FM 2012 Progress - How is your game going?

I just finished my first season with Gloucester (a Blue Square North side), I picked them because they're nickname's the Tigers and they have an awesome logo and outfit (aside from their out-shirts, those are fugly).
Anyways that first season was pretty easy as we pretty much owned all the teams, we lost only 3 games and drawed (drew? I dunno, forgive me if I'm wrong) 6.

We surprisingly got through to the 3rd round in the FA Cup, beating L2 sides Morecambe and Bradford in the first round and second round, and losing 3-2 to League 1 side Rochdale in the 3rd round, where we gave away our 2-1 lead by picking up a red in the 53rd minute.

We only got to the 3rd round of the FA Trophy though, undeservedly losing to BSP side Forest Green with 3-1. They had 3 decent chances and scored 3 goals... Anyway I wasn't too disappointed by that since we got so far in the FA Cup.

At the end of the season I decided to try and arrange some friendlies since we had already won the BSN with 7 games in hand. And quite surprisingly we won 1-0 against Hibernian and 3-1 against Celtic!!! Sure they were just friendlies, but I was thoroughly proud of my team.

It's July 2012 now and I'm playing friendlies against Championship sides to raise some cash. So far we lost 3 of them by a close margin, drawed another 3, and won 3-2 against Hull City, who are also called Tigers... And by that, our team made clear who the real tigers are :p

Anyways... only two more friendlies to go and then the Blue Square Premier season kicks off. Can't wait :D
 
Completed 6 seasons at AS Roma today, awesome journey.
Starting with a 3rd place finish in the first season, went on to win 3 Scudetto ,1 Champions League (in the fifth season), 2 Italian Super Cup. Couldn't win the Italian Cup, always a tough competition for me.

Lamela, Jose Angel, Burdisso, Stekelenburg,De Rossi, Bertolacci, Pjanic, Brighi, Cesare Cerci, the players who have been a part of the project from day one and still the core of the AS Roma.

Over the years, I did strengthen all areas. Bought Mario at RB, Luchin, Wassenaar, Vertonghen at CB, Yashuhito Morimoto, Andrea Poli, Zakaria Labyad in the Mid. And Welbeck, Yarmolenko and Jelle Vossen up front.

We're a formidable team now. I usually play narrow system with my fullbacks supporting up front and trequartista moving to the wings as well. And it has served me well from season 2.

Have fun playing :) :)
 
Suprised by my start won the Conference South with Havant and Waterlooville in my first full season. Everythings going swimmingly, this is my first ever Football Manager and I can't wait for the next game it's addicting.;) If you want you can follow my story.
 
I just started my second season with Italian side Sampdoria. In my first season I won the Serie A and the Italian cup. At the start of my second season I defeated Torino to win the Italian Super cup. But what confuses me is I have been entered into the group stages of the Champions league and the Europa league in the same season, has this happened to anyone else?
 
Completed 6 seasons at AS Roma today, awesome journey.
Starting with a 3rd place finish in the first season, went on to win 3 Scudetto ,1 Champions League (in the fifth season), 2 Italian Super Cup. Couldn't win the Italian Cup, always a tough competition for me.

Lamela, Jose Angel, Burdisso, Stekelenburg,De Rossi, Bertolacci, Pjanic, Brighi, Cesare Cerci, the players who have been a part of the project from day one and still the core of the AS Roma.

Over the years, I did strengthen all areas. Bought Mario at RB, Luchin, Wassenaar, Vertonghen at CB, Yashuhito Morimoto, Andrea Poli, Zakaria Labyad in the Mid. And Welbeck, Yarmolenko and Jelle Vossen up front.

We're a formidable team now. I usually play narrow system with my fullbacks supporting up front and trequartista moving to the wings as well. And it has served me well from season 2.

Have fun playing :) :)


Brilliant wee player.
 
Just about to embark on my fourth season in charge of Norwich. My main goal each season was to avoid relegation and put together a decent cup run at some point. My first season saw us lift the league cup in extra time, beating Newcastle and finishing 11th. Season two saw a brief European adventure, dropping out of the Europa League at the fourth qualifying round. League form dipped a little, finishing 14th, but thanks to some very fortunate ties, ended up lifting the FA Cup. Third season saw an amazing sixth place finish in the league, first knockout stage of the Europa League, losing on away goals to Zaragoza after topping a group containing Dnipro, Ajax and Wolfsburg and lifting the FA Cup again.

