Career The Journey of Ianis Hagi - Season 22

[Ian]

Introduction

I haven’t been very active on here in recent times and to be honest that is more or less totally due to what is going on in the real world. It just feels to me like everything that’s going on is filtering into every aspect of our lives, or at least I feel it is with me. I see football as a release, something to take my mind off of things that are going on in the real world, both good and bad and I feel like that aspect of the game is not there at this current time. You could say that I’m at a bit of a crossroads when it comes to football and almost falling out of love with the sport. This is mainly why I haven’t been active recently as I don’t want my negativity to stink the place out so to speak.

Anyway, enough of that as I’m here now with a career that will hopefully turn out to be somewhat successful.

 

You can probably tell by the title that the star (hopefully) of this career is going to be Ianis Hagi but as many of you will know, his father Gheorghe Hagi was also a footballer and a very good one too by all accounts so I feel I need to focus on him a bit first to lay the groundwork as he’s the main inspiration for this career in truth.

 

In saying that, there’s not really much else to say about him really as you’re all on the internet so if you want to know more about him you can easily research him yourself.

I do want to show you the following screenshot though which basically shows his club career history and the reason will become apparent later on.

 

Here is Gheorghe’s son Ianis and as you can see he currently plays for Glasgow Rangers, which is where this journey will begin. I’m basically going to attempt to get him to both score and assist 500 goals during his club career but rather than just stay at Rangers, I want to kind of take him on a journey and hopefully have him perform at a few different clubs. He looks like he’s a decent player and at 21, he should be ready to perform well right from the off.

 

As you can see further up, his father played in a few different countries including Romania, Italy, Spain and Turkey with the latter three all being playable on the game so I decided those would be the three leagues I’d load along with Scotland and just take it from there. I obviously have no idea how this will pan out or whether I’ll manage to get him to play in all of the three countries but I’m determined that we won’t spend the whole time at Rangers.

 

Thank you for reading and I’ll be back later with the next update where we’ll see how things got started.

Edited September 14, 2021 by Ian

[Rich]

Good luck Ian, love Hagi on the game, looking forward to seeing how you get on, no doubt brilliantly.

[Rob]

Lovely idea for a career Ian. Good luck and enjoy. 

[Woody]

Yes, great idea mate and i great to have you doing an active career.

Good luck👍

[Rob]

Forgot to say: I love the ‘Ianis’ coincidence too - I’m hoping that played in to you selecting this as a career! 

[Scratch]

Oh, this will be good! Only used him one (recently) and only for a season, but I want to come back to him as he seems a great player. Hope this kick starts your passion for FMM and football again.

[broodje kip]

Ianis one of the best Viber out there. Pretty sure he can smash this one easily. 

[Ian]

14 hours ago, Rich said:

Good luck Ian, love Hagi on the game, looking forward to seeing how you get on, no doubt brilliantly.

Cheers Rich, I’ve had my eye on using him for something for a while. I’ve messed on using him in tests and he usually turns out pretty good so hopefully he will do here too.

14 hours ago, Rob said:

Lovely idea for a career Ian. Good luck and enjoy. 

Thanks Rob, I feel like he’s well capable of getting the returns but trying to move clubs makes it less than a given as we’re relying on a bit of luck in terms of the right jobs coming up at the right time. Plus, there’s more chance that I could totally mess things up. I suppose there’s no point in thinking too far ahead as at the beginning we need to do well at Rangers otherwise no one else will want me.

14 hours ago, Woody said:

Yes, great idea mate and i great to have you doing an active career.

Good luck👍

Thank Woody, hopefully it’ll be a success, or at least if we do end up failing it’ll still be somewhat of a success.

13 hours ago, Rob said:

Forgot to say: I love the ‘Ianis’ coincidence too - I’m hoping that played in to you selecting this as a career! 

It did enter my thoughts and was even sat there trying to think of a title to play on it but couldn’t get anything 😂

10 hours ago, Scratch said:

Oh, this will be good! Only used him one (recently) and only for a season, but I want to come back to him as he seems a great player. Hope this kick starts your passion for FMM and football again.

