• Breaking News

    Friday, April 24, 2020

    Home Unlabelled Football Manager - I love my boys

    Football Manager - I love my boys

    April 24, 2020

    Football Manager - I love my boys

    I love my boys

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 10:41 AM PDT

    Some things can't be forgiven

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 09:22 AM PDT

    After 5 real life years, I have finally done it. AFC Bolnore, “the worst team in England”, have won the treble!

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 11:14 AM PDT

    It's taken 5 years in real life, 35 in game seasons, 23 promotions, two hard drive reformats and 4000-odd ingame hours (most of which have been spent processing or idling), but thanks to the lockdown, I've finally reached the goal at long last: Taking AFC Bolnore, the "worst team in England" which in 2014 were predicted to come dead last in the illustrious Mid Sussex Football League Division 11 - all the way up through the football pyramid to the Premier League and Treble glory. In this time, the real AFC Bolnore have unfortunately become defunct, which made me unexpectedly sad. This spurred me on to complete the challenge, however. And now that I've done it, I'm not about to move on without documenting the suffering I've put my patience and my computer's processor through, so here goes.

    This is basically a marathon version of the "dafuge challenge", with some personal modifications to avoid going completely mad (such as allowing scouting at even the lowest level and signing players to an amateur team from across the country). The journey itself presumably started in some sort of field near Haywards Heath. Due to database quirks, I had to use fake players and staff to ensure that clubs that would normally be empty would have players and managers. For those who doesn't know, this usually doesn't change much other than the names and occasionally the nationalities of well-known players. This means that Eden Hazard is now named "Scott Greatorex", Alvaro Morata is called "Candido Pastor"; and Thomas Müller, hilariously, is just called Josef Müller. From the beginning, I also only had the English football leagues as this alone was more than enough to bring my laptop to a boil.

    THE EARLY YEARS

    Basically, the first decade or so is just a test of endurance rather than representative of any form of management skill. The game isn't really balanced below Conference level, so if you're good enough to get promoted once, chances are you're good enough to get promoted next year as well. The one challenge is keeping your players for an extended time, as amateurs change teams at the drop of a hat and aren't restricted by pesky things such as "transfer windows" or "the loyalty and homebody-ness of a sane person". I reckon that until Bolnore went semi-pro around the Isthmian level, at least half the squad would turn over each season. That said, it was in the amateur years that I also managed a whole league season without conceding a single goal, and I didn't even notice until the summer break.

    THE GREEN WAVE

    Semi-pro level provided a different challenge; finances. I'd grown a preference for offering exorbitant (relatively speaking) match and goal bonuses to lure League One/Two-level players to my Isthmian/Conference side, which ensured that Bolnore's liquidity was teetering on the edge of the abyss every single season. Fortunately, the consecutive promotions continued all the way to the Championship largely thanks to players such as John Brown, a club legend who followed the club all the way from Isthmian to the Premier League (I'll get back to him later). The cartoon villains of the board considered firing me for managing the finances like a drunken sailor. Miraculously, the club was then suddenly sold to some spanish bloke who immediately injected cash; not a lot, mind you, but enough to ensure that the smallest venue in the Championship could stay afloat and even make a few free transfers. Bolnore only spent three years in the Championship, getting promoted in their third season in part due to the magic of Mirkos Petrak, another club legend and goalscoring virtuoso (I'll get back to him later).

    A NEW COLOSSUS

    I was cash-strapped with mostly Championship level players, and had to change playstyles accordingly to survive in the EPL. Through the first three seasons, AFC Bolnore would be known to play proper English 4-4-2 with long balls and hard studs (whew, euphemism much?) which would award us with ignoble mid-table positions. A gradual change began in the 42/43-season, where strategic sales allowed the purchase of Tom Moore, future vice-captain; and Tommy Spencer, Harry Kane-clone and absolute lad. These two and the return of one Kezie Keen (who I don't have a screenshot of as the game opted not to save his history) led to a masterclass 4th place finish.

    The rise continued from there. With powerhouses such as Man Utd, Arsenal, Man City and Sunderland going through upheaval and rough patches, Bolnore pounced. And, through continued development of their youngsters as well as the occasional iconic transfer, they'd finish runners up twice before dethroning Chelsea in 45/46. In the same period, Bolnore won the EL in 2043, and the CL (somewhat fortuitously) in 2045, as well as the domestic cups a few times - look it doesn't matter. Only one thing remained; the elusive (true) Treble.

    Anyway, after Chelsea's second second place in -47, Miguel Perez, legendary manager (and for some reason, friend of yours truly) decided to join Manchester City instead. He spent a whole 5 months there before getting fired, whereupon he joined Stoke instead in the Championship. Every big team was in complete shambles. The season turned into a cakewalk after the fatigue from the christmas period started setting in, and I was merciless in the transfer market to ensure complete dominance over the English pyramid that I had worked so diligently to climb.

