shen

Meh, not as sensible as what we used to have. Hopefully they didn't give Trump more than what his aggression deserves.

Also, kind of funny that Steve Cooper was appointed manager of Club Brugge a month ago in my game (April 2031), Brendan Rodgers has been OHL manager since 2029 (previously Genk from 2026-28). Even in Belgium I cannot escape Leicester's ghosts haunting me!

Diegem update: Just as I was thinking that this team can walk on water... We drew Chelsea in the last-16 and just put out a wholly professional performance away in the first leg winning it 1-2, letting them back into the tie in the 87th minute. It was a pretty even game, we were just sharper with Orakpo and Pieters getting the strikes. In the return leg, we definitely have the upper hand but cannot make a breakthrough until Reece James gets shown a straight red in first half added time. We start the second half like lightning and race into a 2-0 lead by the 58th minute, Orakpo and September getting the goals, and four minutes later I make what in hindsight looks like a big mistake by changing five players and freshen things up as my tactic is very taxing against strong opposition. Just five minutes after this, they reduce the arrears and then on 76 minutes they bloody equalise with ten men. Suddenly, my entire team's confidence is shot and I'm biting nails here. But we hold on and win 4-3 on aggregate. We continue bulldozing in the league winning 6-1 against Gent and 7-1 against Standard which sets us up to win the league in between the CL quarterfinals against none other than Real Madrid.... The first leg is at home and we are absolutely flying. Petterson saves an early penalty from Güler and makes two outstanding saves in the following corners. Then Andrey Santos bursts through a few minutes later and gets chopped down in the area. Penalty. Orakpo buries it and the stadium erupts. 37 minutes, a corner taken short and Jetten works it in towards Gueye who buries it from close range. Half time. We're deservedly ahead and beating the biggest club in the world! 49 minutes - Orakpo buries another through ball, again assisted by Santos and we're on cloud 9. But then our excellent defence gets punished with some bad luck. A pot shot from distance hits two players and lands at Endrick's feet who taps into an empty net with Petterson wrongfooted. And now Real have their tails up and are throwing the kitchen sink at it. I make another mistake and don't dare change anything after the punishment by Chelsea - Jetten loses it badly in their half as he dithers too long and Güler just punts it long and Bellingham races through from his own half - unopposed - and buries it with 6 minutes left to play. We hold on for a famous - and deserved - win, but Real are very much alive in the tie. We play third-placed Charleroi away in-between and thoroughly outplay them, but we waste chances which they don't and we end up with a draw which means we don't secure the league yet. Would've been nice with that morale booster. We go to Bernabeu and are immediately under the cosh. Yeremy Pino, who we kept completely quiet in the first game as well as Güler are toying with us and within 23 minutes we're down 2-0 with them two assisting eachother. But in both cases, we had just wasted two gilt-edged chances just before their goals, with Gueye missing the target on both occasions, which just added salt to the wound. We fought bravely and missed the target with another two clear chances which is so uncharacteristic. Terrible day for my strikers to draw blanks. We contain Real Madrid well, but we just couldn't find that one goal to take it into extra time and the miracle run is over. Proud but also thinking what could've been. ------- Then a couple of weeks off before the cup final against Genk and I place two friendlies against amateur sides which we casually win 19-0 and 22-0 respectively to build up morale and confidence. Preparations have gone great, we practice extra penalties and set pieces and focus on penalties in the match prep as well. The game starts cagey until we get our first chance in the 11th minute. A Machmoum cross is floated to the middle and Orakpo, flying in from the left wing, directs it beautifully into the far corner. We keep creating openings and clear sights of goal, but at half-time we've had 18 shots with only 4 on target and I'm already sensing what's coming. Genk haven't had a sniff so far. We sub three on 75 mintues and another two on 83 minutes to keep performance levels up and lo behold, we miss a sitter in the 85th minute to kill the game and two minutes later Genk create their only chance of any danger to equalise. Unreal. Extra time is one way traffic and we end the game with an xG of 3,29 to their 0,59, but it goes down to penalties and I just hate penalties... The perfect season comes crashing down as Irankunda buries the last pen to win it.

You've proper put Bochum in to fifth gear, Dan. Averaging almost four goals a game in the Bundesliga is pretty wild. Also nuts that it's already a two horse race after half a season. I'm liking the look of your tactic. It's not too dissimilar to mine with a back five and a front five - classic FM stuff. Best of luck for the remainder of the season!

