I havent had the best of starts to FM15. My attempted save with Athletic Bilbao was firstly accidentally deleted and then when I restarted it it got corrupted with regular crash dumps so I have decided to manage my true love - Newcastle United.
I have supported Newcastle from a distance for nearly 25 years, since I was 8 years old and I have been a few times to matches and the like.
The aim is quite simple - to turn Newcastle United into a global force in world football!!!!
I am using a custom database with all the latest managerial changes and transfers and regarding Newcastle all I have changed is to add Rangers as an affiliated club, replacing St. Mirren.
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CLUB INFO
Founded - 1892 Stadium - St. James Park (capacity: 52,405) Nicknames- The Magpies, The Toon Fierce Rivals- Sunderland (Tyne - Wear derby) League Championship Winners - 4 times FA Cup Wins- 6 times UEFA Fairs Cup Winners - 1 Record Transfer Fee Paid - $16m to Real Madrid for Michael Owen Record Transfer Fee Received - $35m from Liverpool for Andy Carroll (ha ha)
Good luck mate , I had a save with Newcastle which corrupted - my advice is do not loan out Abeid he was my young player of the year with Moussa Sissoko winning player of the year!
I arrived at the club with a lot of pre-conceived ideas and opinions regarding both the playing and coaching staff. I knew that we have some very talented players both in the first team picture and coming through the ranks so it is all about finding a successful gameplan to get the best results.
We have a strong keeper in Tim Krul, a solid centre half in Fabricio Coloccini and two good attacking full backs in the shape of Daryl Janmaat and Davide Santon. Cheick Tiote and Moussa Sissoko are two physically strong midfielders while Siem De Jong and Remy Cabella are there to create the opportunities for whoever plays up front.
Youth wise we have Ayoze Perez, Rolando Aarons, Massadio Haidara, Mehdi Abeid and Adam Armstrong all wanting a chance and it is my aim to get them a lot of minutes during the season.
Annoyingly however is the fact that we have some top quality players away on loan as Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa and Hatem Ben Arfa would easily be first choices and Karl Darlow and Jamaal Lascelles would add further depth to the squad.
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PLAYERS IN
It was obvious that if there was one place I needed to strengthen it was in the centre of defence so I brought in Eder Alvarez Balanta from River Plate for $6.5m. He was immense in last years game so if he is half as good in this years game I will be happy. View attachment 325890
The others were all youngsters. Josh Brownhill came in from Preston for $2m and will be in my U21 squad while Delle Ali was brought in, and loaned back to, MK Dons for $2.7m and Humam Tariq was signed from some team in Iraq for $700,000 and was loaned out to my new feeder side Red Star Belgrade. View attachment 325885View attachment 325884View attachment 325883
When getting Red Star as a feeder side I noticed that they had a decent looking striker in Luka Jovic and I paid $2m to sign him when he turns 18.
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PLAYERS OUT
Gabriel Obertan was shipped out to Burnley for $2.1m and Kevin Mbabu was sold to Sion for $83,000. Other than that it was all loan deals including Gael Bigirimana going to Rangers and Adam Campbell going to Oldham Athletic.
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STAFF CHANGES
I immediately got rid of my head of youth development, assistant manager and several other members of my backroom team. In came Steve Clarke as my new assistant and Phil Cannon as my head of youth development.
Other new members of my backroom team include Rene Meulensteen, John Murtough, David Platt, Jeff Vetere and Vic Bettinelli. Along with Clarke I brought in fellow Scots Arthur Albiston and Tony McAndrew to the club.
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MY FIRST XI
Krul
Santon - Alvarez Balanta - Coloccini - Janmaat
Tiote - Sissoko
Cabella (LW) - De Jong - Gouffran (RW)
Ferreyra
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BOARD PROMISES
The board insisted that I had to sign young players for the first team which I was happy with but I also added that I wanted to play attacking football while keeping posession and to develop youngsters to come through.
The board agreed and agreed to improve both the youth and training facilities.
Facundo Ferreyra - a decent start!!! AUGUST
Newcastle United 6 (Ferreyra 11, 60pen, 69pen, 73, De Jong 51, Gouffran 62)
Swansea City 0
WHAT A START!!!!!! Granted we were helped by the fact that we got 2 penalties but we were terrific here as my team thrashed a decent Swansea side. Ferreyra introduced himself to English football in fine style!!
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Crystal Palace 2 (Chamakh 63, Krul og90)
Newcastle United 4 (Alvarez Balanta 30, Gouffran 32, Ferreyra 43, De Jong 49)
Another good win as we look to be very dangerous going forward. Remy Cabella had 2 second half goals disallowed!!!
