Football Manager 2026

[Beliall]

Champions!! 

a very nerve wracking season ,TNS were always biting at our heels but in the end we beat them in the title conference to go 5 for 5 and finish well clear. we also took home the Welsh cup so i have completed Wales now. will do one more season here because of the champions league, which we will be out of before it starts but still, why not. im already thinking ahead for the next league to go to, i think a good step would be switching to the womens game, i fancy a go in the WSL with london city, WSL 2 with Durham maybe, or any NWSL team, if i can tick off the cups on that side i can remove the leagues and speed the game up. 

the main power behind this seasons win was Ceiran Loney, a youngster released by Everton was got on a free, scoring 32 goals in 30 apps 

behind him in midfield was Benji Purcell, my first ever signing here and this was his breakout season. i signed players in january just to resign him because he wanted a stronger squad. he got us 17 assists, 1 less than my left back on 18

i won manager of the month 6 times! am expecting manager of the season too. 

now to strengthen for the defence

[Beliall]

Just took the great britain job for the olympics. wish i was british though 

[Lineker's Lugs]

I've wrapped up some more leagues in the Too Much Time On His Hands Challenge.

 

Gibraltar and Northern Ireland were straightforward and took me up to three leagues completed, all at the lowest level of league reputation.  Loan signings were crucial to both, in particular strikers from clubs that wouldn't dream of sending players on loan to places like Gibraltar in reality.

 

 

 

By now though, I'd hit on a different approach.  Instead of working up the reputation levels, my new plan was to try and get to the top as soon as possible.  The theory was I would then have my pick of jobs at lower levels and could choose ones that offered a quick route to success as I worked back down the levels.

 

With that in mind I added Scotland and England to the save with the idea of using them as ladders by getting promoted up the divisions.  Instead, just as I finished at Glenavon, a Scottish Premiership job opened up at Motherwell.  I was a bit surprised to be appointed and even more surprised with how it went.

 

We started the first season well but by halfway Rangers and Celtic had passed us, though we weren't too far behind.  We tailed off over the second half of the season, but a win over Hibs near the end meant we finished third, 13 and 23 points behind Celtic and Rangers respectively.  Crucially, as it turned out, we had qualified for the Europa League.

 

Although we were knocked out of that in the final qualifying round, we dropped into the group stage of the Conference League.  By the end of the year we had qualified for the round of 16 by finishing in 7th.  The Premiership had gone the same as last year with Celtic and Rangers slightly ahead of us, but the prize-money from our European exploits led to funds being made available to strengthen in the January window and the reinforcements meant we could rotate a fair bit without weakening the team too much.  We were on a roll and it felt like we couldn't lose if we tried.  We kept pace until late in the season when our last three games were Rangers away, then Aberdeen and Celtic at home.

 

We won at Ibrox with our January loan keeper getting the man of the match award.  That effectively ended their challenge and took us top for the first time.  Then we comfortably beat mid-table Aberdeen.  The title was ours barring the unlikely event of losing by eight goals to Celtic, but we managed to finish on a high by beating them too, giving the final table a deceptively comfortable look.

 

I really thought this one was going to take at least three or four years, but the prize-money was a game-changer.  I'm in Germany next, but as it's not Bayern I think things will slow down.  At least I'll be completing my Pro licence midway through next season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Beliall]

We have won the first 2 qualifying rounds of the UCL champions path, and now we are guaranteed conference league at a minimum  really chuffed with that, losing the 3rd round drops us into the europa league play off, losing that will put us in the conference league. money money money. signing off from Connahs quay in style. 




side by side i just qualified out of the olympics group stage with team GB women, hammering jamaica after a draw with japan. tbh, international and club football at the same is too much. ill be resigning after the competition, but it will raise my profile hopefully, helping me secure a job the WSL/NWSL next season. and its been fun using some of the best players in the womens game

 

Edited 2 July by Beliall

[Tommy Fresh]

Started a save with Altınordu (who produced Ünder and Söyüncü) in the Turkish third division, I've wanted to do a save with them for a few years, they've got a Bilbao type policy but it's Turkish players only, not a specific region. Apparently in real life they have to also have a certain percent in the team from their own academy but that's not enforced on the game (but with their youth set up and the Turkish only restriction, it's pretty much impossible to not have a load of academy products anyway).

