A time flies and the second season of my Football Manager 2024 save is over for some time. For a long time to be absolutely honest. But there was not enough time to write about due to many real-life things, mainly because of the almost five weeks-long illness of my son including a couple of days in hospital before Christmas. But the custom skin edits also played a role in it as I spent many days (maybe weeks) just tweaking the code and reloading the skin to find out I made something I wanted for a long time instead of playing the game. I’m one hundred per cent sure I spent more time with the skin customising than playing the game itself. I’m not sure if it will change in the upcoming time but not because of the skin but because of real-life work and real-life football. Priorities they say. Maybe it’s more about I’m just older…

After a promotion thanks to the penalty shootout win in the Serie C play-off final (feel free to read more about the first season HERE), I hoped to be competitive in Serie B mainly because the squad was even younger than in the first season. And also because of the injury crisis during the season. It surprised me when the pre-season odds were presented and our side was set to finish 1st despite being Serie B newcomers.

No pressure there…

Transfers

It was very similar to the opening season in terms of what I knew - we needed some good players to strengthen the squad. My favourite way how to find some good and cheap players in this save is to use the “Minimum Fee Release Clause (Domestic Clubs in Higher Division)”. That’s how I, for example, found young central defender Alberto Cinelli who I bought for €58k from Giugliano (I can safely say it was the best signing from all in my eyes and in terms of his development).

Lorenzo Di Adario (a new main RWB) is the same example as he was one of the best players of Serie C in the first season - €155k was easy money to pay.

I knew some key players from the first season would attract interest from some clubs. But it’s always sad to lose your key players. And I lost two of three of them during the winter of 2024/2025. The best goalscorer of the first season Francesco Riccio left for €1.4M to Lille. And Antonio Donnarumma, our best central midfielder, went to Fiorentina for a club record fee of €4.2M. Donnarumma left us almost at the end of January 2025, which means I had to react very quickly.

After some brief scouting, searching and comparing, I decided to sign Youssou Keïta from Espanyol. He is one and a half years younger than Donnarumma but he is enough experienced to help our central midfielders who are mainly youngsters. In terms of attributes numbers, he is not as good as Donnarumma but he was also a reason why I made a change in our tactics. And maybe it also led to how our Serie B campaign ended…

The picture above shows the comparison of Keïta and Donnarumma from the end of the season. The attributes are highlighted for the CM(S) role because this role is 1) the base for our central midfielders and 2) all our central midfielders are trained for the CM(S) role. Keïta played only a couple of times as CM(S) but that’s not important.

Donnarumma played 10 matches in Serie B for us, scored one goal and made one assist. Keïta made 7 assists in 17 appearances.

The striker Michele Cincilla was the best signing in the end-of-season summary. I signed him as a possible Riccio replacement and he scored 12 goals and made 3 assists in 23(13) appearances. But he didn’t become one of my favourite players and if there will be some bid in the summer, I have no issue with letting him go.

Coppa Italia

We didn’t play in the Coppa Italia last season, only in the Coppa Italia Serie C so we entered to the main cup competition at the beginning of the 2024/2025 season. We got Potenza in the preliminary round, our opponent in the play-off semi-final. Already mentioned Cincilla scored twice and we won 3:1 despite we were 0:1 down after the first half but three goals within twenty minutes secured our win.

The first round draw decided we faced Bari away from home, one of the candidates for a promotion. It was played a week before the Serie B beginning so I took it as another test. We went 1:0 up after the half-time but the home side equalised shortly before the end. They went 2:1 up almost immediately after the extra-time started but we equalised thanks to a second goal by Casella. Gwaeron Vrede scored their third but the captain Stefano Scardino scored after a corner kick in the 119th minute.

Unfortunately, the hard work was not rewarded and we lost on penalties after Forastiero and Scardino missed their attempts. I know it was only a first-round tie but if someone would need some proper advert for the Coppa Italia, this game would be good enough. I also gained enough confidence we can play against stronger sides in Serie B.

