Football Manager 2020

Got Herbie Kane on a precontract from Liverpool. Then decided to just pay the money to get him in January. Looks a good player.

 

Got this beast for £7 million (release clasue) to partner Ajer at centre half.

 

Needed a prpoer back up for Eddy and somebody who can come on and change a game. Got him for £6.5 million

 

We had a flawless October. A so-so November. And then all * broke loose in December. 3 losses and a draw from 4 wasn’t quite season derailing stuff, given our strong start, but it was enough to give me the jitters. I probably made the mistake of sticking rather than twisting, but it’s tough to veer away from your storngest XI when you’ve got tough oppo like Valencia and Celta in close proximity.

Win away to Atleti was just the tonic to kick off the new year, with Iglesias netting a hat trick. We then blitzed through the rest of the month with wins until the small blemish of getting bundled out of the cup by Celta.

Board handed me an increased transfer budget for the window so I decided to go balls to the wall and splurge 25m (over 4 years, naturally) on 17 y/o Sebastiano Esposito. A bit of a risk, sure, but he’s the striker I envisaged leading the line before I even started the save, so might as well get him on board at the earliest opportunity in order to oversee his development. Has already scored a couple of goals from the bench which is an encouraging start.

February was reasonable, apart from the Eibar loss. But they’re a solid top half team so no shame in losing to them.



Things are very delicately poised at the moment, not at all confident about keeping our noses ahead of one of Atleti and Valencia. But that’s the recipe for a CL spot.

The looming end of the Chinese transfer window has bought about some… interesting times. Had SIPG and Dalian both progressively bidding higher and higher amounts for Marc Bartra. Board eventually accepted two 40-50m+ offers, but they accepted my protests and agreed to reject the offers. Still a bit worried that one of the Chinese clubs may decide to pounce on his 52m release clause.

SIPG then came in for my other CB Sidnei, and I’m able to negotiate them all the way up to a straight 35m fee. This is a rather trickier decision to make because Sidnei is infinitely more expendable than Bartra, and is also interested in the move. The benefits of selling are obvious, getting more than twice the value on a 30 y/o CB who I doubt I’ll be able to sell for much more than 15m should I try to shift him in the summer (and based on my experience with Nastasic and Chinses bidders in my Schalke save, once you’ve batted them away the big offers don’t come back around again). I’d also be able to tie up a deal for Fiorentina’s Nikola Milenkovic straight away, sealing a long term top tier defender for the save. But the downside is I’m weakening the side for our potential CL spot push. Pau Torres can step in to start alongside Bartra, no issues there, but I’d then go to having to elevate Feddal to first cab off the rank in the event of injury. And he’s fairly sketchy ability wise.

Think I’m going to pull the trigger on it and take the risk, can’t look a gift horse in the mouth etc. Let’s live dangerously.

 

Anyone tried any different skins yet?

Never usually do, but I'm trying out the YACS one on the workshop in steam, so far liking it and makes the game feel a bit different and 'new' compared to the purple of last year and this year. Changes the player page a little as well.




And the increased size in player pictures for newgens make them look like Sims or something:

 

What does Henderson look like in your save? I punted him to Aberdeen for pennies....

 

Not really developed much as I shamefully do not play him.
Connell is doing better:

 

What's the thoughts on this year's edition? More of the same as last one or an improvement

 

Small improvements, but my game keeps freezing like * during matches and seems to take longer moving between days.

 

Whew.



What a fun battle. I thought we’d suffer for selling Sidnei but our defence more or less held up, it was finding goals which proved far more troublesome as Iglesias endured a rather tough barren stretch. You’ll note from the fixtures below that we kept 6/12 clean sheets, and conceded more than once in only 2/12 games. But in 5/12 fixtures we only scored once, and only scored three goals in a single game. So tl:dr, there were a lot of nailbiting close encounters.



It was a proper three-way slog right to the end. The back-to-back Real and Barca fixtures loomed large, to the extent that I thought we’d blown it after that 0-0 away to Leganes. Losing to Celta and being held by Villarreal made Valencia away a must win, so was * stoked we grinded a 1-0. Win away to Athletic was massive as we fell behind 2-0 in the first twenty minutes and had to rally back in the second half.

Real game was a terrific performance on our part, think they had an eye on their upcoming CL semi against Bayern. But we didn’t give them a sniff. Their defeat mathematically ended their title hopes, handing the league to Barca. Was hoping Barca would be on the beach and hence field a weakened lineup, but they rolled into town with Messi and co all starting.