Cheers Scratch, he’s nice and at a good age where he should hopefully improve pretty quickly. He’s good at set pieces and crossing is good too for corner assists so he does have a lot going for him when it comes to this challenge. Never seems too bad for injuries either.

10 hours ago, broodje kip said:

Ianis one of the best Viber out there. Pretty sure he can smash this one easily. 

Thanks Kip, hopefully we can do it.

[Scratch]

15 hours ago, Ian said:

Cheers Scratch, he’s nice and at a good age where he should hopefully improve pretty quickly.

Yeah, since the "needs to mature" thing came in, I try not to use anyone under 19 for a challenge. And for my supplementary players I see 21-22 as the sweet spot for players who will improve really quickly.

[Rich]

7 hours ago, Scratch said:

Yeah, since the "needs to mature" thing came in, I try not to use anyone under 19 for a challenge. And for my supplementary players I see 21-22 as the sweet spot for players who will improve really quickly.

Sorry to jump in, but that’s good to know, always learning new things with you Scratch 😝

[Ian]

9 hours ago, Scratch said:

Yeah, since the "needs to mature" thing came in, I try not to use anyone under 19 for a challenge. And for my supplementary players I see 21-22 as the sweet spot for players who will improve really quickly.

I remember noticing this problem with youngsters and it was you that confirmed what the problem was. It can certainly get frustrating which is why I was always trying to mention that to people on here when they were trying the challenges with younger players. I guess it’s just a matter of trying to stay patient in those situations.

2 hours ago, Rich said:

Sorry to jump in, but that’s good to know, always learning new things with you Scratch 😝

Yeah, he certainly knows his way around the game that’s for sure. Can’t think there’ll be much he doesn’t know about the inner workings of the game.

[Ian]

Season 1

Here we go then with the season one update.

 

We went into this season obviously hoping Hagi would get himself off to a decent start but as we’re managing Rangers we were also expecting the team to do well domestically. Europe would be treated as a bit of a bonus if I’m being honest, especially given the rough schedule in the opening season so just getting through the group stage would be considered a success for me.

I had a system in mind, looked at the squad and decided that we were pretty strong so there wasn’t much transfer action really with just one player coming in before the season began. I felt we needed a better first choice striker to play alongside Morelos so went pretty big for this Austrian guy who often appears in my searches. The other transfer Foulon was brought in after the season ended, he is a left wing back and is expected to be a rotation option next year.

Spoiler

 

This is the system I went with below. I’d done the striker peak years challenge a few months back with three forward players who were positioned the same way with Bruno Fernandes very much being the main man in the T position. We were at Real Madrid and it was dream team stuff as we had the resources to buy practically anyone we wanted to. Anyway, that went well and the 2-5-1-2 system worked a treat in terms of both team results and the challengers doing their stuff. This was before the winter update though and I just haven’t been able to get the tactic quite right since then. Don’t get me wrong, the tactic as it was still works in terms of the three players and the T guy in particular doing well but the team results are just not there. I felt as though it’s the obvious weakness down the flanks that may well be causing the issues so decided to make a slight change to hopefully somewhat combat that in going with two inverted wingbacks along the back line with just one central defender and just four in the midfield line. Of course, we’re now weak in central defence with just one defender there so no doubt we’ll pay for that at times but hopefully we’ll still have a strong enough output at the other end to come out on top more times than not.

 

I felt we were drawn into a decent UEFA Cup group with two less than great teams and the fairly decent Feyenoord. It went well as we ended up finishing top and scored a good amount of goals too.

 

Leipzig were drawn against us in the first knockout round and that’s where our run ended. It’s not like they were just too much for us as both games were tight and Scott Arfield getting himself sent off in the return home leg certainly didn’t help our cause. Still, we’re happy enough as we at least made it through the group stage.

 

We won the League Cup, beating Raith Rovers in the final with Hagi netting two of our three goals. We managed to avoid Celtic throughout which helped.

