everything I want (and at times I'd like more goals), but they do enough for me to get by and not fannying on too much. Although typing this post up has reignited my annoyance at my AMR and AML not scoring enough, changes could be afoot at Palermo ahead of the 2057/58 season.

4 draws, 9 wins over the last 13 league games....13 points off Juventus. Juve just aren't fucking around, to take our minds off this lets look at the impacts of my January signings;

Eller - MC - 6(1) - 0 - 0 - 6.87
Poncelas - ST - 6(6) - 4 -4 - 7.27
Hajji - AMRL - 7(4) - 2 -0 6.85

Not too shocked with Eller, was always a risk bringing him in. Would have liked a wee bit more from Hajji but its been tough, I'm yet to play him from ST and that is his genuine position, I want him more as a winger though. As for Poncelas he is quality when I start him, from the bench he has been hit and miss. I hope this form just isn't a flash in the pan with him as I'd like to have him on lock as my backup ST for the next 2-3 seasons. Its nice being able to rest Mauro every now and then

This could be down to 3 things;

1. The players PPMs clashing with your instructions (for example Lamela could have a tendency to dribble down the wing, this would clash with you telling him to come inside)
2. The players having a low Teamwork stat (meaning they are less likely to follow instructions)
3. Your team instructions clashing with your player instructions (are you giving the team too much creativity? telling them to drift from the positions?, etc)

Just like in real life it is hard to get players to do exactly what you want and it will take some time to get the message through. At times though some players just won't listen and will end up doing their own thing, its a balancing act between giving creative players the freedom they need and giving them the instructions which best utilise their ability and your tactics.

Youth batch is in and they're all bloody abysmal. Don't think I have a single Palermo kid on the books who has what it takes to be anything more than quota filler during their career. Disheartening but not the end of the world.

van Berlo is still going strong with Torino on loan so he will definitely be in the first team squad next season.

In the next month we have a Serie A game vs Napoli, the second leg of the Italian cup semi vs Inter (won the first leg 2-1) and our CL QFs vs Real Madrid. Gonna take some squad rotation as we won't have much rest time.

Noice, noice. Great performance all round, tidy, simple, effective. And Boukhari on the scoresheet to boot, he'll be pivotal in our CL run and potential (potential) title push (potential).

I tend to look for the same things in my younger players, determination and no injury proneness. However if you are signing players at U18 you can always get stung, I used to sign U17 players on the regular but now I've basically totally given up on it because the players rarely amount to anything. At times this is just down to pure luck as loads of players never progress and meet their potential in real life, other times its because of injuries or consistent poor form.

In regards to staff opinions remember those opinions are based off the size of your club (and that the staff aren't always 100% correct). So a three star PA player for Man City would be a 5 star PA player for a mid-table EPL team because of the different needs of both clubs.

With my youth players I either get them in the first team early or get them loaned out, basically as soon as they are qualified as home grown I either first team them or loan them. I hate having them rot playing no competitive games. Its just Russian Roulette at the end of the day, some of the players will go on to great things, some will just never improve. Just like in real life there's no magic formula, be patient, be consistent, be persistent.

MARTIAL

Knew I'd seen a thread around here moaning about inflated prices, thank you BananaRama2000 (never thought I'd say that sentence in my life, at least not after what happened the last time.....)

It is weird, is it just on the Staff Search he isn't showing or on the overall in game search when you search for a name?

We never really looked in control and PSG had their chances, but Mauro pulled us through once more. A repeat performance of last years in Paris and I will be a very happy coffee drinker.

The agents can totally screw you over, I renewed one of my players deals last year and I couldn't get the deal done unless I gave the agent a £5m fee. When a new contract request comes in you can thankfully ask the player to sack his agent and sometimes when buying a player if you can't agree negotiations the player will sack his agent after the failure and you can just rebid and renegotiate.

It happened to me a few years ago and after sacking an agent a players wage demands went down from 50kish to right under 30k

Comeback game for Boukhari, part of a 4-1 Italian Cup QF win vs Bari, Steve Sheridan got a hat trick and Poncelas grabbed two assists.