The Challenge Wheel - Viking Quest

[misterioBean]

1st September 2024

Before showing the schedule let me just show you some of the events that took place before the game with Bodo/Glimt.

Our job was being questioned for the first time since we arrived to Stavenger. I was mad when I saw this. I was able to give this team 2 back to back titles when they were not even title contenders. We are still in the 1st place of the league this season and our supporters have the audacity to be questioning our last few results. I mean yes we are playing badly and not getting results but still...

Worse than that was our board agreed with them and arranged an emergency meeting for us to buy someone better for the RW position with around 2M in the bank.

Schedule

I took that personally and since then we only dropped points twice.

In between those matches we had the UCL Playoffs against Young Boys.

We were able to get a draw at Stavanger after Ryste scored immediately after they scored. This was a very balanced game and could have gone either way.

In Switzerland on the other hand Young Boys completely dominated us and qualified for the UCL League Phase, throwing us to the UEL League Phase so it's still better than last season in which we were on the UECL.

UEL Fixtures

We have a very difficult fixture list though and there's probably only 3 teams in which we could expect a good result. Maybe we are surprised though but I won't have my hopes up too much.

Next Fixtures

Our schedule got a bit of an update here with those fixtures and we will have to find a way to get our team to be fully capable phsyically for every game. Good luck for us.

Finances

Finances are looking good though so at least there's that.​

 

[misterioBean]

13th December 2024

It's time for the end of season review of another season in Stavenger. Between competing for the first time in an European competition for first time, being eliminated from the UCL, the UEL and reaching the Semi Finals of the UECL and falling to the Young Boys taking a leap to the UEL on the same calendar year, we should be feeling pretty good about our journey so far.
Let's see how this second half of the 3rd season went down.

Schedule and League Table

After the summer we had a pretty good run except for the 3-1 loss to Aalesund but to be fair we did have to use a completely changed team due to the proximity between games and some injuries that ocurred.

You can also see we are having an okay run on the Europa League despite our first expectations. We only lost to Brighton and I can say there's only one match in which we should have won, against Riga. Every other result so far it's good. We still have Napoli and PSV to face though and those are probably in the top 3 worst teams we were facing besides obviously Brighton.

For the third time in a row, Viking FK are the Norwegian champions... and by a good margin may I add.
Also I find it super funny how Haugesund won the NM SAS Braathens Cup and threw Molde to the UECL despite finishing in 12th.
Football can be very surprising sometimes. Hopefully next year we can add the NM SAS cup to the Viking trophy cabinet.

Europa League Phase

We currently sit in the 12th position in the UEL and should secure a place to the next stage (hopefully).
Also shout out to Valerenga who can still make the teams going through and contribute to the nation's coefficient.

Our team only had 1 week of vacations though because we will be playing both Napoli and PSV in January. I'll make sure to give them a couple more weeks before them though and maybe even another 2 after those games since I don't expect the new season to begin before March.

Team of the Season

The Accolades

I'm not sure why Nordas was the signing of the season over Ryste but for me Ryste was the best player the whole season. Tripic and Tangen were very good too and the summer newcomer Gronbaek was simply class in our mdifield.

We also had a lot of players joining the best Viking 11 this season which is always a good indicative of the emerging quality of our team.

Other Stuff

The board accepted to improve the training facilities once again and the junior coaching budget. Unfortunately there's no option to ask for an improvement on the youth facilities yet so that will remain unchanged.

We finish this section with a horrible look at our Youth Intake preview for next season. I don't even want to think about this and I just hope it won't be as bad as it seems.

Finances

The board gave us a bit more money to spend this season and with nearly 13M€ available I think we will be able to increase our team's strenght slightly. Obviously not enough to be very competitive on an European level but at least to ensure the continuity of our presence on those competitions.

In terms of our team there are a couple of players who I intend to offload next season but that's a topic for the next update.​

 

[misterioBean]

1st April 2025

After our last season we saw our world reputation go up once again. We are still not the most reputable club in Norway tho.

Transfers Out

A lot of players left the club before the new season.

Djibril Diop was not getting much playing time and wanted to leave.
Urbancic didn't develop as much as we wanted and ended up leaving the club too.
Hendriksson left on a free after 3 seasons with us.
Lars Ranger also didn't develop as much as I hope and we decided to make some money with him before his contract expired.
Sodal went from being a good prospect to a expandable player in the time we was here and never really lived up to his potential even with all the loans.
Auklend is in the same situation but noone wanted to buy him so he ended up leaving on another loan.
Fiksdal was losing a lot of potential and with his contract expiring next year I decided to sell him before his value droped even more.

