Manchester Disaster

[misterioBean]

So, here I am once again. I'll be honest, after my Saint-Etienne file crashed and got corrupted I lost the will to play this game. I tried to start over with multiple teams, even with Vitória SC once again just to get the spark back, but nothing was cutting it. I decided to take a bit of time off FM hoping to find something that wouldn't immediately bore me.

I had some saves in mind: waiting for the winter transfer window to end and start with Vitória SC once again; Create a custom database in which Schalke 04 got relegated to amateur football; Getting Deportivo La Coruña back to the Spanish top flight; Bringing Kaiserslautern back to their former glory....

But then, something caught my attention. While searching for some ideas I came across a thread called "Non-League City". It pretty much says everything you need to know, but here's the description:

The Premier League took the summer to investigate further over the 115 alleged charges and after Manchester City’s legal challenges failed the punishments began being dished out in an explosive statement. The full list of penalties were as follows:

• Removal from the Premier League;
• Removal from European Club Football;
• Global Transfer Ban ending on 1st July 2027.

Where will Man. City end up?​

Due to the charges against them, clubs from the Football League voted for Manchester City to be accepted into either the Championship, League One or League Two but that vote was lost. The Vanarama National League offered them a place in the North division which was accepted.

This would also send shockwaves around European football where Manchester City would not be allowed to defend their UEFA Champions League crown. Liverpool would take their place in the competition with Aston Villa moving up to the Europa League and Tottenham given a spot in the UEFA Conference League.

Finances​

All sponsors distanced themselves from the club and were allowed to terminate the deals early, meaning the club is entirely funded by the City Football Group, which means the money will still be rolling in.

Macron were the only kit manufacturer to step in after Puma walked away.

Amazon Prime Video, who had once made a documentary on the club with their ‘All or Nothing’ series back in 2018, make a return to the club to film once more, also becoming the club’s front-of-shirt sponsor.

The club's reputation also took a big downgrade following the charges and very few people see a move to the Citizens with good eyes.

Squad
​

Most of the players decided to leave the club after all the charges and penalties were applied, with only a handful of players chosing to stay in Manchester, with another handful seeing their loan spells terminated in order to help the club reach their goals. Pep Guardiola decided it was time to leave the club after winning the UCL last season, taking all the first team staff with him.

Final Thoughts
​

Before anything else, I'm not a City fan. In fact, it's probably my least favourite club in the Premier League and I never managed them in any FM until now. With that said, our goal for this save is simple:

Get Manchester City back to the top of world football.

​

 

[misterioBean]

First Day at the Etihad

Despite everything that happened, Man City were able to keep their amazing facilities, as well as their stadium.
The media obviously expects us to finish on the top of the Vanarama North because the players that decided to stay at the club are still way above the league's standards.

Board and Supporter Expectations

Our board expectations are what you would expect.
Automatic promotion and be comeptitive on all the other competitions.

It's worth noting we will still play the UEFA Super Cup since we won last season's UCL.

We might run into trouble on the culture though, since they want us to sign high-rep players, which we are forbidden to do until 2027.
At least they also want us to develop players using the youth system.

The supporters are pretty much aligned with our board which is good to see.

Staff

Like I said previously, we have no staff available at the club.
Ideally, we would get the spots filled with new people so we don't leave our youth teams with worst staff, but if needed we will bring some of the youth staff to the first team.

The only department I won't be filling is the recruitment team since we can't sign anybody in the next years.

Finances

Finance wise we are not as rich as we once were. We do have a big budget available but we can't use it, but at least we won't be going into the negative any time soon.

Meeting the Squad and Choosing a Tactic

It shouldn't be a surprise at this point but for the tactic I'm once again sticking to my 4-3-3 DM.
Glad we took that out of the way.

We were fortunate enough to keep 2 decent GK in our squad.
Zack Steffen will be our starter while Scott Carson will remain as his backup.

Our starting CB's also look very good in Taylor Harwood-Bellis (Bellis from now on) and Callum Doyle.
They are both young too so they will develop and will most likely remain at the club for a long time.

Depth is not very good though and Finley Burns is the 3rd choice but doesn't have much potential.

However, we do have 2 exciting youngsters almost ready to break into the first team and honestly will probably use them both before using Burns.

We do have a lot of quality in our RWB position with Rico Lewis being the standout of the team. Kaboré is a very solid backup for when he's needed though.

The same can't be said for our LWB role however and having no other options available we will have to make due with what we are given.