 

Mid way through November, going pretty well, just had a 10 game unbeaten run ended in pure FM fashion by losing 4-3 after being 3-0 up in the 79th minute. Also, randomly had 3 or 4 lads start showing as suspended, had a look all have global bans until Christmas, had a quick Google and seems like the game is enforcing the bans a load of players got (real life dates) for the big match fixing situation.

 

 

 

[moore_94]

Inter Milan can you FVCK OFF.

 

I have 4 very good 17 year olds at the club and they are going for all of them - they also tried for another but he didn't kick off quite as much thankfully

 

[Lineker's Lugs]

Pointless challenge update:

 

Germany done with Eintracht Frankfurt.  I’d underestimated them – they had just finished 5th (but close to 2nd), had won the Europa League, were already classed as rich and had Champions League money incoming.  In short, not as far away from Bayern as I anticipated.  My career plan to boost my reputation so that I could cherry-pick jobs was working out.  By the time I was done in Germany I had all my coaching badges and a continental reputation.  And the plumiest of plum jobs was available.

 

Spain was done in one year with Real Madrid.  The squad was ageing but brilliant so I didn’t waste time with transfers and just got cracking.  Barcelona started so badly that they were still 6th at halfway.  They recovered to 2nd but we were over the hills and far away.

 

Belgium – Club Brugge.  There were a couple of other options in similar reputation leagues but I’ll always take the easiest and Brugge had plenty of dosh and were title favourites before I’d done anything.  In contrast to Madrid, I did splash the cash:  £100m+, breaking the club and Belgian spending records.  I was just buying some insurance really, and it worked to the extent that even the fully rotated team that I was using in alternate games for most of the season was winning easily.

 

Seven down, sixty-two to go.  I've practically finished.

 

[Beliall]

Lost the Olympics final 1-0 to USA. a bit harshe, we had a lot of the game but they created the best chance and won it. with rick bloody passmoor managing.  quit the job at Team GB women and now i can concentrate on the league/europe

[Beliall]

back at Connahs Quay and we beat Serbian side Crvena Zvezda 5-2 on agg to set up a final play off game vs RB Salzburg. losing this game (which we will for sure) will give us £3.7m in the bank and a place in the europa league. but the matches are going to come in thick and fast, im scrambling to buy players to rotate with but the registration rules for both comps are making it hard as im short of club grown players. still its a nice problem to have

[Beliall]

Hell of a match in the UCL playoff second leg. almost made it through, but 2 late goals sent us home with £3.7m in the bank and a place in the europa league. these matches are already affecting us in the league though, behind in matches played, no wins yet and a game every 3 days, i hope it slows down soon because we dont have the squad for this really. 

[shen]

Picked up my Diegem save again and had a somewhat unconvincing start to the season. Won the Belgian Supercup against Antwerp on penalties, then barely won against Beveren 5-4 in the first league game, with the defense looking more than shaky. A couple of wins sandwiched a defeat at OH Leuven, who surely are my bogey side now. A frustrating draw away at Eupen was followed up with a convincing comeback win against Union SG.

 

The draw has been made for the Champions League group phase and I don't think I could've had much worse luck:

Crvena zvezda (A)
Bodø/Glimt (A)

Spurs (H)
Benfica (A)

Everton (H)

Juventus (H)

Man City (A)

Porto (H)

 

The two most winnable ties are both away, then I play against three (!) PL sides and maybe the two best sides outside the top five leagues. Anything above 6-7 points will be miraculous.

[Dan]

On 11/06/2026 at 17:57, Dan said:

Flew through my first season with Bochum. Here's how it went...

 

Straight in there with the same formation I played at Vrsac and Kallithea. I'm not actually having all that much joy with much different this year which is a bit concerning and probably gets found out in a better league, but Bochum had on paper a decent team for this level, predicted to finish 7th.

 

It couldn't have started any better with a 1-5 win at Darmstadt. We then battered Elversberg at home for a half before loanee Callum Marshall picked up a straight red card and my whole 'keep it tight' lasted a whole 5 minutes of the second half. It ends 1-1. We beat a fifth tier team 1-5 in the cup as well.

 

Our first derby game, and the first I've played in any form for god knows how long came away at Schalke and it was a catastrophe. 3-0 down at half time and a 4th added late on. But we bounced back with four wins in a row over the rest of August and September. Kwadwo Baah joined on loan from Watford at the end of August.

