Football Manager - Mandragora may win us games but Baker just won my heart

Mandragora may win us games but Baker just won my heart
Staying with the same tactic that has served you well despite a 5 game losing streak
Oliver Shenton aka the vanarama Ronaldo! Best goal I’ve seen on FM.
Signed a couple of days ago... fantastic start to his Peterborough career...
My CB (playing at RB for Italy) had 3 goals in 78 previous caps...and then did this at the 2034 World Cup
i can't breathe holy shit
Dr. Savescum or: How I learned to stop worrying and win the league with Paderborn- Part 3
Couldnt be from anyware else really
I think there's no need in scouting
Back to Instanbul with these custom kits of the day!
I wonder who will win this "Sack Race"...
A tough record to beat
This player has been in the team since National League. I can afford better ones, but I got attached to him. Now he's the captain and is finally playing in Premier League.
Greatest FM achievement. 5 years to take Altrincham from Vanarama North to Championship.
League One side Oldham with truly glorious FA Cup run
I would say it’s been a productive quarantine.
Forgot to renew my centre-back's contract, joining Bayern on a free. Don't be me.
when your new league pays you 500k every 9 games, if you play atleast 12 domestic players.
Terrible finsihing by my team
Brooke United's record transfer fee received since Ronaldo left ... and make a €92m profit for good measure ��
(Palermo, Season 2) After unbeaten season 1 in Serie D I was not sure what to expect in season 2 in Serie C. But guess I can't complain...
Just 4 Shots.... I Am Now Bored From This
Ref clearly going through a rough divorce at the moment
Any Cinderella stories in World Cup/UCL/Europa League/other big tournaments in your save?

Mandragora may win us games but Baker just won my heart

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 02:31 PM PDT

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

Staying with the same tactic that has served you well despite a 5 game losing streak

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 02:18 AM PDT

submitted by /u/NickMac40
[link] [comments]

Oliver Shenton aka the vanarama Ronaldo! Best goal I’ve seen on FM.

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 12:31 PM PDT

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

Signed a couple of days ago... fantastic start to his Peterborough career...

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 03:29 PM PDT

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

My CB (playing at RB for Italy) had 3 goals in 78 previous caps...and then did this at the 2034 World Cup

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 03:06 PM PDT

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

i can't breathe holy shit

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 03:47 PM PDT

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

Dr. Savescum or: How I learned to stop worrying and win the league with Paderborn- Part 3

Posted: 12 Jun 2020 05:21 AM PDT

Link to Part 1 / Link to Part 2

The journey continues...

We had eleven games left until the winter break, with back to back games against Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig being the stand out fixtures. As we established in the last update, the first half of the season was vital for this run to last as few games as possible, so with a relatively easy run of fixtures until those big hitters, with Koln, Fortuna Dusseldorf and a cup game against Mainz, we wanted to blitz through these games with as few attempts as possible.

First up, we had Koln away. A few of you might remember the Wolfsburg game last part and how teams with amazing full backs were the bane of our existence. You can imagine how well a game against Jonas Hector and Katterbach went. We did alright in our first game, unluckily drawing 0-0 to a team reduced to 10 men. After that it was all downhill. I saw Jonas Hector score the exact same bloody goal a trillion times, rinsing Victor Garcia and blasting it to the near post, while Tiago Sá tried to helplessly get a hand on it. When it wasn't the full backs it was Jhon Cordoba, also known as Prime Cristiano Ronaldo, making a mess of our defense on the counter. It got so bad that we decided to start trying out new tactics to specifically stop Koln. Keep in mind it took two (!) attempts to get 3 points against Bayern. It didn't help that Jota, our best player by far, was out with a suspension.

Our first idea was to channel our inner portuguese spirit and build an entire transport company in front of goal. The results were...less than ideal.