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Capital One Cup 2nd Round
Newcastle United 3 (Aarons 33, 60, Gouffran 75) Millwall 0
The youngsters got a chance here and I was especially keen to see how Aarons and Armstrong got on. Aarons was great while Armstrong was average.
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Newcastle United 2 (Gouffran 60, Vertonghen og86) Manchester United 1 (Mata 69)
GET IN!!!! I hate Man Utd so this victory is extremely pleasing. Gouffran had an early goal disallowed but we won it thanks to a fortunate own goal. Unfortunately Siem De Jong got injured and will be out for a few months.
I am delighted with the way that we have started as we won all 4 games and very impressively too!!! We started the season by thrashing Swansea 6-0 and then put 4 past Palace before beating Manchester United in a hard fought victory. Millwall were easily beaten in the league cup too.
Yoann Gouffran has scored in every game and has impressed while Facundo Ferreyra has been immense as he scored 4 goals on his debut. I made a decision to spend the remainder of my transfer budget on Brownhill, Alli and Tariq rather than spend the $6m to buy him outright from Shakhtar Donetsk - hopefully I wont regret that!!!!!!
Thanks for the comments guys - I have played the next game and thats it. It always used to crash on the final game of August before so all is looking good!!!
Stoke City 0
Newcastle United 2 (Gouffran 59, Sissoko 89)
We were fortunate to come out with all 3 points here (Stoke had 29 shots to our 5) but I am happy anyway as I had to play a couple of youngsters in Ayoze and Aarons. Gouffran has scored in every game so far for me.
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Newcastle United 1 (Gouffran 90) West Bromwich Albion 0
Gouffran does it again!!!! He scored a great header from the penalty spot in stoppage time to give us the victory here.
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Capital One Cup 3rd Round
Newcastle United 5 (Shawcross og8, Alvarez Balanta 39, 67, Aarons 49, 90) Stoke City 3 (Palacios 10, Alvarez Balanta og47, Arnautovic 83)
This was an entertaining game with Eder Alvarez Balenta scoring a hat-trick of sorts lol. Rolando Aarons excelled once again while Gouffran failed to score for the first time.
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Arsenal 2 (Mertesacker 6, Giroud 64)
Newcastle United 3 (Ferreyra 46pen, Ayoze 78, Cisse 83)
WOW!!!! I cant quite believe it!!! We quickly went a goal down and then they had a goal disallowed which proved to be key. We traded goals in the 2nd half and were struggling but then I made a triple substitution which worked a treat as Cisse and Ayoze came off the bench to score.
Our fantastic start to the campaign continued this month as once again we won all of our games with the most notable being the away victory against Arsenal. They may be struggling in mid-table but to win was a great achievement anyway.
I loaned out Curtis Good and Shane Ferguson during the month to give them some game time and put them out onto the shop window.
Next month will be trickier as we face Liverpool twice and Chelsea too
Chelsea 4 (Cuadrado 6, Schurrle 45, Diego Costa 60, Filipe Luis 69)
Newcastle United 3 (Cabella 17, Aarons 25, Gouffran 65)
Our first defeat of the season!!! We were ahead at one point and I admit that it would be pretty stupid had we held on lol
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Newcastle United 1 (Williamson 75) Liverpool 2 (Balotelli 55, 86)
Successive defeats is not good and although it was undeserved I can take it on the chin considering we have already defeated Man Utd and Arsenal.
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Burnley 1 (Ings 12) Newcastle United 4 (Ferreyra 20, Coloccini 22, Gouffran 64, Ayoze 75)
It was imperative that we won this game and we did so convincingly after we fell behind early on.
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Capital One Cup 4th Round Liverpool 3 (Skrtel 18, Borini 38, Lambert 53)
Newcastle United 1 (Gouffran 52)
Our 2nd defeat to Liverpool this month and I have no complaints as we didnt deserve to go through. However Gouffran had a goal disallowed that would have made the score 1-1.
This month was very tough as we lost 3 out of our 4 matches which included our exit of the Capital One Cup. That being said our defeats came at the hands of Chelsea and Liverpool so there is no shame there.
I noticed during the month that I forgot to register Davide Santon for the league so he will not be able to play first team football until January which is annoying but I suppose it gives another month of first team football to Massadio Haidara as Santon wont be available until December.
I loaned out Haris Vuckic this month and managed to get Massadio Haidara to sign a new contract as well as Hatem Ben Arfa who is out on loan at Hull City.
Congrats on the quality start Klippy. I often rely on a 4-2-3-1 formation yet I am struggling to find consistency at the moment. Are you operating with two DMs or two CMs? It would be great if you could please post your team instructions/player roles and see where I am going wrong! Cheers.
well i do have a newcastle save and story but i may have to stop my story lol as the king of fm returns...keep playing Ferreyra he is an animal 56 goals in 60 and in 3 season sold him for 40m
