Gaming Football Manager 2021 (FM21)

Well this was a fecking awesome Christmas present right before 3 games in 5 days.....

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Edit:

and a Boxing day present too!

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Shaw was already injured, as was Bailly, so my backline for the next 3 weeks will be:

Williams -- Axel -- Mengi -- AWB

with Fish and Fernandez as my bench options.
 
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Well this was a fecking awesome Christmas present right before 3 games in 5 days.....

oWvoH4q.png


Edit:

and a Boxing day present too!

xQrSH3f.png


Shaw was already injured, as was Bailly, so my backline for the next 3 weeks will be:

Williams -- Axel -- Mengi -- AWB

with Fish and Fernandez as my bench options.

Ouch! The game is cruel indeed!
 
Is a regista officially a playmaker? The description for the role starts with "A regista is a more agressive version of the deep-lying playmaker". Will my goalie look for him if I have "distribute to playmaker" checked? Just a bit doubtful because he's not actually got the word "playmaker" in his positional name like a deep-lying, roaming, wide or advanced playmaker would.
 
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Both CBs injured in one week is brutal. But yeah it usually happens that several players in one position get injured, at least in my games.
not just one week, but
- within 7 minutes of each other (well, the messages were within 7 minutes)
- in training
- on Christmas
- where all that was scheduled was rest and Mach Prep.
 
not sure if it is a bug or an actual rule, but in a Carabou Cup game I had Fred get injured in the 89th min, but I was out of subs. We went to ET but it would not let me use the ET sub to replace Fred, so I was stuck with 10 men. Is this an actual thing?
 
Anyone got any tips for going about a lower league save??

just started one with my local club and determined to stick at it

Suppose it depends how you're playing the game. I'm traditionally dirty. Attribute masking off, downloaded tactics and using genie scout to find all players in the game. Means there's no real need to pay scouts or have a scouting budget and I can find better players at the same time while saving money.

Trying to be a bit more 'pure' myself now.

I don't know, use the loan system as much as you can, even better if you can get the players having to pay no wages. Was watching this the other day as a way to find players early on:


Tactics-wise some people swear that certain tactics work better at different levels or depending on if a team is one of the best in their division or worst. I've never really found that, more that if it works it works but I suppose experiences differ. Like I said, I've usually used downloaded ones so maybe that's it, they're exploiting everything to the max but I've gone through the divisions playing exactly the same way many a time and punching above the team's weight at all times. Worst squad in the league, might finish mid-table, mid-table squad might win it. Never really underperform, good tactics seem to universally perform to me, just got to find the right players. Suppose that's where using Genie Scout made it very easy as without it you might find it hard to fit good players to a working system.
 
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Long throws definitely over powered, I seem to get a goal every game or two from them. They can create absolute mayhem in the box.
 
Can anyone recommend a decent laptop to play this on that won’t break the bank? Really fancy picking it up but haven’t a clue what specs to get on a laptop.

I get a discount at Argos but fcuked if I know the difference between one laptop to the next.
If it's a laptop purely for Football Manager you don't need to break the bank. A low-mid range gaming laptop would be fine. It runs on a decent office laptop and even really old laptops to be honest but if you're buying specifically for FM it makes sense to get a gaming one as they have a better cooling system in general, as well as discrete graphics so you can run the 3D match engine smoothly and it won't get ridiculously hot on your lap if you play like that and may even stay relatively quiet.

Something with an i5/Ryzen 5 CPU and any kind of graphics chip would do the job, maybe a RTX1650.
 
Anyone got any tips for going about a lower league save??

just started one with my local club and determined to stick at it
Free transfers. Buying players for fees is really not good at low levels. Divert all funds to wages. Invite all the free agents you can to trial. As soon as they come in use the assistant report to identify the promising ones, be ruthless because there are loads and immediately dismiss the poor ones. Keep the good ones. Rinse and repeat for every position. Very monotonous but you will get good players. You can go for any profile of player but I like 18-20 because they will improve a lot and take low wages, I've had a lad with me from Vanarama South to League 1 and he was still a useful squad player.

