FM24 - Quim Tropedo Around the World

[misterioBean]

Hello everyone and welcome to my Journeyman Challenge in FM24.

This is one of the most famous and one of my favourites challenges to play in FM, even if I haven't really play it the newest versions of the game.
This year though, I intend to make it my long term save. Also I don't really have any goals or rules by which I will play. We'll be going for a very vanilla playstyle.

This means I will only be changing teams when:

1. I get bored of a particular team or league;
2. I get a better offer from another team;
3. I get sacked (which will probably happen quite a lot).

In terms of leagues loaded, I loaded up every league in the game (except for Hong Kong and Russia) + Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

As you can see, our manager has no coaching badges or football playing experience, so we will have to improve over time. You can also see we already have a job despite starting unemployed. This is because I forgot to take a screenshot before applying to any jobs...

 

[misterioBean]

Journeyman - Season 1

Our first job will be at FC Gifu, a team currently playing in the Japanese 3rd Division.

The board expects our team to finish in the top 4 places of the J3 League and be competitive on the cup.

Well I sincerely hope this are the next season expectations since we are currently 14th in the league table with only 11 games left in the season and were already knocked out of the cup (which has a crazy huge name so we will be calling it Emperor's Cup from now on).

Well guess next year we will have to get promoted. At least if we don't get it our contract still expires which decreases the odds of us getting fired (hopefully).

Key Players

Decent looking winger for our right side. A lot of versatility on this guy as well but it's not necessarily a good thing.

Good defensive midfielder, specially mentally but already is 35 years old.

Another 35 year old as a key player, this time for our left back position. The physicals are to be expected with his age.

The last player is a striker but doesn't really inspires much confidence. Mentally he is actually quite decent, but his technicalls are abysmal.

The Squad + Tactic

Well, there's definitely a lot of positions that need to be strenghten but the transfer window will only be opening in January and the season ends in December so this is what we have for the rest of our season.

Tactic wise I decided to go for a 4-3-3 DM with a counter-attack playstyle. We don't really have fast players but I don't think we have the technical quality necessary for controlling possession and I don't intend to be playing defensively.

Finances

The finances are actually quite good for a tier 3 club. Originally it was 1M in the transfer budget but I had to put some on the wage budget which was on the negative and most of our team needs a new contract since they will be finish in January.

I'll be back at the end of the season with the first update.​

 

[misterioBean]

J3 League
Matchday 28

First game in charge of FC Gifu was against the 2nd place Matsumoto Yamaga side and after a very good 1st half we let them draw the game in the 2nd half.

J3 League
Matchday 29

We then lost the next game against the 7th place side Fukushima in a game we should have won, but they scored the only shot on target they took the whole game.

J3 League
Matchday 30

We finally won our first game against Azul Claro who were sitting in the 5th position, which was a very nice surprise after the last 2 results.

J3 League
Matchday 31

However, we drew the next game against the team who were sitting in the 19th position. They were playingvery defesively the whole game and we just couldn't get any good chances. It was becoming clear that our biggest problem was our ability to score.

J3 League
Matchday 32

We quickly went back to winning though with a 2-1 result against Nara who were 2 places above us at the time so it was a crucial win.

J3 League
Matchday 33

And we drew once again with yet another awful performance in front of the goal.

J3 League
Matchday 34 and 35

Two good results against two teams very close to us in the table so, once again, two crucial results because our last 3 games would be way harder.

J3 League
Matchday 36

We lost our next game against Grulla Morioka. We just couldn't stop their striker and that cost us the game.

J3 League
Matchday 37

Very good result against the 1st place side Ryukyu and we were actually ahead of the game until the final 20 minutes but we just couldn't keep the game in our favor.

J3 League
Matchday 38

We finished up our season with a crazy game against Kitakyushu in which we came out on top.

League Table

Unfortunately we couldn't do best than a 14th place for this season and our board wants us to get automatic promotion next season so it means they expect us to finish 1st.