What can I say but yikes

Afterwards, we decided to be a bit more creative. Since we were having recurring problems with full backs, we pushed back both of our wingers to play a 4-1-4-1 style of football, pushing the defensive line a bit higher up and lowering the pressing line to try and limit the space on the wings. This allowed us to still play broadly the same style of football we were playing since the start ("play it long and inshallah" as we call it) while attending to specific issues within our squad. The first outing with this brand new tactic was unsuccessful, a 3-1 loss, but we did show improvement, even if Hector still managed to slam one home. It was the next attempt, when they miraculously went down to 10 men, that we finally got our first win against them. This game alone took 11 attempts.

We need to talk about Kai

I'm gonna take this opportunity to mention something everyone agreed was worthy of note: Kai Proger, who is in real life one of Paderborn's standout players, and one of the few survivors from the Great Paderborn Purge of 2019, is an absolutely atrocious footballer. Even though he has gotten extensive game time due to Matheus Nunes' underwhelming performances and inconsistency, he has failed to make a contribution even once. In one of the Koln games where we were able to salvage a 0-0 draw, he missed two sitters in extra time,something that annoyed us so much that 35 year old mostly meme signing Siphiwe Tshabalala was the starter for a lot of our games, leading to him assisting one of Tanque's goals in our unsucessful attempts. The frustration with his performances was only increased by a player in very similar circumstances, Ben Zolinski, scoring a 90th minute winner on his debut. Kai, dear, if you're reading this we're sorry, but you are total garbage.

Despite the Koln roadblock, the month of October ended rather quickly, with a routine 1-0 win against Fortuna Dusseldorf and the loss in the cup against Mainz. Like stated in earlier parts, we wanted to use the cup as a litmus test to see how good of a team we actually had. As it turns out, not very good.

A surprising 3-0 battering of Hoffenheim away lifted our spirits, before a mind boggling 8 games against Augsburg brought us back down to Earth. Playing this save, it becomes quite clear how tipsy turvy Football Manager can be as a game. It quickly became impossible to guess how many games were needed for each fixture, due to the seemingly arbitrary way that the quality of our opponents was calculated. This became even more apparent after we drew with Dortmund away on our second attempt and effortlessly dispatched RB Leipzig at home.

Another job well done

To be clear, results like these do occur commonly in real life, this isn't a "FM bad fix it Miles" take by any stretch, but after you play the sheer volume of games we did in a relatively small amount of time, it can get on your nerves.

Meanwhile, our Under 19 squad was having a grand old time...

Yeah, I don't know either

I need a hero

After a 0-0 draw against Werder Bremen (which we decided to take, seeing as we were growing a considerable gap with Bayern already and after 11 games against Koln you really start to despise this game) and another Kai Proger disaster class, we decided to shoot our shot in the free agent pool. A name immediately stood out to our DoF: 27 year old brazilian winger Geuvânio. His wage demands were costly, if attainable, but our DoF assured us he was the real deal. Our scouts thought so too, giving him 3/5 stars current ability, making him easily our best winger and one of our best players.

His debut would come against 17th placed Union Berlin. After a disappointing start, Jota won us a penalty in the second half. Being firmly on the Geuvânio hype train, we decided to ignore his 9 Penalty Taking stat and give it to the debutant.

We lost that game 1-0, and had to play Union at home four times before a scrappy 1-0 win. See what I mean?

We accepted yet another 0-0 draw, this time against Monchengladbach, as Bayern had also lost points, and finished off the first part of the season with a tie against Eintracht Frankfurt. After a 1-0 loss, we bounced back and won 3-1 on our second attempt.

The Winter Break

With Geuvânio in, we were able to improve our winger situation, where we were plagued with inconsistency and bad performances. As Jota is either footed, he started playing on the right, giving Geuvânio room to play on his prefered role as a left winger. This left us two problems left to fix, as we mentioned in the last part: our wing backs were terribly underqualified for what were trying to achieve here, so it was time to unleash our DoF unto the unsuspecting world of FM bargains. For the left back position, our target was Aubrey Modiba. The South African playing at SuperSport United could not only play the entire left side, but would also be a suitable player for most of the right side as well. Not only that, he would only set us back 275k which for a player of his ability is absolutely insane. The only real problem were his wage demands: we tried to get him earlier in the season, but his 26k wage demands were way too much for a team of our caliber. We did manage to renegotiate it to 18k and bring him in, but unfortunately that meant sacrificing cult hero Tshabalala, our only out of the winter period, for 9k, which was almost as much as he cost us weekly. In the end, the deal went through, and we had on our hands a 4 star left back, meaning we no longer had to endure Diogo Clemente's two footers inside the box as often.

