HawkAussie - Comments

For me ideally, I want to have it on a half-season basis unless it's really close at the top of the table with only few games to go. If that is the case, I would do it by matchday.

Congrats on completing the United States and for a career so far. Any ideas on possible locations once North America is complete.

@r96Skinner Yeah thank you for that

Yesssss, you can finally leave Gibraltar now.

A close shave there

Congrats on getting promotion to the top division.

Some good form right there.

Ahh that was unlucky there with Motherwell. But hopefully, you can finally get out of this country that is called Gibraltar this season.

Well done on cracking that 700 barrier in games, now to go for another 700.

The second season of the European competitions has been completed with some predictable results. First, we head to Spain where Real Madrid have retaken the title away from Valencia who finished in fifth place for this season. Barcelona and Atletico Madrid came in second and third place respectively while Sevilla claimed the final Champions League spot. Getting relegated was Alaves, Valladoid and Zaragova (newly promoted into the top tier)

In Slovakia, Slovan Bratislava took the title once again as they finished two points ahead of second place Trencin. Skalica though will be getting relegated while for Sport Podbrezova, they would be hoping they will be able to survive in the playoff.

In Romania, Steaua Bucharest once again showed how they came back from the first phase of the competition to take their second title of this save. Univ Cluj, on the other hand, will be heading back down to the second tier after being relegated.

The final step is in Europe with the Champions League once again going to an English team with Chelsea taking the title over Manchester City who came runnerup for the second year in a row. In the Europa League, Dortmund took out the title as they won 4-2 in the final over Austrian team Red Bull Salzburg who will definitely be hoping that this is going to signs to come in the future.

Funny seeing you in Finland now as I haven't really moved from my location as I haven't had the time to play FM.

I don't know why but the feeling of "why" is creeping in as the attempts of doing these matches on my own seems to not work with our team losing two of the four matches that I managed after getting the lead. Those being in the games against RoPS and HJK Helsinki which for me seem to be doing something and then it just goes to shreds. The two wins that I did get was from instant result those games where we played well against FC Lahti and only just got the win against SJK. Maybe this is why I don't get many saves past the first season or so.

Hopefully, I can survive another month on this save and with that look in the fixtures, maybe I can get some confidence back into not only this team (with morale being so low) but maybe to myself. Then again, FM is an easy game to learn but to tough to master, especially if you are not a person who looks at other people's tactics to see what is working for them.

At least there is some hope that we can survive but I don't feel confident at all, again its properly the factor of an overload in working out what to do in these sort of situations.

This is very familiar to ManUtd1 save in Europe and Africa with this set up.

Another one that has hit the dust at around the eight season mark because @Dan had issues when he was doing his journeyman save.

That does suck.

With the 2020 Olympics being held in Japan, a couple jobs in Europe popped up for the taking with France, Romania and Portugal all putting up a job application for a manager to take them through the Olympic Games. For me, I thought I might have an attempt at the Olympics and applied for all three with only the Romanian team putting my name for the job in which I gladly accepted without hesitation as it would give me a chance at the Olympic Games that I couldn't get with Hong Kong. This would be Romania's fourth time at the Olympic Games with the first three being with the senior team with their best result being a quarter-final appearance at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. The group that we have been given is what I would call properly the easiest of the four groups with properly Saudi Arabia being the toughest team from that group. But nothing is certain that is for sure.

The other groups for 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan

A very good month there and yeah that is a group where qualifying for the knockouts is easily possible.

@bigmattb28 @tongey Yeah not the best start but it was too be expected with us being predicted to go down.

The Suomen Cup has been won with Inter Turku taking out the title after they defeated MP Mikkeli who are currently in the third division of Finnish league football and not in the default database to start with as it's only the top two divisions in Finland. This does mean that Inter Turku have booked their spot into the Europa League for the 2021-22 season (I think). Another non-loaded up team was JS Hercules who made it all the way to the quarters before being eliminated by the champions.

So the first month in the top league of Finnish football was an ok month as I was hoping for a couple of wins to get us off to a great start. After an nil-all draw with FC Honka to open the season, we seemed to concede some stupid goals which I couldn't quite understand with the tactic. This meant that I switched the 4-4-1-1 tactic that I developed back into a 4-4-2 Wide tactic that I had last season with some success. With some more tinkering with the inner workings of the tactic and we got our first win over VPS in injury time to get us off the bottom of the table after the month of April.

The first month sees no surprise with HJK Helsinki on top of the table by goal difference over second place Inter Turku. IFK Mariehamn is third with the biggest surprise being AC Oulu in fourth place (they were predicted to finish last). On the other end of the table, we have FC Lahti in 11th place with FC Honka bringing up the rear because of them only scoring one goal from five matches.

Next month is going to be a reasonable one with the biggest game of the month having to be the game against HJK Helsinki with the first rival match of the season. Before that its a game against IFK Mariehamn which is a game which I would like to take a point from.

