Invincible!

I've finally done it! I wasn't even paying attention to it until I won the league early in April; then I checked the league table and saw that I hadn't lost a game! Since then, though, I got nervous playing a league game because I didn't want the run to end. To say that I had a good season would be an understatement; I won every trophy there is to win this season.

Wasn't even expecting this

It's only January, with only 20 games played, and it's not even a contest right now. Hope this post doesn't jinx it.

Surprised to see this though, Cesc Fabregas is currently on loan at Everton. He's only 30, a decent midfielder, so maybe that's why Everton is doing quite well, sitting 2nd on the table.

Well, that didn't last long

David Moyes got fired from Arsenal, after only ~6 months on the job. Arsenal are 8th in the league; surprisingly, not that much different than United's current league position in real life.

2015-2016

I've just finished my third( season on FM14, with United winning the league and, unfortunately, nothing else. I lost to Arsenal on the 4th round of the FA Cup, and to Barcelona on the quarter finals of the Champions League. Honestly, the board's expectations of reaching the finals of both cups, while winning the league, is a bit too much. I've only won the league the past two seasons, so hopefully this will lower their expectations.

I couldn't help myself

Of course I bought Mata for my FM 14 game!

FM14

Been playing FM14 A LOT lately (since I pretty much have nothing else to do), and I think I'm doing okay. Currently in March 2015, which is approaching the end of my second season as United's manager. The biggest change from FM12 is basically where they put everything. Tabs used to be on the upper left hand side; it's now on the right, under parent tabs. The variety of options for team talks and press conferences also took a while to get used to (especially since they moved around the tone! Why in the world would they do that‽).

I've brought in Thiago and Javier Pastore, and let go of Anderson, Tom Cleverley and Javier Hernandez. And then, as always, I spend all my money on 4+ star potential hot prospects.

Victor Valdes, who I signed for a free agent for ~$10k a week, always has this problem on FM14, unfortunately. Recently there was a post on Reddit about how he retired at the age of 32 because no clubs would sign him! I tried to get him earlier for a much higher wage but as a backup, and he (his agent?) rejected it because he wanted to be a first team regular. David DeGea, is definitely good enough for me in that position so I didn't bother. But I was pretty surprised when I tried again a few months later, and they only requested ~11k wage! Of course I took him in!

In my first season, I actually won the treble (Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League), so obviously the board now expect me to win pretty much everything. I'm already out of the FA Cup, and they're already disappointed in me because of that; and it doesn't look like I'm gonna win the League, since I'm currently third, 7 points off the leaders Chelsea. So I kinda have to win the Champions League this season or risk getting sacked.

Side note: copied my friend the game and got him to start playing; hopefully he gets addicted!

So I'm cheating...

United isn't doing so well (it hurts me to even type that) and the last FM game that I played was the dropped one. There, my Bromley had just gotten promoted, so it's a bit more difficult to win games. We're pretty much struggling. And seeing as how FM is supposed to be my United safe space, not winning is not really ideal.

So, I started a new game! Well, first, I fired up the FM12 Editor first. I dropped Manchester United all the way down to Blue Square Bet South, and promoted Bromley to the Premier League (sorry, Bromley). I kept all the stats for United the same, which means we're insanely overqualified and overspending for a team in such a low league. For Bromley, I gave them a bit of money (£50m) in the hopes that they'd survive.

I took over United, and after a few friendlies, the season starts. The weird thing is, I had to play one league game before playing Manchester City in the Community Shield (which I lost, sadly). Let's just say, we're having a pretty easy season. We're also competing in the Champions League. Wonder what would happen if I win it, even though the club is competing in the Blue Square Bet South (probably promoted to Blue Square Bet Premier) that season.

My main concern is that my players would drop in abilities and potentials, or that they'd leave the team to get into better leagues. Haven't happened so far; morale is high and all first team players seem to be eager to stay. Hopefully this doesn't actually destroy Manchester United...

I did it!

It's only my first season at Bromley, and I've managed to get them promoted from Blue Square Bet South!

I finished second behind Ebbsfleet –– who was pretty much untouchable –– after an amazing unbeaten run at the end of the season. I was pretty much a low-mid table team for the first third or half of the season, and slowly climbed up the table. I earned my promotion through the playoffs, and beating Eastleigh in the final after extra time.

I actually didn't know how the promotion/relegation works all the way down the leagues; apparently, since Blue Square Bet has North/South, only 2 teams get promoted (champion and winner of playoffs). The next league up is the Blue Square Bet Premier; from which the bottom 4 teams are relegated, 2 to North and 2 to South. From Premier, there's League 2, and then League 1, Championship, and finally the Premier League. Current plan is to take Bromley all the way to the Premier League, maybe make them a decent mid/top table team there, and then take back my Manchester United.

That's one gone...

I have no idea what Jose Mourinho is doing with the Manchester United that I left, but only 2 years later, 5-6 of my starters want to leave the club. Four of them have had their transfer list requests granted.

The first one to go? Justin Bennett.

It's even more difficult than I expected to stop myself from taking my United back. These are great players that deserve to start for Manchester United. Bennett, especially, got through United's youth system; made it into the first team at the age of 18/19; he...he should be a United player until he retires! :(

We did okay, I think

I just finished my first season on my simmed FM12 game. I finished 2nd, behind Tottenham, only by goal difference. Yes, it brought back bad memories of the real 2012 season. Even worse, I lost it on the last game, playing Tottenham. 

It sucked, but I thought I did okay because this United had been a mid-table team. Seriously, 2nd isn't that bad, right? So the board's expectations at the beginning of the season was to get a Champions League spot. I raised the bar and said I would challenge for the title. Well, 2nd place on goal difference is challenging the title, isn't it? The board didn't think so. They were "disappointed" by our league performance. Whatever. I'm definitely going to win this season!

This is much harder than I expected

In my last FM12 game, where I resigned as Man Utd manager, I decided to take the job of managing England national team for World Cup Qualifiers. I wanted to manage a lower league team, and since I had to add those leagues, I had to wait until the current season ended before those leagues were added to the game. That meant I had about half a season with nothing to do, so I thought why not.

I think I'm doing pretty well as England manager.


However, once the lower leagues had been added, I looked for an opening at a Blue Square Bet North/South club. I randomly picked a club, and it happened to be Bromley. I had pretty much no budget; wage budget £575 per week, and no transfer budget whatsoever.


Hopefully I'll get the hang of it by the end of the season, and start moving up the leagues soon. It's quite a learning curve, going from Manchester United arguably the best team in the world, with plenty of world class players, to a team with players hired on no contract.

My current plan is to take Bromley all the way up to the Premier League, and maybe play a season or two there, before taking United back, if possible. Or maybe by that time I'd be too attached to my Bromley players?

It actually hurts a little

With all the news about FM14 coming out, I got excited in starting a new FM game, with a new challenge. My last game was actually also a new challenge, and it's going pretty well. But I wanted a new one. First, I tried Classic Mode on FM13 Demo, and I got about halfway through the season in second place to City.

This time, I thought, why not create another save for my first game, in which I'm doing very well in the 8.5 years I was there, and resign?

Just started a new FM12 game

This transfer window is just too much for me; we're being linked with pretty much all central midfielders out there and I can't handle it. So, as always, I revert back to my United safe place: Football Manager. This time, I simmed through until 2050, and then took over Manchester United. Stole this idea from /r/footballmanagergames. All players are now regens, and I don't know any of them. I welcome the challenge, even though I know I'm going to miss the amazing regens I've managed to acquire in my other save.