Career Grandpater Europae, The Sequel.

[sscout]

INTRODUCTION

 

Good Day and Good Night vibe, it's been a long, long time since I've posted here but here I am with renewed vigour to complete what I left unfinished from FM2022.

Andorra

 

Now I'll admit, I lost interest as I felt I kept hitting this roadblock where I'd consistently win La Liga, the domestic trophies, and even UCL but keep failing at the ever so crucial world stage with Andorra. Now looking back, I see that the root cause of that was a lack of ambition. Not from me or my players but my tactic, which I had specially designed to be low scoring with the focus on consistency and risk-free play. Tho it was a very solid tactic, it was undoubtedly unambitious and that was my downfall. 

But recently I've built this new tactic and it has breathe life into my games, this tactic is undoubtedly ambitious and I have not even seen it's full potential yet. 

So here I am. 

Now enough of my backstory, let me set down some of my goals for this hopefully successful career:

• An Andorran player with 1000 goals and assists netted over the course of his career. (An adjustment of my previous aspiration which only included goals in the tally.) 
• Lift the World Cup with the Andorran National Team. (My personal Moby Dick.) 
• Win the Euros with the Andorran National Team. (Wouldn't it be funny if I won the world cup before I won this?)
• Win a domestic treble with a First XI consisting entirely of Andorran players. (Easy.)
• Win the Champion's League with a First XI consisting entirely of Andorran players. (Easy 2.) 

Now, while I didn't make any big restrictions with my last attempt, I want to spice things up a little this time so I got 2 self-imposed restrictions 

1. I am only allowed to bring in 22 players on permanent transfers within the first 5 seasons, after which I cannot bring in any players that are non-Andorran. 
2. I am allowed to loan in 3 players per season for the first 3 seasons. 

And all the rest of my players will be either from my youth academy or greyed out reserve players I offered a contract to. 

And with those formal matters out of the way, let me post this first as I write out how my first season went. 

 

[sscout]

SEASON 1

So you know how I said that I was allowed to bring in 3 players on loan per season? Yeah I didn't bring in any players on loan because I didn't think about that part when I was playing through oops. And I brought in 3 players on a permanent transfer using up some of my 22 slots, and all 3 of them kinda flopped oops. 

Sounds like my career went badly eh? 

Well... 

Spoiler

 

 

It could have gone a lot worse, but it ain't that bad really. But can I just talk about how I managed to con my way into a 6th place finish despite conceding 89 goals, the most in the league, by simply scoring 107 goals, the most in the league. See this is what I mean when I say my new tactic is ambitious 🤪 

But on a slightly more serious note, I feel the season went much better than expected for two reasons, 

1. My recruiting was awful, I didn't bring in a single player that improved upon what was already there. 
2. My tactic is not suited for weaker teams, it's a tactic I made to dominate and finish off opponents, unlike my previous tactic which was more focused on getting the best and most consistent result possible. 

So a top table finish while fighting for promotion is a pretty good start. I will say that I am aiming for automatic promotion next season. 

Our Copa del Rey run wasn't much to write about, made it to the third round before being handily dispatched by a top division team. 

With our overall performance out of the way, let us dive into some of the individuals who played a part or two in this seasons skirmish:

Spoiler

1st. 

Jacobo

The player deployed as my favourite "wide trequartista" role. (It's a semi-secret role only me and few others I've discussed it with on discord know about, I'll reveal it once I have perfected my tactic and post it on vibe 🤫) He got a pretty respectable 12 goals and 11 assists tally over 37 games, not the best g+a ratio on my team but his 8.02 rating speaks of his consistently strong performances, with or without producing goals. 

2nd. 

Marco Magno

My first Andorran golden boy, he didn't really get many opportunities for the first few months after he was promoted from the youth team. But as he grew, so did my confidence in him, I placed my bets and he has rewarded me kindly with 23 goals and 9 assists in just 28 games, the first 5 or 6 of those being him just as an option brought in from the bench. 

