Football Manager 2026

[shen]

£2,6 mil - phwoar. Not a bad warchest! 

Hopefully the team will have gelled for the second half of the season and you'll see more stable performances and race to the front again.

 

I tend to do a Team Bonding session every week, just to help it along. Not sure how quantifiable the effect is, but judging from my own start to my fourth season (not as many changes), the team cohesion is a big factor.

 

 

[Dan]

I bought a goalkeeper from Smederevo in the 2nd tier and an Ivorian centre half from Brest - both coups. I made the Ivorian my highest paid player. Given I need to be picky with foreign players I would say he's a real steal. One of those high potential types who just tailed off a bit on this save. The sort who could probs be starting for a Ligue 1 side in another save. Hoping for pareto principle - I'm convinced we're close to being a good team.

[Dan]

In-fact my best XI now is...

 

Premovic

Vojnocic

N'Tamon

Serafimovic

Stefanovic

Jankovic

Cvetkovic

Croes

Gotea

Donno

Bubanj

 

That's literally 10 new signings and Donno. So the recruitment is good.

[Beliall]

ill probably give this up pretty soon, game bugs are easier to take when you're winning. but im struggling with my save and dealing with team talk screens that dont show up and replay s that just loop, forcing me to instant result, which i hate to do

[shen]

4 hours ago, Beliall said:

ill probably give this up pretty soon, game bugs are easier to take when you're winning. but im struggling with my save and dealing with team talk screens that dont show up and replay s that just loop, forcing me to instant result, which i hate to do

You need to let those replays play out fully. It's annoying as f, but you don't need to instant result.

Edited 30 April by shen

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

Does anyone ever "Leave a comment" in press conferences? Nothing I love more than getting heat from the tabloids after calling someone a paedo

[Beliall]

9 hours ago, shen said:

You need to let those replays play out fully. It's annoying as f, but you don't need to instant result.

i did that mate, just went to "real time" with my subs locked till replay was over, then it went replay mode again. 

 

[Beliall]

i am the best at getting fired. do it all the time

[Beliall]

26 minutes ago, Beliall said:

i am the best at getting fired. do it all the time

straight to a rival lol. had to be done

[shen]

1 hour ago, Beliall said:

straight to a rival lol. had to be done

LfCFC

[shen]

Diegem update!

Not been having many sessions lately, but our summer went fine.
I managed to sell a backup winger I had signed the summer before from Lierse when Brugge activated his £725k release clause. However, despite being given a negative transfer budget, this transfer did nothing to better my budget, which is highly frustrating. I got rid of a few other youngsters who won't make the grade, scraping in another 150k, while all except one transfer have been free's or loans.
That one transfer did break my transfer record though - a whopping £480 for a new goalkeeper 

 

One massive surprise however is that somehow, my club signed a player on loan (with optional fee to buy for €350k), that I had no involvement in, from Club Africain in Tunisia. This feels like it's a transfer that was arranged before I took over, because he joined on his 18th birthday, but that would've made him 14-15 at the start of the game. Luckily for me, he is incredible at this level:

 

I had already signed a Douglas Borel on a free from Santa Clara, making him my highest earner, so DR has gone from being probably my weakest position to my strongest overnight.

I did start sweating bullets on deadline day as my top scorer Djenairo Daniels, who has a £450k release clause, was wanted by Palermo - and I had nothing lined up. He's my main source of goals and with already going over my ridiculously low wage budget and having 0 transfer budget, I wasn't going to get anyone of similar calibre in. Palermo never bid however, so he's here until at least January.

And thank goodness for that, because my squad is really short of depth in quality with the ECL to contend with as well.

Speaking of which - I got a terrible draw in the second quali round against Sparta Prague. They were a superior team all over the pitch and they went ahead 2-0 in Prague with some woeful defending on our part and great finishing on theirs. I was trialling a new tactic, copying what Belgian teams had done against me, playing a narrow 3-4-2-1. I stuck to it as it looked solid enough statwise. I tweaked it a bit after the early setbacks and it paid off.
I pulled one back before halftime and then leveled on the hour, only to then have my youth prospect centerback send the fans into raptures with a goal to put us 2-3 up with 15 minutes to go. We held on comfortably and what seemed like a game that would end in a heavy defeat, we ended up stealing a win!
The return leg followed a similar pattern, but Prague dominated even more. I went ahead, but they leveled on the stroke of HT. Then Daniels became the hero and gave us breathing space in the 67th minute at which point I went full Fort Knox to keep out Prague to finish the job.

