Dafuge's Challenge - FM15

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Dafuge's Challenge - FM15

Hello all and welcome to my latest Manager Story where I'll be attempting a decade old Football Manager challenge that was created by Dafuge himself back in 2005, but don't worry I'll give you some background on the challenge in case you want to try it yourself!

The Aim:

The aim of the Dafuge Challenge is to take a small club who were previously unplayable in an unedited game from the Vanarama N/S to Premier League and Champions League glory.

(Effectively a team from below the Vanarama N/S)

The Rules:

Firstly you need to load a game with the English leagues only, with the Vanarama N/S selected. All of the boxed should be left unticked apart from 'do not add key staff' and 'prevent use of in-game editor'. It should end up looking like this:

View attachment 321095

Just like previous years, the players for the newly playable clubs need to be added which can be done using a custom database. The players from the three feeder league have to be added, which can be done by changing the database size to 'Advanced' before selecting these options:

View attachment 321094

This will add the players to the teams you have a chance of playing as.

After creating the game, add yourself as an unemployed manager but don't worry about the details, they are not important at all. Call your manager 'Holiday Man' or something along those lines.

View attachment 321085

Go on holiday until 25th June 2015, this shouldn't take too long, perhaps about an hour. Turning off autosaving during this time will speed things up. Saving on 24th June 2014 may give you a better choice of teams by reloading the game then going on holiday for one day, I would strongly recommend trying this.

(I'm personally not going to be reloading my save, I'll just go with the flow)

Retire your 'Holiday Man' manager. His job is complete and he is no longer required.

Add a new manager, the personal details are completely up to you but I would expect people to use their own true nationalities and languages spoken. Coaching badges must be set to 'None', with past playing experience set as 'Sunday League Footballer'. The coaching attributes are completely up to you.

(This will be your proper manager profile for the duration of the save)

For example:

View attachment 724248

You can assign the attributes for your manager in any way you please so long as you keep the Qualifications/Experience inside the rules set.

When adding a new manager, choose one of the new clubs promoted to the Vanarama North or South to manage. A quick way to check the new teams is to find the 'England Overview' team, then the 'season summary'. Just above the FA Cup summary you should find a list of six new teams.

Once you have selected one of the newly promoted teams i
t is now up to you to manage this club all the way to the Premier League title and UEFA Champions League crown.

You may not move clubs unless you are sacked, in which case you can either take over a newly promoted club that satisfies the original criteria (check the club's league history), or just start again.

No form of international management is not allowed, until you have completed the challenge.

Assigning parent clubs and loaning players is completely up to the player, although it should be noted that on occasions a parent club can lend players which will make the first season or two slightly less of a challenge. It is completely up to you how you play this one, but everyone knows real men don't use parent club loans. Personally, I like to assign a parent club for financial benefits but never take any players on loan from them.

To sign a player, you must be able to scout them, this doesn't mean you have to, just he must be accessible to your scouts. If you have a foreign player on a free transfer who is willing to come on trial, you do not need to be able to scout them, as long as you have them at the club on trial so you can get a coach report on him. If an agent offers you a player, you can sign him without scouting him.

No external utilities such as scouting programs should be used and the database should be unedited (with the exception of cosmetic changes which cannot be discussed here). Should SI release a data update, this would be allowed but any other data updates are not.

Just as always, no extra leagues can be loaded for the extent of the challenge. Once the challenge is completed, you have the freedom to do what you want.

Use of save game editors is strictly banned, whatever the reason. Ticking that box at the start should see to this.



With that all said and done I hope you will enjoy my attempt at the Dafuge Challenge and maybe give it a go yourself. I'd love to see some others post threads on their attempt!



Credit to Dafuge for the challenge, read his thread and view other peoples progress here:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/400804-dafuge-s-FM15-challenge?


 
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Dafuge's Challenge - FM15


After holidaying the first year of the game I've now taken over the Club I will be using for the Dafuge challenge and that Club is...

View attachment 321055

Witton Albion F.C. (Skrill North)

Founded in 1887, Witton Albion are a club based in Northwich, England.

The Club have won the Cheshire Senior Cup 11 times since 1902 and have reached the FA Cup 2nd round on three occassions.

Witton Albion currently play their Football at Wincham Park, a stadium with a capacity of 4,813 (600 seated).​




Manager Profile:

Having taken over at Witton I thought I'd show you guys my manager profile to prove that it fits the rules set.

Profile:

View attachment 321052

This is the personal profile of my manager, as you can see I've kept it as realistic as possible for the purpose of the challenge.