 

The Scottish Cup was also won as we came out on top against Aberdeen in a high scoring final. Again, we managed to avoid Celtic to aid our cause.

 

Celtic were there right until the end in the league but we managed to come out on top. They beat us in three of the four games we played them though, our only league defeats as it turned out so we still have plenty of work to do as we’re clearly not strong enough to fend off the stronger teams.

 

It was very much the front three and Hagi in particular who were our main attacking threat as they made up the bulk of our goals and assists. Morelos also managed to avoid getting himself sent off, although that was actually a bit of a disappointment in truth. A very nice start for Hagi anyway with 55 goals and 43 assists which was better than I was expecting really.

 

He really improved during the season until he suffered a little three week injury in March which knocked back some of his attributes and they haven’t quite come back up yet. I’m sure he was at green level at a good few of those with red downward arrows and really looked the part so hopefully those come back up next year.

 

Not much to say regarding my manager profile. Discipline is down a bit which probably means I’ve forgotten to fine someone after a red card which isn’t at all uncommon for me.

 

Decent start all in all and we just need to keep going. In an ideal world we’d be looking at moving to a decent team in either Spain or Italy within the first few years so all we can do try to remain successful and keep an eye on the job market and hope the right job comes up at the right time.

 

Score

 

Ianis Hagi

Season 01: 55 goals and 43 assists in 50 games

 

Thank you for reading.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Ian

[broodje kip]

That’s a very nice first season there Ian. Well done!

[Rob]

Hulk-smashed it Ian. 

[Ian]

13 hours ago, broodje kip said:

That’s a very nice first season there Ian. Well done!

Thank you Mr Kip, hopefully we can keep things going nicely.

6 hours ago, Rob said:

Hulk-smashed it Ian. 

Thanks Rob, it went better than I expected really and it’s certainly given me confidence that we can hit the target. I do have a tendency to mess things up a bit this year from time to time in terms of transfers and stuff so better not get too overconfident yet 😂

[Scratch]

That's a fantastic effort especially for the first season. You need to get tougher on your players though!  

I'm really liking the two up front with a T playing behind them in the middle - I use that a lot, though with TMs rather than DLFs, but I hear DLFs are the bomb this year...

[Ian]

10 hours ago, Scratch said:

That's a fantastic effort especially for the first season. You need to get tougher on your players though!  

I'm really liking the two up front with a T playing behind them in the middle - I use that a lot, though with TMs rather than DLFs, but I hear DLFs are the bomb this year...

Thank you Scratch, I certainly do need to try and remember the fines for red cards otherwise the players will walk all over me.

I do like the three up top like this. I’ve tested a few different roles for the front two but always seem to go back to the DLF’s. Seems to offer a good balance for goals and assists for the T guy. I found with the other roles that there’s slightly more crosses coming in and successfully too which is fine and works well but at the same time seems to take a bit away from the T as he’s not quite involved as much. With the DLF’s I find I can get practically everything going through the middle and you’re then just hoping the three are up to the task. 

[Ian]

Season 2

The opening season was very much a success as Hagi got himself off to a great start and the team performed well in winning all of their domestic competitions. Europe was decent too as they got through to the knockout stage of the UEFA Cup which is all I was expecting. There’s still plenty of work to do though as we did struggle against all of the stronger teams and our big rivals Celtic in particular who beat us three times out of the four games we faced them in.

Simple stuff now in theory as we’re just looking to go into the transfer market with the aim of improving the squad.