Transfers In
​

Jhon Kitolano - Free

​

Our replacement for Urbancic is this 25 year old who looks a bit better except on his mentals which could be a bit better.

Markus Karlsson - 1.5M

And right on the other side of our defense we found Ranger's replacement in the 21 year old youngster from Hammarby. Mentally way better than Ranger, he only loses on a few technicals and not much more.

Sindre Walle Egeli - 275k

Yet another youngster from Sandefjord, the winger joins his brother Vetle who joined us last season. He was much cheaper and looks decent with a high progression margin yet to achieve.

Schedule

Very good preseason with a lot of European games in between. As you can see, we were able to beat Slovan Bratislava even with a 2-1 loss in the first leg.

We also beat Braga twice to qualify for the Europa League Quarter Finals.

We won't have an easy job as we will face Napoli once again if we want to reach even higher stages.

On top of that, we will face them as we start our new season which may complicate our 1st team choices.

Youth Intake

Our preview led us to believe this year's intake was going to be atrocious but it was actually quite good.​

 

[misterioBean]

1st August 2025

It's Summer once again in Norway and instead of going to the warm European beaches we keep grinding in the Nordic's icy lakes and rivers and, as Vikings would, we demolish everything in our paths.

Schedule

Unfortunately we just couldn't demolish the Italians yet and fell short in the Europa League Quarter Finals. We did put on a good fight though which I was very pleased with.

In the Eliteserien we just kept battering our rams and axes everywhere we could.

That trend continued for quite a while and in fact we only droped points once this season against Molde who keep resisting our strenght in various occasions.

The cup also went quite well and we will be facing Brann on the Semi Finals which is good because that means we have a very strong possibility to at least reach the Finals of the NM SAS Braathens for the 1st time since we are here. Could this be the season we bring it to Stavenger?

League Table

Quite unsurprisingly we are 1st once again and Bodo/Glimt are in our trail with just 3 points behind us. Vikins aren't used to easy victories and we proved over the years we are capable of keeping our good form even gainst bad tides.

Transfers

There were no players leaving us for now so let's see who joined the crew.
​

Glenn Kamara - Free

When I saw this beast of a player free on the market I had to ****** him before any other bigger clubs could even realize what happened. Yes he is on big wages compared to all of our other players but let's be real, he is worth it and now we don't need to be so careful with our money like we did a few seasons ago. It's time for some bigger players to come in if we are serious about getting to the top of the European charts.

Jonathan Levi - Free

Yet another good player coming in for free after his contract ran out in the summer. Clearly not as good as Kamara but with Tripic getting older and running out of contract this season we needed to secure his position.

Rune Kronberg - Free

Third and last signing so far is a youngster who's report kinda threw me off. I swear he seemed better when I signed him but he is here now and at least is a decent player forour 2nd team. Can never see the 1st team squad but he also can develop more than expected and coming in for nothing but his wages I'm good with having him.

Finances

Our Finances are still stable and as usual we will be getting some more money once we reach the European stages (which we hopefully will). We will be playing in the Champions League Playoffs this month but our opponent won't be known for a few more days.

There are quite a few teams here who I would rather not face yet but we will do with what we get.

Random Stuff

We secured new contracts to some of our best players who were going out at the end of next season. All of them signed until 2028.

We also signed a new contract with the club until 2028 which just gives us more time to complete the challenge. Like if we were even remotelly close to finishing it...

We keep moving up in the ranks and are now in the 66th position.

Is also very good to see our nation moving up in the European coefficients. If we are champions once again this season we will be joining the Champions League League Stage (first time I noticed there's a bug which still says Group Stage).​

 

[misterioBean]

1st September 2025

Schedule

Well, this month showed me how well we are in Norway right now. Yes we drew once again to Lillestrom who, much like Molde, always tend to give us a hard time against them, but we beat Bodo/Glimt 5-2 playing at their stadium and with some of our 1st team players out of the team.

League Table

The league table remains pretty much the same and we are still ahead and ready to take our 4th league title in a row.

UCL

No comments regarding this game. It made our chances to go through harder.