Delighted with myself and the team, we then drew Dun. Streda from Slovakia in the final playoff round. I thought this tie would be much easier. It wasn't.
Their squad was also comfortably better than ours and their tactical setup was much trickier to counter. We drew 1-1 at home in a very balanced match.
I was banking on our defensive tactics that got wins against Brugge on the road last season would give us a chance.
Streda went ahead mid first half, but we equalised through a great strike from our young right wing prospect. As you were at HT.

Then came Daniels again with a superb header, only for Streda to score a beautiful goal to equalise just 7 minutes later.
Truth be told, we were completely under the cost and our record signing, Juri Kirchmayer deputising in goal for our injured first-choice Milo Roekarts, was playing a blinder. 
Save after save after save, the defense barely holding on and we had created nothing bar the two goals.

Then up pops Daniels again. I had barely stopped fist-pumping before our DM, who never scores, suddenly pops up two minutes later to put us 2-4 up with 20 minutes to go. 
Full Fort Knox mode again, and we held on to much delight. 
We were very fortunate in this tie - the score should really have been the other way around - but I won't complain! This is huge for us financially.

The draw sees us play AS Roma, Molde and Apoel as the bigger guns and the more winnable ties against Flora Tallinn, Borac and IFK Göteborg.

We started the Jupiler Pro League on fire smashing KAA Gent 3-0 and then squeezed out more modest 1-0 wins against La Louviere and Lokeren. Then fatigue was setting in a we had to rotate some youth players in to save energy for the European games, which led to 0-0 and 1-1 draws against Kortrijk and OHL. Weak results, but acceptable given the circumstances.
We then went to Anderlecht, which counts as a local derby, after winning in Slovakia and we stole another fantastic win with two very late goals to finish 0-2 and followed it up with another excellent result at home against Brugge, completely stifling them in a 0-0 draw. That result puts us joint second in the table.

Going into the first game of the Conference League Main Phase against APOEL, our last defeat was a 1-3 home reversal to Brugge on April 9 which makes us unbeaten for 5 months!

The save will go on hiatus for the next couple of weeks due to having guests over.

[Beliall]

Managed to get Leicesterford clear of relegation, my old team went down though, **** em. for some reason the board decided that was a good time to take a loan out for a new stadium and deleted my budgets as a result, we already dont make much money, but i did manage to re sign my top players despite interest from bigger clubs, picked up so good youth on loan and im hoping this coming season is the one i finally get going in the right direction. have slowed my pace down too, was playing a lot on key highlights to try and get through seasons faster, but i went back to comprehensive which is my preferred way and started doing a lot better in matches, i react better to what i see than data i guess. stay away from dynamic speed though. that shit is so broken games take 30-40 mins

[Dan]

On 28/04/2026 at 19:53, Dan said:

So our newfound wealth had landed in my transfer and wage budget at last and in came 11 new signings. Most notable were two of Cukaricki's first choice defenders Vojnovic and Serafimovic - both of these had minimal interest in joining the club but were at least willing to talk to us at all and with the Serbian player wages situation, this made them quite easy to actually bring in.

 

 

 

This really was an overhaul. Pretty substantially strengthened in all areas. Cvetkovic was a player I'd had my eye on ages, he was somehow stuck in the second tier and nobody had come and taken him off Beograd. Bubanj had scored 13 goals in that dreadful Napredak team and the likes of Gotea and Croes looked like promising youngsters as well - albeit the £1.1mil future fee for Gotea was likely to stop a permanent move.

 

We made a pretty mixed start. Extremely disappointing to concede a last minute equaliser on the opening day at home to TSC but we followed it up with a shock 0-3 win at Partizan. It took us five games to win at home but surprisingly this arrived against Zvezda. We sat around 4th in the table after 3 months but there was something like only 3 points between the whole of the top half. it was a mad table.

 

We were never entirely convincing which was a shame. We felt a bit too open and I always expected us to give away silly goals even though we were scoring plenty. Despite hitting top spot we went and suffered a humiliating 2-6 loss to Radnicki Nis - one of the cluster of teams around the top. You could make a case for us coming 1st or 6th, but probably not below that.

