***The Official Football Manager Thread***

[gopher_guy]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Well, even after releasing three highly over paid players, and selling two others for ~40K in total (mostly addons) to teams in league 2. Then signing 5 loans from championship sides U23's, we ended up doing it again.




We've now had to do back to back stand upgrades to comply with league rules about seating. So for the second season in a row we will be playing in someone elses stadium. Also we just got hit with a take over talks. I hope its a good one, because we need someone to pump money into the club. We aren't doing well financially. The price of having amazing seasons. Which is all my fault.

I'd be interested to see the finances for these low level English teams. Like, you can't have many fans, right? So not much match day income I'd imagine. Sponsorships can't be that much. No TV money, etc.

What kind of expenditure/income is there? I would imagine having to renovate the stadium twice in two years would financially ruin a club like that.

[Zac]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

I'd be interested to see the finances for these low level English teams. Like, you can't have many fans, right? So not much match day income I'd imagine. Sponsorships can't be that much. No TV money, etc.

What kind of expenditure/income is there? I would imagine having to renovate the stadium twice in two years would financially ruin a club like that.

I'll get some screens when I get home tonight. Didn't bring my laptop to work today. And I'm super bored because of that.

I'm in the VNL right now. But yeah we have been in the red for years. I think we are ~480K in the red currently (might be more, can't remember). We are insecure. And the board took out two loans to expand the stadium (I think 100K and 250K). So we will start making two loan payments soon. Not sure about match day income. My wage bills are never more than 4K a week (I think currently 2k actually). And I think our newest kit sponsor was 12k for two years. I remember the last one before that was 4K for two years. We lose money hand over fist. We are at risk of going into admin.

This is why the owner is looking to sell. But I think its going to fall through. Kept getting those take over hits rocks emails last night.

When I first started in level 9 we had 2K in the bank and only had armature contracts. Then I ruined it all the next season by singing players on semi-pro contracts. And its been all down hill financially from there.

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Last year, when I did my Dudley Town save from Level 11? I think? We were in financial ruin until we got one of our youth players bought by a L2 club for 5,000+35% sell-on, then got sold to Stoke a year later for like 500,000. that lad alone funded us up to League Two, bless him.

[Zac]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

I haven't been lucky enough yet to get that. All my sales with sell on % get released on frees. And same with the addons for like 50 games etc. I haven't gotten a single one of those yet.

[JHedges2]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

All this talk makes me curious to try a lower league save.

I have limited time to play, and have never tried a save outside of a rich club. I feel like there would be a STEEP learning curve.

Do you find it enjoyable to play with leagues, teams, and players you don't know?

I also assume there's a lot less "off field" stuff to do being smaller club?

I think I might try bringing Leyton Orient up.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Operation Sports mobile app

[Zac]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

All this talk makes me curious to try a lower league save.

I have limited time to play, and have never tried a save outside of a rich club. I feel like there would be a STEEP learning curve.

Do you find it enjoyable to play with leagues, teams, and players you don't know?

I also assume there's a lot less "off field" stuff to do being smaller club?

I think I might try bringing Leyton Orient up.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Operation Sports mobile app

I don't know about a steep learning curve. I actually learned FM with lower level clubs. Maybe that is why I don't like playing with big clubs.

I like small to mid size clubs. I like trying to turn them into big clubs. And I do enjoy playing with unfamiliar players and leagues/clubs. I get bored to easily if I play with top clubs. And I can't for the life of me bring myself to play with clubs I support in real life. I get to angry about loses. And I obsess over trying to make them perfect. Takes all the fun out of it.

Depending on how small you go, you have far far less press conferences to deal with. So you don't notice all the repetition. Your staff is much smaller, and not as good as they would be with a big club. So I tend to do more scouting myself at smaller clubs and rely less on the scouts info. Because most times its incomplete info. You also don't want to have a big staff even if you can, because it will just drain money.

Which leads to, you really have to pay close attention to your finances. You wont have money to spend on transfers. So you have to bargain shop. And make lots of free transfers. You also have to sell that great player you like because you can't pass up the money being offered. And if the club is setup for it, milk the youth setup. The biggest part of LLM is managing finances as best you can. And trying to find players on a free who can do a good job for you that, that you might be able to sell for 5-10K the next summer to a bigger club.

[jesmith29]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

Nothing better than taking a Lower League club to the top!

[Velocityy]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

I don't know about a steep learning curve. I actually learned FM with lower level clubs. Maybe that is why I don't like playing with big clubs.

I like small to mid size clubs. I like trying to turn them into big clubs. And I do enjoy playing with unfamiliar players and leagues/clubs. I get bored to easily if I play with top clubs. And I can't for the life of me bring myself to play with clubs I support in real life. I get to angry about loses. And I obsess over trying to make them perfect. Takes all the fun out of it.

Depending on how small you go, you have far far less press conferences to deal with. So you don't notice all the repetition. Your staff is much smaller, and not as good as they would be with a big club. So I tend to do more scouting myself at smaller clubs and rely less on the scouts info. Because most times its incomplete info. You also don't want to have a big staff even if you can, because it will just drain money.