This is our starting midfield. The roles they will be assigned to are already highlited and I think it's safe to say we have a pretty strong midfield, specially considering we still have 4 more decent options:

Our starting wingers also look very good and we should have no problem in this position as well since we still have Sarmiento, Kaiky and Stevanovic available in our squad.

Liam Delap will be our main striker and I'm expecting him to have a lot of success in the near future.

As for his backup I decided to call Will Dickson from our U21's since I don't like to play with Target Forwards and Tedic is not very good even playing his favourite role.

Final Thoughts

We have some positions which could use some fresh players but since we have 5 years ahead of us of transfer embargo we will need to adapt and use what we were given.

Overall, we have a very strong side for this level and if we don't gain automatic promotion this season I will probably retire our manager with only 1 season to his name.​

 

[misterioBean]

Preseason and First Games

The Staff

First things first, we already filled all the positions we wanted staff wise.

We were able to bring in a full English staff team, only bringing in one U21 staff member.
As expected we currently own the best staff in the Vanarama North, even with the club's reputation damaged by all the legal charges.

Richard Wright, one of Pep's staff members, accepted to come back after being told Guardiola would not be accepting any managing role in the near future.

Transfers Out

We had a few players wanting to leave the club.
Yan Couto's contract was running out at the end of the season and he told me he had no intentions of renewing with us.

Is also worth noting all this transfers include a 50% Future Fee Clause, so we basically own 50% of the player's financial rights.

Transfers In

Obviously no one joined us.

Well, I guess we can count this as one:

Ben Knight was promoted to the 1st team after Yan Couto's sale. He looks decent for this level so I won't complain.

Preseason

Nothing much to say here except for that goalless draw against Radcliffe. I rotated the team and our backups weren't able to find the net.

Overall very good preseason in which we made a statement we were not going to stick around here for much longer.

First Games in Charge

Over the next 2 weeks, we had 5 games to be played: the FA Community Shield Final against Arsenal; the first 3 games of the Vanarama National League North (VNLN from now on) and the UEFA Super Cup Final against Sevilla.

Let's see how everything went.

FA Community Shield

Harsh start to our managing career in Manchester but it was to be expected. Sadly we couldn't even reach Arsenal's defensive third to create goal chances.

Vanorama National League North
Gameday 1 and 2

Nice to see our team play better but there's no real challenges here.
Is also nice to see our backup team can also win us games, since we made a full squad rotation for the Warrington fixture.

UEFA Super Cup

This was a very pleasant surprise. Not only we were able to beat Sevilla but we did it while dominating the game, at least when we had the ball.

Was a very good game to watch to be fair, both teams played well but we were able to score while Sevilla wasted their opportunities.

Vanorama National League North
Gameday 3

A bit of a scare on the next leage fixture away at Brackley after we conceded a goal in the 21st minute. Thankfully our fully rotated squad were able to bring it back and win us the game after both our wingers, Sarmiento and Ben Knight, brilliant play on the last few minutes of the game.

VNLN Table

We are currently unbeaten in the league and sit in the 4th place, 1 game behind all the teams above us.
I expect us to keep the good run and reach the top of the table in no time.​

 

[misterioBean]

22nd October 2023
13 games Into the season

Okay so we are currently 13 league games into our first season in Manchester, 17 games overall played so far.
As a person that very rarely plays in the Vanarama leagues I forgot how long this seasons tend to be. I mean there's 46 league games alone plus 2 different cup competitions.

Anyway, let's see how we are doing.

Vanorama National League North
Gameday 4 to 13

I don't think there's a point in showing this individually but we are still unbeaten in the league and are looking very strong.
Still 33 games to go until the end of the season so there's a lot of time to lose points. I hope we keep playing like we have been playing so far.

FA Cup
Second Qualifying Round

On the other hand, I'll show every FA Cup and other competition fixtures individually, just because it makes sense since we can be eliminated at any time.

Not the case in this round against Brightlingsea though.

FA Cup
Third Qualifying Round

Nuneaton were also not able to eliminate us and we are through to the next round.

FA Cup
Fourth Qualifying Round

We beat Alfreton Town in the last qualifying round, which means we are officially playing in the FA Cup tournment this season.

Our first opponent will be Tranmere Rovers in November, but we still have 4 league games before that match.

VNLN Table

We rose to the 1st place in the table and still are 1 game behind most of the teams behind us.

Final Thoughts

Nothing else really happened for now so I guess I'll see you in the next update.​

 

[misterioBean]

2nd January 2024
A brand new year, same old team

We officially reached the middle of our first season in Manchester and nothing much changed since our last update.

We still have the same players, same tactic, similar finances and same staff.
Also, we still have 4.5 years left of transfer embargo.

So let's take a very quick look at everything.

