***The Official Football Manager Thread***

[Suntan Superman]

Quote: Originally Posted by ggsimmonds

New to the game and would like some insight. For context I started a career as Virtus Verona in Italy Serie C (maybe not the most beginner friendly) 1. How worried should I be about my finances in this situation: Last week of September and I sit at about -$400k in balance (the save started at -$38k). My projected yearly expenses total 3.8 million, and my revenue sits at 2.8 million. I'm spending between twice and three times what I make each month. I'm bleeding money and feel like I should be in crisis mode, but the game is doing the "this is fine" thing. Board is happy and I'm under the budgeted payroll. But it does not look fine to me.

If you want a real assessment post your income and expenditures screen, i can look at it and tell you exactly how deep you are or are not in. To be honest though, I would just keep following the wage budget, but I'd try to give yourself room to sign 2-3 players at all times. What happened in my recent save is that the wage budget just re-adjusts over time and I've yet to have a team go insolvent on me. With that said, your best choice is up to you, if you think you have a squad to go up, I would do what you can to keep them together, and get promotion, because promotion often saves your finances one way or another. Plus, it's a promotion on your resume, so if worse comes to worse, you'll look a little better for your next gig.

Quote: Originally Posted by ggsimmonds

2. How do you guys manage your matches in terms of tactic adjustments and formation changes? So far I have 1 formation trained up (a custom 4-3-3 that plays like a 4-1-2-2-1) and never deviate from it. I have won every match (5) and sit at the top of the table, but looks like my early fixtures have mostly been against the bottom squads so it may not hold. I typically just change my mentality and thats been enough, but I don't know that such an approach would work against better competition. I've thought about creating a few variations of my formation where I move the midfielders around based on the match. My current formation is 1 DLP DM, 1 CM-AT, 1 CM-SU. I've considered moving a CM to an CAM role to give more attacking when needed, and when I need to hold a lead move a CM to a second DM role. Part of me says if it ain't broke don't fix it. Thru five cup games I have won every match and have the most potent attack/highest GD in the table. But I've also yet to have a match against anyone in the top half of the table. Note: The two questions are related. I'm looking into the possibility of drastically decreasing my player expenses because my top 6 salaries are killing me: https://sortitoutsi.net/football-man.../virtus-verona If I ship out my overpaid vets the quality of my team is going to suffer a huge drop. About 100 days away from the transfer window, if its typically expected to need to make tactics adjustments match-to-match should I start now even though its not needed so that I'll be prepared when my team turns to suck. On the other hand, if I keep winning will this apparent financial crisis get resolved somehow and I'm fretting over nothing?

It's honestly completely dependent on your team/squad/competition. If you've read my earlier novels here, I'm currently attempting to simply run a "brand" of football, so I am currently forcing my tactic through, most of the time it just required me to be hyper specific in recruiting, now I just have enough money to plug holes with cash. Typically if I'm not doing a gimmick, I do whatever I have to win if I'm at a lower squad where I have little resources, normally involves heavy scouting and tailoring each match plan. Either way, I would honestly do what you think is best, one thing I love about this game is that there's no real wrong answers when it comes to tactics, when it works it's great, and when it doesn't maybe it's time to switch!

[ggsimmonds]

Quote: Originally Posted by Suntan Superman

If you want a real assessment post your income and expenditures screen, i can look at it and tell you exactly how deep you are or are not in. To be honest though, I would just keep following the wage budget, but I'd try to give yourself room to sign 2-3 players at all times. What happened in my recent save is that the wage budget just re-adjusts over time and I've yet to have a team go insolvent on me. With that said, your best choice is up to you, if you think you have a squad to go up, I would do what you can to keep them together, and get promotion, because promotion often saves your finances one way or another. Plus, it's a promotion on your resume, so if worse comes to worse, you'll look a little better for your next gig. It's honestly completely dependent on your team/squad/competition. If you've read my earlier novels here, I'm currently attempting to simply run a "brand" of football, so I am currently forcing my tactic through, most of the time it just required me to be hyper specific in recruiting, now I just have enough money to plug holes with cash. Typically if I'm not doing a gimmick, I do whatever I have to win if I'm at a lower squad where I have little resources, normally involves heavy scouting and tailoring each match plan. Either way, I would honestly do what you think is best, one thing I love about this game is that there's no real wrong answers when it comes to tactics, when it works it's great, and when it doesn't maybe it's time to switch!

Income:

Expenses:

And yeah overall I have a style I am implementing at my squad. Its not so much about that overall tactics approach, more a question of you're up 2-0 at the 60 minute mark what do you do to hold that lead? Just switch mentality or do you create a custom tactic ( a la the FIFA approach) for defensive and aggressive situations.

The bulk of my squad have their contracts expire after this current season so maybe the question of finances is largely moot anyway. (but I think my itty bitty 1,500 capacity stadium is hurting me the most)

Edit: The increase in staff salaries mtm is something the AI did I think. At the start of the save I was content with my youth coaching staffs but it was set to something the board controlled. I've been getting notifications of when they hired new staff so I'm guessing they bought out the original coaches and hired replacements and that jump in expenses represent the buyouts. I'm annoyed cause if so they fired some decent coaches and replaced them with trash

[Suntan Superman]

Not sure if it matters to you, but I believe your name is in the file path on those images. It looks like your finances will ultimately be fine for this year thanks to that sponsorship, if that sponsorship is real and listed as recurring you should be fine overall as well, otherwise like most small clubs your finances will just be year to year until you get a big sale or promoted.