Fortunately, our performance in the 2nd leg was way better and we went through to the UCL League Phase for the first time.

Well that sucks...

Transfers

Before any transfer talks, let me just show you something...

I really don't understand how the media thought we could sign those players for those fees when we are not a rich club. Anyway...

A lot of players leaving for loans plus some 2nd team players with no potential leaving for small fees.

Transfers In
​

Valtteri Haavisto - 525k

We keep looking to our future as we bring in the Finnish CB only aged 16 who shows very good potential, hopefully he gets there.

Ragnvald Rimala - 2M

We may have paid a little more for this youngster but like I said before we don't really need to worry so much about that right now. He also shows a lot of potential but his personality worries me a little.

Robin Algotsson - 750k

Third and final youngster for our team comes from Sweden and like the others he shows much potential and in my opinion if he's able to develop his mentals he may reach the first team very soon.

Johan Bangsbo - 900k

I was not happy with the development of our backup CB's so I went and signed Bangsbo who was previously signed to Inter.

Antonio Nusa - 6M

The most expensive transfer from the summer was the Norwegian winger because Autsbo wasn't develop as much as I expected so we needed other player who gave us more warranties.

Finances

Our finances took a bit of a beat with the last signging but we are still well.​

 

[misterioBean]

11th December 2025

Another season comes to an end in Norway and it was a very good season for the Vikings.

League Schedule and Table

We had a terrible September in our league campaign but we won every game after that. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get an unbeatable season...yet.

Our bad performance in September wasn't enough for Bodo/Glimt to get ahead and so the Eliteserien title comes to Stavanger once again.

NM SAS Braathens Cup

With little surprise we were able to beat Brann in the cup Semi Final. For the first time since we are here, the Vikings were going to be a part of the cup finalists.

The Nordic Gods dictated we were going to face Bodo/Glimt in the Finals. We all know what happened the last time we faced each other...

Just a friendly reminder...

NM SAS Braathens Cup Final

For the first time since we took over and 6 years after the last cup win, the Braathens is coming to Stavanger.

UCL

Okay it's not as bad as I expected.
10 out of 18 is decent for us considering we already beat Sassuolo, PSV and Lyon.

We are currently in the 15th position with 2 more games to go. But we shouldn't be expecting to come out of them with any point since we are yet to face Liverpool and Inter. Good to see we are ahead of Liverpool for now at least...

Random Stuff

The board gave us a decent budget for next season with a 10M injection which is decent but still not enough to be competing for the UCL title.

I don't even know what to say here. Moving on...

Our training facilities are, once again, being upgraded. Just sad to see there's no option to ask for an uograde on our youth facilities. I truly don't know why I never have that option...

Oh well... Our team has a total of one week off to rest and we will be back in January for our UCL fixtures.​

 

[misterioBean]

28th January 2026

The final two games of the UCL League Phase are in our past now.
Before moving into those, let's see the transfer business we've done in January so far.

Transfers Out

We sold a couple of players who never fulfilled their potential. Auklend was a player from Viking's youth teams but we did make a good profit on the sale of Peder Meen Johansen who joined us some years before for only 50k.

Transfers In
​

Elias Haug - 1.1M

Another player for the future, looking at him now I kinda regret paying so much for him. Think I overpaid a bit.

Lars Sandberg - 525k

The second and last signing for now was yet another youth player. This one looks a bit more promising.

UCL Schedule and Table

Okay this game was something else. We didn't exactly play well in this game but Ryste was able to score two goals for us when counter-attacking and Liverpool just couldn't be effective in front of goal.

Unfortunately, Inter's attacking power was just too much for us, specially in the 1st half. 2nd half was very boring from both teams with Inter having most of the chances.

With the last results we got we were able to secure a place in the Playoffs. I have a feeling this will do huge things for both our club's reputation and for the league's coefficient in the upcoming years.​

 

[misterioBean]

12th March 2026

UCL

After qualifying for the UCL Playoffs we were drawn against Lyon, a team we had already beaten so we were very confident for this fixtures.

Our confidence gave us strenght and we completely demolished them in France.

Sadly, they came back to Norway and scored 2 goals in 2 minutes which was unexpected. However, the Playoff aggregate was in our favour and we went trough to the Round of 16.

We drew Ajax for the Round of 16 who are always a tricky team to go against.