VNLN Schedule

Like I said, nothing changed so far. Still unbeaten in the Vanarama.

FA Cup
First Round

We go through to the next FA Cup stage with a dominant win against Tranmere-

FA Cup
Second Round

Notts County were able to score against us but we still battered them and will now go against York City in the next phase.

FA Trophy
Second Round

Different cup competition but the same level of domination from our team.

FA Trophy
Third Round

Same on the next match against Malverne and we secured our maintenance in both cup competitions.

FIFA Club World Cup
Semi Final

Okay I completely forgot we still had another competition ahead of us this season.

You see we got removed from the UEFA competitions and went down a few divisions but we still qualified for the FIFA Club World Cup and faith decided we would go against Al-Ittihad, with players such like N'golo Kanté, Karim Benzema and Kevin de Bruyne, who joined them after leaving our club. Oh and they also got Neuer on the goal, so alot of pressure on our players.

Well I'm not sure what happened here but we scored 3 goals in the first 20 minutes and secured the win even after letting them get back into the game on the 2nd half. No one could have predicted how amazing this game would be.

FIFA Club World Cup
Final

The Final fixture was easier in theory.
We would go up against the Egyptian side of Al-Ahly who beat Barcelona S.C. 6-0.
Surely we can beat them after our performance against a way better team right?

Well I guess not if our keeper decides to score an own goal and if they score the winning goal on the 90th minute.

Could have been the first ever FIFA Club World Cup in our club's history, but we failed to bring it home.

Random Stuff

We got a preview of our first youth intake at Man. City and let me tell you... it's absolute garbage.
I didn't even screnshot it because the best position was a C-tier.

I know sometimes this preview is not very accurate but ****, I really wish it's better than just a C youth intake because we are very dependant on our HoYD bringing in some gems to keep us going up in the next 5 seasons.

With nothing else to report I'll see you all after the youth intake drops.​

 

[misterioBean]

14th May 2024
The end of the 1st season

In the last update I said I would be back when the youth intake was released and show you how the last 3 months went at Manchester, but I got excited and played through the whole season so... oops I guess.
Let's take a look at the rest of the season.

VNLN Schedule and Table

We went unbeaten in this year's Vanarama National League North season and almost won every match in the season but a poor performance in front of goal against Spennymoor saw us drop the only points this season.

It was a very good season nontheless. We scored a total of 205 goals in 46 games, averaging around 4,46 goals per game, and only conceded 20, finishing our first season with a whooping 185 goal difference and 136 points in 138 possible.

This was a record breaking season in a lot of areas as you can see.
We also broke the highest average attendance (this one was quite easy I guess), the most goals scored in a season, most league wins a season and most matches won in a row.

3 of our players also joined the recordists lists for VNLN.
Liam Delap for most goals scored in a single game;
Filip Stevanovic for most assists in a season;
Alex Robertson for the highest average rating (he wasn't a regular starter but still played 46 games in all comeptitions).

FA Cup
Third Round

Easy win for our team in the 3rd round of the FA Cup against York City.

We then faced Leicester City and were finally starting to get some bigger teams to come against us.

FA Cup
Fourth Round

Good game but we failed to score a goal at the King Power Stadium, which means we were due for a replay match at the Etihad.

We beat them with another very good performance but we couldn't avoid conceding 2 goals.

We would face Middlesbrough next...

FA Cup
Fifth Round

Easier game this time and we beat them 6-1 even after our captain missed a penalty on the 7th minute.

We went through to the Quarter Finals of the FA Cup, in which we would face non other than Arsenal, the team that took away our Community shield at the beginning of the season. This was the perfect opportunity to get revenge.

FA Cup
Quarter Finals

Well, maybe next season...

FA Trophy
Fourth Round

Our focus shifted to the other cup competition, a trophy we actually had a very good shot at.

We start by beating Rochdale 4-1 at our home stadium.

FA Trophy
Fifth Round

Another win, this time against Wealdstone and we are through to the Quarter Finals.

FA Trophy
Quarter Finals

Another 5-0 win on the quarter finals.

FA Trophy
Semi Finals

Things are looking very promising as we beat Altrincham to reach the cup final.

FA Trophy
Final

And we bring it home!
Obviously it's not the best of trophies, but it is a trophy nontheless.

Also, it's the first Isuzu FA Trophy in the club's history, which is sill something.

Season Recap

The victory in FA Trophy Final sealed a very good first season for our club after everything we went through.
From losing all of our main players, getting relegated not one, not two, not even 3 or 4, but 5 divisions and seeing our finances reach the negative for multiple times, we still won 3 trophies, including the UEFA Super Cup, also a first in our history.

