Football Manager - And all it took was going 35-1-0 in the league and making the Europa League Final

And all it took was going 35-1-0 in the league and making the Europa League Final
No Experience, No Coaching Badges, No Job Challenge - Part I: Starting from the Bottom
R.I.P my laptop
It took me a lot of seasons but I finally won the UCL
My 19 year old kid scored a 100 goal in a single season including 27 goals in UCL (and he still has a long way before reaching his PA)!
Spurs (managed by Antonio Conte) got relegated on my save and are currently 6th in the Championship with this squad...
It's a miracle this guy is still walking
PSG's Harry Kane, playing as a CM, almost gets the Ballon d'Or
I've had a player at my club ever since he was a teenager, he is now almost in his 30s. I would like to know what happens when he retires? Can I retire his jersey number (the one I gave him), can I name our new stadium after him? What possibilities do I have? He has been a legend since he was 18 lol
You just cant please some owners WTF am I doing wrong �� 15 wins and only 1 loss
I created myself and added myself to my own team in Football Manager, today I/me came out as gay, fuck my life. I guess I'm gay in real life now as well. Out of all players, "me" had to be the one.
What a useful clause
Are older games allowed? Epic comeback by Partizan.
I feel like this was my first true shithousery
I think you're being a little overambitious there...
NICE
I jumped from my seat in happiness in the 96 minute, that was his only goal of the season so far
This the tightest race for top 6 I’ve ever seen

And all it took was going 35-1-0 in the league and making the Europa League Final

Posted: 10 Jun 2021 02:27 PM PDT

submitted by /u/riv3th3ad
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No Experience, No Coaching Badges, No Job Challenge - Part I: Starting from the Bottom

Posted: 10 Jun 2021 04:54 PM PDT

Background

So I've been playing football manager for about 12 years now. As with a lot of players, I like to take on new challenges once I get through my initial beta save run of "Let's go to a rich club and win trophies". I recently discovered a post by u/saint-vincent on this sub about entering the game as an unemployed manager with no coaching badges and no real experience within the game, and trying to make the way up the ladder. I've never actually started as an Unemployed manager before so I felt this could be a fun little challenge that tests me in different ways, and gave me inspiration to make this post. If there's a decent enough reception, I'll look at making a Part II follow-up post.

Step One - Find a club who is actually hiring

In saves like this, the most challenging part is to actually find a club that both have a vacancy, and would consider taking a punt on a manager with zero prior football experience. I guess I won't be in the running for any of the Champions League jobs just yet.... In the end I set up a database consisting of countries with low-ranked leagues - the likes of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the South/Eastern European nations we only usually care about when hunting for cheap regen wonderkids - in order to maximise my chances of getting a job.

When I load up the job centre screen, I see about a 15 vacancies - just under half are for top flight clubs so I disregard those..... my best chance of finding a job is with a lower division club. It's a race against time to find a club who'll take me - the worst way to start this save would be to start the 2020/21 season still unemployed. I don't want to apply for too many jobs as that may put some clubs off but I don't want to miss an opportunity either.

In the end I'm offered a chance to interview by Slovenian club Triglav Kranj, looking for a manager to push for promotion in the wake of their 2019/20 relegation from the Prva Liga. Though I leave the interview in good spirits, I receive the soul crushing notification a couple of days later - "Triglav job application unsuccessful".

It's squeaky bum time, the Hungarian and Romanian vacancies have all been filled. Only two vacancies in the second tier remain - both in Bulgaria. Hebar Pazardzhik or Neftochimic Burgas. I opt for Hebar, who agree to give me a 2-year contract. Just as a point of irony, u/saint-vincent's unemployed challenge also started at Hebar Pazardzhik. Guess I'm taking this inspiration a little too literally.

Starting from the bottom

Before the ink is even dry on my contract I am given the following objectives:

Secure a top-half finish
Reach the Second Round of the Bulgarian Cup
Work within the wage budget

The last objective already seems like a stretch - I have no transfer budget, am £500p/w over budget on wages before I've even assessed the squad and a combination of a raging global pandemic and a squad consisting mostly of new players means that it's going to prove difficult to reduce the budget, which in turn means I'm going to struggle to bring quality into the squad too.

When it comes to assessing the squad, the dynamics page shows me we have no players who can be considered team leaders and only a handful listed as highly influential. In a bid to change this I make the controversial decision to remove the 3* goalkeeper with 11 leadership of the captaincy and bestow it on a 4* central midfielder with 14 leaderships, Izaylo Lazarov.