 

 

 

The record against the Belgrade clubs was impressive though. How we didn't win at Zvezda I will never know. We sat 4th going into the winter break and I did have a bit of money to spend - with a couple more players lined up.

I often think friendlies even against rubbish teams can be a quite good measure. You're going to win the game, but how convincingly it's done is often an indicator. With the two new January signings of Mateja Premovic (goalkeeper from 2nd tier Smederevo) and Elie N'Tamon (Ivorian CB from Stade Brestois) I thought I'd plugged probably our two main weaknesses, and very encouragingly we beat Bulgarian 2nd tier Bdin Vidin 0-9 in a friendly before a 3-0 win over 2nd tier Radnicki.

 

We have a storming February and March, winning all bar one game with yet another loss to Radnicki Nis doing the damage meaning we got just 1 point from our 3 games against them this season, but on the flip side, we had 7 from the Zvezda games. We had clearly gone up a level.

 

 

I saw very little weakness in our team at this point. Bubanj up front was quite streaky but passable. The trio behind him though... goodness me. Three pacey teenagers and nobody in the league bar Radnicki Nis seemed to have an answer to it. The Romanian Gotea had really settled into the team after an injury hit first half of the season. Australian Donno on the left was dangerous even if the average ratings weren't massively showing it. But the star of the show was Aruban winger Jayden Croes. Taken as a bit of a risk free punt in the summer, he was absolutely ripping the league to bits and I felt it was kind of inevitable one of the Belgrade clubs would pinch him off us. Enjoy him while he's here I guess.

 

What was becoming clear though was we had a genuine shot of the league title. Zvezda were having a pretty mediocre season. The cluster of teams at the top had broken up and the title looked like bar a miracle it was heading either here or to Partizan, who had also massively picked up in the new year. We have another pretty flawless month in April bar a draw with struggling IMT and a 1-0 loss at Partizan. We were scoring for fun.

 

 

The wins over Vojvodina and Cukaricki the obvious highlights. These are clubs that at the start of the game were probably ranked 3rd and 5th respectively in Serbia. Not only have we taken two of Cukaricki's better players but we're now absolutely massacring them in games. I said Bubanj was streaky and I wasn't joking - he got 3 against Vojvodina, 2 against Radnik Surdulica and 4 in the Cukaricki win including the eventual goal of the season winner at the end of the game where he dribbled from his own box near enough, unchallenged granted, and curled one in from 25 yards. We were taking the piss. But Partizan were matching us every step of the way.

 

At worst, we were going to finish 2nd. We also had a cup semi final away at Zeleznicar Pancevo - funnily enough our home ground. This felt like such an opportunity.

 

We win 0-1 in the semi final, admittedly totally dominating, but we're into our 2nd final in 3 years and will face, surprise surprise, Partizan.

 

We're then hit with the old foe of the save. Macva bloody Sabac.

 

 

It's just funny at this point against them. It doesn't seem to matter what I do, how we're playing, how they're playing (they've gone to pot after a good start), we just do not beat this team at home. That's 7 attempts and we're still yet to beat them. We've only scored in 3 of the games. This just feels a cursed fixture.

 

We do only need 4 points from our final 2 games to seal the title though and one of the games is against already relegated Mladost Lucani away, who we swat aside with tease. We just need a point on the final day at home to TSC, not the easiest fixture, to be sure of the title. Partizan strangely host Zvezda on the final day. Good luck to the authorities.

 

We make bloody hard work of it, and a bumper crowd of 1,872 (....) witness history.

 

 

 

Partizan ended up losing anyway so it didn't matter. But we got it. It did require buying virtually an entirely new XI but we earned that money as far as I'm concerned and pretty much every signing nailed it. Bubanj won the golden boot with 23 goals. Cvetkovic and Jankovic in midfield were perfectly balanced. The trio behind the striker were great and Croes ended up getting 25 G/A from 30 games - in-fact his average rating from January onwards was north of 8.00. N'Tamon and Premovic I think did make the difference and allowed us to play even more aggressively, N'Tamon acting almost like a poor mans Van Dijk in style.

 

The one blot, however, is another cup final defeat.

