Career Tree's "Football Factory" (all Youth coaches) - 30yr epic!

[Ian]

I’ve literally just played the 2022-23 season on one of my saves and it was absolutely horrible like you say. Just no let up of games at all, awful!

You still did ok though considering that and I’m sure you’ll win back the trust of the board next season.

[BatiGoal]

Your facilities are maxed AND you still got the job. Dream season! Great progress, Tree. 

[S4NCH0]

Oh my! What a return from Benrahma,Brewster and Fross, around 100 goals between the 3. Keep it up and in no time you'll be playing in some big european nights 

[Paul186]

Another good season, success is just around the corner

[Mr Tree]

Many thanks @Ian @BatiGoal @S4NCH0 and @Paul186 - much appreciated!

Season Five

The new crop of youngsters included a couple of shiny ones 😍

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Got the gold one improving well early...

We got through a tricky-looking champs league group...

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...and we progressed to the final four, but P$G slaughtered us in Paris, and we gave it a go but couldn't get close in the second leg 

The league season was frustrating - we started really sluggishly, mid-table form for the first third of the season, before finishing strongly - left ourselves far too much to do though:

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Still, European qualification target achieved, plus we won the FA Cup for the first time in the club's history:

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Benrahma, who's been with me from the start, got two big awards:

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As you can see, he had a don season, but noone else stepped up really. Need a better strikeforce.

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A look at some of the rising stars that I'm working on:

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My manager profile after five seasons:

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Number of past or present bees in the England squad: 2 after bringing Joe Gomez into the defence.

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But regarding the challenge and the effect of having only youth coaches... I thought these screens were "interesting", although not quite sure what to make of them myself. The first team (including a fair few kids), and then the reserves which have a lot of kids...

And yes, a fair few loaned out there, which should really mean they're not having the youth coaches working on them... But I do find they improve well with a loan spell or two mixed into their development...

Hard to know what conclusions to make cos I don't know how those numbers compare to "normal" - kids will be developing leaps and bounds at a top club anyway...

Let me know if there are any other screens you'd like to see One idea was that I would see more one-to-one specialisation, but that hasn't really been the case either (these are especially boring screenshots, so I'll hide them)

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Anyway, thanks for reading, and I promise Season Six will be... posted soon

Edited April 6, 2020 by Mr Tree

[LTFC]

Great job on the past few seasons! Now you gotta go for the big trophies! All the best

[Kun Aguero]

Season 2022/23 was a horrible season, especially when you don't have a large squad. Have a feeling that it will be worse if SI decided to implement the consequences of COVID-19 into next year's version. 

Anyway, great squad you got there, Marco Kana looks great, have seen him in a few careers but haven't quite use him, will try to look for him in my current save.

[Paul186]

Another great season with better prospects coming through you will soon start making progress on the challenge

[Dagion]

Nice updates, good looking prospects also. Do you prefer to buy foreign wonderkids/prospects or are you going to splash the cash on current England players?

[Kanegan]

You are doing a great job turning the Bees into a top team. Interesting to see how far you can take them.

[S4NCH0]

Sebastian Crespo and Thornton seem bound to rip apart the Premier League in 3-4 years time. KIU.

 

btw, thanks for adding the board request screenshot. Very appreciated.

[Mr Tree]

Thanks for the comments, @LTFC @Kun Aguero @Paul186 and @Kanegan

@Dagion- I love trying to get young talent, but obviously there's only so much you can do before you're over-stocked and wasting players. I've had to buy some older quality players too - hopefully in due course, my young ones will be the next generation's old ones I'm not specifically targeting English players, I don't care where they're from, but for the "challenge" I was hopeful that my academy will be producing young English talent in due course...

 

Season Six

Not much to write home about with this year's crop... "Dear mum, we've got a half-decent centre-back but that's about it. Hope you're well, lots of love, Tree"

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We got the first silverware of the year

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And we tied Messi-regen down to a long-term deal......

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It was a tortuous campaign though - could beat anyone on our day, but capable of losing shockers too. Most of the big teams would beat me regularly, and then the mid-table ones would be toss-ups. The EPL is proving a fair bit harder for me than Serie A was - the quality at the top level is bananas...