This stats are actually insane. We produced a total of 299 goals this season, with Liam Delap scoreing 59 alone.
However, you would be very wrong if you think he was our best scorer in the league. In fact, he only scored 25 league goals this season.

Our best league scorer was actually Will Dickson, who banged 30 goals for us in the league.
The reason is simple: I spared Liam Delap quite often for our cup matches, which left a lot of room for Will to score and I think he just kept scoring goal after goal.

As stated before, the youth intake was awful. Not even worth showing any of them at this point.

We have a lot of money in our club just waiting to be spent.
However, we can't use it until 2027, which is still 3 years away (for some reason I thought the transfer embargo was 5 years but I guess it's only 4?)

Final Thoughts

Overall it was a very good season for the Citizens and now we are focused on the next season in the Vanarama National League.
Hopefully we can get promoted to League Two with little trouble.

Keeping our main players is key and most of them have interestshown by top tier clubs.
I'm expecting to be bombarded with transfer offers and unhappy players but I hope we can keep at least the majority of them.​

 

[misterioBean]

1st July 2024
One step closer

I was debating if I should be doing an update right now since there's no major update.
I decided to do a quick and simple post just to share what happened in the last month.

Transfers Out

Lewis Florini left our club to join Southampton for 3.5M€.
He was our 3rd choice fpr the AP role in the midfield and didn't pay much last season. This season wasn't going to be any different so off he goes.

Reinforcements

Since we can't buy anyone this are not really transfers but we can still call them reinforcements.

Scott Carson will retire in 2 weeks so we had to bring a new backup keeper for Steffen.
Brits is the best looking one we had in our youth teams. No idea why his face is not showing, will have to check on my main PC later to see if it's a problem in this one.

Last season Kaboré got an injury for 4 weeks and I had to bring in Ezra Carrington.
Despite not looking very good he actually had some good performances and is probably going to be able to play well in the Vanarama.
He's only our 3rd choice RB though.

We also brought Isaac Smith for a couple of games when Katongo got injured so he ended up staying permanently on the 1st team.

Squad depth looks decent enough for the season and we still have some decent looking youth players in our U21's we can call if we need to.

Preseason

Only one game so far in oir preseason and we beat Bolton who currently play at League One so that's a good sign.

Finances

We are still rich despite losing 43M this month. I just noticed we are still paying for players we don't even have anymore since they all left the club last season. Not sure if it was supposed to be like this or if the database creator forgot to remove them but they are here and we will have to live with them for a lot more years since some go until 2029...

Final Thoughts

With nothing else to say I'll make a statement:

Go Citizens!​

 

[misterioBean]

2nd September 2024
Preseason and Start of a New Season

This year I decided to bring spice up our preseason a bit and play mostly teams from higher divisions.
Not very positive results there but we still scored a lot and we had 3 of our main players injured (Zack Steffen, Tommy Doyle and Liam Delap).

We did put some nice performances in most of the games we played so I wasn't too worried about the results. After all we were aiming to get our players some match sharpness and not chasing results.

The start of our VNL campaign was way better.
Very similar to last year, we keep getting those results and banging goals game after game.

Still too early in the season to say anything but I would be very disappointed if we didn't keep this form for the rest of the season.

Two players left us this summer but none of our key players.

Even though we had tons of offers for most of them, we were able to keep them all for the rest of the season.
I really don't want to lose any good players because we simply don't have the youth to afford it yet. Hoping this year's youth intake comes out a lot better. You would expect a club with our facilities and a pretty decent HoYD to pop some good youth but that was not the case.

Made some changes to the tactic just to try something different.
Nothing too radical but it may still be enough to change something. Guess we will wait and see.​

 

[misterioBean]

2nd January 2025
Some Unexpected Results

This season has not been what I expected. I'm not sure why but I can make a pretty good guess.

VNL

We kept our good run from the summer going into Septmeber winning all games we played.
However, in October we drew two games and we could have easily lost them both since we scored 3 of our 4 goals after the 90 minutes.
Overall good performances in the other 3 games.

In November we get back to the 100% win ratio we were used to, but in December we got two more draws.
Like before, good performances on the other games.

We also won the first game of the year right after new year's eve. However, we were forced to use some U21 payers due to physical restrains in our 1st team, which caused us to have a pretty hard time scoring. The only goal of the game came on the 92nd minute.

Crazy to say we are 27 games into the season and we still have 19 games left to be played in the league alone.

FA Cup
Fourth Qualifying Round

What . A . Game. Absolute madness in this one. Forced to go on a replay match but this was one of the most entertaining matched I've seen this save.