 

We certainly made more incoming transfers this season and it was the sale of our first choice left wing back Barisic that helped fund things. It was one of them where I wasn’t sure what to do as I didn’t really plan on letting him go but then the big offer came in and I had to think about it. Ultimately I saw the pound signs and decided to let him go thinking we could do a lot with that kind of money. We obviously then needed a new first choice left wing back to replace him and the Greek guy Giorgos was the chosen player arriving from Italy. I mentioned Foulon last time as he was bought at the end of the first season and he’ll be a nice second choice to the Greek. We went to Italy again to sign a new first choice keeper in Montipó who would replace the retiring McGregor, he seems like a decent keeper for the money we spent. Merquelanz is a steady left sided player who I felt would improve us and Gaćinović is a good utility player as he can play in practically every position in the final third. Ofoborh came up on the free list and looked like a half decent central midfielder so we took a punt on him as he should at the least provide good cover. A young centre back was brought through the academy in Burt and a few youngsters were loaned in to bolster the squad and I’m guessing most of you will be aware of at least two of them. Tyler Adams didn’t stay long as it turned out as he picked up a bad injury early on in the season and went back to Leipzig.

Spoiler

 

We avoided Celtic in both domestic cup competitions last year but no such luck this time as we met them in the semi final of the League Cup. They won unfortunately.

 

Hagi single-handedly put Forfar to the sword in the fourth round of the Scottish Cup as he scored eight in a 9-0 victory.

 

The European Cup didn’t go too well as we couldn’t qualify for the knockout stages but it wasn’t so bad as third place meant we dropped into the UEFA Cup.

 

It ended at the same stage as last time though with Marseille breaking our hearts in the first knockout round. A bit frustrating really as we missed a penalty in both matches which ultimately cost us.

 

Real Madrid were looking for a new manager in January so I went for it. There wasn’t much confidence there that we’d get it and that proved to be the case as they quickly appointed Jose. Hopefully we’ll get our move eventually.

 

We won the Scottish Cup again and actually managed to beat Celtic in the fifth round which was pleasing. The final was very one sided with Hagi coming up with the goods again in scoring all four of our goals against the Hibees.

 

The league was won again but there were plenty of dropped points so it’s not like we’re formidable.

 

It was very much the front three again and they’re all considered as our star players which certainly looks nice. Not quite as many goals for Hagi this year though, more on that later but can’t really complain as his numbers are still fine for me.

 

I’m not sure how much development is left in him but he certainly looks good. A bit more on his stamina would be nice and perhaps his shooting too but it’s not something I’m going to fret over as he’s proved he can do it as is. If we do end up going to Spain or Italy it’ll be interesting to see how he performs in those leagues but can’t be getting ahead of ourselves at this stage.

 

Again, a slight drop off in his goal return and his league return in particular which is a little concerning. He had that mega game in the cup though where he scored eight goals and after that he had a bit of a dry spell so I’m hoping that that was just the game kind of balancing things out. We’ll find out soon enough though I guess.

 

Discipline down again which is somewhat amusing after I mentioned missing red cards last time and I obviously didn’t learn from it.

 

Another season done and we keep going. We’ve won all of the domestic competitions here and I feel we’re ready to move on so we just have to hope a good offer comes in sometime soon from a decent team in either Italy or Spain.

 

Score

 

Ianis Hagi

Season 01: 55 goals and 43 assists in 50 games

Season 02: 46 goals and 45 assists in 51 games

Total: 101 goals and 88 assists in 101 games

 

Thanks for reading.

Edited August 3, 2021 by Ian

[broodje kip]

He looks very great! Shame about the Celtic one but I’m pretty sure you’d conquer Europe soon.

[Scratch]

Great season! Though you need to sit that lad down and tell him scoring 8 goals is counter productive - I mean if he scores most of the goals, how will he get any assists!

[Ian]

9 hours ago, broodje kip said:

He looks very great! Shame about the Celtic one but I’m pretty sure you’d conquer Europe soon.

Thank you Danish Salmon, hopefully we can get some European success soon, either at Rangers or a team abroad if a job comes up.

8 hours ago, Scratch said:

Great season! Though you need to sit that lad down and tell him scoring 8 goals is counter productive - I mean if he scores most of the goals, how will he get any assists!

Thanks Scratch, it was great at the time and we certainly felt good after the game. You then think he’s going to do that every game but as is life, things don’t always pan out how you want or expect. Still, can’t complain and onwards and upwards.