    JUST ONE LAST THING…

    The Champions League was the one big hurdle that stood unforded. True, I had already won it once, but that was pretty much a fluke. While the teams on home soil had become routine, four clubs in Europe were still fully capable of massively fucking my shit up; Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Juventus, and particularly PSG. The latter almost had me give up in the penultimate season, as they managed to overturn a 0-2 loss at home to a 3-4 in thanks to an own goal and a massive blunder, both from the same defender. But the year after, it happened. It began with a needlessly narrow 3-2 vs. Basel, followed by a complete 11-1 walloping against Chelsea, then a delicious 7-2 semi final against Barcelona. Only Bayern remained for the final, and they'd fall to Chris Bennett's desperate header from a free kick in the 30th minute of extra time, making it 3-2. AFC Bolnore, the "worst club in England", are treble winners.

    (Side note: I also briefly managed France for a couple of years, which was a dumb decision that may have indirectly contributed to making PSG an all-time powerhouse.)

    THE ABSOLUTE LEGENDS

    This is the all-time AFC Bolnore best eleven as calculated by whichever algorithm it is the game uses. I'm pretty split on it, as while it's nice to see the formative years and players being acknowledged in line with the superstars, a 4-4-2 still makes for a not quite optimal selection. Oh well;

    GK - Dennis Bertram: Can't really say I've had any outstanding goalkeepers, and it seems Bertram made the team sheet based on appearances alone. He has been a mostly nailed-on pick in the 'modern age' and is a reliable German goalie - what more can you ask for?

    RB - Ryan Steade: At a glance, this is probably my best ever Bolnore player, stats wise. I reckon he's at least 190 CA. I threw money at Chesterfield for him (£15.5M) because a scout said he'd turn out 4-5 stars. Since, he's been a steade-y feature on the right back.

    CB - Liam O'Hanlon: Okay, so, once I had won promotion to League Two and became pro, I disabled many of the lower leagues to ease the toll on my computer, and enabled a good chunk of the bigger leagues from around the world to avoid making England too dominant on the world stage. The side effect seemed to be a lot of random, good players showing up in leagues around the world. O'Hanlon was such a player, and I bought the Englishman for a laughable £12.5M from Anji in Russia.

    CB - Damián Lozano: Joined up on a free from Valencia Mestalla when Bolnore was still in the Championship, and stuck around for six years, featuring reliably. Never quite good enough to get caps for Spain.

    LB - Chris Morgan: Morgan really just proves that I haven't had many long-serving left backs, as he showed up in the Conference and stuck around for five seasons until the Championship before he fucked off to Corinthian-Casuals to get relegated from League 1. I can't remember him but he seems to have played well so he couldn't have been bad.

    MR - Tom Moore: This guy is shoehorned into the right midfield position because he can play there but he's spent 98% of the time being a striker for me. He's still around, serving as vice-captain being third-or-second choice up front depending on form, and although everyone keeps telling me he's plagued by injuries, I'm just not seeing it after 256 league games.

    MC - Kezie Keen: So this is where it gets fuzzy, because his player history has been removed to save memory. He joined in Conference N/S as a youngster from Arsenal, and followed the team to the Championship before joining Tranmere in the Premier League. After two seasons, he re-joined Bolnore, having now been retooled from a left winger to an attacking mid. By the end, he'd racked up the second-most appearances ever for Bolnore.

    MC - Osmar: I'll be honest, Osmar was an impulse buy in the PL which I wasn't excited about. I needed a creative midfielder and he looked interesting. He was so consistent however that he pretty much played every game until he got displaced by a better midfielder, whereupon he graciously asked to return to Italy. How could I deny him?

    ML - Marc Wilkinson: I don't remember this guy, to be honest, but he played for 8 consecutive seasons during the Mid Sussex-years which makes him a friggin' rarity.

    ST - Matthew Dickson: I am so very happy that Dickson still is in the XI after all this time. I posted a screenshot of him years back. Although he was an atrocious footballer overall, he has many key attributes that allowed him to dominate on an amateur level - speed, stamina/workrate, and goalscoring ability. He alone allowed me to play a "boot it long to the fast lad"-style for about a decade, and when that didn't work, his relatively intense pressing ensured that he'd at least create one goal from snagging the ball off any defender with a First Touch of 1 (which was everyone).

    ST - Luke Harris: He's just a rich man's Dickson, really. He played for me in two periods between the Sussex County Leagues and League One, getting his most impressive scoring streaks in the Conference.

    2nd GK - Jack Moore: As far as I can remember, I didn't even mean for Jack to become a regular. I simply ran out of keepers in League 1 and brought him in on a free, and he unexpectedly developed into a starter who played all the way up to a whole season in the PL. He then moved to Reading and have had a very respectable career.

    2nd Sub (MC) - Andrew Wilson: Wilson used to be my captain if I'm not mistaken, and he was a man of extremes. Completely devoid of everything resembling technique, he was first and foremost a physical powerhouse with the defensive sensibilities of a pitbull terrier, making playmakers pee their pants all around the country. Serving Bolnore from 35 to 42, he then went on to terrorise League 1 for half a decade before hanging up his boots.