Generally it's hard to get good loans initially if you're a really low club, but as soon as you can it's good to max them out because generally they are your ticket to the best players willing to come to your club.

I think general tactic advice applies to any league. I have always found I can implement the same stuff at lower leagues. I've had Dulwich playing like Peps Barcelona, at least stylistically! Kinda unrealistic in that sense, but there's no need to overthink tactics for lower leagues. It's all about getting the players for promotion.
 
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Starting a new save, FM thinks France is a neighbouring nation of Sweden?

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Trying the Swedish 4th tier. Not many countries have a playable 4th tier at all on the official database, thought it would be something different.

Gone for BK Olympic of the Division 2 Vastra Gotaland. Top team in each gets promoted plus there's playoffs for runners-up. There's 14 teams in the league and rules say we only play each other once. That's a bit rubbish but what can you do?

On start day we're 14-1odds, 9th favourites. I know this league is going to be tough in the first season because last week I was looking for the easiest teams to manage in the whole game with players better than the others in their division. A team called Angellholms was one of them and they just happen to be in this division too. Angellholms are 1-91 odds-on.

Trying a more purist save here. Tactics I created myself, attribute masking on, no third-party programs to help find players.

Edit: Looking into things more, in the real world this league had everyone play each other twice up to and including the 2019 season. Wonder if the 2020 campaign was cut short because of corona and whether or not it will go back to more matches again after that.
 
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All my midfielders out injured, luckily it’s January so I loan in two midfielders and one gets a virus. Only Barcelona away next.
 
Still playing around with stuff. None of the AM, Trequarista or engache variants I tried with a striker were better than SS + a striker. SS + F9 still seemed to work best.

Jumped into 2 striker combos. Dual AFs is mental. Still using Liverpool to test with as a lot of the guys who test tactics online do, particularly someone called knap. Just had Salah and Mane score 94 between them in all comps although F9+SS and a couple of others got more points in the league.

Would be really fun to play the 2x AF and might well do. Easy to build a squad too as you're always looking for the same types of player. Might feel more pure or even realistic to have 2 different roles instead though. Can't imagine there's many managers who instruct a pair of strikers to play exactly the same way as each other.

Anyway, now at this:
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Just want to try some stuff with the Dm and central defenders now, goalie too where #I don't anticipate it making too much difference what role you have him set to but we'll see.

I think I would still go with IWBs because the midfield setup leaves these nice little gaps for them to really go through and cause havoc.
 
My Utd save is full of all kinds of weird shit going on, but for the most insane is that Spurs are in the relegation zone 26 games into the season. That's not the kicker though. This has been their managers and pt totals:

Jose: 12 games, 9 pts
Chris Powell (caretaker): 5 games 8 points!!
Rafa: 9 games, 2 pts.

Their last game was against me and Rafa had them playing a defensive 5(FB's, NOT WB's!!!) - 4 - 1. I smoked them 5-0 and they had 1 shot and 32% possession.

They are likely going down. Anyone else seen a "bigger team" get relegated in the first 2 seasons before FM transfer madness sets in?
 
My Utd save is full of all kinds of weird shit going on, but for the most insane is that Spurs are in the relegation zone 26 games into the season. That's not the kicker though. This has been their managers and pt totals:

Jose: 12 games, 9 pts
Chris Powell (caretaker): 5 games 8 points!!
Rafa: 9 games, 2 pts.

Their last game was against me and Rafa had them playing a defensive 5(FB's, NOT WB's!!!) - 4 - 1. I smoked them 5-0 and they had 1 shot and 32% possession.

They are likely going down. Anyone else seen a "bigger team" get relegated in the first 2 seasons before FM transfer madness sets in?
Brighton are consistently in the top four for me, Everton got relegated in the second season and are now a perennial yo-yo team. City are usually hovering around 7th, Crystal Palace are usually fighting it out for Champions League.

The game is crazy for me, too crazy. Was crazy near enough straight away, has only got worse the longer I play, am now in sixth season.

It's too easy and way to outlandish with some of it's generated outcomes.
 