Your Stadium is definitely hurting you the most as you can't really make good TV money without a cup run, but also without looking at the rules, I think if you get promoted you'll have to move or build a new stadium anyway which is a whole other financial crisis(as long as you don't immediately go back down it shouldn't be that bad)

RE: Staff, I would check your Staff Responsibilities screen, if you can change it to all being to yourself you can save on those buyout fees, and keep the coaches you like, I'm normally fairly particular about my coaching staffs, so I will not generally allow anyone access to hire/fire staff.

RE: Tactics I hate to really beat around the bush and kind of give a non-answer, but it really just depends on the levels I'm playing at, the players I have and the players the opponents will have. Like right now I'm at Gladbach, and my next match is a home tie against Bayern Munich. In the away fixture I bunkered down and switched my entire formation and style to try and absorb their immense attacking talent and because a lot of my defense and GK were new, so getting them more bodies just made more sense. Now with half the season in the book, and the defense currently 3rd best in the Buli, I don't plan on changing much, plus being at home, I really want to try and bring the game to Bayern as I think I can compete. Earlier in this career, especially at Cambuur where I had to face PSV, Feyenoord, and Ajax, and were never close to their level, I just had a tactic specifically trained to face them as I knew there were six games I needed them for, while a team like FC Utrecht, who were simply having a great season, I just made a mentality adjustment and a role adjustment to try and counter their threat.

[ggsimmonds]

I'll have to double check but I think the sponsorship expires at the end of this season. Which could be even better if I continue to outperform and can get better deals there.

I'm not sure what to expect on the stadium front. Per the rules of Serie C the minimum capacity needs to be 5000 iirc. But VV have been in Serie C for 3 or 4 years now. On some screens it does say this current stadium can be expanded to 5000 so I guess that saves us from a total rebuild.

So yeah those two things add to my uncertainty because I don't know what to expect in the offseason. Does VV have better RL sponsorships than their level and I'm fixing to lose that or are the current deals rather standard that I can improve on, and do I have a stadium expansion bill waiting for me. (those are rhetorical, don't expect an answer here unless other people have experience in Italy Serie C)

Anyway, I got a 1st round Cup match versus Trento I'm going to get through this morning. Hoping to advance from that. This game is definitely benefiting from my holiday vacation lol

Edit: Just checked, in game rules state stadiums that don't meet the minimum 4000 capacity can be used for one year. So I probably will need to expand after this season. Oh and whoever negotiated the contracts for this team did me no favors. These bonuses and appearance fees are hurting.

[Cod]

I love seeing how invested you're getting in this game! The crazy thing is how much you'll actually learn about the sport while playing and not even realizing it. You didn't do yourself any favors though picking a lower league team with financial issues lol. Hope you continue having fun with it and I'm enjoying reading the stories!

[ggsimmonds]

Quote: Originally Posted by Cod

I love seeing how invested you're getting in this game! The crazy thing is how much you'll actually learn about the sport while playing and not even realizing it. You didn't do yourself any favors though picking a lower league team with financial issues lol. Hope you continue having fun with it and I'm enjoying reading the stories!

Quite right and even moreso if previous experience was playing FIFA. For example I have learned that if I want to run a counter attacking tactic I should have more of a target forward to hold the ball up. Coming from FIFA I just put the striker with the most pace there because pace is god in FIFA. FIFA while fun can definitely distort one's knowledge of the game.

But I'm loving the added challenge of starting at the lower level. Maybe tough to explain but it pulls me in more you know? If I went with a top club its like I can halfass it and still get results whereas with this club I have to take a deep dive into everything to get results.

Anyway Michael Fabbro is giving me something of a good problem to have right now. He's my highest paid player and making twice that of the second highest. In the preseason I had him at RAM and he was largely a non factor in each fixture. I decided I couldn't afford him and had to move on. But then for the last friendly I tried him at striker and thats where he has been since and its resulted in 7 goals thru 6 matches. Now I'm of the mind that I cannot afford to NOT have him on my club.

Prior to my cup match with Trento I had a league match where I basically trotted out my Second XI to ensure fitness for Trento. We fell to 0-2 at HT before bringing on Fabbro as a late sub and he promptly scored two goals and we got the 3 points with a 3-2 win. I have to extend him (he's 26) but hopefully I can make the new contract have less incentives and bonuses.

[Suntan Superman]

You can half *** it at some clubs in the higher tier, and use money to fix some of your mistakes, but you also have a much shorter leash with the players and the board I've always found. At Manresa in Spain I went 12 games without winning, and everyone was still like "Hey you won the first three, great job!" I drew 3 games in a row at Gladbach and the board approval went from A+ to C. The thing I enjoy most about FM is the challenges are always different at each club.

[ggsimmonds]

Yep its a challenge in a different way. I figured by signing on with a club whose expectation was to be in the playout group but avoid relegation it would give me a sufficient leash to learn the game