3rd. 

Sinan Bakis

An impressive target man, he had served me well with 28 goals and 17 assists in 41 games. A solid rock of my attack, unfortunately he is demanding a 300% pay raise so yeahhhhh

Honourable mention. 

Raúl Lizoáin 

So....

He conceded 102 goals in 47 games. 

That's all I wanted to bring up. 

Also he got an assist. 

Dishonourable mentions:

Remember those 3 permanent transfers I brought in that flopped? 

Quite literally the 3 worst performing players in my team, how are they worse than the keeper who conceded 102 goals??? 

Well with all the props and flops out of the way, I think here's a good time as any for a farewell. 

Til season 2, adieu. 

Edited March 14, 2023 by sscout

[sscout]

SEASON 2

I decided to try out a bit of a new format for this season and onwards, instead of just posting overall season stats right at the start how about I go through it chronologically? Giving a sorta month by month play by play of how it's going. 

So with that said, let's start off with the stretch of July to October: 

Spoiler

JULY

With a huge amount of players leaving us due to bosmans, contract expiries, release clause offers, or just being sold because they were shit, we needed to bring in quality and quantity. 

Indeed I had barely 15 people in the entire team when it was all said and done, 

So naturally I decided to

Not do much about it really. 

I mean, I've got a limited amount of players I can bring in, and all the good loan players don't want to come to me or their parent clubs keep refusing my completely reasonable request to loan them out for free. 

But I eventually settled on bringing in a few players to stop myself from playing random Andorran kids I lured to the club with promises of fame and fortune(they don't know they're shit). 

Urko Izeta and Neskes joined on permanent deals and inserted themselves pretty well into the team, 

While Dani Pérez joined as depth for attacking midfield, and Filip Jörgensen joined to somehow try and concede less than 100 goals this season. Will he succeed? 

We played a single friendly this month, but I think I don't need to talk much about that one. 

AUGUST

A couple of friendlies, and a couple of strong league starts before an immediate game against Alavés saw me rotating out half of my best 11 and exposing our lack of depth. The highlight of the month has to be our 5-0 trashing of AD Alcorcón which saw new signing Urko announce himself with a magnificent hat-trick. What a legend. 

SEPTEMBER

Carrying on the losing form from last month, we start of September with a narrow loss against CD Mirandés before going on to to have somewhat mixed results with two wins and two draws for the rest of the month. The final match of the month would be my pick for the highlight as 5 goals from our side was not enough to stop Real Oviedo and Borja Bastón who singlehandedly got them the draw by scoring 5 goals against us. What a legend. 

OCTOBER

Our lowest scoring month yet as I tweaked around with instructions looking for a touch more defensive solidity to prevent a repeat of that Real Oviedo game. Despite the lower scorelines, we are now on a 8 game unbeaten streak and looking to contend for that auto promotion spot. I don't feel like any of the games this month stood out much, unfortunately. No legends here sadly. 

 

And with that, well I'll post this part first. 

I initially wanted to slowly write and build upon this as I went through the season and then post it all as a one season chunk, but I am gonna be pretty busy over the next day or two so I think it might be better if I just post this first. 

Good day and thanks for reading! 

[BatiGoal]

On 14/03/2023 at 21:42, sscout said:

But recently I've built this new tactic and it has breathe life into my games, this tactic is undoubtedly ambitious and I have not even seen it's full potential yet

Intriguing!

On 14/03/2023 at 21:42, sscout said:

• An Andorran player with 1000 goals and assists netted over the course of his career. (An adjustment of my previous aspiration which only included goals in the tally.) 
• Lift the World Cup with the Andorran National Team. (My personal Moby Dick.) 
• Win the Euros with the Andorran National Team. (Wouldn't it be funny if I won the world cup before I won this?)
• Win a domestic treble with a First XI consisting entirely of Andorran players. (Easy.)
• Win the Champion's League with a First XI consisting entirely of Andorran players. (Easy 2.) 