[Rich]

What a cracking start with them two seasons Ian, great work👍

[Rob]

Wonderful again Ian

[Ian]

9 hours ago, Rich said:

What a cracking start with them two seasons Ian, great work👍

Thanks Richard, we are happy enough with the start.

8 hours ago, Rob said:

Wonderful again Ian

Thank you Rob, just need to keep things going now.

[Ian]

Season 3

We’ve had two decent seasons so far but haven’t quite managed to get anything going in Europe which has been a little disappointing if I’m being honest so I was determined to improve things there. I’d also be perfectly happy to move on should the right job come up but can’t control that so the focus going into season three was to try and improve the squad at Rangers.

 

Just a few transfers that we were hoping would improve us. Our star Austrian striker had had enough and wanted to leave, and leave he did. We also made good money on young Tony Weston who was somewhat decent but the offer was just too good to refuse. First choice right wing back Tavernier’s contract was up and at 31 years old we decided to let him go, so needed a replacement. We ended up getting two as McCrorie came in from Aberdeen and Pole Bereszyński arrived from Sampdoria. We went to Sampdoria again as we brought in Jankto to play on either flank or even in the middle if required. The ever reliable Shandon Baptiste was added to our ranks as an option in centre midfield and we replaced the outgoing Austrian forward with two youngsters on loan in Edmondson from Leeds and Zirkzee from Bayern.

Spoiler

 

We were looking to improve a bit in terms of team results and things started well in that regard as we’d only dropped points in one league game by the time things stopped for the winter World Cup. Just the three goals conceded too so definitely an improvement there.

 

Things went much better in Europe too as we managed to qualify for the knockout stages. I did make a slight tactical change this season in changing the passing from short to mixed which was something that had worked on a somewhat similar tactic of mine a while back. I’ve been tempted to try it a few times during the first couple of seasons but Hagi was doing so well and I just didn’t want to risk messing things up for him.

 

So, team results have certainly been a bit better but that wouldn’t mean much if the main man had gone backwards. He didn’t as he passed the test with 17 goals and 20 assists in the first 21 games so I was very happy at this stage.

 

This was almost certainly the highlight game as Hagi lost his cool and got himself sent off. You could say his indiscipline spread as our goalie also walked at around the hour mark. Still, we won and sent a message out that no one comes to the Ibrox and has an easy game.

 

Unfortunately, just at the World Cup mid season break Ianis decided he was too good for us and wanted a move to a bigger club. He still loved me though and I certainly wanted to keep it that way so didn’t want to rock the boat.

 

On the same day I received a job offer from Villarreal which was rather enticing. First thing I looked at was their transfer budget to see if the funds would be there to be able to afford Hagi. £76m it was and a squad filled with loads of fairly high valued players told me that money should in theory be no problem.

 

The team were in the European Cup but bowed out at the group stage, finishing in third place which is probably another plus as they’ll drop into the easier UEFA Cup.

 

They were 19th in the league though which isn’t exactly great but taking everything into account, it was fairly clear that they were almost certainly in a false position.

 

I had to ask myself whether this would be considered a step up for Hagi though as no disrespect to Villarreal but they aren’t Barca, Real or Atletico. I thought about it for a bit and felt I had to go for it as I was fairly confident he’d come with me and also the fact he was now unhappy at Rangers came into my thinking as that would be a pain going forward.

 

I took up their offer.

 

And so did Hagi.

 

More later.

 

Thank you for reading. 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Ian

[Scratch]

Damn, brave move! Must have been a bit nerve wracking. 😄

But what about all those players you left behind! Some good ones there, will be interested to see who you buy at Villarreal.

[Ian]

10 hours ago, Scratch said:

Damn, brave move! Must have been a bit nerve wracking. 😄

But what about all those players you left behind! Some good ones there, will be interested to see who you buy at Villarreal.

Thank you Scratch, it was a bit as you always have that fear that he either wouldn’t even want the move or would have too high a wage demand. Him being unhappy and wanting a move made the decision much easier as I just felt I had to go for it and I did have a lot of confidence that he’d come. It went well for us both so it was then just a matter of trying to get things right at struggling Villarreal.