FA Cup
Fourth Qualifying Round Replay

Not so much in this one. Completely dominated the game and ended up coming away with the win.

FA Cup
First Round

First round against Charlton and first big win in the competition. This team got the best of us in the preseason but we got our revenge on a match that actually matters so that worked out quite nicely.

FA Cup
Second Round

Another good performance topped with a very good result.

FA Trophy
Third Round

One week later and we got the same result for the other cup competition, which we want to win once again.

We will play for all the competitions in the next 12 days and the match against Huddersfield is a tricky one. They are currently playing on the League One, so 2 divisions above us and they are fighting for a playoff spot. Let's see how it goes.

(I'm not sure why the other update wasn't posted earlier but it was supposed to be posted in the morning and not 30m ago...)​

 

[misterioBean]

2nd February 2025
Back to Good Form

VNL

We kept our good form in the league in the first month of the year.
It wasn't easy due to some external factors but we did it. I'll explain it in a bit.

Since the year started we know nothing but the winning feeling in the league which is great to see. It's worth noting that we went back to our trustworthy 4-3-3 DM tactic so it may have something to do with that but we could probably have won those games anyway.

FA Cup
Third Round

Good win for the FA Cup as well as we go through to the next fase. Faith decided we would face Chelsea on the Fourth Round of the competition, a real test for our team.

Isuzu FA Trophy
Fourth Round

Very good performance on the FA Trophy. We will face Rochdale in the next round.

FA Cup
Fourth Round

Despite our early goal, sadly it wasn't meant to be. Manchester City are once again eliminated from the FA Cup. Unfortunately we couldn't replicate last year's performance and reach the quarter finals.

Transfer Window

No players left the club this winter despite getting some big offers from Premier League clubs.
The main players were Callum Doyle, Tommy Doyle, James McAtee and Liam Delap.

Liam Delap was very hard to manage. He even deliver to our table his transfer request and turned our locker room against us.
With everything he was doing, I wasn't willing to sacrifice our team's harmony just because of him and Will Dickson showed that he can also score goals when called so I accepted a bid of 25M + 50% of a future transfer.

However, he refused that offer and no other club came in for him on the last days of the market.

Since I thought he was leaving, I called up James Hemming from our U18's who had already made a few appearances this season.
He was actually a player that came in from our youth intake last season but he developed more than it was predicted at first. He looks decent enough to play at this level and will definitely have a few more opportunities to show his ability.

Final Thoughts

As you may have noticed I changed my skin just because when I saw the backgrounds I really wanted to try them out and unfortunately Tato is not a translucid themed skin.
Still unsure if I'll keep them though but I'll give it a try until the end of the season and decide then.

Anyway I'll be back either after youth intake or at the end of the season...​

 

[misterioBean]

18th March 2025
Early Champions in the Vanarama

Well I guess the title says it all already.

Vanarama National League

Manchester City have been crowned champions of the Vanarama National League 2024/25.

Still 6 games to go in the league but our good form continued after our last update, only losing points against Rochdale playing at the Etihad.

Here's the league table right now.
I'm probably going to give some youngsters first team playtime on the last few games of the season.
I don't think we would be losing any of them anyway.

Isuzu FA Trophy
Fifth Round

We wnt through to the Quarter Finals of the FA Trophy after beating Rochdale at the Etihad, using our first team this time.

Isuzu FA Trophy
Quarter Finals

We also won in the Quarter Finals and are now set to play at the Semi Finals.
Hopefully we can retain the title this season.

We will be going against Hartlepool who are currently 3rd in our league.
If we win we will face either Fylde (6th) or Bath City (1st in the Vanarama National League South).

We have very good chances of winning the trophy once again.
It's not much but we'll take any silverware we can get.

Finances

Our board gave us a whooping budget of 95M€ for getting promoted to League 2, which is around 30M more than what we had.
It would be great if we didn't have the transfer embargo active for another 2 seasons but I guess we will eventually have a ton of money when it ends.

Youth Intake

Not really sure what I can say about this.
I was seariously expecting way more from our youth intakes. I mean we have top facilities, top youth recruitment and a pretty decent HoYD...

I don't think I've shown him but we hired Aidan Callan last season on a free transfer and he seems good enough to bring some good talent but the truth is he didn't deliver what he was expected to.

Final thoughts

Good second season in my books. No surprises whatsoever with us running away with the league.
Very disappointed with the youth intake though. With only one more year left in Callan's contract, I think it's time we look elsewhere in hopes we get better youth players in the upcoming seasons.

