New Year New Life: The Story of a Journeyman

[LutterworthFox]

2025/26 Pre-Season (Red Star FC - France)
I didn't want to make too many changes to the squad but due to things out of my control (players wanting to leave and refusing to sign new contracts) I had to make a few signings and do a bit of rejigging!
Outs

A lot of outs and as you can see a few fees as well. Cros, Thales, Sahin, Berger and Dagba all asked to leave as they wanted to win trophies, I didn't want them lowering the morale so happily let them go. The others weren't required and were just taking up wages.
Ins

Only 6 and 3 of those were loans, I'm was quite happy with what I had left after all the outs but needed to bolster the ranks a bit more and fill some gaps. Click the players name below for their profile.

• Khaled Boudib
• Serge Ngome
• Stanislas Robert
• Andre Hansen
• Sandro Pinheiro
• Fiston Otieno

Squad

Quite a few changes but overall it looks good, we have good cover in all positions.
Pre-Season Friendlies

I played mainly easy friendlies with a little 2 game tour of England. As you can see it went very very well!
Odds/Expectations

6th is about right but I fully expect us to be challenging at that end of the table and hopefully pushing the automatic places. The boards expectations are a little lower which is nice and helpful.
So let's hope we get off to a good start, wish me luck!

 

[LutterworthFox]

August/September 2025

A busy few months but a really good, solid start. Lot's of clean sheets which is nice but it's taken us a while to get our goalscoring boots on!

Running away with it already! Let's hope we can keep it up.

 

[LutterworthFox]

October/November 2025

The decent start continues even though we lost out first league game.

The gap has shrunk by a point but we are still looking good.

 

[LutterworthFox]

December 2025/January 2026

Sorry for the delay in updates guys, been really ill the past few days that I couldn't even play FM, but I'm back and hoping to get a few games played today and over the next few days.

Form has dipped a bit and defensively we don't look as good. Only 2 wins in the League from 6 games but only 1 defeat.

Still top but only just! Need to start winning some games now and trying to increase that gap.

 

[LutterworthFox]

February/March 2026

Another decent few months but those 2 defeats has closed the gap at the top.

7 games to go, promotion is close but we need to keep up the form or the chasing pack will be closing in.
I also made a new signing right at the end of March, this guy popped up in my inbox and after a bit of scouting realised he looking flipping amazing! Not bad for a free transfer.

 

[LutterworthFox]

April/May 2026 + End of Season Review

A good run of wins at the start of the month sealed promotion with 4 games to go. The defeat dropped us down to 2nd but 3 draws at the end of the season was enough for us to end up Champions.

After promotion was sorted the board gave me their budgets, not massively high especially as we have a tycoon owner but decent enough to strengthen the side a little

Here is the playing squad:

Here are who I feel were my 2 key players:

Here is the end of season review screens:

So we are into Ligue 1, next season the plan is to just steer clear of relegation, hopefully we won't be anywhere near going down. A season of stability and then who know where we can go from there.

 

[LutterworthFox]

2026/27 Pre-Season - Red Star FC (France)
In's
I tried to do as little business as I could. The squad from last year deserved a chance but there were some weak areas that needed addressing

Here are the players: (click the player name below for their profile)

• Issam Kissi - Striker
• Andreas Moullakis - Centre Back
• Nacer Ghezzal - Goalkeeper
• Guilherme - Right Back
• Djibril Kasse - Central Midfield
• Alexandre Giorgi - Right Wing

I'm really pleased with the signings and the squad looks good now. There were no major out, only one player left for a fee (Winger Mousset for £1.1m), all others were released or their contracts ran out.

The squad looks decent, we have cover in all areas and will be trying to employ my 4231 tactic, reverting a 41221 in the tougher games.
Pre-Season Friendlies

Odd/Expectations

So there are 4 of us all on 1000-1, only 2 teams go down so we have a good chance of survival as long we start well and the new players bed into the tactic well.

 

[LutterworthFox]

August/September 2026

WHAT A START!!!!!!!!!!!! All the games were tight but my god have we done well! Bring on the big boys!

Champions League here we come!

 

[LutterworthFox]

October/November 2026

So this is going a lot better than expected, 2 defeats, 1 expected, 1 not so but 5 wins in 8 games is fantastic!

We have dropped a place but 5th is amazing. Don't think we will be going down!

 

[dani3w]

Just caught back up on the last couple of pages, landed on your feet taking the Red Star job especially with the tycoon chairman, well done on promotion and a top start to Ligue 1

 

[LutterworthFox]

Just caught back up on the last couple of pages, landed on your feet taking the Red Star job especially with the tycoon chairman, well done on promotion and a top start to Ligue 1

Thanks mate, hopefully we can keep the good start up and push for a European spot, then I think it's one more season and move on. I always like to keep moving especially in these kind of saves!

 

[LutterworthFox]

December 2026/January 2027

A busy few months and after a really good start form has collapsed mainly due to our lack of goals all of a sudden.

Somehow we are still 5th but teams behind us are closing in.

 

[LutterworthFox]

February/March 2027

Absolutely fallen apart!

All the way down in 10th now although it's still quite tight above us

 

[LutterworthFox]

April/May 2026 + End of Season Review

We gained a little ground but in the end it wasn't enough to get back in the European spots. A fantastic achievement ending in the top half in our first season but it's tinged with disappointment seeing as how well we started.

Look at the gap at the top! There is no way we will be challenging those for a while. I'm going to give it another season here and see if we can win a trophy and if not move, BUT if i job comes up at either PSG or Monaco then I'm going for it, just for one season then move on to my next bordering nation.
Here is the squad that partook in our brilliant season:

And here are the end of season review screens:

Finally some news on me as a manager. I now have my Continental Pro Licence and my rep is at 60%, I must be challenging for bigger and better jobs now but we will see!

 

[LutterworthFox]

2027/28 Pre-Season - Red Star FC (France)

A squad revamp was needed after last season's capitulation, so there are lots of in's and out's.

Out's

All fringe players that just didn't perform or play last season.
In's

The board had given me a tasty £9m budget and we blew it all! Midfield and defence was where the most work was needed, that's where I did most of my business and bought a couple of extras as well. Click the players name below for their profile:

• Jedrzej Piotrowski
• Mostafa Jafari
• Giorgi Guruli
• Andrea Cosenza
• Paulo Bernardo
• Jean Ruiz
• Daniel Muge
• Lindani Mngomeni

After those signings here is my squad for the new season:

Pre-Season Friendlies

Odd/Expectations

1000-1 again! I'm sure we can do better than that! The board fully expect us to do better and have set us the rather daunting challenge of mid-table.

 

[LutterworthFox]

Hi everybody

Well I have some sad news, on Tuesday my laptop had an absolute meltdown and decided to turn off and never turn back on. I've spent the week trying to fix it by means of taking it to my local laptop-fixing-man and as much as they have managed to make my laptop useable again I have lost everything, my hard-drive has wiped itself (thanks for that) and everything has gone. Like a muppet I forgot to activate the steam cloud for this save and have no back-ups so it's over, the save has gone (anyone know where the crying face emoji is??)

So FM17 is re-installed and I want to start a new save, I need a new challenge, I'm always one for a journeyman save whether that's the Pentagon Challenge, Alphabet Challenge, etc so I want your thoughts on what new journeyman challenge I should do, your suggestions would be amazing. One thing I don't want to do is add any extra leagues and nations, I will just use the default database

Sorry to let you all down!