 

 

And honestly, it was a miserable showing. We were comfortably 2nd best and lucky it was only 1-0. I do think Partizan are better than we are (well them and Zvezda obviously have better players), but we capitalised on them. What it does mean is that if I'm sticking true to what I said in that I want to go into these leagues and win the league and the cup, then I have to stick around here until we've secured the latter. But I've got a bit of a hankering for a save in the lower leagues of Japan for some reason. I will stick with these for at least another year, but I think that's where I'll head next.

[Beliall]

how come you guys can still post pictures, i tried the other day and the upload limit was tiny. wanted to visualise my save and show off a player i got

[Dan]

5 minutes ago, Beliall said:

how come you guys can still post pictures, i tried the other day and the upload limit was tiny. wanted to visualise my save and show off a player i got

I use snipping tool and just paste them into here if that helps.

[Dan]

6 minutes ago, Beliall said:

how come you guys can still post pictures, i tried the other day and the upload limit was tiny. wanted to visualise my save and show off a player i got

I can still see your images btw.

 

Regarding players, worth putting a couple of faces to names. These are my personal three faves:

 

 

 

 

I still think speed is king in lower leagues. Croes, Donno, and Gotea (who spoiler alert, I didn't buy permanently, I just couldn't pay £1.1mil) just ripped teams to shreds and N'Tamon covered against other teams doing similar to us.

[Beliall]

10 minutes ago, Dan said:

I use snipping tool and just paste them into here if that helps.

same mate, worked one day and then it didnt. maybe it will fix itself

[Dan]

On 04/05/2026 at 12:44, shen said:

Diegem update!

Not been having many sessions lately, but our summer went fine.
I managed to sell a backup winger I had signed the summer before from Lierse when Brugge activated his £725k release clause. However, despite being given a negative transfer budget, this transfer did nothing to better my budget, which is highly frustrating. I got rid of a few other youngsters who won't make the grade, scraping in another 150k, while all except one transfer have been free's or loans.
That one transfer did break my transfer record though - a whopping £480 for a new goalkeeper 

 

One massive surprise however is that somehow, my club signed a player on loan (with optional fee to buy for €350k), that I had no involvement in, from Club Africain in Tunisia. This feels like it's a transfer that was arranged before I took over, because he joined on his 18th birthday, but that would've made him 14-15 at the start of the game. Luckily for me, he is incredible at this level:

 

I had already signed a Douglas Borel on a free from Santa Clara, making him my highest earner, so DR has gone from being probably my weakest position to my strongest overnight.

I did start sweating bullets on deadline day as my top scorer Djenairo Daniels, who has a £450k release clause, was wanted by Palermo - and I had nothing lined up. He's my main source of goals and with already going over my ridiculously low wage budget and having 0 transfer budget, I wasn't going to get anyone of similar calibre in. Palermo never bid however, so he's here until at least January.

And thank goodness for that, because my squad is really short of depth in quality with the ECL to contend with as well.

Speaking of which - I got a terrible draw in the second quali round against Sparta Prague. They were a superior team all over the pitch and they went ahead 2-0 in Prague with some woeful defending on our part and great finishing on theirs. I was trialling a new tactic, copying what Belgian teams had done against me, playing a narrow 3-4-2-1. I stuck to it as it looked solid enough statwise. I tweaked it a bit after the early setbacks and it paid off.
I pulled one back before halftime and then leveled on the hour, only to then have my youth prospect centerback send the fans into raptures with a goal to put us 2-3 up with 15 minutes to go. We held on comfortably and what seemed like a game that would end in a heavy defeat, we ended up stealing a win!
The return leg followed a similar pattern, but Prague dominated even more. I went ahead, but they leveled on the stroke of HT. Then Daniels became the hero and gave us breathing space in the 67th minute at which point I went full Fort Knox to keep out Prague to finish the job.

Delighted with myself and the team, we then drew Dun. Streda from Slovakia in the final playoff round. I thought this tie would be much easier. It wasn't.
Their squad was also comfortably better than ours and their tactical setup was much trickier to counter. We drew 1-1 at home in a very balanced match.
I was banking on our defensive tactics that got wins against Brugge on the road last season would give us a chance.
Streda went ahead mid first half, but we equalised through a great strike from our young right wing prospect. As you were at HT.