Playing at home I use a 5-3-2 formation, using three CB's and two wing backs. Two CM's, one ACM and generally a target man and a poacher up front. Away from home I go 4-5-1, using wingers and an anchor man.

Squad wise I've made some pretty good signings. The extra income from the unexpected cup success and subsequent European adventures have meant my transfer budget has increased quite a bit. I also didn't spend any money in my first season as I relied on free transfers and loans.

Current side looks a little like this

John Ruddy
Daley Blind -- Sebastian Bassong -- Michael Turner -- Angel Dealbert -- Kyle Naughton
Bradley Johnson -- Josip Radosevic
Oscar
Grant Holt -- Jermain Defoe

Subs: Declan Rudd, Alberto Botia, Dani Ayala, Jermain Jenas, Giannis Fetfatzidis, Steve Morison, Dani Pacheco
 
Well, getting a bit of use out of FM12 since I can't afford FM13 yet so I've started with fulham- good start (earlier than most!) in the europa league but then chose to holiday until the end of the season and to my surprise we finished 16th under the guidance of my assistant. Now the challenge is on! Pre season and strengthening required!

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2
 
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I just started my 3rd season with Man United.

1st season saw me win the premier league title, bowed out in the semi-finals of the champions league by losing 3 - 2 to Barcelona, and i lost the FA Cup final.
2nd seaons was horrible i finished 8th and suffered big blow outs in the champions league, my defence leaked goals like a seive.
3rd season i won all my friendlies and bolsted my defence, i also let go a few aging players to bring in some youth and Ferdinand retired, surprisingly enough Real Madrid had decided to let go Christiano Ronaldo, after beating every other team away with a stick a managed to secure him. So far my first two games have been against Man City (won 3 - 1) and Chelsea (won 4 - 1), so things are looking much better this season.
 
Currently in the year 2023, first season with Feyenoord.

After ten years with St. Albans City - in which I brought them from the Evo-Stik Southern to the EPL - with a record high second place, after the unbeatable Mancunians, in my last season. I decided to leave them for Juventus, seeking a new challenge. I joined Juventus in November 2021, being unable to find a new job at first. They were in the 10th position of the Serie A. Took them to the 6th position in 3 months before leaving them for Feyenoord; who were also in 10th position.

Got them to the 7th place and secured European football through the play-offs. The first full season I was in charge went a lot better, with two matches to go we're currently in first place, having lost only one match to neighbouring FC Dordrecht (quite shameful loss actually). We're in the KNVB Cup final, and competing Juventus in the Europa League quarter finals.
 
I decided to start my career in the less taken path of South Africa, the continent's only ready league.

Started managing club Black Leopards, a second grade team that just made it to the top division for the first time in a decade. My plan since day 1 was to focus investment in South African youngsters for the long term profit (in South Africa, the foreigners allowed in a team are very few, and though the continent has amazing and talented youths in Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Cameroon they're only interested to play for the more famous North African leagues like Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria or Europe).

As the first season went by I began implementing changes in both the club's staff and players to heal the club's starting budget which was low.. very low, to the point where an agent asking for an extra 1000$ fee would break any deal for a promising young player. Every single player and staff member bought in was through a hard-bargain and every contract negotiation was painstakingly more difficult than Middle East peace talks. The team itself had three star players that carried the whole team where their absence insured a loss by a 2 or three goal margin. At the end of the seasonno league or cup trophies were won, but the team was significantly costing less, the new young players were starting to gain experience and in the last matches of the season they started even finding their way to the opponent's goal, ending the league in the surprising 10th position.

Season 2013-14 was much smoother, I maintained some dictatorial strategies of never buying any player older than 25, I had an eye for picking the right prospects to fit the squad so my contract offers were 4 or 5 years long for them and those who didn't cut it never got to see the pitch even once, acting only as laborers for friendly matches for the sake of the club's income. In the same manner, players aged 33 and older were sold or loaned immediately. By now, the squad player were starting to attract the attention of the league's powerhouses but they had a snowball's chance in **** before I would sell or loan any of my main line-up or anything less than double the price for their main substitutes. This time, Black Leopards had finished the season in 3rd place and won a minor cup, my star striker "Rodney Ramagalela" won the goalscoring award and I got the Manager of the year. The next two seasons I went on to claim every Cup but finished second in the league by 2 points before finally winning it.