In fact it may be worth to have a good look at all our staff and hire some better people for our club.

I'll be back soon.​

 

[misterioBean]

13th May 2025
End of Season

Vanarama National League

As we expected, we won every single game since our last update without any issue even when we used youngsters.

Rochdale will be going up to League 2 with us next season.
It was another very good season in terms of goals scored. In total we scored 219 goals across all competitions, making it a 80 goal difference compared to last season performance.

Isuzu FA Trophy
Semi Finals

Looking at the match score you would probably think this was a close game but in reality it was anything but that. We had 20 more shots than Hartlepool and controlled the whole game but it only took a defensive mistake from our team for them to score the first goal. Thankfully it seemed like that was the needed spark for our team to score and we turned the score around in 15 minutes.

We go through to the Finals and we will be facing Fylde.

Isuzu FA Trophy
Finals

We retain the title after a good performance in the first half.
The only things happening in the 2nd half were Rico Lewis getting subbed off for picking up an injury on the 67th minute and Fylde going one player down at the 87th minute, but at that point their faith was already sealed.

With that win on the final day of the season we celebrated the 5th title for the club since we agreed to bring them back to the Premier League.
However, we are very aware that we will have to overcome bigger challenges with every season that finishes.
Yes, we had 2 very good years on the lower leagues, but starting next season we will be going up against stronger sides, teams who have good squads that can actually give us a fair challenge.

Ideally we would be able to get promoted once again next year, but we won't be going into every game thinking we would easily win.

Player Stats

Another class season from Delap scoring 51 goals across all competitions. Will Dickson didn't have as many chances this season and that was reflected in the goals he scored (11).

I also need to address the youngster James Hemming who scored 7 goals in 8 games played.

Despite Delap's goal tally, I think the season MVP award goes to Tommy Doyle, who scored 33 goals and provided another 23 assists, making a total of 55 goal contributions this season.

James McAtee also had 40 goal contributions, Oscar Bobb had 39 and Stevanovic had 38 so I think we can be very happy about our midfield. Even our backup wingers (Kaiky and Sarmiento) and our WBs had good numbers this season.

Team Records

A lot of records beaten this season, some of them were easier than others but are still records. The attendance records are probably never getting out of our hands though.

Player Records

Only 2 players joining the record list for the Vanarama this year: Liam Delap for most goals in a match and Oscar Bobb for Highest Average Rating.

Final Thoughts​

Another good season in our quest to get back to the Premier League, but like I said before the real challenge starts now.
We still have 2 more seasons in which we won't be able to bring in any players and we will start to face teams that can actually compare to us in terms of player quality. Yes we do have a very good first team lineup but we don't have a lot of depth to our squad when we talk about quality.

We do have some decent looking youngsters still in our youth teams but they are not ready to come into the first team and be good options against the stronger sides when needed.

We also have all of our main players being hunted by clubs in higher divisions and we may not be able to keep them all. I can confirm that Liam Delap will not be a Manchester City player next season since he refuses to renew his contract which will expire in 2026 so we will try to make some money seeling him.

Tommy Doyle's contract also ends next season and he doesn't want to renew since he has interest shown by other clubs so it may be worth selling his as well since the other option is losing him for free.

 

[leckuno]

Gutting with how bad the youth intakes have been as I thought you would of still be bringing through some future stars

 

[misterioBean]

Gutting with how bad the youth intakes have been as I thought you would of still be bringing through some future stars

Maybe being in lower leagues has some kind of influence in the quality of intakes but either way Callan is out

 

[misterioBean]

6th July 2025
Though Year in the Horizon

First of all, seems like our season wasn't over yet. In fact, we had one more competition yet to be played before we reached the 2025/26 preseason...

FIFA Club World Championship

So it seems like this competition will change it's format in 2025 and will become a 32 team competition and Manchester City is 1 of the 3 English teams who will be playing it.

I forgot to screenshot it, but our group was composed by Barcelona S.C. (Ecuador), Kashima Antlers (Japan) and RB Leipzig.

FIFA Club World Championship
Group Phase Gameday 1

We win our 1st game 2-1 in a match in which all games were scored in the first 30 minutes of the game.

FIFA Club World Championship
Group Phase Gameday 2

More even performance on the 2nd game with Robertson picking up the spotlight and scoring both our goals.

FIFA Club World Championship
Group Phase Gameday 2

Not really sure what happened here but we'll take it. We go through the group phase finishing 1st in our group.

Next match: Club Léon (México)

FIFA Club World Championship
Second Round

Another 4-2 win to send us through to the Quarter Finals against Bayern Muchen, the toughest game so far.

