Lineker's Lugs

Wordle 1,945 3/6 ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛ ⬛⬛🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Shame Bella is out. They used to play for my club's junior teams, even when in Game of Thrones. It seemed an unwritten rule in committee meetings that we didn't refer to the fact we had a player who was in the biggest show on TV. I did it once and there was a bit of a sharp intake of breath. I didn't do it again.

Wordle 1,938 5/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Anyone been watching SI's previews of FM27? Everything looks good, but there's nothing I'm really bothered about. The in-match stuff and the improvements to immersion look like definite steps forward, but as I usually just rattle through seasons using instant result they won't really impact me unless I change the way I play. I'm doubtless in a minority of one, but all I really want are data exports (definitely not happening) and more depth in the women's game to make a career save worthwhile. I'm in two minds about getting the game at this stage.

Wordle 1,936 2/6 ⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

That’s how he’s always been. It was perhaps justified back in the amateur/part time days, but in a professional set up (in name at least) the constant stream of instructions shouldn’t be necessary, just a bit of tinkering.

Credit where it’s due, Passmoor’s half-time team talk has worked wonders. For Sunderland.

#oneclub

Nothing can possibly go wrong now.

I didn’t realise McLoughlin is out for a while. She’s the real loss in my opinion.

A four goal win and top spot awaits.

Some people just prefer to watch men running around getting sweaty and we need to respect their life choices.

1st is automatic promotion, 2nd and 3rd play off and the winner of that then faces 13th from the top flight for the final place in the WSL. I think Leicester have a strong enough squad for top three, but unless they change their approach they’ll just be cannon fodder again next season if they do go up.

I always refer to Leicester as Leicester these days. The time I would talk about 'us' or 'we' is long gone. Defeats like today no longer resonate at all. Life's too short to be too invested in the mess the club has become.

I’m broadly supportive of London City from the perspective of seeing an independent women’s team doing well, but there are certainly reservations, not least the fact their starting line up last night was the first in WSL history not to include a single English player. Good to see former Loughborough Foxes player Becky Langley on their coaching staff though.

My save is complete. The final league was Hong Kong. I was a bit disappointed by that, but because of the approach I took it was always going to finish in a backwater somewhere. What I hadn’t expected was for the final title to be one of the best. It was the ultimate two horse race with my side, C & W District, and Kitchee SC way ahead of everyone else. We only lost twice all season, both to Kitchee, and the second defeat took them above us on head-to-head record with only three to play. We drew our next game while they won, so we were two points behind. They then lost their last two – the only defeats they had all season – and we won ours to take the title by a deceptively comfortable four points. In total the save took 19 days, 19 hours and 13 minutes. It turns out managers age up to 100 years old, then stop get older. My career earnings were in the region of £38.5m, which was nice. It could have been more but I usually negotiated down to a 1 year contract and took a lower wage as a result. For some reason I didn’t want to consistently break contracts, although the game still thought I resigned from every job of course. By the end I was only being offered one year contracts (and just four months on one occasion, which turned out to be enough). Whether it was the game learning what I would accept, or just the result of my manager being little more than a barely animated corpse by that point, I don't know. I became heartily sick of messages that began with the words 'heads up' or 'potential issue'. I strongly suspect that instant result = better results and that probably took a few years off my save. I never had to spend more than two years in a job because I was nearly always able to join the strongest or richest club in a country. There were plenty of easy pickings where I found myself at clubs where it was almost harder NOT to win the league. I also managed to speed things up when I realised that switching between winter and summer leagues meant I could join a club midway through a season then have mid-season and between-season transfer windows to build the squad, and then be ready to win the league the following season. Two leagues could be won in three years by doing that. In the last twenty or so years of the save, I kept an eye on Leicester’s teams. The women were always either relegated from the WSL or promoted from WSL2 whenever I looked. The men were also a yo-yo team, but in their case it was between League One and League Two. As the save ended they had just finished 22nd to be relegated from League One again, and had sacked their manager. Jon Rudkin’s ghost remains on the payroll. I haven’t bothered posting all the details of every country, but I’ve been taking screenshots of each table and to save me typing any more, here’s a screenshot of the filenames showing each country and the club concerned. Where there are multiple files for a club it's usually because there is a league stage and a playoff stage.

This save is taking its toll...