For the right back position we broke the bank. At 1.6M, 30 year old Bebeto from Maritimo became Paderborn's biggest signing of all time. While seemingly unspectacular, Victor Garcia was probably one of our weakest links in the team (not including Kai Proger) and Bebeto is a very solid choice for a full back due to his rounded stats. With no money left to invest on the team, we approached the second half of the season. Seventeen fixtures stood between us and a magical (and heavily rigged) Bundesliga victory.

Tables and other fun stats

At matchday 17, Paderborn stood at the top with 43 points, 6 points above Bayern Munich. This essentially meant we just had to emulate whatever Bayern was doing at their games, which thankfully were played at the same time. This meant we weren't obligated to push for the 3 points every time, and it also meant our unbeaten run might soon reach its end. If we only count the first attempt, however, it would add up to 22 points, which would see us occupy a spot around the middle of the table (and is more than Paderborn had at this point of the season irl). At this point we have played a total of 55 games, with 53 points to show for it, which equates to 0,96 points per game, which is an improvement from the 0,91 tally we had last part. Here is the table with all our attempts.

Opponent	Game	Result
FC Koln (A)	Attempt 1	0-0
	Attempt 2	2-1 - Cordobá/Hector, Douglas TANQUE (assisted by Tshabalala. Yes, you read that correctly.)
	Attempt 3	3-2 - Hector/Victor Garcia (OG)/Cordobá, Douglas TANQUE/Victor Garcia
	Attempt 4	0-0 (Kai Pröger missed 2 potential 90th minute winners back to back.)
	Attempt 5	1-0 - Schindler (PK)
	Attempt 6	3-0 - Cordobá (x2)/Schindler (PK)
	Attempt 7	1-1 - Bornaw, Chiren (PK)
	Attempt 8	3-0 - Bornaw/Schindler (PK)/Héctor
	Attempt 9	3-1 - Cordobá x2/Katterbach, Matheus Nunes (they had 43 shots, 23 on target. We had 6, 3 on target)
	Attempt 10	3-1 - Hector/Thielmann/Rexhbecaj, Chiren (PK)
	Attempt 11	1-2 - Cordobá, Chrien (PK)/Zolinski ON HIS DEBUT (they had 10 but wtv)
Fortuna Dusseldorf (H)	Attempt 1	1-0 - Douglas TANQUE
TSG Hoffenheim (A)	Attempt 1	0-3 - Jota x2/Douglas TANQUE
FC Augsburg (H)	Attempt 1	1-1 -> Hahn, Jota
	Attempt 2	3-1 -> Hahn x2/Finbogasson, Douglas TANQUE
	Attempt 3	0-0
	Attempt 4	0-2 -> Jensen/Finbogasson (PK)
	Attempt 5	0-1 -> Finbogasson (PK)
	Attempt 6	0-1 -> Bauer
	Attempt 7	0-0
	Attempt 8	1-0 -> Douglas TANQUE
Borussia Dortmund (A)	Attempt 1	1-0 - Sancho
	Attempt 2	Wind, Douglas TANQUE (Bayern drew 2-2 with a 90th minute Fortuna goal so we move)
RB Leipzig (H)	Attempt 1	2-1 -> Jota/Schonlau, Werner
Werder Bremen (A)	Attempt 1	0-0
Union Berlin (H)	Attempt 1	0-1 - Andersson
	Attempt 2	0-0
	Attempt 3	0-0
	Attempt 4	1-0 - Douglas TANQUE
Borussia Monchengladbach (A)	Attempt 1	0-0
Eintracht Frankfurt (H)	Attempt 1	0-1 -> Gacinovic
	Attempt 2	3-1 -> Jota/Chrien/Douglas TANQUE, Timmy Chandler