FIFA Club World Championship
Quarter Finals

Well we seem to dominate the German teams. What a performance from our team.

Next match: Liverpool

FIFA Club World Championship
Semi Finals

Sadly, we can't beat Liverpool and were actually completely destroyed in this game.

Next match: Chelsea

FIFA Club World Championship
Third Place Playoff

Unfortunate result in the penalty shootouts against Chelsea in a more balanced game compared to the Liverpool one.

Overall I think we did pretty good and way better than anyone expected.

Transfers Out

I did say both of this players were set to leave the club and they didn't take long to do so.
We will be getting around 30M€ on both deals so it's better than just having their contracts running out.

Stevanovic is another player set to leave us. His contract is expiring and when I tried to renew it he failed to get a work permit and decided to not sign the contract. He's currently in talks with Luton Town for a fee of 9M€.

Kaiky and Sarmiento are both of the same positions in which they can't sign new deals because they had their work permits rejected.

Reinforcements

As we still can't bring in new players, I had to go to our youth teams once again.

The first player I brought up was the CB Harrison Parker since he was better than Isaac Smith and Katongo.

For the miedfield, McAtee will be playing the B2B position left by Doyle and Robertson will pick the AP spot.
We still have Micah Richards as a backup for McAtee so we needed someone to replace Robertson and Nico O'Reilly is the best option we have.

With Stevanovic leaving and Kaiky and Sarmiento's current contract situation I decided to bring in 2 wingers to develop them and give them more playtime. Hendersen-Hall will be Bobb's new backup.

For the opposite side I'll be playing Kaiky this season as our main guy and brought in Brooklyn Nfonkeu to be his backup. Sarmiento's development is basically none at this point so Nfonkeu will most likely have a lot of chances this season.

Squad

Comparing to last years, our squad doesn't seem that good. We lost 3 of our best players and will have to endure it.

Finances

Still rich and unable to use the money we have.​

 

[misterioBean]

4rd September 2025
Preseason and First Few Steps into League 2

Transfers Out

Like I said in the last post, Filip Stevanovic left the club after not getting a work permit for our club. He joined Luton for 9M€ but he also did not get a work permit for them. He is still able to play for them since he has been allocated to a ESC work permit place.

Other minor transfers happened as well but nothing too major. All of the players were in our youth teams and had no potential to make it to the 1st team.

We also released some players whose contracts expired and weren't good enough.

Preseason

With the FIFA Club World Championship taking place in June and early July we didn't have much time to get much going. I counted those games as preseason as well.

In the end, it was a good preseason and did get the job done in terms of getting our players match fitness.

EFL League Two

We started our league campaign with 5 wins and 14 goals scored and some very good performances.

That puts us at the top of the table, at least for now. Still a long way to go as we still have 41 games ahead of us.

EFL Cup
First Round

Good win against Preston in the EFL Cup.

Next game: Schrewsbury

EFL Cup
Second Round

Very good performance in the 2nd Round of the Cup and are going into the next stage, which will be a much bigger challenge.

Next game: West Ham

EFL Trophy
Norhthern Section Group D

Gameday 1

Tough game against Leicester U21's but we ended up beating them 2-1 with all goals being scored in 13 minutes.
Was a boring game to watch though.

We still have Harrogate Town and Chesterfield to go against in this competition but I expect us to finish on top.

Finances

We are getting closer to being able to use all this money. Only 2 seasons left on the transfer embargo.
We probably won't be spending that much tough. Best case scenario we'll be playing Championship football by the time we get there.

Final thoughts

I may have underestimate our team's ability to play at this level.
I really don't want our performances to go downhill but I think we may be the strongest team in the league and we should get a promotion once again.​

 

[misterioBean]

5th November 2025
God's Work

EFL League Two

We are doing well in the league apart from those two draws in October against Wrexham and Carlisle.

Still 1st in the league with a 10 point lead and 1 game behind the 2nd place so I think we are doing very well.

EFL Cup
Third Round

We were able to beat West Ham in the EFL Cup with a very good performance. Not only did we beat them but also dominated the game.

Next game: Newcastle United

EFL Trophy
Northern Section Group D

Gameday 2

We also beat Harrogate Town for the EFL Trophy and keep our dpot on the top of the group.

EFL Cup
Fourth Round

We also beat Newcastle on the EFL Cup. We dominated the entire game but they held us all the way to the penalty shootout.

Absolutely thrilled with the results we are getting so far in the competition but our run may reach it's endline in the Quarter Finals.

Next game: Liverpool...