Season 2016-17, during those last 2 years, things changed around the club, its finances grew, my players trusted my decisions with their life, turning into determined professionals accustomed to nothing less than a win, Serie A and Bundesliga clubs were showing strong interest in my players but I was unrelenting as ever -which caused some understandable problems-, my focus shifted from the national accomplishments up to continental glory in the African champions league. I had bought a phenomenal player named "Godfrey Langa", this forward had only two strong points: finishing and SPEED... He's so fast the "Top Gear" show may as well dedicate an episode for his sake. It is fair to say that this player is the best deal I ever made as a manager (although it was belated because of a personal grudge, he had cost my team the FA Cup in the final with the score 3-3 by scoring in the 119th minute the late winner), having bought him for 200k, in three years Regina was asking for him for 10M $ and I was still reluctantly refusing, he reached a resounding 92 goals this season alone (then again I had participated in 6 competitions and reached all of their finals)

Back to the African champions league, my previous record was reaching the semi-final before receiving a disheartening loss. This season I managed to win a record amount of trophies (Super 8 cup - A cup for last season's top 8 league teams, SA Knockout cup - A cup for only the top division of South Africa, the SA premiere league and the South African federation cup - A cup that involved all SA divisions) ..and now finally after a nail biting first leg, I won the Champions League on home grounds against African and Egyptian legend club Al-Ahly. This qualified me for the Club World Cup where my best hope honestly was an honorable representation. Surprisingly, I got past CONCACAF's Mexican Club C.F. Monterrey 4-0 (2 goals of which by Langa) then beat CONMEBOL's Argentinian club in the semi-final 4-2 (Also two goals by Langa) to face UEFA's champion Bayern Munich for the Club World Cup itself. I still get the chills now when thinking back about the tension of that matchday, I had a fully fit and confident team that seemed invincible and so did Bayern. The match went on with the Germans progressively getting more possession before I scored in them at the 23rd minute, by minute 40 they headed in the equalizer. In the second half, Langa lit my heart by scoring in the 56th minute. Things were going great until they scored in the 70s (Lahm) and 80s minutes and won the cup. I admit it wasn't the best outcome I had pictured but I was very grateful for all my players and raised all their contracts.

By now this performance had earned me international recognition and I found myself refusing an offer from Spanish giant Deportivo la Cornea (they were financially knee-deep in ****). I came to accept that having won all the African and South African top trophies, the club's worth grew 50-fold to 50M $ and had even newer young talents to keep it winning for the next several years; there was nothing more for me to achieve except moving to bigger goals and I accepted an offer for Spanish club Girona (a relatively small club) which was just promoted to the top division this season, a scenario that reminded me of my start with Black Leopards.

then I was kicked out of my rl house and lost the save game...


PS: I would like to point out that as good as Godfrey Langa's performance sounded in South African and continental African competitions, he was only average in his national team(which I avidly followed along with my home country's [Egypt] matches) mainly because of lack of versatility in his skills in headers, long range and to a lesser extent team-work. Although I was watching his mediocre results in a Serie A club, he is still the first player I'd recommend for league levels similar to that of South Africa.
 
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I never played that version before, and I started a couple of days ago! As a Marseille fan, I started there, of course.To shake things up I made all the board 100 years old. To try to have a new owner. Not much happening though. We don't have ANY money to buy, to my surprise, so I started with the original team and staff.I'm almost in january now, and unbeaten. Leader of the league, ended first of my CL group (with Napoli, Chelsea and Leverkusen). I got quite some injury troubles lately, and some suspensions too. A.Ayew got injured 3 months, Remy 3 months and Gignac just got injured for 6 months... The board gave me 13.75M€ around november, so I bought a few players. Started with Diego, (LW from Tours) because without A.Ayew I had big issues on that left wing. I also got Romario (RB) and Verratti for january, and Fierro for july.Hopefully I'll stop getting injuries and will find a striker to replace Gignac (I'm looking at Balotelli as a loan). Next round in CL is Real Madrid, so I'm already out
 
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