Episode 98 – Community Section Round-up

Another week, another community round-up for you all to immediately stop what you’re doing and immerse yourself into a boatload of FM flavoured content.

Scott Salter and Will Sharp from In Bed With Maradona appeared on the pod this week, and if you haven’t given it a listen yet, I’d encourage you to do so. Bit of an early one for the exclusive to this post plug of some community content, but if you haven’t been reading Will’s FM17 save with Sheffield Wednesday on the site, I’d encourage you to do that too!

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Episode 97 – Community Section Round-up

Episode 97 of the pod had a retro feel to it. Retro in that it was just George, Ed and you down your headphones listening in. Like the good old days had returned. Yes, we all love it when a guest is on. But how good was it to just listen to the guys have a good old natter about all things FM. Give it a listen if you haven’t already.

The community section appeared as has been normal for the last couple of months. Here’s your usual round-up of what I picked out over the last week that I think you should be checking out.

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Episode 96 – Community Section Round-up

Episode 96, eh? Hands up who thought the guys wouldn’t even get to episode 10 way back when the podcast started, never mind episode 100! But boy we’re glad they have.

The latest episode saw George and Ed take in the BetBright FM17 Cup final in London. Yes, George and Ed were both in the same room! It includes chats with Iain Macintosh, Alex Stewart, and the undisputed champions of the whole tournament, who take home a prize of £5,000! Give it a listen, then remember to come back here and get the round-up of the community section.

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Episode 95 – Community Section Round-up

Episode 95 of the Deep Lying Podcast has been and gone, and if you haven’t listened yet, what are you waiting for? It featured Greg Johnson from Squawka who was on hand to answer some of your and George’s questions, with Ed absent due to being in a minor traffic accident (#PrayforEd #he’sfine #youdon’tneedtopray).

The community section delivered some absolute treats for you to read and watch again, and if you want another reminder of those recommendations, you’ve come to the right place.

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Episode 94 – Community Section Round-up

It’s me! I’m back with another community section round-up from episode 94 of the podcast. This week’s pod was a tactics special with FM Analysis and LPQR appearing as guests alongside George and Ed (making a return after a few weeks). They answered some of your questions you’d submitted and had a good old natter about narrow formations in particular. Always a hot topic. Once you’ve had a listen to that, and find yourself intrigued by the community content that George mentions, head on back here and easily click the links to go and read about them. We’ve got you covered.

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Episode 93 – Community Section Round-up

Episode 93 was a bit of a corker in my opinion! Ali Maxwell of Not The Top 20 podcast was on, and the pod had a very EFL flavour, naturally. Alongside the usual save updates, George asked Ali to give his recommendations of players to look out for across the 3 divisions, and Ali also gave us some recommendations of interesting clubs we might fancy doing a save with across the EFL. If you haven’t listened yet, do click the link and check it out.

Down to business though and the community section!

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Episode 92 – Community Section Round-up

The community section round-up is back! Last week’s edition went down well enough that George and Ed haven’t kicked me off the site. Hopefully well enough too that you all spent your boring Monday at work catching up on the latest content from around the FM community. Who needs to be actually working, eh?!

Episode 92 featured Danny Jamieson from FPL Daily, so if you haven’t given it a listen yet, do click the link and catch up.

And a reminder too that if you’re a Deep Lying Podcast fanboy like me, you can help the guys out to continue to provide the pod straight into your ears every week. Head over to their Patreon page, and if you’ve just found some spare change down the couch too, you could maybe chip in that little bit extra too and get a few benefits for yourself!

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Episode 91 – Community Section Round-up

I’m delighted to be making my debut on the Deep Lying Podcast site and I’m bringing you something big: the first ever round up of the podcast’s community section to hit a website.

I’ve been compiling the community section for the podcast, which has been running in conjunction with #FMSlack since the middle of January, and there’s been some brilliant content produced in that time across the blogging and YouTubing spectrum.

Before now, I’ve just been posting the round-up on Twitter once the pod has been released. Now that George and Ed are Patreoning however,  we’ll be giving you the all important links to what you should be catching up on and who you should be following across the community every Monday from now on.

Let’s get into it.


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FM17: Stuttgart – 2018/19 Season Review

As promised, I’ve now written a follow up blog. Funny how a new game coupled with enjoyment can spur someone on to put words on a page. In this post I’ll bring you up to speed with my progress (which is tough, believe me – playing at some rate of knots right now) and I’ll also give you a run down on the youth prospects at the club that I’m excited about, so much so that a little wee came out.

Gross.

2018/19 – Pre-Season Transfer Shenanigans

Now, I found this transfer window really, really frustrating. Usually I find pre-season one of the most enjoyable things about FM; the wheeling and dealing, transfer rumours, fighting to keep hold of your best players, scouring the world for unearthed gems and inevitably scrambling around to replace a player whose just stabbed you in the back now that a bigger club is sniffing around. It’s all a lot of fun…usually.