Yeah there is a lot of movement for your club, let's just hope that it would be good enough for the team.

The pre-season has been completed and for us it was an alright one I guess for us with our team winning some nice easy friendlies but the Suomen Cup was a disappointment as we seemed to struggle throughout the entire group. For me the loss against FC Ilves was probably a game that we should have won and seen how close we were, it was a real disappointment for us to be eliminated.

The group stage and we finished in 5th by virtual of goal difference which does suck in a way as a point from the last game against HJK, we might have qualified through to the second-round. But that wasn't to be.

Our first five games of the season and I think its a good start for us with two of the lower ranked teams in terms of odds as our first two matches before a test against Inter Turku. But all and all, that is a reasonable opening for our season.

@tongey Thanks for that and yeah and leaving Hong Kong wasn't something that I wanted but I wasn't going to wait four years to have another shot at it.

So the third season of the career and the first in a top division of Finnish football. For my thoughts, I am properly thinking of staying for a season before maybe moving on or if I can get a job in one of the higher tier teams in Finland (aka a professional club as ours is semi-professional). So after looking through the market, our main goal was to try and scope out the frees and hope they would be able to come to us. This meant a lot of people on trial to see if they can fit in and we got five new players into the squad but there could have been so many more with a couple of players not accepting or being way too much for us to sign. But we did break the transfer record for the club so there is that.


The player that we bought with money and looking through the stats, I think this might be a player that we can get behind with his physical stats being really good for this type of level. He did play in Finland last season for Inter Turku so the rule about players playing in the country does apply here. I reckon he would properly be part of our main 11 to hopefully survive the drop.


Looking through the lower leagues I saw this player playing in the third tier and will bring experience while also strengthing the defence which will properly be a key to surviving the drop into the second tier.


The other player of note was another play from Inter Turku, this time being a loan player with us not paying anything in terms of wage and will hopefully be a good backup for Ultmannen who is another year older from playing here at HIFK.


Looking at the media table and we are still predicted to win the title at 650-1 odds. So yay for that, I think especially when HJK Helsinki are favourites at 7-2 odds with KuPs and IFK close behind. For us, we are predicted to fall into the relegation play-off by these predictions which is hopefully where I won't be going.

Ouch on that short rein in China as you struggled there. Maybe going across to the other side of the world was a bad idea.

@AdamRK @Brick Tamland Thanks for the comments and yeah it's going to be a tough journey for this season (that is if I last a season)



So the 2020 AFC U-23 Championship has been played with our national U-23 team being drawn in Group B with three western teams in that group. In the opening game, we went behind early against Kuwait. After that little stumble, we came back hard by scoring six goals to dominate the game and take that match out. The second game saw a better performance with us not giving an early goal this time. This early confidence led to a 4-1 victory over Iraq and after knocking off Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the last match of the group, we would finish top where we would meet China. After a good first half, we got demolished in the second half with their striker scoring all four of the goals which would see us crashing out of the championship. For me, that was time on my journey as the Hong Kong U23s as I will now focus on HIFK and trying to get out of this situation that we are in.

Well done on winning the cup there.

So here we go, our second attempt in the Veikkausliiga with our last attempt being between 2015 to 2017 where our best result was a seventh-place finish on our first attempt back in 2015. First the good news and most of our annual revenues are going up with us gaining an extra sixty-nine thousand pounds in the bank compared to the previous season and despite us losing a little bit of a general sponsorship, that will at least be an improvement compared to last season.



Now the bad news, that is because of the first odds that have been revealed to us and we are predicted to finish in the play-off spot which is a little bit worrying but nothing we can't handle as that means we have to sign up some players to try and get us out of the relegation spots. Secondly, we have to the face the fact that the defending champions in HJK Helsinki went unbeaten last season and might be a challenge for the other teams in the league to stop this form from possibly going unbeaten for a second year in a row.

@bigmattb28 I will properly do another season and see how it will go. From there I will properly try and work out where to go.

In the international scene, four continental tournaments were held during this year with Asia, Africa and the two American competitions all competing during this year and we will be going from the earliest to the latest here.

First up it was AFC Nations Cup held in the UAE and it was the South Koreans who after losing the final in 2015 to Australia, they got revenge as they defeated Australia 3-1 in the final. The host nation made it all the way to the semis before losing to Australia. Next on the schedule was North America with Mexico defeating rivals the United States in the final by a single goal in what was a boring tournament. Over in South America, Brazil knocked off Argentina 2-1 in the final while over in Africa it was Nigeria who would take it out as they defeated Egypt by a goal.

Might need to expand on that depth if you want to challenge for promotion with only 14 players on your books.

That worry in terms of finances might need to be something to keep a watch on. As you don't want that to go further into the red there.

This will be an interesting journey to say the least.