FA Cup
First Round

Easy game in the first game of the FA Cup when we met Jamal Baptiste once again.
We didn't held ourselves though and destroyed them 6-0.

Next game: Wimbledon​

 

[misterioBean]

1st January 2026
Always the Same Outcome

EFL League Two

Only 1 draw in our last 11 games to end the year in a good league form.
I have to mention the match against Chesterfield in which we were down 2-0 very early and got the comeback with 5 goals scored in the last 45 minutes.

We are competely dominating the league and already have a 17 point leat to the 2nd place Wrexham.
Let's keep it this way shall we?

EFL Trophy
Northern Section Group D

Gameday 3

We finished our EFL Trophy group stage with a 3-0 win against Chesterfield and are set to play against Rochdale in the next round.

FA Cup
Second Round

Good win against Winbledon in the FA Cup.

Next game: Brentford

EFL Trophy
Norhtern Section Second Round

We had a hard time beating Rochdale in this one, even using our 1st team players.
We got lucky on the penalty shootout.

Next game: Stockport County

EFL Cup
Quarter Final

You know, in Portugal we have a saying: "Pedra no meu sapato" (Rock in my shoe). In English, I think it's the equivalent as saying "A thorn in my side".

Liverpool is both the rock and the thorn because man, we can't get a good result against them. Yes we played well and went all the way to penalties, but we ended up losing the shootout and got eliminated from the EFL Cup.

It was a good run though.

Youth Intake Preview

I don't even know if this is better or the same as the last few intakes we had, but it's still not good enough.
​

 

[misterioBean]

2nd March 2026
Nothing Lasts Forever

EFL League Two

Yes, we finally lost a game in the league. After 3 seasons with no losses, Crawley Town came into the Etihad and scored a goal on the counter-attack and then defended their lead with everything they had. Unfortunately, we weren't on our best performances and couldn't get one past them.

We also drew a couple of games but in the middle of everything we were able to secure automatic promotion to League 1.

Good to be getting promotion with still 2 months left in the season.
We'll worry about it when it's over, for now we want to be crowned champions and will aim to win every game left.

FA Cup
Third Round

Not a good result but we were facing a Premier League team and a draw is not the worst scenario.
A replay will take place in some days.

EFL Trophy
Northern Section Third Round

Completely different result right after the draw against Brentford.
We go through to the next round.

FA Cup
Third Round Replay

Well that did not go well.
We lost our main striker for 4 weeks and got eliminated of the FA Cup.

EFL Trophy
Quarter Final

Good win against Wigan on the EFL Trophy and we will be going to the Semi Final to play against Portsmouth.

Transfers Out

Unfortunately, we had to sell Rico Lewis after he handed in a transfer request. We got 17M + 50% of a future transfer fee and we'll aim to keep including this clause in every player we sell.

Finances

Our budgets keep going up and we can't do anything about it.
Only one more year left on the embargo. I knwo it's only the 3rd season but not being able to buy players takes a lot of the fun out of it, specially when our youth intakes keep being so bad. We didn't get this year's youth intake yet but I'm not hopeful.​

 

[misterioBean]

18th May 2026
End of Season

EFL League Two

Good run to end our season despite losing yet another game.
We had some big name injuries and fitness issues and we just weren't in our best days.

This was another season with 100+ goals in the league. This time we scored 135 goals and conceded 32, finishing with a goal difference of 103 and 122 points.

Wrexham, Swindon and MK Dons are all coming up to League 1 with us next season.

EFL Trophy
Semi Final

Good win in the Semi Final against Portsmouth and with that we earned our spot at Wembley.
We'll be playing against Plymouth.

EFL Trophy
Final

And just like that we won another trophy for the club, the first in the club's history as well.

Player Stats

Both our strikers scored a lot of goals this season. Very surprised about James Hemming being the top scorer this season though as he was not our main striker. Will Dickson didn't perform as much as we would expect but at least we have a very reliable and consistent player in Hemming.

Our midfielders are all on the top 10 as well, along woth our main wingers. Very good to see Henderson-Hall (Kaiky's backup) scoring as well.

In terms of assists we have all our midfielders wingers and WB's in the top 10 which is amazing to see.
Rico Lewis, our main RWB until January, had only been able to provide 4 assists and scored 6 goals and Kaboré took the opportunity when he left and helped the team with 21 goal contributions.

Youth Intake

This year's youth intake was slightly better compared to the last few we had but still not as good as we would expect.

Random Stuff

We got offered a new contract in the club after our last 3 seasons, getting back to back to back promotions.

Can we get promotion yet again next season and reach the Championship?
Hopefully we do, but let's not get ahead of ourselves yet.​