[Ian]

Season 3 - Part 2

I ended the last update in early November as both Hagi and myself had decided to jump ship and move on to Spain. The World Cup was on when we moved so there weren’t any club games until the end of the year and by then the transfer window would be just about to open so I’ll start there with the transfers.

Minimino was brought in by my predecessor and sold on by myself as part of the deal to bring Hagi to Spain and of course a few of the others weren’t made by myself but I did do a bit of business. We ended up focusing on the spine of the team and just going with what we had for the wide areas, it wasn’t planned to be like that as I’d have preferred to do a bit more business but just couldn’t offload as many players as I’d have liked to and couldn’t get the right players to show up for part exchanges. They were very weak in goal so Mike Maignan came in from France to instantly improve us there. I also felt we badly needed a better first choice centre back and Söyüncü was the man chosen for that role as he came in from Leicester. A decent fee was spent on midfield playmaker Gonçalves who arrived from Sporting, never used him before and he looked decent so it was an intriguing one. Patrik Schick won’t need much introduction as he’s a fine forward and I was happy to be able to sign him. There’s still a lot of work to do with the squad as there is still plenty of deadwood there on high wages so the hope was that we’d be good enough to get us through the season ok to be able to do much more work in the summer.

Spoiler

 

I had no idea how things would go in Spain to be perfectly honest but it didn’t take long to realise that we were fairly capable and could compete with the better teams as our early form was very good. We beat Atletico away in our very first game before the transfer window had even opened and Barca and Real were both beaten early on as we won the Super Cup. Hagi was very much involved so things were looking very good at this point.

 

The Spanish Cup was collected too as we beat Real in the final with Hagi again doing well. We avoided Barca in that particular run-in but did have to navigate past Atletico in the semi so it was pretty good going and that’s all of the domestic cup competitions won here already.

 

We had a good league run too and found ourselves with an outside chance of finishing in the top four with only a few games left. You can also see things went well in Europe as we also had a final to look forward to against Zenit which is another route to European Cup qualification.

 

It ended up being too much for us to overthrow Valencia and we ended up in fifth.

 

We were too much for Zenit in the UEFA Cup final though which brings us our first European silverware and with that we can look forward to playing in the big one next season.

Spoiler

 

Hagi proved he could perform in this league as his return was pretty similar to what he produced in Scotland with 31 goals and 29 assists in 32 games.

 

I’m not sure there’s going to be much more to come in terms of his attributes improving so it’s just a matter of hoping he can somewhat maintain these returns for most of his peak years.

 

A very nice season all in all and better than I expected so I’ll have to be very careful with my summer transfers as it’s easy to see how I could do too much and mess things up. On the other hand, it is pretty clear now that we were in a false position when we arrived and perhaps the game gave us a bit of a push to boost us up the league. Basically, with it being a split season I’m not exactly sure how good the team really is so there’s plenty to think about going into the summer transfer window.

 

Score

 

Ianis Hagi

 

Rangers

Season 01: 55 goals and 43 assists in 50 games

Season 02: 46 goals and 45 assists in 51 games

Season 03: 17 goals and 20 assists in 21 games

Rangers Total: 118 goals and 108 assists in 122 games

 

Villarreal

Season 03: 31 goals and 29 assists in 32 games

 

Grand Total: 149 goals and 137 assists in 154 game

 

Thank you for reading.

Edited August 7, 2021 by Ian

[Rich]

Well that nice didn’t hinder his input at all Ian, great stuff, hopefully he can keep it up 👏🏻

[Ian]

1 hour ago, Rich said:

Well that nice didn’t hinder his input at all Ian, great stuff, hopefully he can keep it up 👏🏻

Thanks Rich, he did very well. I always find Spain to be very good for these type of challenges as I’ve done well here before. I suppose we’re getting a good chance to compare leagues with me moving around a bit. Italy is loaded too as well as Turkey so I have no idea where this will go.