Serie B - part 1

The first part of the Serie B campaign was very good except for one month. We remained unbeaten for the first 12 league matches and we were in a very comfortable position without any relegation fears. When we beat Ternana 3:0 away from home in the first round and Gianluca Giucci scored our third in the sixth additional time, I didn’t even imagine it was his last goal for the rest of the season. I mentioned this player in the post about the first season, but his development got a big knock as he damaged his cruciate ligaments and he was out for 7 months.

It happened at the end of October and there were up to eight more injured players during November and we had to improvise a lot. The results show we were not able to win five matches in a row before some players came back in December and we finished third in the table after the first half of the Serie B campaign. Very solid.

The 3-5-2 for the second season

I already mentioned Youssou Keïta and his influence on our tactics for the second half of the season. I played the first half of the season with the same formation as in the first season but when Keïta came in, I decided to make a couple of changes.

The main was to change one CM(S) role to the Roaming Playmaker role and use Keïta in this role. The CM(A) role moved from the MC spot to the MCL. I also switched the duties of both wing-backs. The other changes were in terms of instructions - instead of using more often pressing, I decided to use Counter instruction within the “in transition” and the goalkeeper should distribute the ball through the Take Short Kicks instruction as it works better (in my eyes) when you have some playmaker role as the keeper doesn’t distribute it only to defenders. But maybe that’s only some of my imagination…

What has changed on the pitch? The main change was in terms of variability of how our attacks looked thanks to the unpredictability of the Roaming Playmaker. I really liked how Keïta operated in the middle of the pitch in both halves of the pitch. I also liked how the RPM and CM(S) players were able to swap their positions just because RPM went deeper for the ball more centrally and the CM(S) player moved to the MCR slot automatically.

Serie B - part 2

We started the second part of the season with a 1:0 win against Empoli, a 1:2 defeat with Cesena and a goalless draw against Brescia. But we woke up after these three not-too-impressive matches. The search for the right starting XI after transfers resulted in a big 5:1 win against Parma. We had strong February, March and April and despite losing 0:2 against Palermo in the 36th round (they secured a promotion thanks to it) we finished second in the table and won the promotion to the Serie A.

It was not “I don’t want to win the title/promotion” style but, yes, I was surprised it ended like this. Maybe it’s because of the completely fake FM world thanks to the blank database. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. I wanted to compare the first and the second half of the season as I thought we scored more and conceded less after the mentioned tactical tweaks. But the truth is that it was almost identical. We scored 37 goals in the first half and 36 in the second half. We conceded 17 in the first half and 16 in the second half.

While comparing these two parts of the season in my head in terms of the tactics, we played more like a team in the second half of the season. It was much more compact and I thought every player wanted to fight for his teammates. I’m not sure why I have this feeling but it’s not always only about results and goals in my head.

Bari is the loser of this season in Serie B 100% as they were the first in the table for some time twice during the season but they finished 5th in the end and lost to Sampdoria in the play-off preliminary round and their season ended negatively. Sampdoria as the last play-off member won the promotion.

I already know I will lose one of the key members of the squad - the WBL Dario Iazzetta who is set to join AS Roma for free as he was unwilling to sign a new contract with us. That’s also why he played fewer matches at the end of the season to give Mario Mercurio enough playing time before he became the new WBL number one.

Just for your idea, this is the team from the end of the season. The average age of the team - 19.93.

How did the other two (future) clubs do in the 2024/2025 season?

• Dijon finished 3rd in the Ligue 2 and they qualified to the promotion play-off. They beat Nancy in the semi-final after penalties and they also beat Metz 1:0 on aggregate to make it back to the Ligue 1 after four years. That means a second straight promotion for Dijon, the same as we did with Perugia.

• Reading is back in the English Championship after two years in League One as they finished 2nd in the table just a point behind Charlton.

FM Slack alert!

There were a lot of changes within many social media including Twitter (now “X”) and it’s not the same as in the past. We can’t see many things due to the algorithm, weird preferences and many other reasons I don’t even want to know.

There are many Discord servers and I’m sure they are good and useful. But I will probably always be a bigger fan of Slack. Or better worded the Football Manager Slack. Feel free to join us with this link.

You will find a short channel summary in the ‘generalchat’ so it will be easier for you to navigate through the channels.