MrTini23
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Non-League to Legend
After the best part of six months editing the 2013/14 Retro Database for FM24, it is now time for me to take a break from editing and finally play some FM24. After successful spells with Warrington Town, Southport and Wrexham (twice) in FM20, FM21, FM22 and FM23 respectively, I have once again decided to delve into the lower leagues of the English period. For a long time, I have been undecided on which team to manage in FM24 having already played as a lot of my local clubs. I had originally decided to play as Wrexham, however, Youtuber Lollujo has inspired me to try a 'Non-League to Legend' challenge with a local club.
The Rules
Based roughly on Lollujo's Non-League to Legend series.
These are the rules I'll be playing to.
1. Manage in the lowest possible league and the closest possible team to your house.
2. Every decision is based on realism. e.g. if a club comes in for me, would it be viable financially? Would I want to move?
3. Try and use scouting recommendations were possible.
4. Play with attribute masking on.
5. Try and keep staff consistent unless there is an obvious issue.
The Goals
The main goal is to get to the top of world football but I've also set myself a couple of other targets to keep the save fresh and interesting.
Youth Development
One of my main aims is to develop youth as much as I physically can. This doesn't mean I'll have a team of kids but I will use younger players where I can. I also want to have at least 1 youth academy graduate in every matchday squad, much like Sir Alex Ferguson did with Man Utd. I won't be able to do this for the first season.
30 or below
Throughout the save, I want to avoid having any player over the age of 30 unless they are a club legend. I won't be able to achieve this straight away but I want to be achieving it within 2-3 seasons. This is going to be particularly challenging in the lower leagues where you sometimes need experienced players to succeed.
The Challenge Begins
Normally in Non-league to Legend Lollujo will select the nearest team to his house in the lowest tier of the Vanilla version of the game. I did intend to do this but after some research, I found out that the team would be CHESTER. For context, I am a Wrexham fan so that is a big no thanks from me. For that reason, I am going to differ slightly from the way Lollujo does things. Instead of using the Vanilla version of the game, I am going to be using the excellent Level 10 database by DanFMDatabases on FMScout.
That means that the lowest playable league is now the North West Counties League Division One South and as luck would have it, there is a team in that league that play down the road from where I live. That team is Ashville FC.
Fun Fact. In my previous job, I helped to design and create the signage that is at the home ground, The Ray Parker Stadium. Yes, those are my shoes in the picture!
Here we go, the journey to footballing glory begins. How far can we take Ashville? Where will eventually end up in our career? Let's find out.
The Club
Ashville is a semi-professional club in its second season at this level after joining in 2022. Last season, the club finished a respectable 12th in the league. FM lists Ashville as only having 248 followers which is incredibly harsh. They have over 5k overall! Twitter
The Ray Parker can hold over 1,000 people albeit with very limited seating capacity. I think that's very good for this level of football. All the other facilities are as you'd expect for a level 10 club and will be something we look to improve on should we manage to advance up the pyramid.
The Finances
Finances-wise we aren't exactly laden with cash, which is to be expected at this level of football.
We are way under when it comes to the budgets so there is room to improve the squad if needs be. That 1k transfer budget will be going straight into the wage budget.
This is a little worrying. Our projection for the next few seasons suggests we are going to struggle financially. I am assuming that doesn't include prize money for competitions so doing as well as possible is going to be vital.
The Objectives
The board are only looking for us to attempt to avoid relegation and to be competitive in the cup. I think we can do a lot better than that in all honesty.
The supporters are pretty much the same as the board in terms of expectations.
Interestingly, the media are a lot more positive about our chances for the upcoming season. They believe that we have what it takes to win the league with the squad we have, going as far as labeling us the favourites.
The Squad
Here is the squad that we have to start with. I think it's very good for this level and doesn't really need improving all that much. To be honest, I think we could probably look at trimming it to save on the cash. The plan is to see what our solitary scout can find in terms of improvements and go from there.