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So I tried this for the first time ever... And it seemed to help

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I just about made it through my CL group, blowing Bayern away in one of those games where everything clicked (think I was 4-0 up after 15mins!)

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Things never picked up in the league though, leading to a very disappointing finish:

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Messi-regen lived up to his contract:

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And fortunately, we bumbled through to the Champs League final... And my big-game players stepped up:

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Per below, that probably saved my job!

Squad overview... Edouard did well enough to force Brewster out... And I'm loving this trio of English centre-backs in Gomez, Tuanzebe and Adarabioyo (esp cos Tosin can fill in at RB)...

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Here's how Messi-regen was looking towards the end of the season:

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And some other Rising Stars:

Number of past and present Bees in the England squad on the last day of the season: 2

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But some encouraging signs in the U21's...

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Thanks for reading - I've just finished Season Seven, actually, so I'll post that tomorrow and then we're pretty much caught up and my summaries might become slightly more coherent... No promises, though!

Edited April 6, 2020 by Mr Tree

[Mr Tree]

1 hour ago, S4NCH0 said:

Sebastian Crespo and Thornton seem bound to rip apart the Premier League in 3-4 years time. KIU.

 

btw, thanks for adding the board request screenshot. Very appreciated.

Cheers man! Thornton had a rough season, didn't step up, but he's still only 17/18... He'll come back with a vengeance next season

[Paul186]

Great Champion League win, and should have known you would win, Spurs always collapse when the heat is on. 😀

[BatiGoal]

You're bringing legendary matches and victories over opponents fans never dared dreaming and they're protesting? Man, I'd so resign and watch them sink hard back to the championship... unfaithful bunch ffs. 

Anyways, top job 😁 

[DIRECTFX]

@Mr Tree  Great career so far and always find lesser clubs more interesting reads. Got a couple questions if you don’t mind . 
Are you manually training the players or left it up to youth coaches ? 
How is the reserves youth coach doing in terms of playing players in right positions ? 
Can u post rest of staff scouts & physio?

Maybe an end of season transfers screen see where your players went if on loan and improved? Also where youngsters didn’t fit go to and how they fared after leaving all youth coaches setup you had . Wonder if development continued or did it stall out at new club? 
 

BTW you said wanted to do a more “normal” career but think you stumbled on a new challenge of trying get most starters in a national team from your club team maybe ? 

[Mr Tree]

12 hours ago, DIRECTFX said:

@Mr Tree  Great career so far and always find lesser clubs more interesting reads. Got a couple questions if you don’t mind . 
Are you manually training the players or left it up to youth coaches ? 
How is the reserves youth coach doing in terms of playing players in right positions ? 
Can u post rest of staff scouts & physio?

Maybe an end of season transfers screen see where your players went if on loan and improved? Also where youngsters didn’t fit go to and how they fared after leaving all youth coaches setup you had . Wonder if development continued or did it stall out at new club? 
 

BTW you said wanted to do a more “normal” career but think you stumbled on a new challenge of trying get most starters in a national team from your club team maybe ? 

cheers mate. let's see....

Are you manually training the players or left it up to youth coaches ? - i leave it up to the coaches - i found training a bit fiddly and boring, and the coaches seem to produce good enough players. i'm not sure how much better they'd be if i put effort into it (presumably they must get a bit better, otherwise what's the point?), but the downside seems to be manageable and i waste enough time on this damn game

How is the reserves youth coach doing in terms of playing players in right positions ? - i don't check at all. i've noticed CB's playing at DMC or whatever, but otherwise i really don't check at all. all useful for their football education, isn't it

Can u post rest of staff scouts & physio? - i won't take space with screenshots, cos they're a bit boring too. think i've got a First Team Scout, Youth Scout and Tactical Analyst, all Gold, and two Prevention and one Rehab physion, all Gold. i like Scouting the talents that fit my criteria, to filter out bad ones, but they're not hugely important - i don't know why i bother having the Tactical Analyst, i pay zero attention to him, i just play the same way all the time.

