Finnegan

Just don't think it'll particularly mean much atm.

It's pretty common to mix up the personnel so that both "teams" are half and half as opposed to just sending out the "first" team and a fully rotated one, no? Although that does look like a list of players that have probably asked to leave

It's copium. He got injured and didn't recover very well last year so everyone's convincing themselves Stolarczyk is better in advance so that we're less depressed when he leaves for way less than he's worth.

Louder for the people at the back.

I'm heading to Rome in a couple of weeks and was a bit sad that their new home kit is bollocks. Hope this has been released when I get there, doing a stadium tour and this would cap it off nicely.

jfc

Don't entirely know how Cifuentes is going to line up or who we're going to manage to sell, etc, or who he'll get a tune out of. Every new manager, at every club, there's always one or two players that surprise coming back in to the fold. So, assuming a clean slate for everyone and assuming Enzo's formation because it's still probably the best way for our current squad to line up then the objectively best 11 is probably something like this (unpopular opinion incoming) - Mads Ricardo, Faes, Vestergaard, JJ Winks Fatawu, Ndidi, BEK, Mavididi Daka I mean, that's basically the team that won a load of games in this division last time out. We know they all work, BEK is probably a good enough replacement for KDH that you could carry on as we left off last time we were here. Would I pick that team? Probably not. Do I expect they'll all be here come the first game? Probably not. But on paper I'd argue that's our strongest 11 still, regardless of how people see some of our kids are at the moment or how sick of Faes, Vestergaard, JJ, Ndidi, Winks and Daka some (most?) of you are.

If the "British Culture" that needs protecting is you, I can't ****ing wait for it to go extinct.

They're just responding to sloppy narratives pushed out by the media wanting to sell a fairy story. The idea that it was miraculous we won the league, 5000/1 outsiders, relegation fodder, somehow magically just won the, probably, second most lucrative prize in professional football. To people gobbling that up - amidst them, loads of our own fans - it was ridiculous to sack the same manager a few months later. The fact of that matter is we'd built some absolutely brilliant that won a title on merit, with some incredible footballers, some great sporting infastructure at the club and Ranieri was bit by bit taking it apart and tanking it. The squad had won the league, it shouldn't have been even close to going down, had we done it would have been a far bigger shock than Rodgers' side dropping. But the press have never wanted to tell that story. These are the same people that act like it's a shock every single year that Manchester United are still rubbish because the assumption is they belong at the top. Seriously. Baffles me. Even the above only really annoys me because it's just reflective of how poor the standard of football punditry is in this country. I couldn't give a shit what people think about our club on the whole, it's ****ing criney how much some people do. The "do you they mean us" thread is one of the most embarassing on this entire site.

Ugh. "He's a good defender, honest, all he required was two very good defenders to play with him to mitigate the fact defending is his deficency..." He's a ****ing terrible defender, you just like him because he didn't have to defend for you, he compensated for the fact Willy Boly can't pass a football. Stadt isn't wrong in isolation and neither are the stats, Coady is a shit defender, just like Shinji Okazaki is a ****ing terrible forward. But Shinji Okazaki is a key part of Leicester winning the league, just as Conor Coady was a key part of what made your side tick. There's a lot of ways to skin a cat in football, Winks and Vestergaard were absolutely essential to Enzo winning us the league, they were completely useless to Ruud, didn't want or need their skillsets at all. And that's the rub. It was on us to work all that out and we didn't. I personally think it was a bit of a throwback to to the Pearson era. Nige knew how to strike a balance, on the one hand we brought in the likes of Knockaert, Mahrez, Vardy and co to develop and on the other hand we recruited old warriors like Wasyl, Huth, Fuchs, etc with bags of personality who were established captains for club, country or both. We knew we lacked personality in the squad, knew Coady had a reputation and had been a defender in the Premier League for a couple of defensive sides and just forgot to check whether or not he was actually good at defending.

I can't really agree with that, to be honest, they've spent a **** tonne and their pulling power and commercial revenue is absolutely huge. They've got to the Championship with consecutive promotions in relative ease and... Whilst I agree it'll probably take them a couple of seasons, they'll probably manage it here too. Maybe they'll need a little bit of outside investment but FFP / PSR just does them so many favours. In terms of commercial revenue and global profile, there AREN'T clubs as big as Wrexham in the league. They can spend vastly beyond their match day revenue, far more than anyone else in the league can, and stay within compliance. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they spend more than we do this summer and we're supposed to be the giants of the league. Personally think it's only a matter of time before they get to the Prem and probably stay there. I absolutely wouldn't go so far as to say they'll then thrive and break the top six, get Europe or anything like that but I definitely don't think tehy're done climbing. And it's definitely not miraculous, it's money. Pure and simple.

One thing you aren't considering is that Rio Ferdinand has already written them off so he's nailed on for 40 goals this season.