 

 

October was pretty brutal. The Hertha win was really impressive as we picked up yet another red card on the stroke of half time but actually managed to hold out this time. The other three performances were awful and if we'd lost all games by three goals I wouldn't have deemed it unfair.

 

November was a slight improvement with two good home wins, but the disparity between our home and away performances were mental and this is something I haven't really suffered from a great deal. We were beneficiaries of opposition red cards in both the Magdeburg and Braunschweig games but ended up going behind to 10 men in both of them. December was more of the same, a disappointing albeit slightly unlucky draw with Bielefeld and then frankly a miracle we didn't lose at Hannover, topping the year off with our first home loss. This isn't a team getting promoted for me.

 

 

I was extremely busy in January, seeing 6 players depart and 7 arrive. I really didn't trust this squad after all. Two centre halves who were out of contract and not really playing in Masovic and Loosli were sold to Saudi clubs for a combined £1.5mil which was great business. They were replaced with Georgian Saba Sazonov and Spaniard Manu Hernando on loan and for £450k respectively. The big deal this month though was our best youngster joining Porto for £9mil, Cajetan Lenz. He'd actually been very disappointing although I'd sooner have held onto him due to the home grown thing. We got him back on loan which meant no replacement was needed, and this meant we could make a few amendments elsewhere, although not after Oliver Olsen (£475k), Marcel Sobottka (£275k) and Mortiz-Broni Kwarteng (£1.3mil) had all left too. 

 

 

We returned to smash Darmstadt again, hilariously going 5-0 up after 15 minutes, but I could never escape this idea that we were a pretty bad team running a bit hot. Even in that we ended up outshot and conceding a couple. We drew with Elversberg again before picking up a potentially huge 1-0 win over Schalke, who were top at the time.

 

We started February by putting away an abject Munster 1-2 (our first away win in four months) but floundered throughout the rest of February.

 

 

What I have to give us credit for is we seem to deliver in most big games. We very rarely lose them and we beat nearly all of them at home. I must mention the form of loanee Francis Onyeka, who by this point frankly was carrying us. The defensive overhaul was paying dividends as we managed four clean sheets on the bounce, including away at Hertha who were clearly going to win the league by this point.

 

We clicked just in time and ended up only losing one more game for the rest of the season which was essentially a dead rubber on the final day, having finished 2nd.

 

 

We never felt overly convincing, and I do wonder if I'm a mix of too used to being in a bad league that I've lost all appreciation of a better standard and just being a bit harsh because of how used I got to winning about 85% of my games, but we did get over the line. We still have quite a bit of money left over from the Lenz sale and they've doubled our wage budget, although I did make a late discovery, after spending quite a bit of it that pretty much my entire squad have good promotion wage rises which eats into it. January was a precursor for the summer. I will be overhauling this squad because I really don't trust it much.

 

Have played on with this save and it is going pretty well.

 

First year I got promoted but never felt entirely confident or comfortable with how we were playing despite the decent results and I did think we would be quite a big relegation risk. However I did have quite a bit of money left over from the sale of Lenz to Porto so I was able to bring in plenty of players and the recruitment ended up being pretty spot on.

 

I started slowly in 2026/27 with two 2-0 losses but I tweaked a couple of roles in the system, it was a bit naive playing a DLP as my deepest CDM as a newly promoted side and instead rotated between that and BBM alongside a destroying DM (the nearest thing to the old anchor man).

 

 

As you can see, 17 incomings, but these alongside Japanese winger Tawaratsumida were the key ones. Amoako was the pick for me, very consistent and developed into our most valuable player over the course of the season. Despite being in borderline relegation danger for a lot of the season we ended up going on a really good run in the second half of the season and only missed out on Europe on the final day.

 

 

I can't emphasise enough how dreadful Koln were. They had a good run late on but they hadn't even broken 10 points by April. We beat them 0-6 and 5-1. Our real highlight was beating Dortmund 3-0, despite their earlyish red card we absolutely hammered them pretty much throughout, including at 11 v 11.

 

Someone pointed to Mustermann FM's video series and I tell you what I love it. Exactly the sort of nerdery I love about this game. I was a little bit influenced by some of it even if I didn't go the whole hod and quite piss around with spreadsheets. He's even more ruthless than me in terms of contracts and being a tightarse and once you get into that habit it's quite hard to break, but it definitely works if you know which sort of players work.