Then came Daniels again with a superb header, only for Streda to score a beautiful goal to equalise just 7 minutes later.
Truth be told, we were completely under the cost and our record signing, Juri Kirchmayer deputising in goal for our injured first-choice Milo Roekarts, was playing a blinder. 
Save after save after save, the defense barely holding on and we had created nothing bar the two goals.

Then up pops Daniels again. I had barely stopped fist-pumping before our DM, who never scores, suddenly pops up two minutes later to put us 2-4 up with 20 minutes to go. 
Full Fort Knox mode again, and we held on to much delight. 
We were very fortunate in this tie - the score should really have been the other way around - but I won't complain! This is huge for us financially.

The draw sees us play AS Roma, Molde and Apoel as the bigger guns and the more winnable ties against Flora Tallinn, Borac and IFK Göteborg.

We started the Jupiler Pro League on fire smashing KAA Gent 3-0 and then squeezed out more modest 1-0 wins against La Louviere and Lokeren. Then fatigue was setting in a we had to rotate some youth players in to save energy for the European games, which led to 0-0 and 1-1 draws against Kortrijk and OHL. Weak results, but acceptable given the circumstances.
We then went to Anderlecht, which counts as a local derby, after winning in Slovakia and we stole another fantastic win with two very late goals to finish 0-2 and followed it up with another excellent result at home against Brugge, completely stifling them in a 0-0 draw. That result puts us joint second in the table.

Going into the first game of the Conference League Main Phase against APOEL, our last defeat was a 1-3 home reversal to Brugge on April 9 which makes us unbeaten for 5 months!

The save will go on hiatus for the next couple of weeks due to having guests over.

Looks very good on the whole this does. What I don't get is how you just seemingly have no money ever. I thought by this point after a couple of years in the top flight you would at least have something to play with and not be at a point where losing your striker for £450k would completely kill you. That being said now that you've hit the conference league proper, that surely gives you something to play with, that was an instant £3mil or so just for being in it for us and if you can beat Sparta / Dun Streda over two legs then you'll definitely pick some wins up which is even more money per win.

 

When I get to the stage you're at I often find the league form drops off and I miss out on Europe the next year, but the money we made from Europe leaves us well set for the season after and in some cases, like at Vrsac here, it's enough to actually get us a league win. Lots of timing involved. I got lucky that Partizan had a bad first half of the season and Zvezda had a bad second. Truth be told though I think the performance of those two, especially Zvezda is unrealistically bad. I think if I managed Zvezda with their wage budget I'd win a minimum of 30 out of 33 league games despite rotating Europe. It's absolutely ludicrous for them to drop points in half of their games. It's harder in Belgium than Serbia, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if next season you pushed for the league title - this year will be tricky though.

 

I do find it peculiar how it works in Europe. So often you end up getting given harder games from less expected teams and I think it's a real fault in the game. I mean how on earth are FC Tirana giving me a harder tie than Kobenhavn? CSKA Sofia were a harder qualifier for me than Kobenhavn and Maccabi Haifa.

 

I haven't played as much lately either, been a little busy but I was so accustomed to playing on a slow laptop that I can just fly through on this one I bought about six months ago. Think if I played it as often as I used to I could get through probably 2+ seasons in a week.

Edited 6 May by Dan

[shen]

14 hours ago, Dan said:

I can still see your images btw.

 

Regarding players, worth putting a couple of faces to names. These are my personal three faves:

 

 

 

 

I still think speed is king in lower leagues. Croes, Donno, and Gotea (who spoiler alert, I didn't buy permanently, I just couldn't pay £1.1mil) just ripped teams to shreds and N'Tamon covered against other teams doing similar to us.

Those are some fantastic players at that level. All of them would be starters in my Diegem side. Looking at their wages, they're around the same that I would be paying as well.
Donno looks really good with a good trait as well. N'Tamon would be a star defender too. 

What methods did you use to scout them? I imagine you did active scouting as your club probably didn't have a scouting range beyond Serbia?

I'm trying to give my youth players a chance in Diegem - they have a decent academy which I've just got the board to invest in again. The quality is obviously not as good as getting established players in, but it feels that much more satisfying when they succeed.

Edited 7 May by shen

[shen]

14 hours ago, Dan said:

Looks very good on the whole this does. What I don't get is how you just seemingly have no money ever. I thought by this point after a couple of years in the top flight you would at least have something to play with and not be at a point where losing your striker for £450k would completely kill you. That being said now that you've hit the conference league proper, that surely gives you something to play with, that was an instant £3mil or so just for being in it for us and if you can beat Sparta / Dun Streda over two legs then you'll definitely pick some wins up which is even more money per win.