    3rd Sub (MR) - John Brown: The biggest atrocity of the all-time XI is that John Brown isn't in the first eleven. This is a man who could have played Championship football but opted to join a Sussex County League Division Three team because he saw their potential. This is a man who diligently turned up every single day, from the arduous depths of Sussex to the heights of the Premiership, to make 528 appearances from Bolnore. This is the man who, in a single season, racked up 50 fucking assists and still went on to play for 8 more seasons despite teams 4 levels up wanting his services because he's just that badass. Now he spends his days teaching the Bolnore youth how to be as awesome as he is. Praise be John Brown.

    4th Sub (ST) - Mirko Petrak: Poacher extraordinaire from Croatia that I bought for the Championship. Fired his way into legend but fell a bit into the wayside when I started playing a more free flowing, versatile game and left the club. Still a top bloke though.

    5th Sub (ST?) - Robbie Craven: Yeah, I don't remember what this guy was like. A striker, most likely.

    6th Sub (DC) - Andy Tatters: Tatters only made 86 league starts, which makes him the least featured players in the list. Bit of a robbery too, considering some of the players that came later, but I guess there's some old farts in Haywards Heath somewhere voting on this and reminiscing about the good old days when the pitch was grown from cowpats.

    7th Sub (ST) - Edu González: If Steade isn't the best player I've had, this is the guy. Literally the Complete Striker made flesh, I lucked out as Barcelona had three excellent young forwards but only one position for them to share, so I bought him for a...reasonable £72M fee. Honestly, he hasn't been terribly consistent and he's injured a bit, but what a big game player he's been.

    Honestly, having written all this I'm finding it a little hard to let go. I semi-ironically swore that I'd never play Football Manager again after completing this, but the state of Bolnore now is a financially precarious one. If I were to, say, retire, and simulate for a few decades, I couldn't leave them without establishing a healthy economy first...

    submitted by /u/Cee-Mon
    [link] [comments]

    Whenever I go watch an Under-18 match(my first meme ever go easy)

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 02:11 AM PDT

    What the hell happened to the guy on the left?

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 01:01 PM PDT

    I think this achievement is worthy of being my first post

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 01:01 PM PDT

    When deep down your parents wanted a cat but ended up having you instead

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 03:57 AM PDT

    He's home. He needs to play his last game at Arsenal, he gotta be.

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 08:07 AM PDT

    Been reading the old Manifesto, have we?

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 12:12 PM PDT

    How is your save going?

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 07:34 PM PDT

    I love reading about others saves and the unique stories that occur in each. Share away!

    submitted by /u/BradSaint17
    [link] [comments]

    Well isn’t this interesting.. I wonder if this actually happens to real players

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 08:30 PM PDT

    so let me get this straight, you want me to pay you to have him?

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 11:47 AM PDT

    Wouldn't have it any other way...

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 03:06 PM PDT

    feel like 11 aggression is a bit low

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 11:17 AM PDT

    Glory Hunter Challenge

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 04:47 PM PDT

    Attempting the glory hunter challenge as inspired by doctorbenjyfm on YouTube

    The challenge: to win the league and domestic cup in each of Europe's top five leagues(England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France). Competition that also need to be won are: Champions League, Europa League, World Cup and Euro Champs

    Duration: 20 season

    Starting Team: Borussia Dortmund

    I'm just using this to; one update you on how I do, and two occasionally ask for help on key decisions

    submitted by /u/joshy2019
    [link] [comments]

    I have become what I fear most...

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 02:31 PM PDT

    Pray For Everton. We can't afford to allow Liverpool Win it three times in a row.

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 02:27 PM PDT

    WEAKLINGS go on holiday when the season's over. MEN stay practicing all by themselves.

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 06:19 AM PDT

    Felipe Renan Getting My First 10.0 Rating in FM2020

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 09:20 PM PDT

    Is FM mobile worth buying???

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 09:19 PM PDT

    I started the match then got up for a minute and came back to this

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 04:29 PM PDT

    Seems a fair offer...

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 08:08 AM PDT

    I wonder how good he would be on the left wing

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 02:00 AM PDT

    How to stop the rot

    Posted: 24 Apr 2020 11:31 AM PDT

    Every single fm save I do goes like this

    1 . I start a new career 2 . I make some good signings 3 . I create a good tactic and start off incredibly well 4 . I lose one game 5 . I lose six games , my tactic suddenly no longer works 6 . I make a team meeting change my tactic slightly 7 . Nothing changes , I go winless In 15 8 . I quit or get sacked

    I like the game however this ruins it, what do you all do that actually works when the inevitable bad run of form hits ? .

    submitted by /u/DopeytheSam
    [link] [comments]
    Read more
    at

    No comments:

    Post a Comment

    Fashion

    Beauty

    Travel