My Utd save is full of all kinds of weird shit going on, but for the most insane is that Spurs are in the relegation zone 26 games into the season. That's not the kicker though. This has been their managers and pt totals:

Jose: 12 games, 9 pts
Chris Powell (caretaker): 5 games 8 points!!
Rafa: 9 games, 2 pts.

Their last game was against me and Rafa had them playing a defensive 5(FB's, NOT WB's!!!) - 4 - 1. I smoked them 5-0 and they had 1 shot and 32% possession.

They are likely going down. Anyone else seen a "bigger team" get relegated in the first 2 seasons before FM transfer madness sets in?


Few people have mentioned that this happens with Tottenham. Maybe it’s a bug or something but they do end up in free fall in some of my saves
 
I think I would still go with IWBs because the midfield setup leaves these nice little gaps for them to really go through and cause havoc.

I've changed things up a little since then but that's a really good shout. Currently looking like this:
OoC2Zd7.png


Now I was testing while holidaying, never really saw the players in their positions, just letting the Ass Man pick the team for the purpose of the test. When putting players in the coloured tiles were showing some areas of concern in midfield for a big team and major issues for the little side I actually want to be in my new save.
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Those orange areas are exactly the parts of the pitch where IWBs go. Noticed we were light in that area last night but actually tried making the wingers wide midfielders to offer a bit of help there instead. Reverting back to IWBs seems the better option. A lot of these choices were to just try and get away from tactics I've previously downloaded, making them as different as possible while still being good and using WBs instead of IWBs was because of that for the most part.

The F9 gives us some orange up near the right-hand corner flag but I can live with that. Regista instead of DLP was one of those changes just for the sake of changing it up as was one CD instead of two BPDs. SK on attack was part that as well, also partly to get another player on attack duty in the side, and as we play with an offside trap, albeit only with a standard line I think a SK helps.
 
My Utd save is full of all kinds of weird shit going on, but for the most insane is that Spurs are in the relegation zone 26 games into the season. That's not the kicker though. This has been their managers and pt totals:

Jose: 12 games, 9 pts
Chris Powell (caretaker): 5 games 8 points!!
Rafa: 9 games, 2 pts.

Their last game was against me and Rafa had them playing a defensive 5(FB's, NOT WB's!!!) - 4 - 1. I smoked them 5-0 and they had 1 shot and 32% possession.

They are likely going down. Anyone else seen a "bigger team" get relegated in the first 2 seasons before FM transfer madness sets in?

Yeah, Tottenham seems to chronically do badly in almost every save game I started. Which is funny because in FM20 and FM19 they were always really OP
 
Yeah, Tottenham seems to chronically do badly in almost every save game I started. Which is funny because in FM20 and FM19 they were always really OP

I have seen similar, which makes no sense b/c they have a fantastic roster. With mentality being such a huge thing, I wonder if virtual Jose is just as toxic as real Jose and he decimates their dynamic so bad they can't recover. I guess a test would be to replace him in the editor before starting the game and seeing how Spurs does.
 
Noticed Arsenal win the league a couple of times in season 1, not sure what was going on there. United a few more times than expected too but was mostly City and Liverpool for me.

And on another topic, SI have messed up the Swedish 4th tier. Got teams down to play each other once only, which they did in 2020 due to Covid but then the game doesn't have them going back to playing each other twice again after that when in real life they are. Permanant 13 game seasons in that tier. Not sure I want to manage there now, not unless I get promoted at the first time of asking as that will just be boring year-in year-out. One obvious tactic would be to have a small squad, no need to stretch the budget over 22+ players if only playing 13 times, plough all the money into about 16.
 
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I have seen similar, which makes no sense b/c they have a fantastic roster. With mentality being such a huge thing, I wonder if virtual Jose is just as toxic as real Jose and he decimates their dynamic so bad they can't recover. I guess a test would be to replace him in the editor before starting the game and seeing how Spurs does.

I think it's more to do with the fact that defensive managers don't do so well in this version of FM it seems that counter pressing is a requirement doing well over an entire season. You can win the occasional game with a defensive setup but I feel in the long run for like a season playing defensive football will always have you keep being left behind by other teams.
 