 

When I get to the stage you're at I often find the league form drops off and I miss out on Europe the next year, but the money we made from Europe leaves us well set for the season after and in some cases, like at Vrsac here, it's enough to actually get us a league win. Lots of timing involved. I got lucky that Partizan had a bad first half of the season and Zvezda had a bad second. Truth be told though I think the performance of those two, especially Zvezda is unrealistically bad. I think if I managed Zvezda with their wage budget I'd win a minimum of 30 out of 33 league games despite rotating Europe. It's absolutely ludicrous for them to drop points in half of their games. It's harder in Belgium than Serbia, obviously, but I wouldn't be surprised if next season you pushed for the league title - this year will be tricky though.

 

I do find it peculiar how it works in Europe. So often you end up getting given harder games from less expected teams and I think it's a real fault in the game. I mean how on earth are FC Tirana giving me a harder tie than Kobenhavn? CSKA Sofia were a harder qualifier for me than Kobenhavn and Maccabi Haifa.

 

I haven't played as much lately either, been a little busy but I was so accustomed to playing on a slow laptop that I can just fly through on this one I bought about six months ago. Think if I played it as often as I used to I could get through probably 2+ seasons in a week.

My balance is around £2m now after they've invested in the academy (after initial rejection). I got them to increase the wage budget to £65k (also after initial rejection), but I was already over that limit by that point  
Maybe they'll realise the finances will be ok when I reach January and the ECL money has been ticking in steadily. 
I think I could improve to the top 4 this season, maybe 2nd at a push as Brugge have had a poor start. USG look miles ahead still and are bulldozing the league, so unless they implode, we won't catch them.

 

This is my first experience with European games in FM26, so I can't say I've noticed a trend yet. I will say that my side is better suited as the underdog, so sitting back and keeping compact, which means I can compete better against teams that play slow and press high. 
On the flipside, I'm very vulnerable against sides that play fast and direct and counter hard, which Dun Streda did. Maybe that's why it felt much harder.
Will be interesting to see how I do against Roma and Molde (I beat APOEL already) and whether I find those games easier than Flora et al.

[Dan]

9 hours ago, shen said:

Those are some fantastic players at that level. All of them would be starters in my Diegem side. Looking at their wages, they're around the same that I would be paying as well.
Donno looks really good with a good trait as well. N'Tamon would be a star defender too. 

What methods did you use to scout them? I imagine you did active scouting as your club probably didn't have a scouting range beyond Serbia?

I'm trying to give my youth players a chance in Diegem - they have a decent academy which I've just got the board to invest in again. The quality is obviously not as good as getting established players in, but it feels that much more satisfying when they succeed.

The wages point is a strange one in Serbia because it's just so out of kilter with virtually anywhere else in Europe bar the minnow countries. No country of its size, to my knowledge, pays its domestic players so poorly. Croes I signed as a bit of a prospect and he ended up fair better than I imagined but even as somebody who got signed as 'breakthrough prospect' he was earning 10 times as much as some of my more senior players. But due to the money influx I had a far bigger wage bill than I needed so I could afford it quite easily.

 

I genuinely don't know how Croes came up - I wonder if it was an agent thing. I'm scouting younger players but I seem to get the odd one crop up, usually in a small Dutch team that's 5 star potential and available on a free. I did similar with Kallithea when I signed Sanders (sold for £4.5mil in the end). My scouting range is only eastern europe, I can afford to do worldwide now to be honest but it almost seems a little bit pointless because only a pretty small pool of players will actually come here. I usually target specific regions. Croatia and Slovenia being classed as South Europe is annoying as it means we're not picking anyone up from there and they would be handy.

 

Even N'Tamon - again I'm not even sure how he's come up. It must be agents again. He just fit the bill perfectly for me beyond being Serbian. The key I guess with a league like this is using the foreign player slots for key, or potentially key players.