Those are some serious goals, my friend 🧐

[Meow]

Looking forward to some delicious regen attribute distributions

[sscout]

4 hours ago, BatiGoal said:

Those are some serious goals, my friend 🧐

Lofty goals indeed, but I am supremely confident owing to my previous attempt which went kinda successfully

 

3 hours ago, Meow said:

Looking forward to some delicious regen attribute distributions

Unfortunately I just lost my most interesting player over the winter window to a goddamn release clause, he was asking way more than I could afford to renew too

[StuartM]

Good luck, the wide Trequartista... does that make it a false number 10?!

[sscout]

SEASON 2

Alrighty, having now finished up the entirety of season two let me continue with my tales starting from November to February:

Spoiler

November:

A somewhat decent if low-scoring month, including a rare 1-0 score-line. No matches stood out much this month but the 2-3 loss to Las Palmas threw a wrench in our plans as that kicked us out of the top two auto promotion spot and put Las Palmas there instead. 

December:

Starting off with a loss did not help our auto promotion worries, but otherwise a somewhat unremarkable but decent month. 

January:

Ah now this was a difficult month. Made much more difficult by the tightly packed schedule and losing a handful of key players. We lost our best Andorran youngster Marco Magno and 3 first team starters. We also got knocked out of the Copa after a narrow 1-0 loss to La Liga side Vigo. A single league win was all we managed this month. 

To shore up our team, we brought in De Santis on a loan and Calero on a permanent transfer. 

February:

But February more than made up for the difficulties faced as we scored an impressive 17 goals in 4 games. The highlight of this month not being 1-6 win against now relegated Mirandés but the 4-1 win against former promotion challengers Alavés where our second 11 made almost entirely up of Andorran youngsters kicked off this high scoring month. 

And now on to the final third of this season, the stretch of March-June:

Spoiler

March:

A mixed month, but with plenty of high-scoring games so what's there to complain about. 

April:

Ah now this was a special month, solely for the 1-8 win against Las Palmas which saw us regain and solidify our 2nd place. 

It also marked our 100th league goal this season. 

May:

And May was the month that won us promotion to La Liga at last. Otherwise, a solid month but nothing out of the ordinary. 

June:

And the final two games of the season were played, both difficult games against top level teams. 

And now with all of that out of the way, let me summarize a few things and talk a little about my plans for next season:

Spoiler

 

Our league campaign went as well as we could have expected, with more goals scored and less conceded than the season before. 

Our players also led the statistics for goals scored and assists bagged. Urko one of our two strikers and Neskes our central attacking midfielder respectively. 

Our key players for this season include:

1st. 

Urko Izeta

The man who only just joined us this season for a mere 230K, he has gone on to score 44 goals and assist 15 more in just 40 games. Undoubtedly the man of the season. 

2nd. 

Marco Escura

A hot young prospect from our youth academy, he had a slow start to his season but as we lost key players in the winter window the need came for him to step up and deliver, and deliver he did with 8 goals scored and 5 assisted in 12 games. 

3rd. 

Joel Llovera

A youth academy player who's spent last season as a rotational option and backup, he too made the step up once players left in the winter window. Playing in my favourite wide trequartista role, he got himself 13 goals and 8 assists in 27 games. 

 

That about covers this season, but what about the next? 

I have about 10M for my transfer and wage budget each, 20M in total, and next season will see me in the top flight fighting to establish myself and further myself to my end goals. I am pumped to see what I can do once I'm there. 

Oh also, the Andorra national team seat was vacant, but somehow Brad Guzan beat me to it... 

Also a final word, I had to retype this whole thing like 3 times because I was facing network issues and my browser kept refreshing itself, I feel so exhausted ahhh

 

Edited March 17, 2023 by sscout

[Meow]

13 hours ago, sscout said:

I had to retype this whole thing like 3 times

Many a post I've given up because of this hahaha