I don't have much to say about the results. We desearved better in both games but specially in Amsterdam. If our shooting was on point we could have gotten a better result but their possesion based game was too much for us.

Our UCL campaign ends here but we will have more European action in a few months.

Eliteserien
Matchday 1

Inbetween the UCL fixtures we had the first game if the Norwish season in which we beat Asane 2-0 in a game we completely dominated even with a fully rotated squad.

Transfers Out

A lot of youngsters with no potential keep leaving the club for small fees. We also decided to sell Stensness since we was getting older and not getting better so we had to get money fopr him while he was worth something.

A couple of youngsters also saw their contracts terminated.

Tramsfers In
​

Bjorn Ahlhander - 550k

We keep bringing in some youngsters and this one looks very decent both technically and mentally. Just sad his physicals are not that good.

Thomas Kristensen - 3M

In order to replace Stensness, we signed this 1.98m Danish monster from AGF. With his height and 19 jumping reach, I think we will be a very good player for our set pieces. His heading could be better but hopefullyhis aerial abilities are enough for him to score lots of goals.

Tore Andreas Rosendal - 2.5M

Another youngster and this one looks absolutely crazy. Good physicals and technicals, just needs to develop his mentals and he will be on the 1st team soon.

Finances

Our finances keep getting better and better every season.

Other stuff

Our facilities all look great except for our youth facilities which we still can't ask the board to improve. Sucks because it would really help to develop our youngsters even more.​

 

[misterioBean]

3rd August 2026

We reached the summer transfer window and are half way through our season.
Things have been going very well for us and I don't expect them to get much worse.

Before going into the update let's just appreciate our manager's determination in making the Vikings an European threat, reaching 200 games in charge of the Stavanger team.

Let's see what's happening in Norway.

League Schedule and Table

A lot of games into the season already in just oen update and out of the 17 games we played we won 16 of them. Unfortunately we couldn't beat Sarpsborg on their stadium but we didn't desearve the win so I can't complain much.

Also I need to say we are scoring way too many goals this season. There are 3 main reasons for that, but more on that later.

Safe to say we are the favourites this season yet again but I think this is the first time we are this comfortably ahead. I mean there0s 17 points between us and Brann. Also shoutout to Brann for becoming a force to be reckon in Norway, currently beating Bodo/Glimt, Molde and Rosengorb.

NM SAS Braathens Cup

Same thing in the Norwish Cup. We will be facing Lillestrom in the Semi Finals and I'm kinda scared because they are a team we have a very hard time beating every single year. Well maybe not this year but ever since the beginning they gave us a fair game.

Transfers Out

So, a lot of players left since the last update, most of them on loan spells but we had some big players leaving us in the summer already.

Before July we lost a couple of backup players in Rugland Ree (backup GK) and Lasse Nordas. Neither of them were getting better and we needed to improve our team if we want to be an actual threat in the UCL so they left. More info on Nordas deal later on.

In the summer, we sold Vetle Walle Egeli, who was a starter for us in our midfield. He wanted to leave and Al-Shabab paid well over his value so I had to let him go to avoid a backroom backlash.

We also sold Leo Walta, another midfielder who was a good backup for us but 5.5M was too good to turn down (he was valued at 3M max).
Sad that Norwish market values are not that high...

Jonathan Levi also left us for 3M, all profit since he came for free last season.

Total income: 17,95M

Transfers In​

Hampus Finndell - Free (End of contract)

Leo Walta's replacement here as he came from Juventus for free. Very decent backup for our midfield.

Benjamin Thoresen Faraas - 3M

Backup for our striker role with decent enough attributes at 20 years old. Also, he is Norwish and we need to keep in mind we can't have more than 10 non-homegrown players.

Oscar Aga - 1.5M

Yes, another Norwish striker joined us in the summer. Aga is older but also has some better stats than Faraas, at least for now.

Kent-Are Gravrok - 800k

Good looking youngster for the future for a very small fee. Shame about the personality though.

Morten Damsbo - 4M + Lasse Nordas

Do I need to say anything about this guy? 18 years old, Model Citizen, crazy mentals for his age, good physicals and technicals and, on top of all that, he counts as homegrown since he has double nationality. 4M for him was a complete bargain.

Total Spent: 5M

The Reasons

Earlier in this post I said there were 3 main reasons for our success this season.

The first one is a very basic one.