Which leads to, you really have to pay close attention to your finances. You wont have money to spend on transfers. So you have to bargain shop. And make lots of free transfers. You also have to sell that great player you like because you can't pass up the money being offered. And if the club is setup for it, milk the youth setup. The biggest part of LLM is managing finances as best you can. And trying to find players on a free who can do a good job for you that, that you might be able to sell for 5-10K the next summer to a bigger club.

All of this! Taking a lower league club up is so rewarding! Make sure you DL the England through Level 23 database so you can start wherever you like...it's really thorough and I haven't noticed anything wrong with it in my usage. It's just got a LOT of teams, so don't load them all if you want a faster moving save, maybe just load the league below where you start if you want more details on teams getting promoted to your league.

Free transfers and loans are absolutely vital, and those sell on fee's can be really helpful. I had a youngster I sold to a Championship side with a 40% sell on fee to come back to me...I got one use out of it until he was released on a free...just that little bit helped a lot. But yes, expect to be in the red constantly. Hope you have an owner that's willing to give a cash injection each off-season (I've been lucky with that). If not you might be like ZO and deal with takeover talks which is always scary.

I made sure to spend some money on a decent scouting staff because I knew I wasn't spending anything on transfers...that helped me a lot, but I know in 18 scouting is different so that's up to you.

Lots of room to grow, lots of new teams and leagues to learn, and it's a lot less repetitive (as long as you are improving every year).

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

The problem is that the database only goes so low for CA/PA, so it's pretty easy to assemble a better-than-average squad and run the table. You mostly just have to watch out for your finances.

[Zac]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

That is very true. Anything added in an addon db is just super easy because the AI logic is awful for anything not in the main db.

Its why I was able to destroy my way up the leagues every year in this save. Those teams don't try and get players above their level/rep. So me getting players every year two and three levels above us just destroyed every team we played. But also why my finances are so messed up.

[Zac]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

I'd be interested to see the finances for these low level English teams. Like, you can't have many fans, right? So not much match day income I'd imagine. Sponsorships can't be that much. No TV money, etc.

What kind of expenditure/income is there? I would imagine having to renovate the stadium twice in two years would financially ruin a club like that.

Here are the screen grabs.

Spoiler

Not as far bad in the red as I thought.



I had no idea we made money from fund raising. That we got grant money. And we made merchandising money. That seems super odd for a such a low level team.



We will probably lose even more this season.

Hoping the take over happens and they pump something like 200K into the club. Otherwise we will be in trouble end of this season. I predict we will lose around another 120K, probably more.

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

That is very true. Anything added in an addon db is just super easy because the AI logic is awful for anything not in the main db.

Its why I was able to destroy my way up the leagues every year in this save. Those teams don't try and get players above their level/rep. So me getting players every year two and three levels above us just destroyed every team we played. But also why my finances are so messed up.

In general, yes, it really depends on how deep you go though, The mod that I'm using for the German divisions has been working quite well in terms of doing things that make sense, as well as maintaining a semblance of difficulty. My issue is with England, where the VNS/VNN/VNL typically have players in the 30-70 range so there's not much to go below. Going to Level 11 from Level 6 means the difference in ability stretches 5 levels down, from 50 to 0, and the other way goes from 70 to 200. There's just far less options out there.

On that note, in my editing of dbs, I found the solution to players/teams and I'll be implementing it in my new USA one shortly, and that's matching initial reputations.

EDIT:

this looks so nice and tidy. I wish it would never change

[gopher_guy]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

. So I tend to do more scouting myself at smaller clubs and rely less on the scouts info.

Wait, how do you do scouting yourself? There's a way to spot besides assigning your scouts to players to get reports on them?

[JHedges2]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

All of this! Taking a lower league club up is so rewarding! Make sure you DL the England through Level 23 database so you can start wherever you like...it's really thorough and I haven't noticed anything wrong with it in my usage. It's just got a LOT of teams, so don't load them all if you want a faster moving save, maybe just load the league below where you start if you want more details on teams getting promoted to your league.

The problem is that the database only goes so low for CA/PA, so it's pretty easy to assemble a better-than-average squad and run the table. You mostly just have to watch out for your finances.

That is very true. Anything added in an addon db is just super easy because the AI logic is awful for anything not in the main db.

Its why I was able to destroy my way up the leagues every year in this save. Those teams don't try and get players above their level/rep. So me getting players every year two and three levels above us just destroyed every team we played. But also why my finances are so messed up.

So, are you guys saying it's best to just roll with the standard database? I think I might start today a save with a team in the Vanarama South or North (no clue how to choose who!), and then just load up all the leagues from the UK and roll with that. Thoughts?

[Suntan Superman]

Re: ***The Official Football Manager Thread***

So, are you guys saying it's best to just roll with the standard database? I think I might start today a save with a team in the Vanarama South or North (no clue how to choose who!), and then just load up all the leagues from the UK and roll with that. Thoughts?

I think it's best to do it how you think you'll enjoy it the most. Ultimately I found the additional levels(at least anything beyond 9) to not be as challenging as I normally like, I didn't have to do much in the way of preparation, it was just play the match and go up. However if there is a team you'd like to bring up, then it makes perfect sense to go through that arduous task. The biggest challenge, the lower you go, is always the finances.

Speaking of finances, aside from our "payable once 1860 reach the top division loan" we're out of debt! Which means....