To this I say an absolutely massive, believe it when I see it. Really, really hope it brings change but I have significant doubts.

DCL isn't much better.

Bloat is right. I would describe current FM games as both artificially and superficially complex. They aren't actually anymore difficult and you don't really need to engage significantly with a lot of their new systems but they can be intimidating and off-putting. Instead of focusing on making the game more challenging by making the AI better at key decision making (recruitment being a big one), I feel like they've focused a lot on deliberately increasing the average time it takes a person to get through a season. Most of it can be avoided and is just extra clicks for nothing. Needing to talk to an agent before bidding on a player, needing to make promises before offering a contract, it's just extra screens to go through and can usually just be ignored and skipped. Stuff like overhauling the training schedules can be avoided by just having your assistant manager do it with almost zero loss of actual performance. Meanwhile, the same tactics you had in 2010 can almost certainly be copied in to a save on 2020 with no significant problems. New roles like mezzala, trequartista, pressing forward, raumdeauter all sound good but can just be ignored and I find that generic Winger (Attack) and Winger (Support) either side of a couple of CM (Autos) can still win you the league. It's all largely just fluff to make the game appear to be more detailed and in many cases it's often stuff that was always in the game, it's just been added to the UI. Recruiting Data Analysts so you can see all of the underlying data the game was already recording anyway, for example. Does nothing for you largely, to be honest, I doubt many people really use it and often what they show isn't helpful. But it's there and it's pages to look at and the game will tell you to look at it and new players will go "????? ugh wtf?" and get lost.

Yeah obviously that's what's the real magic isn't it, it's not just what they make it's what they're allowed to spend because of their commercial revenue. Every time Rob or Humphrey go on one of their speeches about how they don't spend as much as everyone thinks and they aren't just Disney FC I think yeah, yeah ok. Now show how dependent you are on your match day revenue vs. the likes of Bradford or Rotherham or Bolton. Hell, even us. I absolutely don't resent it, they're playing by the rules and I don't see anything wrong with it. As you say, it's fairly clean, it's just good promotion and sensible marketing. I don't have a problem with Wrexham, I have a problem with the rules that allow you to offset commercial revenue against PSR so the most famous clubs will always be the most powerful. It just isn't particularly a fair way to run the game.

It'll be interesting how much loyalty they show Parkinson. He'll pretty much have found his limit. He's a tidy lower league coach, good organiser and motivator. He probably lacks the tactical complexity to take them to the next level. I don't have a problem with Wrexham, the TV show or any of the hype around it. I find people genuinely wound up by it to be a bit sad. But it definitely is funny watching the show as an actual football fan because it's very clearly made as entertainment and to sell the idea of British football fandom to an American audience. It'll almost lose some relevance once they get to the Premier League, most of the charm of it has been about showing a worldwide audience what the rest of UK football is about. Everyone knows the Prem. If they get there and the show just starts being about millionaire footballers and the local fans getting priced out then what's the point.

I'm not mocking the club, I'm mocking the format of the TV show. My missus loves it but she was genuinely gobsmacked after watching season one when I told her Paul Mullin not only wasn't good enough to play for England, he wasn't good enough to play for Wales either. The way they hype their players on the show it's like they're talking about prime Ronaldo. The hype they made for getting Foster and McLean was brilliant, haha.

I absolutely cannot wait for the episode where Rob, Ryan and Humphrey are doing their absolute hardest to talk up how exciting it is that Wrexham have not only signed a Welsh International but a home town boy with over forty caps who played for Wales at the world cup. Then two episodes later Phil Parkinson is having a stroke screaming his lungs out at the fifteenth goal Danny Ward has let in in the last three games.

It was pretty easy but also pretty new remember. Largely the series is quite tired now. It's a bit more complex now but I still wouldn't say it'd particularly difficult.

We tend to either buy players that are ****ing mustard and they move to some of the richest clubs in the world for massive fees, or complete rubbish we've overpaid for that nobody else is willing to pay higher wages to to take off us. This bipolar nature of our recruitment pretty much all but guarantees what you're suggesting will never happen.

I love that year by year Ric comes closer and closer to being the new Thracian.

They were all like it, it's hilarious. I've been playing a few old FMs over the last couple of weeks for a laugh and a bit of nostalgia. Player ratings around the 05 - 10 era were absolutely bonkers, there was clearly no major moderation done so some editors have done their teams fairly realistically and then others have run absolutely wild. Scotland is full of absolute chad wonderkids, as is Belgium and famously we all know about some of the nuts Scandis. Progressively ratings have just come lower and lower and a lot more sensible. You can actually play like 2005 then 2015 and then 2024 (womp womp 25) and just look around the world and just see how the general balance has changed over time.

Give it time. He'll fail to score a hattrick in his first five games and half of FoxesTalk will start slagging him off, the abuse will spread and we'll slowly start undermining his confidence. Don't you worry.