The one good side of this squad is the youth side - when setting up the game I opted to turn on the option that populates empty youth academies with regens and the hand I've been dealt is a good one. The first team squad already contained a lot of young players with potential and the youth team has a few players with 4* potential in it's own right. As well as experience and leadership, the other area my team is lacking in is decent wide players (particularly at full back) so 15-year-old Emil Belchev is promoted to cover our only recognised left back Todor Govchev.

Lastly I need to settle on a tactic. The assman recommends a few 4-4-2 options, and with only 4 central midfielders, all of whom are defensively minded, it seemed like a decent option, using a system that involves using a ball-winning and box-to-box midfieders, wide players looking to stick one in the box, and sticking one of the big uglies at top as a target man, with an advanced forward Todor Chavorski as the man who'd try to score us the goals. With transfer options limited, I opted to bring in veteran forward Dimitar Makriev in on a free transfer to try to bolster the squad's experience and to back our strikers up in case of injury.

Thrown straight into the deep end

The announcement of my arrival at Hebar Pazardzhik comes just 8 days before the start of the new campaign, so we have little time to prepare for the start of the new season. The opening game is a trip to newly promoted Septemvri Simitli, so provides a perfect opportunity to get off to a good start. The first goal comes inside just 15 minutes, with my faith in Todor Chavorski as our prime bagsman being paid off straight away. Our second goal comes 10 minutes inside the second half, new club captain Lazarov smashing one into the top bins from 25 yards out to send all 4 away supporters stood behind the Simitli goal into raptures.

Our first home game 6 days later doesn't go quite as smoothly. Despite just one of the 461 supporters inside the Georgi Benkovski stadium being from the visiting Yantra Gabrovo side, they claim the lions share of possession and find a winning goal 5 minutes from the end of the game.

After a second win on the road, our next home game is against one of the media's picks to do well this season - Pirin Blagoevgrad. The game starts well enough with Dimitar Makriev marking his debut appearance with a goal after half an hour, but a late goal is our undoing for the second time this season with Pirin's centre-half Nikolay Bodurov heading in a free kick in the 90th minute. On the bright side, the board agree to allow me to go for my first coaching badge, the National C License.

The final game of August is a 0-0 draw at Ludogorets' II side who occupy a place in the Second Division. September proves to be a better month, a strike by Todor Chavorski inside 23 seconds helping us to our first home win of the season. This is followed up by a promising draw away to promotion hopefuls Septemvri Sofia, before we demolished league leaders Litex Lovech 4-1, a result they struggled to recover from as the embark on a run of 5 consecutive losses.

Aside from league success, our other focus is getting to the Second Round of the Bulgarian Cup to keep our board happy. The preliminaries go well, and despite going down early on to Dunav Ruse, a 92nd minute own goal takes us to the First Round proper. We hope that the draw gives us a team we have a chance of beating, but whilst we're delighted to be drawn at home, our delight turns to concern as the opponents are revealed. Ludogorets.

Our other concern is conceding late goals. Having already conceded last-minute winners at home to Yantra and Pirin earlier in the season, our October is blighted by two stoppage time goals - the first a 94th minute equaliser away to mid-table Sozopol with our next game against promotion hopefuls Lokomotiv Sofia seeing us concede a 92nd minute winner.

A valiant cup exit

A winless October turns into November and our big game with Ludogorets looms. A bumper crowd of 1,005 supporters turns up to watch the Bulgarian league leaders travel to Pazardzhik. Ludogorets take the lead after 24 minutes, but it's not all one-way traffic and the plucky underdogs manage to equalise from the penalty spot after bagsman Todor Chavorski is brought down. In the end, the bigger side managed to overwhelm us, our young centre back Tomislav Papazov the unlucky scorer of a second half own goal before Ludogorets grab a third with some silky play.

So here, we are - despite our best efforts, we've been eliminated from the cup. Our finances are also looking bleak as we're bleeding money and don't have our wage budget under control. With 2 of the 3 objectives set out by the board at the start of the season having failed already, there's only one realistic measurement of success left, we need to perform well in the league. But with an unremarkable 16 points from the opening 11 games and a really closely contested mid-table with only a handful of points separating 3rd and 13th, this inexperienced manager's first job could be off to a bumpy start......

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R.I.P my laptop

Posted: 10 Jun 2021 08:59 PM PDT