Maybe an end of season transfers screen see where your players went if on loan and improved? Also where youngsters didn’t fit go to and how they fared after leaving all youth coaches setup you had . Wonder if development continued or did it stall out at new club? - I do find that loaning players out can bring improvement, and i've included a couple of examples along the way (i think there was Joe Adams in my first season). i'll try to revisit some golden oldies along the way - i'm hoping a few will pop up in the England squad

BTW you said wanted to do a more “normal” career but think you stumbled on a new challenge of trying get most starters in a national team from your club team maybe ? - maybe  i didn't want to formalise it unless/until i get an impressive number

"lesser clubs" - what?!?!?!??!

[Mr Tree]

i meant to mention, i've been playing my same old "simple" 4-2-2-2 with two inside-forwards the whole time, but one switch i made this past season was to move from Mixed passing and Disciplined mentality to Short passing and Balanced mentality. i was still inconsistent, there were some areas of my squad that needed fixing, but most of them are good passers now and decent players, so it was a useful change (i think).

also, i was quite proud of winning the Prem in season 3 with a lot of the original players - our current keeper Raya, midfielders Jensen, Da Silva, Norgaard, Baptiste, wingers Benrahma, Mbeumo, Adams, strikers Watkins and Forss...

but to win the Champs League in season 6, we've had to upgrade on all of those, with only one remaining...

if you don;t know Said Benrahma, then give this 3min video a go. yes, he totally does this too much, but he's a fantastic player to watch when he's feeling it:

 

[Dagion]

Nice updates again, the u21 looks promising! However, isn't there a bug where some players never get out of the u21? Or is that only when you're managing an international side yourself?

[Mr Tree]

1 hour ago, Dagion said:

Nice updates again, the u21 looks promising! However, isn't there a bug where some players never get out of the u21? Or is that only when you're managing an international side yourself?

Hmm, I did have one in my Italian save, and I wasn't the international manager. Let's hope we don't see it here, but I'll let you know if we do

[LTFC]

good job on the champions league win a huge achievement definitely made up for the poor league finish. perhaps if you invested in more english talent you’d get more in the england team? only a suggestion but your doing great 

[Mr Tree]

Thanks for your support, as always, @Paul186 - and yeah @BatiGoal, as a Brentford fan myself, I can believe it... A section of our support is VERY demanding! (Like anywhere though, I guess). Thank you too for your input

Season Seven

We start with one silver prospect, otherwise a bit shrug...

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Our Champions League win had a Club World Championship immediately following, but we couldn't quite claim both, with P$G pipping me in extra time:

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I needed to fix a couple of things in my squad after last year's disappointing league campaign. We were good in some areas... 

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the whole squad had good Teamwork (showing it ordered from the lowest here) :

And good Technique, with only my keeper and promising young centre back Blackett in single figures:

And good decision-makers:

And good passers, again just let down (a little) by Blackett, who's so good elsewhere I forgive him:

But... We were actually playing alarmingly similarly to the real life bees of recent years... Plenty of talent, but we'd crumble if we conceded first...

And much as in real life, when the bees recruited Pontus Jansson and immediately looked much better, we needed a bit more Leadership. We had a bit:

But it's not something I generally look for, and we were lacking it in quite a few players:

So I set about fixing that...

We grabbed some silverware, despite being reduced to 10 men:

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We continued having a strong presence in the U21's:

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Big Joe was becoming a legend at the back:

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So the game set about sabotaging me:

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And an injury to a youth winger the next day apparently led to concerns about how we were training - maybe suffering from the lack of fitness coaches? I have noticed we've struggled a bit when the fixtures pile up, although on the other hand our squad is pretty well-stacked with quality reserves now...

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We made light work of our Champs League group:

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And we notched a milestone with our first entry on the World XI. It is the Messi regen though... Should I just sell him? I didn't particularly try to get him, I don't care about regens much, but maybe he's spoiling things a bit here - what do you think?

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The Prem was ridiculously tight - six clubs separated by three points at the turn of the year. Only missing Chelsea from the traditional Big Six - they actually struggled to avoid relegation:

We got the Carabao Cup - Hull were leading League One, and actually beat Tranmere in an all-L1 semi-final! They did knock out Man Utd on the way so they earned it, and they led in the final for 30mins!