Just looking at my Sporting save how certain teams have been doing over the 3 seasons I'm into this save.

Liverpool: 1st, 2nd, 1st
United: 2nd, 3rd, 3rd
City: 3rd, 1st, 2nd
Chelsea: 4th, 4th, 8th
Tottenham: 5th, 5th, 4th
Arsenal: 8th, 6th, 6th

Interesting so in this save Tottenham isn't too bad, actually kept at a very stable position. Bielsa has taken over there this season, it will be interesting to see how well they get on after José.

Surprise Teams
  • 20/21: Southampton, 6th
  • 21/22: Burnley, 7th
  • 22/23: Wolves, 5th

Relegated Teams
  • 20/21: Newcastle, West Brom, Crystal Palace
  • 21/22: Swansea, Leeds, Aston Villa
  • 22/23: Bournmouth, Blackburn, Norwich

So I guess this far nothing completely outrages happening in the PL.
 
And down go Spurs. All they had to do was draw Southampton, away, on the final day, but they got beat 4-2. Rafa's final tally was 17 points from 21 games and Spurs scored only 35 goals the whole season. Insane.
 
Changed my mind about this Swedish save because of the league issues, never even started barring offering some trials to players.

Off to the Conference North/South in England instead, usually do a save starting at this level and haven't yet. As a northerner it's got be North, some nice teams in there. Played as Southport in FM 20, always thought Blyth were quite cool, Gateshead have a big stadium. Some teams I remember being in the football league at one point like Chester, Darlington and Hereford, and I think Kiddeminster as well.

Going with York, one of my favourite places to visit. Could say the same of Chester, similar place with lots of history but York trumps it. York too have league history that I remember, they put us out the League Cup once when I was younger. Should hold a grudge really but I don't. 8,000+ stadium as well, nice capacity if we progress up the leagues.
 
In my experience it's when you get to the Championship that things get pretty tough when coming up from the Vanarama.

Vanarama National is not that much different to North/South. League One isn't that much better than League Two. You can pretty much get by with your usual diet of free transfers. You don't even need the majority of players to be rated as a good player for the league by your assistant.

But in the Championship you're suddenly playing against 20 million pound strikers worth more than your whole squad. It's a colossal step up and you get punished for the mistakes you were getting away with.
 
If it's a laptop purely for Football Manager you don't need to break the bank. A low-mid range gaming laptop would be fine. It runs on a decent office laptop and even really old laptops to be honest but if you're buying specifically for FM it makes sense to get a gaming one as they have a better cooling system in general, as well as discrete graphics so you can run the 3D match engine smoothly and it won't get ridiculously hot on your lap if you play like that and may even stay relatively quiet.

Something with an i5/Ryzen 5 CPU and any kind of graphics chip would do the job, maybe a RTX1650.
I’d use it for the usual, maybe a bit of streaming, upload photos etc. But primary function would be to play FM.

So would any of these be any good or just glorified paper weights:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8298508

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8270564

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/compu...p-amd-3020e-64-gb-emmc-blue-10219102-pdt.html
 
I’d use it for the usual, maybe a bit of streaming, upload photos etc. But primary function would be to play FM.

So would any of these be any good or just glorified paper weights:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8298508

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8270564

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/compu...p-amd-3020e-64-gb-emmc-blue-10219102-pdt.html
I think they would be weak. It would run but it would probably impact your enjoyment of the game as it is likely be pretty unresponsive to navigate menus and progress time. FM is a dog if it doesn't play well because of the fiddly tasks.

I think you'd be looking at a budget of more like 400-500 for a good experience. If you filter by processor on Argos you'll be able to narrow it down to more suitable candidates. I filtered by i5/Ryzen 5 processors which I think is the starting point for a nice experience and got the below but there are many choices:

https://www.argos.co.uk/product/8483935?clickSR=slp:term:laptops:6:88:1

You could always look on eBay and locally if it's a bit rich and save some money.
 