We changed our tactic. For those of you who followed my Youth2Gold save in Portugal, you may have already seen this tactic.
I'm a very simple person and I only ever use 3 tactics. Obviously the 4-3-3, this 4-2-4 and, more rarely, a 4-5-1.

This tactic is obviously very good because we are the best Norwish team right now so we easily beat most of our opponents.

The other 2 reasons are not really 2, more like 1...

This 2 guys are just insane. They have 55 goal contributions this season and we are still half way through the season. Also keep in mind Damsbo only joined us in April so he lost the first 5 games of the season, including the UCL Round of 16 against Ajax. Oh what could have been...

Even though Ryste and Damsbo are the stars of our team, this two also need recognition.

An extra 28 goal contribution in our wingers, which brings the goal contribution from our 4 upfront to 83 in just 6 months.

Finances

Well this was something I wasn't expecting at all. Our board gave us extra funds to bring in new players, in the case we want to of course.

Our finances keep improving every year and we are finally considered a rich club. In fact, we are the only rich Scandinavian club. Kobenhavn used to be but now they are only considered financially secure for some reason.

Random stuff

Our league keeps moving up in the ranks, this time it's for the reputation rank.

We also moved up 2 places in the European coefficients which helped the team who finnishes 2nd in the league since they have one less round to play before the League Phase.

We also moved up in the ranks and are now officially in the top 50 clubs in Europe.

Still a long way to go here but this has been an amazing ride so far.

Since FM24 will allow us to carry our FM23 saves I will most likely bring this one over and keep it going at least until we win the Champions League.​

 

[misterioBean]

10th December 2026

Another season comes to an end in Norway and it was probably the best of our career so far.

Schedule and League Table

Okay, we did lose 3 times this season and are still waiting for the unvincible year but we kept scoring goals the whole season. In fact, we wonly didn't score any goal in the last game of the season and that was it. Every other game we scored at least one goal and most games we scored multiple goals. Very good season overall.

Even with 3 losses this year, we won the league by a huge margin, 23 points over the 2nd who was Rosenborg this season. Also Bodo/Glimt seem to be getting worse very season that passes even though they have a very good team for our league.

NM SAS Braathens

Last year we won our first Norwegian Cup on the 4th try. Our goal was to win it again this year and to be able to win it, we had to beat Lillestrom to get to the finals.

It was a very hard game for us, but after extra time we were heading to the finals.
Also 24/38 shots on target is insane, even if we only scored 4 of them.

In the Finals we were given a fairly easy opponent and we controlled the match to retain the Cup and bring it to Stavenger for the 2nd year in a row.

UEFA Champions League

This has been going way better than what I thought. I think I still underestimate our team but we only lost twice in 6 games and all our wins were huge. I mean 18 goals in 6 games is just unbelievable.

We are currently in the 8th position of the League Phase with 12 points, but we can still go down a lot. Here's why:

Our next 2 fixtures are both very hard. Milan's already qualified and Chelsea wants a place in the top 8.
I think we are safe to assume we will be on the top 24 at least but I don't want to get ahead of myself.

Finances

The board gave us more money to work around next season, but it's still not that much comparing to the teams we are expecting to win in the UCL. Slow and steady we will get there.

Random Stuff

We keep improving our training facilities which is huge for our players development.

And finally we are able to improve our youth facilities. The main reason for this was a new president being elected this year and this one seems way more eager to contribute to our youth system. This will hopefully make our youth players develop more and faster, also bringing in better youth intakes, which have been terrible ever since the first couple of seasons.

On that note, next year's isn't looking any different, even with a better HoYD and youth recruitment maxed out. Hopefully next year we will have a golden year in Stavanger.

Player of the Season

Who else could it be? This guy scored 43 goals the whole season and is still 21 years old. This makes it 2 saves in which he has proven to be an amazing signing and in FM24 I'll definitely take a look at him again.

Final Thoughts

I have been having a very good time playing this save and it has brought to me joy like I haven't experienced with any other save other than playing with my home team. Unfortunately, lately I have been super busy and can barely play FM. I'm not sure if we will be finishing the challenge before FM24 comes out but I'm still debating if I will carry this career over to it or simply starting a new save with Vitória SC again (our season has been awful this year and we are alrady on our 3rd manager since the summer).

I'll try to play as much as I can until FM24 comes out and I will make a decision later on. Thanks for keep reading my updates.

See you soon!​