 

The following season was different, but similar. What I mean is we spent most of the season towards the top of the table, but ended up narrowly missing Europe this time through a terrible late run of results, losing 7 of our last 10 games and ensuring we missed out. I could be barking up the wrong tree completely but I wonder if two of my key players, both Amoako and Baur deciding they wanted to explore options at the end of their contract took the sting out of us, because both dropped off quite a bit. Both would be sold in the summer. Key signings ended up being attacking midfielder Laurin Ulrich and winger Jacob Ondrejka, both in for small fees but both outperforming more expensive buys in Noah Darvich and Kasper Davidsen.

 

 

Baur and Amoako raised about £20mil in total which was good profit. I was still being pretty tight with my spending but I loosened it to bring in Ezechiel Banzuzi from Leipzig for a club record £12mil. Striker Marezi, who'd scored 15 goals in both of his seasons here, left for a small fee but was upgraded on with an even smaller fee for Nelson Weiper from Augsburg. Despite Banzuzi himself not being particularly instrumental, we didn't just make Europe but actually managed a 2nd placed finish this season. We won loads of games and looked pretty comfortable throughout the season. The one black mark against the season was losing 8-1 at Bayern on the final day. Bayern, frankly, are a machine. Even by their standards, they feel ridiculously overpowered. I think even despite coming 2nd in the league, we are probably nearer to a 2nd tier team in ability than we are to them. We have overperformed massively to finish 2nd, but we are nowhere near hauling them in at all. Paderborn's one win all season came on the final day which was quite funny.

 

 

My general tightness and overperformance (still only 15th in the wage bill list) has left us in a very nice financial position for next season with a massive budget. But I still think I'll probably spend under half of it

 

It's going well, but Bayern are a real problem. So many other saves I've done have seen the big team drop off. But where it's needed most, they've decided they'll average 4 goals a game. There is no doubt this has been a good save, but I can see what happened in the season just gone becoming a bit of a norm, and we've got to learn a way to really play against them because they're absolutely fisting us every time.

 

Bochum have one of the best academies I've ever had on this version. I seem to get numerous 5 star potential players every season. Will post a few of them soon but I have three that are in and around the first team, or will be soon - two are out on loan at Bundesliga teams and one of them is regularly starting at 18.

[Tommy Fresh]

On 09/07/2026 at 15:28, Dan said:

Have played on with this save and it is going pretty well.

 

First year I got promoted but never felt entirely confident or comfortable with how we were playing despite the decent results and I did think we would be quite a big relegation risk. However I did have quite a bit of money left over from the sale of Lenz to Porto so I was able to bring in plenty of players and the recruitment ended up being pretty spot on.

 

I started slowly in 2026/27 with two 2-0 losses but I tweaked a couple of roles in the system, it was a bit naive playing a DLP as my deepest CDM as a newly promoted side and instead rotated between that and BBM alongside a destroying DM (the nearest thing to the old anchor man).

 

 

As you can see, 17 incomings, but these alongside Japanese winger Tawaratsumida were the key ones. Amoako was the pick for me, very consistent and developed into our most valuable player over the course of the season. Despite being in borderline relegation danger for a lot of the season we ended up going on a really good run in the second half of the season and only missed out on Europe on the final day.

 

 

I can't emphasise enough how dreadful Koln were. They had a good run late on but they hadn't even broken 10 points by April. We beat them 0-6 and 5-1. Our real highlight was beating Dortmund 3-0, despite their earlyish red card we absolutely hammered them pretty much throughout, including at 11 v 11.

 

Someone pointed to Mustermann FM's video series and I tell you what I love it. Exactly the sort of nerdery I love about this game. I was a little bit influenced by some of it even if I didn't go the whole hod and quite piss around with spreadsheets. He's even more ruthless than me in terms of contracts and being a tightarse and once you get into that habit it's quite hard to break, but it definitely works if you know which sort of players work.