My Utd save is full of all kinds of weird shit going on, but for the most insane is that Spurs are in the relegation zone 26 games into the season. That's not the kicker though. This has been their managers and pt totals:

Jose: 12 games, 9 pts
Chris Powell (caretaker): 5 games 8 points!!
Rafa: 9 games, 2 pts.

Their last game was against me and Rafa had them playing a defensive 5(FB's, NOT WB's!!!) - 4 - 1. I smoked them 5-0 and they had 1 shot and 32% possession.

They are likely going down. Anyone else seen a "bigger team" get relegated in the first 2 seasons before FM transfer madness sets in?
Steve Bruce played that against my Leeds team in FM20 easiest 6 points of the season.

A few years ago Inter Milan got relegated first season, I was the Juve Manager
 
About to play the first competitive match of this York City save, an FA Cup 2nd qualifying round tie away to Grantham Town.

Satisfied with the transfer business over the summer, brought in a few players here and there. The previous manager had already done a lot of business so it was just adding to that with a little more. We have a strong squad and were one of the favourites for the league beforehand, just solidified that position further.

Odds before and after business:
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Very impressed with the financial power of the club, £18k a week wage budget in the 6th tier, and we've gone over it a little to £20k.Just gone back through the thread, got £10k a week as the initial budget in my first season in the SPL with the Albion Rovers save. This is bonkers.

Pre-season was good, most high profile games were Leeds U-23 (2-2) and Greenock Morton of the Scottish Championship (3-2). Notched up wins against fodder apart from that.

In

Gregor Zabret (free) -
Former Slovenian U21 international goalkeeper joins after a successful trial. Was on Swansea's books for 7 years without making a single appearance after they paid £350k to bring him over from Domzale in his homeland. Straight in as first-choice goalie on a one-year deal.
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Bondz N'Gala (free) - Experienced central defender, again signed after a trial comes in after being released by Ebbsfleet. Only played 4 games last season as they got relegated from the National League. Expect him to feature prominently. 272 league games under his belt, and has played as high as the Championship with Scunthorpe and Plymouth.
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Neil Danns (free) - Veteran midfielder Danns joins York following a brief stint at Halifax where he failed to make any appearances. He's played as high as the Premier League, with 3 appearances in the division early in his career for Blackburn Rovers and made 282 appearances in the Championship for 4 separate clubs. Not looked too clever in preseason but hope he comes good. Has been made vice-captain.
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Nestor Shako (free) - Snapped up Nestor, a young winger with promise after he was released by Yeovil. He's previously had loans at Gosport Borough and Paulton Rovers.
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Jaden Thompson-Brissett (free) -
At the age of just 19, the Minstermen become Thompson-Brissett's 4th permanent club. The striker, a product of the Norwich City youth setup has also spent time on the books of Brentford and Dagenham & Redbridge without making a breakthrough. He did play a couple of games while on loan at Maidenhead and that's it. Expected to make more of an impression here his pre-season has been hampered by injury.
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Sam Shaban (free) - Born in London, the well-travelled Shaban comes back to England following a spell in Lithuania with Palanga, which was his second-stint in that country. He broke through there too with DFK Dainava. In-between there was a move much closer to home with Barking and a spell in Cyprus with Assias. The plan is to start him regularly as a false nine, will see how that goes.
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Out

Absolutely nobody -
Tried to unload 3 or 4 players with no takers at all. Attempted to loan them instead and still no joy. The closest we got was one player, Harry Spratt, with Chester wanting him on loan for around 30% of his wages which we accepted only for the player to turn down the move. We did terminate the loan of Gabby McGill that the previous manager had sanctioned, a striker who is with Dunfermline. He was alright and would have featured if not bringing in Thompson-Brisset and Shaban. There are no short transfer windows in this league, I think it stays all the way open until March so there may well still be movement out if any clubs in for some of our unwanted players.

Confident that we'll do well here.
 
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I'm jealous of those who can do long term saves, I haven't managed one in years.

Just completed year two with United, going very well and Haaland is scoring an absolutely ridiculous amount of goals. But I'm also starting to feel a little bored after only two seasons
 
I’m doing my first lower league game.

does anyone know what the silver/grey stars mean when comes to a players role suitability? They are usually gold and range from 1-5.
 