Probably my proudest result of the season given how they mauled us 7-0 at theirs. Tello scored against his former club but Messi quickly restored parity prior to HT. Joaquin bagged the winner in the second and we soaked up pressure the rest of the way. Went into the final day needing a result still against lowly Granada. Atleti beat Real away on the final day, so we needed a result to stay ahead of them. Valencia ended up dropping points, but I think if we’d have lost they’d have beaten us on head-to-head. Was by no means a comfortable win but we managed it.


Bridging the gap to Barca looks a massive challenge at the moment. Finances are woeful in La Liga for the non big boys, our sponsorship amount for next season is less than 5m, compared to the 70m+ I was raking in at Schalke. There’s also absolutely no prize money for your league position. All you get is TV money, and not much of it. At least I’m starting from a nice place in terms of a modest wage budget.

Transfer budget for 20/21 was set at something like 9.75m, but that’s already gone on turning Pedraza’s loan move into a perm for the 8.5m buy option. Really pleased with him as my starting LB, he even managed to make the La Liga XI of the season as the competition’s best left back. I usually have a rule about avoiding players with the doesn’t enjoy big matches trait, but I won’t find anything comparable to him on the market at that price.

Have already spent the entirety of the Sidnei money on getting Nikola Milinkovic in for 36m. Pleased I managed to get him to agree to a 75k contract, not cheap but lower than his initial demands. Now just waiting to see whether I get Lo Celso back. I’m expecting Sanabria and Camarasa back but will probably look to sell them both, so could end up having about 20m to play with depending on what interest I can drum up. Don’t have a clue what to buy though as all of my positions are basically settled at this point. Will probably put it on ice until January. Though if Lo Celso goes to Spurs I’ll try to find a top drawer CM to replace him.



Joaquin led the way with 13 goals in all comps. Expecting him to slow down a bit next season so I’m going to promote Rober from the U19s to deputise. Iglesias blows hot and cold, hopefully Esposito develops into starting material over the course of next season so I can have Iglesias on the bench. Loren did a reasonable job but was mainly a cup striker, and slipped to 3rd choice after Esposito’s arrival. Will keep him around as injury backup given the extra European workload we’ll be taking on next season. Juanmi did really well in the first half of the season, but Tello supplanted him in the second half with some better form. Going to have to juggle 5 wingers next season, have Tello in mind as a RW when Joaquin retires. But might have to loan Juanmi out for a year in the meantime as he’s starting to get in the way of Lainez now. Fekir did reasonably well but had a lot of anonymous games. Canales doesn’t do much from the bench so I’d happily sell him if someone came along with a decent offer. But I probably won’t force anything as he’s reasonably enough as a cheap depth option.

 

That's really good going for first season! I found all the loaned out players remained with me, so I was happy having Lo Celso back. Fingers crossed for you it works out the same.

 

Lo Celso just snubbed them, big relief.



Will give Camarasa a look as a backup DM, but plan on selling Sanabria straight away.

 

Couple of decent signings in jan.


Some hard bargains. Toledano handed in a transfer request after I offered 15m ended up getting him for 7.5

The other guy has some technique, if only he could take a free kick could be Naka 2.0.
5.5 million

 

its a pity that right winger isnt a lefty. He would be amazing in my team. Got all the traits to score a barrel load of goals

 

Left is a tough one. Right side I'm sorted now, with Ulariaga, Skov Olssen and big Sammy Chukwueze.
I tried to find an African to match Tabsoba but no luck.
In midfield i'm hoping to maybe find something in the English premiership, a Herbie Kane type signing would be perfect but rare i'm guessing.

 

Developing quite well. Had to give him a contract bump as you can see.

 

Just noticed the huns got beat 3-0 off hearts thanks to 4 of my loanees.

Hickey, Herrando, Connell and Munteanu!

 

He has been absolutely perfect so far. Rotating and bringing on in the second half of games if i need a goal.

 

Quiet January with just the one in for £14m. Liking the fact he can play either wing or wide midfield position:



Won the league comfortably again, losing only once:



In the CL we topped our group and got drawn with Lyon, who we beat on away goals. Next up was Man City, and after losing 2-1 in Manchester we got the job done at home.

Into the Semi’s and we were off to Manchester again to play Utd, losing 2-1 in the first leg to give us a decent chance of making the final. We battered them at home but looked like we were heading out until I put big Ajer up front in the last 5 minutes to make a nuisance of himself, and it worked as they left Eddy unmarked to smash us into the final in the 94th minute!

PSG were our opponents in the final. Could we do it? No. They had too much pace and power and it was a no contest really.

As a result of reaching the final we go into the newly formatted Club World Cup which should be interesting!

 

I would reccomend Souttar and Lincoln. Both develop really well