From finishing 4th in the previous season we were hopefully looking at qualifying into the Champions League group stages. With this in mind my squad needed more strength and depth. I had a few clubs sniffing around one or two of my players and alas I had to give in to AS Monaco when they faxed over a £28.5m bid for Mihailo Ristic, a £27m profit after one season. I was pretty gutted to lose him as he was fantastic on the left as my defensive winger, however his head had been turned by the luxury of life in Monaco and so I sanctioned the deal knowing full well I could use all those reddies for some sound reinvestment.

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I had identified that the two key areas I needed to invest in were at GK and at ML now that Ristic was gone. I made the mistake of accepting the deal for Ristic without lining up a suitable successor – I have a chap called Bogosavac signed from Partizan the previous season who was ‘competent’ at best – but not on the same level as Ristic. I quickly found that there was no on his level to perform as I wanted, I considered retraining players with similar attributes but who weren’t natural left midfielders, wing backs, full backs, the lot – no bloody club bore any fruit and my scouts were so useless I banished them to scout in Greenland and cursing them the whole way there – it won’t surprise you that they failed to find a better keeper than Langerak too.

In the meantime I set about reinvesting some of that Ristic cash on players that I had found through my worldly travels. In came Rodrigo Bentancur of whom I am a long-term admirer (not in that way). He had many a great day with me at Stoke in FM16 so this was a no brainer at such a relatively small fee. He would come in and provide great competition for my two AM roles and even provide cover at MR & MC. Long term I want him to nail down the AP-S role at AMCR.

Zdenek Vesely & Daniel Horvath are two kids to watch out for, more on them soon.

Davinson Sanchez came in to replace my ageing captain Toni Sunjic at the heart of the defence & Cristian Pavon to make the SS role his own as alarm bells rang around Maxim’s recent performances. Luis Olivera from River was not a signing I necessarily wanted to make but I felt he was the best of a bad bunch of scouting reports to provide backup to the ML role.

Grobler was a dirt cheap, guaranteed profit making DC from South Africa…and finally Jose Laertes joined in January – 6 months too late for the keeper I wanted but alas I only found him at the end of November after a quick trip to Brazil for the World Beach Volleyball Championships. Some compromising photos and a bribe or two later and he was booked on the first flight out of Brazil in January. A much needed long-term upgrade in goal. More on him in my Youth Players blog post which I think we can all see, won’t be happening in this already 700 word post.

August – January

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The season kicked off with as a bit of a mixed bag. I was pretty gutted to be drawn against a strong Monaco side in the Champions League qualifier and they ultimately proved too strong for me over two legs. It was a bit of a kick in the teeth but at least we could fall back on the Europa League on a bloody Thursday night.

A last minute screamer by Assombalonga salvaged a point away at Bayern to kick off the season, other notable wins included a 2-1 away win v Schalke & 4-3 home win v Dortmund. Our EL results were very positive and we comfortably topped our group. I particularly enjoyed our 4-0 drubbing of Lyon in France.

January – May

2ndhalfseason

Before April came we were keeping pace with Leverkusen in 2nd place – especially after a cracking 2-1 win against them away from home which sparked a run of 4 wins in 5 games. However 3 defeats on the bounce before May saw us drop down to 6th albeit in very close proximity to the 3 teams above us – our title challenge had withered yet I knew we were some way from competing on that front.

An incredibly poor 3-0 away loss at the Mestalla meant we left ourselves with far too much to do in the return leg and a 2-0 victory was not enough to turn our fortunes. We wrapped up the league in a more positive fashion bagging 3 wins in our last 4 games to lift us into 4th place at the expense of Schalke who failed to win their final game. I was still pleased with our table finish knowing that we had another shot at Champions League football next season…

…except we don’t do we? FFS the bloody co-efficient. Though going on the results in Europe of the past few seasons – I can’t really see how this is possible, but there you have it. Italy currently have the 4th Champions League spot – the bastardo’s!

It was another enjoyable season where we performed slightly above expectations again, the aim has to be to kick on and nail down a Champions League spot next season and in the meantime – go as far as we can in the Europa League next season.

Watch out for my next update on the wonderkids of Stuttgart as well as summer of transfer madness.

The Football League or Bust – Intro


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“FM 2017 will be different.” – I told myself whilst in the midst of an in-depth VfL Bochum save on FM 2016. (Sorry my updates petered out. In short, I managed nearly three full seasons, the second two of which were spent barely staying in the 1. Bundesliga)

“Next edition I’ll do a proper journeyman save in Asia or South America.”, I thought.

“Something properly out of my comfort zone… Try some wacky formations too for good measure.”

Then – in the real world of football – after performing quite admirably for a team of their stature during the previous season and a half in the Conference National, my beloved Altrincham went on an awful run from January-April, winning two of seventeen games and looking more and more certain for the drop. With long-serving manager Lee Sinnott sacked mid-way through the horrid run in March, the turmoil continued and escalated. A 5-0 thrashing of already-relegated Welling United in their last home game ended up being of no consequence; a 3-0 loss away in their final outing at Braintree brought the curtain down on a season to forget. Alty would be playing in the Conference North again. Continue reading