 

The following season was different, but similar. What I mean is we spent most of the season towards the top of the table, but ended up narrowly missing Europe this time through a terrible late run of results, losing 7 of our last 10 games and ensuring we missed out. I could be barking up the wrong tree completely but I wonder if two of my key players, both Amoako and Baur deciding they wanted to explore options at the end of their contract took the sting out of us, because both dropped off quite a bit. Both would be sold in the summer. Key signings ended up being attacking midfielder Laurin Ulrich and winger Jacob Ondrejka, both in for small fees but both outperforming more expensive buys in Noah Darvich and Kasper Davidsen.

 

 

Baur and Amoako raised about £20mil in total which was good profit. I was still being pretty tight with my spending but I loosened it to bring in Ezechiel Banzuzi from Leipzig for a club record £12mil. Striker Marezi, who'd scored 15 goals in both of his seasons here, left for a small fee but was upgraded on with an even smaller fee for Nelson Weiper from Augsburg. Despite Banzuzi himself not being particularly instrumental, we didn't just make Europe but actually managed a 2nd placed finish this season. We won loads of games and looked pretty comfortable throughout the season. The one black mark against the season was losing 8-1 at Bayern on the final day. Bayern, frankly, are a machine. Even by their standards, they feel ridiculously overpowered. I think even despite coming 2nd in the league, we are probably nearer to a 2nd tier team in ability than we are to them. We have overperformed massively to finish 2nd, but we are nowhere near hauling them in at all. Paderborn's one win all season came on the final day which was quite funny.

 

 

My general tightness and overperformance (still only 15th in the wage bill list) has left us in a very nice financial position for next season with a massive budget. But I still think I'll probably spend under half of it

 

It's going well, but Bayern are a real problem. So many other saves I've done have seen the big team drop off. But where it's needed most, they've decided they'll average 4 goals a game. There is no doubt this has been a good save, but I can see what happened in the season just gone becoming a bit of a norm, and we've got to learn a way to really play against them because they're absolutely fisting us every time.

 

Bochum have one of the best academies I've ever had on this version. I seem to get numerous 5 star potential players every season. Will post a few of them soon but I have three that are in and around the first team, or will be soon - two are out on loan at Bundesliga teams and one of them is regularly starting at 18.

PSG never faded on my Angers save I did when it was released and thinking about it I now want to try France again

[Dan]

21 minutes ago, Tommy Fresh said:

PSG never faded on my Angers save I did when it was released and thinking about it I now want to try France again

They haven't on mine either. Bayern are just boringly good. But it'll make this challenging at least.

[Tommy Fresh]

17 minutes ago, Dan said:

They haven't on mine either. Bayern are just boringly good. But it'll make this challenging at least.

Yeah being in one of the bigger leagues you avoid ending up being the only club with cash like you do in smaller leagues

[Tommy Fresh]

Anyone have any joy reporting issues to SI? I've noticed it now (I'm guessing after the latest update way back) only lets you pick from a handful of sides in the Portuguese third and fouth divisions.

[Lineker's Lugs]

I'm up to ten completed leagues now with three more finished.

 

USA (women) – Seattle Reign.  This was short and sweet.  I took over at Reign when they were 10th (top 8 make the playoffs where the champions are decided).  Finished 4th but won the playoffs.  Had they already been in a playoff position I probably wouldn’t have counted it but I felt I’d done enough to change their season.  And it meant I didn’t have to try and decipher any weird squad/transfer rules.

 

USA (men) – Vancouver Whitecaps.  I did the MLS the best way – from Canada.  Vancouver are the most recent runners up in the MLS Cup in reality and a very good team in my save – the opportunity only arose as the previous manager left for a job in Europe.  FM26 doesn’t cope with the MLS very well.  I ran into a couple of problems which I had to google and discovered them to be known issues with a suggested solution of holidaying forward a couple of days.  I also messed up the salary cap and was forced to leave a couple of players unregistered in order to comply, but I had a big squad anyway so it was fine.  The season took an age due to constant trade offers.  We got to the MLS Cup – the final of the champion-deciding playoffs – and thankfully won.  Another year in this league and my laptop probably would have been lying in a crumpled heap on my drive by now.  Removing USA from my available leagues was a joy.

 

Italy (men) – Roma.  There were a ridiculous sixty players in the first team squad so I was able to generate significant funds over the three transfer windows I was there, and the club was already rich when I arrived.  I brought my goalkeeper from Vancouver with me, only the second player I’ve signed from a previous club in this save.  He helped us concede just 18 goals in the second season while we scored over 100 and won the title by ten points from Napoli.