I’m doing my first lower league game.

does anyone know what the silver/grey stars mean when comes to a players role suitability? They are usually gold and range from 1-5.
Is this FM21 or 20? Because I believe they changed role suitability to role ability on FM21. Which is a function of general ability to play the position and also attributes.

If it's just greyed out as in not there then only the gold stars mean anything.

If it's filled in and silver (which I don't know if this happens on role ability) then silver correlates with youth ratings. It's a way of measuring comparative youth ability rather than just placing them as half a gold star which wouldn't tell you much.
 
Noticed Arsenal win the league a couple of times in season 1, not sure what was going on there. United a few more times than expected too but was mostly City and Liverpool for me.

And on another topic, SI have messed up the Swedish 4th tier. Got teams down to play each other once only, which they did in 2020 due to Covid but then the game doesn't have them going back to playing each other twice again after that when in real life they are. Permanant 13 game seasons in that tier. Not sure I want to manage there now, not unless I get promoted at the first time of asking as that will just be boring year-in year-out. One obvious tactic would be to have a small squad, no need to stretch the budget over 22+ players if only playing 13 times, plough all the money into about 16.

Do you know if this has been fixed or heard anything more about it?

Ive just started an unemployed game and only loaded the Scandi countries with an eye on a Swedish team in the 4th tier because of their outrageously good youth facilities.

Your post puts me off taking a job in that division
 
Do you know if this has been fixed or heard anything more about it?

Ive just started an unemployed game and only loaded the Scandi countries with an eye on a Swedish team in the 4th tier because of their outrageously good youth facilities.

Your post puts me off taking a job in that division

Fixed apparently. l had a moan about it on the SI official forums and someone who had played through it told me.

I think teams do play each other once in the 2020 season in the Swedish 4th tier because that's what really happened because of covid. It says you're due to carry on playing each other once in subsequent seasons on the league rules page but you don't, it goes back to twice.

I was told that if you advance the game past a certain date that the rules page updates too to accurately reflect what actually happens.

Here was where I was talking about it - https://community.sigames.com/forums/topic/531307-sweden-official-league-specific-issues/

Edit: I'm glad of that, will actually try a Swedish 4th tier save one day in the future now. I think it's actually only England, Scotland and Sweden where you can manage as low as the 4th tier without downloading a custom database. Was toying around with stuff the other day and could supposedly load the 4th tier in France and Norway too but I didn't seem to actually be able to pick a team to manage from those at the start of the game, it didn't come up.
 
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Mid-season update with York, things going well. Sitting top of the league with a nice cushion although all the teams chasing us have a game in hand over us right now.
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We're about to play Darlington in the FA Trophy 5th round at home. We're long out of the FA Cup, having got knocked out in the first round proper after getting through 3 rounds of qualifiers. Lost to Sunderland, got beat 1-0 at our place. Sunderland deserved that, wasn't a great game and they restricted us to barely anything going forward while doing enough to get a goal. Was 0.38-1.21 on the old xG.

I've switched things up a bit tactically lately, going from a false nine and an advanced forward to 2 advanced forwards. Didn't have any good options for false 9 and was kind of forcing it. It showed as the guy I've played there most wasn't really contributing, scoring 3 goals and getting one assist in about 14 games. Didn't really want to play with 2 forwards doing the same thing but this seems to work better.

Stephen Dawson (free) - Moved for free agent Dawson after another of our midfielders, Michael Woods broke his ankle. Tons of experience behind him, and hopefully he can help us get over the line.
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Already lost a player for next season, goalkeeper Gregor Zabret is back off home to Slovenia, having agreed to join Radomlje on a Bosman. Would have liked to have kept him and when they came in for him I did try to offer him a contract extension but we couldn't agree terms. I'm over budget and it restricted what I was able to offer him. He's currently on £375 a week and wanted to start negotiations at £1.2k which is something we normally could afford if we wanted to do it. The max we could go to was £675 because of how the board is restricting us and it was never going to happen. He's agreed terms for his new team on £975 a week.