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I'm pretty sure I won the FA Cup too, but didn't screenshot it...

In real life, the bees were due to play their last game at their fantastic old ground Griffin Park this season. It's not programmed into the game, so I've been able to unrealistically expand the old place, but with European success, it's time to move on:

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Our last game here ended up being a final-day victory that relegated West Ham

We couldn't defend our European crown though, bloody P$G taking me down again.

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I knocked them out on my way to the final last year, so we're developing quite the rivalry here...

At home, that tight top six didn't lead to a thrilling finish... Man City even fell out with only 24pts from their last 17 games, allowing F*lham in.

Spurs got 29 from the last 17 to take third... Liverpool had 34 to grab second... But with 42 points from the last 17 games......

Noone could catch the superbees

Our two wingers were in the top three here:

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And again here, although denied top spot by some F*lham **** who wasn't even that good!

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Just two again in the Team of the Season:

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Despite this - sorry, where's this F*lham **** then?!

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Squad overview:

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Manager profile after seven years - youth policy back to yellow!!

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The board were happy with me although, much like my wife, they couldn't resist the opportunity to bring up that 20-year-old German

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Not sure what their problem is either, he looks pretty decent to me!

(an example of improvement from a loan spell there, @DIRECTFX)

A few other Rising Stars, starting with a guy who I'm pretty sure is an Aubameyang regen (he's got Gabon as the second nationality) - he is developing excellently:

A couple of others:

And Small came back strong after a poor previous season:

Even going on to earn himself a place at the World Cup, although then he got injured

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That made it 3 past or present Bees in the England squad on the last day of the season, a new PB

Thanks for reading!

Edited April 6, 2020 by Mr Tree

[BatiGoal]

Your boys are developing nicely. It's what the game's all about, seeing those young lads turn into professionals. 

I usually just pick the 3+ star academy lads during regular careers. You're accepting nearly every man that comes knocking. Your squad size must be ginormous. 

[Mr Tree]

2 hours ago, LTFC said:

good job on the champions league win a huge achievement definitely made up for the poor league finish. perhaps if you invested in more english talent you’d get more in the england team? only a suggestion but your doing great 

Cheers! I'm not chasing it, just seeing what comes

[Mr Tree]

6 minutes ago, BatiGoal said:

Your boys are developing nicely. It's what the game's all about, seeing those young lads turn into professionals. 

I usually just pick the 3+ star academy lads during regular careers. You're accepting nearly every man that comes knocking. Your squad size must be ginormous. 

44 with 4 out on loan at the moment. £1.9m below wage budget, plus £250m transfer budget. Maybe I could give up on some earlier, but you never know I just extended two right-backs despite having a quality Turkish international, the German reserve mentioned above, and some Chilean dude I loaned out last year. And Adarabioyo can fill in there well too! Yeah, that was stupid, but they look decent, and you can never have too many right-backs, I think the saying goes...

[Paul186]

3 minutes ago, Mr Tree said:

44 with 4 out on loan at the moment. £1.9m below wage budget, plus £250m transfer budget. Maybe I could give up on some earlier, but you never know I just extended two right-backs despite having a quality Turkish international, the German reserve mentioned above, and some Chilean dude I loaned out last year. And Adarabioyo can fill in there well too! Yeah, that was stupid, but they look decent, and you can never have too many right-backs, I think the saying goes...

Another interesting season, with such a big squad I would little the Messi regen go.

[Dagion]

Sometimes it's also fun to renovate the squad rigourously. Sell half of them and use those young guns we all like lining up (too many of them most of the time, damn hoarders). Keeps the saves refreshing I find, but maybe that's a consequence of playing in the lesser leagues, they want to leave anyways in a few years so I help them a little bit

[smoggy90]

Doing an awesome job here Tree, great to read!

[Kanegan]

Still going great Tree. How are you managing such an enormous squad?? 

[Mr Tree]

3 hours ago, Kanegan said:

Still going great Tree. How are you managing such an enormous squad?? 

🤷‍♂️there's a cull every summer to take out the weakest, and otherwise the young ones sit around playing for the reserves and "developing" and being useful backups. not much management required