We will be losing a lot of our team players in February which should hopefully increase our wage budget to bring in some better players for free or loaned in.
Unfortunately, I seem to have come across a weird bug that doesn't allow me to sign any Japanese newgens for free which sucks because there seems to be a lot of good players available.

Our wage budget is actually decent but our transfer budget is not that high so we will have to stick with free and loaned in players. Hopefully being in the 3rd Division won't be something that keeps us from bringing in good players.

Random Stuff

Our board actually accepted to pay for our first coaching badge but I forgot to screenshot it.
Due to their generosity I decided to stay at least one more year in Japan before trying to seek for another job in another country.

I'll be back in February with the first update for the second season.​

 

[misterioBean]

1st February 2024

Welcome back to Japan everyone!

This will be a small transfer update since the first game of the season is still one month away.
A lot happened in the last few months and I'm happy to say that the bug I talked about in my last post was fixed with the latest update so we can finally sign free Japanese players.

Transfers Out

As you can see a lot of players left our club in January, mostly very old players who were not even close to being decent for us. We ended up freeing a lot of our wage budget.

We also didn't renew the contracts of 8 players so they ended up leaving on free transfers.

Transfers In

However, a lot of players also joined us in this transfer window and all of them for free. Also, it's worth noting that we can only play 4 non-Japanese players so I tried to sign as much Japanese players as possible.

Most of this players are basically backup players but there are a few that come to be 1st team players. There are also some players who already played for us last season and all of them are 1st team players:
​

The first signing we ever made in our club was Park Hyung-Jin. Despite his age, he still looks amazing for the 3rd tier and last season he managed to get a 6.93 average rating in only 6 games. He also takes 1 foreign slot in our team but I think it's totally worth it.

Another foreign player and this time for the GK position. We desperately needed a better GK and this was the best one I could find last season. He didn't have the best average rating and conceded 9 goals in 7 games last season. Hopefully this season he will be better. If not, I might need to try to find a better one.

We then signed a Brazilian CD who actually looks decent but didn't have the best of times playing for us last season. Hopefully he plays better this season.

Another foreign player who took the last foreign slot in the 1st team was the Ghanese RB Baffour who looks very good but aain, didn't have very good performances last season, but considering he only played 5 games I can't really speak out about it.

We have a new striker as well and even though his mentals are nowhere near as impressive as Ukita's, he makes up on his technicals. Let's see if he can score us enough goals.

Kentaro Oi was next in line to sign for us and even though he is 39 years old, he still looks very decent.

We needed to sign some midfielders this season and Mochizuki comes in as a free Japanese player with very decent looking stats.

Still on the midfield, the Australian Jacob Melling comes in as a backup for Park, so we will never have more than 4 foreign players on the first team.

One of the best signings we did was the 32 year old Takashima for our LW position, which was also lacking a lot, as was the RW.

With that in mind, Okino comes in for the RW and is, once again, a good looking player.

I don't feel there's any point in showing any oother player because non of them will be starters so I'll leave it here for transfers.

Squad

Our squad looks way better this season, but I'm not sure of we are capable of achieving what our board expects us to...

They still expect us to get promoted to J2 League and to finish 1st in our division to guarantee the automatic promotion. In terms of cups:

We drew Kyoto Sanga in the J. League Cup, who currently play in J1 League, 2 divisions above us, so I'm not sure if we can be competitive.

However, our Emperor's Cup fixture looks more accessible since we drew a team playing in our division.

We already played 2 friendlies and are undefeated for now. It's worth noting we beat a J2 League team and drew against a J1 League side. Could this mean we are stronger than I think?

Finances

Our finances look very good for a 3rd division side I must say. Our board injected some more money in our budgets some days after I shared the last update but we didn't use any of it for now. I feel like if I use any of it our financial state will rapidly fall so I rather not touch it for now.

Will be back soon with more updates.​