 

I've not done too badly with the academy. Vrsac actually have a decent young goalkeeper at the start (Lazin) who I ended up selling to Zvezda for a pittance. Had another number 10 come through who made the same move. I'm quite regularly using three academy players in my squad as well, one of whom is now 20 but admittedly isn't better than Croes. It's useful having these for European registration though and you definitely want to try and get some involved somehow. I've got another attacking midfielder who is 17 and looks pretty exciting. I'm unsure how long I'll actually see this save through for though. Had this hankering for Japan but I did play again last night and got quite into this again. I need that flipping cup.

[Dan]

8 hours ago, shen said:

My balance is around £2m now after they've invested in the academy (after initial rejection). I got them to increase the wage budget to £65k (also after initial rejection), but I was already over that limit by that point  
Maybe they'll realise the finances will be ok when I reach January and the ECL money has been ticking in steadily. 
I think I could improve to the top 4 this season, maybe 2nd at a push as Brugge have had a poor start. USG look miles ahead still and are bulldozing the league, so unless they implode, we won't catch them.

 

This is my first experience with European games in FM26, so I can't say I've noticed a trend yet. I will say that my side is better suited as the underdog, so sitting back and keeping compact, which means I can compete better against teams that play slow and press high. 
On the flipside, I'm very vulnerable against sides that play fast and direct and counter hard, which Dun Streda did. Maybe that's why it felt much harder.
Will be interesting to see how I do against Roma and Molde (I beat APOEL already) and whether I find those games easier than Flora et al.

What was crap for me with these, and what I think partly led to my crap season the year before the title was that even though I got the money from Europe I didn't really see any of it for another year. I'm not a huge spender and generally get by (I've had to with the dross I choose to manage ) but I did think having our bank balance go from £100k to £3mil it was stupid for the board to not let me see any of it in transfers and wages for another year and it nearly got us relegated. The same will probably happen to you, you'll get a good budget next season. I'd probably advise going for it in Europe to build up more money while making sure you don't get relegated.

 

Again, if you've beaten APOEL, you'll go through. There's some absolute dirge in the Conference League. I beat Larne of Northern Ireland 1-5, we were 5 up at HT, actually 0-2 up after I think 80 seconds which I've never seen before. I think I made about £4-5mil from going to the Conference League last 16 and that completely changed the game for me. It won't be as impactful for you in Belgium but it will definitely help. In Serbia it made me basically the 3rd richest team in the country overnight so the title, while a big achievement, wasn't hugely shocking IMO given Zvezda's drop off.

[Dan]

Hilarious point yesterday - Andrea Donno above, I accepted £2mil and a loan back from Porto for him on deadline day and he flipping turned them down  who on earth is turning that move down. I would've been perfectly OK with that going through as well.

[shen]

21 hours ago, Dan said:

Hilarious point yesterday - Andrea Donno above, I accepted £2mil and a loan back from Porto for him on deadline day and he flipping turned them down  who on earth is turning that move down. I would've been perfectly OK with that going through as well.

That is bizarre given the cultural proximity of Portugal. Maybe the game mechanics dictate that since he's acclimatised in Eastern Europe, a move to Southern Europe would count against the transfer likelihood? Or maybe your club being champions and in the CL qualifiers (?) made him less willing to move given his presumably high squad status? Still, that's got to be humiliating for Porto 

[shen]

21 hours ago, Dan said:

What was crap for me with these, and what I think partly led to my crap season the year before the title was that even though I got the money from Europe I didn't really see any of it for another year. I'm not a huge spender and generally get by (I've had to with the dross I choose to manage ) but I did think having our bank balance go from £100k to £3mil it was stupid for the board to not let me see any of it in transfers and wages for another year and it nearly got us relegated. The same will probably happen to you, you'll get a good budget next season. I'd probably advise going for it in Europe to build up more money while making sure you don't get relegated.

 

Again, if you've beaten APOEL, you'll go through. There's some absolute dirge in the Conference League. I beat Larne of Northern Ireland 1-5, we were 5 up at HT, actually 0-2 up after I think 80 seconds which I've never seen before. I think I made about £4-5mil from going to the Conference League last 16 and that completely changed the game for me. It won't be as impactful for you in Belgium but it will definitely help. In Serbia it made me basically the 3rd richest team in the country overnight so the title, while a big achievement, wasn't hugely shocking IMO given Zvezda's drop off.

Complete opposite to what Leicester have been doing  I wonder if it would be too much of a cheat code in FM if you could spend next year's budget or loan against installments like we've done.