Managerial Style:

View attachment 321050

As I'll be starting in the lower-leagues I've opted for the tracksuit manager approach but with a higher attribute in Tactics coaching, hopefully this approach will benefit my team in the long-term.

I'll post the next update after the pre-season.

 

Dafuge's Challenge - FM15

View attachment 320992

Season One
Pre-Season Update (2015):

Here is the first update of my Dafuge challenge attempt with Witton Albion Football Club, the pre-season!



Tactics:

Lower League tactics are always something I've failed to implement properly over the years, the need to have a simple tactic but one that is efficient and thorough at the same time.

For the purpose of this save I have created two tactics which both use a counter-attacking style of play (Due to our pace down the wings and under-dog status in the league)

Here is the first of the two tactics:

Tactic One:
4-2-2-2

View attachment 320991

While messing about with the roles this is the general look of our more offensive-minded counter-attacking tactics, allowing us to move the ball from the back to the front quickly while remaining defensively stable

Here are the team instructions for Tactic #1:

View attachment 320990

Tactic Two:
4-5-1

View attachment 320989

This is the second of our tactics here at Witton and one which is more focused on defending our own goal with the defensive midfielder, but the pace down the wings still allows us to quickly break when possession is won, this will be used more often for away matches.

Here are the team instructions for Tactic #2:

View attachment 320988

These will hopefully be the two tactics that we will use throughout the 2015/16 season, but if things go wrong changes may be made.




Staff Changes:

View attachment 320984

When I took over Witton Albion the club had recently parted way with some of the backroom staff, upon seeing this I decided to bring in my own additions.

With a coach limit of 2 I decided to bring Mark Jones to the club, a coach who specialises in Attacking coaching and Fitness, something we lacked at the club.

The Assistant Manager Asa Charlton specialises in defensive coaching and is great at working with youth, when paired with Mark Jones this covers both units of offense and defense.

I also brought in two scouts to help us find players to bring to the club, these are essential at all levels of Football and will definitely help us at Witton Albion.




Transfers:

View attachment 320985

Having taken over at Witton we were now obviously playing at a higher level of Football than we were experiencing last year, this meant we needed to bolster the squad if we were to survive. Lucky for us the board had readied an available wage budget of £4,000 meaning we could easily bring in a number of players to increase the size of our squad.

I'm not going to go through the transfers individually but feel free to look through the players to see if they will fit the bill at the club you're managing!

Astonishingly we still have an available wage budget of £2,500 which can easily be used to build the team up throughout the year, but as for now I'm happy with the squad!

Here is a look at the reinforced squad:

View attachment 320987



Results:

View attachment 320986

Throughout the pre-season we only played four matches, but overall things went very well, having only lost one match against Lancaster I was pleased to see the team win 3 of our 4 matches, which could only give the squad confidence going into the new season.

Hopefully we can avoid the drop!

Predicted finish: 19/22.

 

Dafuge's Challenge - FM15

View attachment 320983

Season One
August Update (2015):


After a successful pre-season we now headed into August, and with the start of the season around the corner we were destined to show the league what we were capable off, come on Wittby Albion!​



Results:

View attachment 320982

Our first month in charge of Witton Albion saw us play 5 league matches in he Vanarama Conference North.

Overall the month went very well, we managed to get 3 draws, 1 win and 1 loss from the month amassing a total of 6 points, for a club predicted to narrowly escape the drop this was a very good way to kick-start the season.

The first 3 matches of the season were all draws against Colwyn Bay, Oxford City and Gloucester and despite the results we dominated these matches, with over 60% possession against Colwyn Bay and Gloucester but despite our control of the ball we were unable to break down the opposition.

My first victory in charge of Witton Albion came away from home against highly predicted Leamington, a vintage away performance in which we took the spoils with a 2-0 victory, the only negative coming from a penalty miss early on.

Finally, we lost at home to Solihull Moors in a 1-0 defeat, we had plenty of early chances but failed to find the net, something our visitors had no difficulty doing as they headed home in the 68th minute following a well worked corner routine, the game then died out before the match finished 1-0 to the away side.




League Table:

View attachment 320980

Following the month we now found ourselves sitting in 14th place after our opening 5 fixtures, a great month in my opinion and something we can hopefully build on in September as we look to avoid the drop.

 
So I just went to load up this save to play and it's not there...Actually, none of my saves are there..This is following a blue screen of death!

View attachment 320594

These are the problems I face by having a terrible system..

Time to ponder my next save, or maybe give Dafuge another go?​
 
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