I think we're probably talking about the same thing just using different terminology, particularly around write off. If a team makes a 100m loss with no excluded spending (such as women's team) the PSR loss is 100m. If they had additionally spent 10m on the women's team to give a total loss of 110m, the PSR loss is still 100m. The women's spending hasn't impacted it at all which was my (possibly badly made) point.

Spending on women’s teams doesn’t give any write-off under FFP/PSR. It just doesn’t get included so the PSR calculation is the same whether the spending happens or not.

After six months of unemployment a job opened up at Young Boys in Switzerland. I wasn’t initially interested, but stubbornly it remained available for a few weeks. Then I noticed a news story about a takeover being completed. I checked the job centre and they were now rich and suddenly I was interested after all! I got the job and being the only team in the league with money made it a straightforward task. Two jobs I’d been waiting for followed. Firstly Barcelona women – no longer as dominant as they are today with both Madrid clubs being very competitive, but they were still winning the league most seasons and I was able to add to that easily enough. Next was Feyenoord who had won the Eredivisie six years running and, as with Young Boys, were easily the best resourced side in their league. Given I’m only taking a short-term approach, the sole problem with the squad was that it had just one keeper. I signed an upgrade as starter and a youngster as third choice insurance, but otherwise cracked on with the already dominant players. Ligue 1 was the last remaining men’s league that had been ranked as either superb or excellent when I began the save. I joined Lyon and yet again I had taken over a team that was already good and had pots of money. Lyon was similar to the gig at Aris. Exactly as I did there, I signed a new keeper and two midfielders and we were sorted. Marseille, Lille and PSG were all competitive without being particularly strong. Number 27 was done and dusted. When I adopted my approach of building my reputation as quickly as possible rather than working up the leagues from weakest to strongest, I thought it would be the simplest, and therefore quickest, way to complete my objective but I’d underestimated just how much it would simplify things. I keep 20 leagues loaded at all times which has meant that so far there has always been a good (i.e. rich and/or stacked and/or high reputation) option available whenever I was out of work, and with a global reputation I get any job I apply for. As a result, the save has really turned into an endurance test rather than needing much skill at the game. Not that I’m complaining!

If I do this I should be sectioned!

It’s been a month since I began the save and I've just completed title number 23 so I’m exactly one third of the way through. The easy third. I’ve been getting through a season a day and for the last week each one has brought another title in another country. Turkey, Czechia, Poland, Portugal, Italy (women), Greece and Sweden have been won with Galatasaray, Slavia Prague, Lech Poznań, Benfica, Juventus, Aris Thessalonikis and Malmö respectively. Five of the seven were defending champions – often multiple successive titles – and six were clear favourites for the title. The only exception was Aris who had finished third the year before but only five points behind the champions. A new keeper and a couple of midfielders were all it needed to overhaul an ageing Olympiakos team. There are only five leagues left where I know of clubs that would pretty much guarantee a title, so unless those jobs come up, the tougher assignments start now.

Usually 2pm so won't conflict with junior games in the morning, but 2pm is the traditional kick-off time for adult teams further down the pyramid. I asked our club secretary about the impact of the WSL noon kick-offs on our club and he said there wasn't any at all. What was impacted was that we're given tickets by Leicester to give away to our juniors and their families. Previously these were snapped up, but last year no-one wanted them due to the kick-off time.

My policy of moving to the best possible jobs is continuing to bear fruit and I’m now up to 16 domestic titles won. Every time I hit the job market I wait for top jobs to become available. There are still enough good leagues to go that I usually have two or three strong options. I then look at their leagues and if the available job is the only one I’d really want, that’s the one I take because it might not be available again for a long time. This approach has led me to Bødo/Glimt in Norway and OL Lyonnes in the French women’s league. The other four I’ve completed recently had more options but I went with Arsenal in the PL and Chelsea in the WSL, Cruzeiro in Brazil and Club América in Mexico. The latter took three goes due to frustrating playoff defeats, but as there are two championships a year it didn’t delay me too much. My new job is at Galatasaray who have won their title for the last six seasons so this should be a simple one. Sooner or later the options will reduce and I’ll be in leagues where I’ve never heard of any teams so paradoxically it will get tougher as the standard of the leagues gets weaker.

Last season WSL2 kick-offs were generally 2pm on Sundays, but there was a bit of variety. The games were only on YouTube so there was no broadcaster dictating noon kick-offs.