Diegem update: January transfer window is over and the biggest news is that we made two big sales with PSV buying Marco Bizzarri, from our very first youth intake, for a whopping £5,75m and Kelven Frees, our captain, who went to Al-Hilal for £11,25m which was just too good to turn down. I'd had already brought in Chibuike Nwaiwu on a free, as I don't think we will extend Matteo Waem's or Ibrahim Cissé's contracts beyond this season. Both of them have been better and played more regularly than I had anticipated, so it'll be with a heavy heart. We missed out on Boris Mamuzah Lum who was captain material, but we'll have to find someone else in the summer. We spent relative pennies on getting an excellent tutor and backup option/potential captain in Virgil Ghita and we got Helmut Coopman on the cheap at £1,6m from USG, who must have lost their marbles. The guy will develop into a top-tier Pro League player without doubt. But the real story of course is the Champions League. Remember the draw I whinged about in the previous update? Well... I finished above all of them After the disappointing draw away to Olympiacos, I then outplayed, outshot and out-XGd Man City in a 1-1 draw, did the same at Juventus with the same result, before winning narrowly 1-0 against Marseille. Then came the only game in which I didn't outshine the opponent when we lost 3-1 to PSG, where I was still in it until stoppage time. We fell behind early against Napoli, but rallied to win 2-1 with a late goal from Bop Gueye, which put us on 9 points with our two easiest games to come. We duly dispatched Slavia Prague and RB Salzburg in convincing fashion 4-1 to finish on 15 points. However, by some insane stroke of luck, not only was this good enough to qualify - it was good enough to finish top 8 !! Going into the last game, Man Utd were in the hot seat on 13 points and playing at home to Eintracht Frankfurt, but I still needed results involving them, Man City (!), Sporting, Chelsea and even Feyenoord and PSG (!) to go my way if I was to make it. My chances were probably less than 5%, but miracles happened. Olympiacos and Juventus (!) both knocked out too. The knockout rounds haven't been played yet, so I'm not sure who I'll play in the round of 16, but it's already a massive achievement at this stage. We're also into the final of the Croky Cup for the first time. We had a really easy run up until the semi final where we played Club Brugge, but we completely destroyed them 5-1 (again) and went 1-3 up in the away leg with what was half a U21 side (finished 8-4 on aggregate). We'll play Genk for the honours in May. In the league, we're still cruising with 19 wins out of 23 putitng us six points ahead of USG and 9 ahead of Charleroi. We had a minor blip during an insane run where we played consecutive games against the top six sides, Brugge getting the better of us as Andrey Santos got a straight red, leading into the PSG loss and a draw against USG. My most exciting prospect is Mathias Pieters, another academy products who's figured regularly from the very start when he appeared three seasons ago, and who's developed explosively this season. Nothing better than own academy products growing into top level players!

Ayew scored a few from outside the box. Wasn't Sheff Wed equaliser last season one?

You did the right thing! No point selling a key player in your system, unless you really need the money. Clever use of the promise! Have never seen it actually in action, but seems a good way to keep morale up while (at least) buying some time.

I understand, but dragging a save out doesn't make it much more interesting or challenging. Ultimately, it's budgets and tactics that are the real constraints. Maybe setting a timer, i.e. win the Süperlig with Altinordu within 3/4 seasons.

Wow, yeah, they're end-game studs these guys! Luis Padilla, 21, Model Citizen, elite superstar. Love it!

Yeah, as noted, that's one way to impose restrictions. I suppose it could be an OK challenge, but Athletic have a fantastic youth setup and it's hard coded that they get a steady stream of potential La Liga players, so it's not THAT difficult. I haven't looked at Altinordu, but I assume it's a bit similar with Turkey producing lots of great talent already.

I've been mulling over my next FM challenge a bit. My Diegem save is going swimmingly, but I'm closing in on the point where winning the league will become a procession and winning the CL will be a question of time and RNG, which quickly becomes redious. I think I've done most of what I find interesting in CM/FM. After having a break between FM21 and FM26, this challenge felt fresh enough, but I've done the rags to riches story a few times now. I've taken my local/heritage clubs into orbit which is always a fun and personal narrative. I've done the wonderkids save. I've done the obligatory Leicester save on each version (though I ditched it after promotion on FM26). I've taken national teams to world cup glory etc. Once training is optimized, scouting is set up properly and most importantly the tactics are cracked, then it's all a procession and more a question of when, not if. So I think the only way is to do self-imposed restrictions (e.g. age limits to transfers/players, limit scope of player pool, only play a certain (non-meta) way) and/or actually role-play the game (i.e. leave scouting/transfer/contract negotiations to the DoF; training to the coaches; infrastructure improvements to the board etc) so that you just act as the head coach and nothing else. In a way, that evens the field a bit as the AI doesn't optimize well and would suffer from these imperfections that result from having delegated matters to staff. What will your challenges be for your next save (whether in CM99/00, FM26 or FM27 or whatever)? I'm thinking about doing a "Dad's army" save where I force myself to only have 33+ year old players in the team and see how far I can go with this. It poses numerous challenges like How to generate income; Dealing with constant squad turnover due to player decline in order stay competitive; Finding a tactic that works best for physically declining players; High wages/big egos; It would turn the whole game experience upside down somewhat. Maybe combine it with role-playing, so I don't get to manually scour the market for optimal players either or dismantle youth facilities etc.

Were they catalysts or just noticeable moments in time where you could identify a downturn? I'd argue that MON leaving was a major reason (maybe the 'catalyst') for the struggles that came to the fore during and after Wycombe. Likewise with Forest, we were already trending downwards and the issues off (FFP, Rodgers crying) and on the field were already well and truly in motion. The departures of Schmeichel, Fofana and Albrighton, combined with the additions of Faes, Souttar and Kristiansen that summer kind of broke the camel's back.

Intriguing about the Maignan gamble not paying off. Maybe it's just a tactical/game engine thing. I'm performing better defensively in my save, but I think it's 90% down to the tactical switch and maybe 5-10% down to the goalkeeper upgrade. I'm still seeing much of the same goals go in, but I'm giving up a lot fewer chances, so it's difficult to say if those goals are just inevitable or whether an elite goalie with superb anticipation, agility, jumping reach and reflexes can actually mitigate it. Just looking at your transfer sums, it looks like you're going to catch up eventually with Bayern as you get top 3 finishes and knockout round progression in Europe giving you substantial rep boosts. If you're able to even offer wages of £100k+ wages, I think you will be able to really shift into a higher gear during this summer window. If you are still not getting closer, I'd look at tweaking the tactics to improve consistency in the league. Happy talent hunting! (also, show us your biggest stars!)

Sutton - the Celtic fan who had an unreasonable long beef with Rodgers/Leicester after he ditched Celtic, "jumps to Martin's defense"? The Martin who embarrassed himself so much in Glasgow and is now failing horribly at Leicester? I can smell the salty crocodile tears from Copenhagen! Little weasel.