I spent 24 years with Reading FC back in the Football Manager 2017. This time, in FM24, it was only six years. For some, it’s too many years with a single club, especially within the save that’s a journeyman save in some way. But waiting (and hitting the spacebar) for some/any FM25 news resulted in almost a complete save in terms of the longevity and how I started the development of the club itself and some players.

I joined the club at the end of the virtual calendar year of 2029 after three seasons with Perugia and two seasons with Dijon. I decided to wrap up this part of the save with this six seasons summary including details about results, trophies, transfers, finances and tactics.

2028/2029 - the survival

I got the Reading FC job in December 2028 when the club was (rock) bottom of the Premier League with only ten points after 17 matches. The only aim was to try to save the club in the Premier League before a new start.

I set the 4-1-3-2 formation as it was planned before and the fight started. January transfer window is not my favourite part of the season and I always feel I did a bad job during the previous summer if I need to buy new players during winter. But this was not my squad and I need to make some business. As always, I didn’t spend too much money compared with other clubs, and the fact that the most important transfer was recalling my own player from his loan speaks for itself.

Everything worked well and we finished 14th in the table after the final round of the 2028/2029 Premier League campaign.

2029/2030

My ambitions were much higher than fighting about survival. I started improving everything and we were able to finish 6th in the league in my first complete season. That also meant continental qualification.

The League/EFL/Coca-Cola/Carabao Cup final appearance was also a great success for the club despite losing 1:4 to Manchester City in the final.

2030/2031

The main highlight of this season was our Europa League campaign. We finished 6th in the League Phase with five wins and three draws in eight matches and that was enough to progress straight to the Last 16 round.

We played against Rennes in this knock-out round and we won 5:4 on aggregate after a 2:2 draw away from home and a 3:2 home win. The quarter-final took us to France again as we got Nantes. We beat them 3:0 at home in the first leg after one of the best performances of the whole season. We made it to the semi-final despite a 1:2 defeat in the second leg.

The great cup run ended in the final as we lost to Chelsea 2:3 after being 0:3 down already after the opening sixty minutes. But it was a great season in the end despite losing the final.

2031/2032

The fourth season with Reading ended with a silverware. We finished 5th in the Premier League and I was happy with it because it meant we secured the Europa League again. The Champions League would be great but we finished three points behind Newcastle and they also have a better goal difference so we would not be able to move over them.

But it was the Europa League campaign that made everyone happy. We finished 2nd in the League Phase just two points behind Barcelona. We beat Göztepe, Cremonese and Valencia in the knock-out stage to make it to the final for the second year in a row.

The save is full of narratives and this final was not an exception because we played against Dijon - one of my former clubs in this save. After an uneventful first half of the final, we scored the winning goal in the 54th minute. Another narrative was that my own academy players made that goal as a central defender Niall Wright made an assist for a goal by the right wing-back James Norley.

“We are devastated because too few youngsters were afforded significant first-team opportunities this season and we are disappointed that this has been allowed to happen.”

I see you, my dear board members. I’m also devastated we won the Europa League with a half-squad of academy graduates.

2032/2033

After winning the Europa League in the previous season, we qualified for the Champions League for the first time. We did great and finished 5th after winning six matches from eight in the League Phase. It meant qualification to the Round of 16 and more prize money. We destroyed Athletic Club 7:0 on aggregate and made it to the quarter-final. The draw was boring, we got Arsenal and lost 0:3 on aggregate.

We concentrated on the Champions League too much in this season and I let to play many young players in both domestic cups and in the Premier League too. And it was the worst Premier League campaign within this save so far as we finished 8th in the league and we won the last European spot. If I don’t count the first season when I took over the club, we managed to get the least number of points and we had the worst goal difference.

2033/2034

The last season of this “Honorary” save so far. And the last season with Reading. I wasn’t 100% sure if it would be the last one but the info about FM25 delay helped me with this decision as I want to play the game occasionally and I don’t have an urge to start a new save with updated database, transfers etc.

I changed the tactic ahead of this season a little bit and we were flying from the beginning of the save. The easier level of the Conference League gave me one great thing - the opponents were not good enough, I was able to play only with youngsters and backup players and the full-strength squad played in the Premier League.

The average age of the squad within Conference League matches was under the age of 20 in most matches. We won all six matches in the League Phase with 25 goals scored and only three conceded. The knock-out stage was quite easy too as we beat Rangers FC, Austria Lustenau and Slavia Prague before we beat Lens 2:1 in the final match. The winning goal was scored by one of the academy youngsters again.

We won the EFL Cup this season too as we beat Arsenal in the final. The FA Cup campaign ended in the quarter-final again after a 1:2 defeat to Manchester City. Again.

But the main point of this season was the Premier League campaign. We fought about the league title with Manchester City until the last round. City had 37 matches played already while we were four points behind them with two matches in hand. We beat Chelsea and Wolves 2:1 and 3:2 respectively and we moved over Manchester City ahead of the last round.

City had to beat Brighton and we travelled for an away match against Everton. City went down early in the match against Brighton. We were 2:1 up after the first half and I knew it was very close after scoring the third goal after an hour of play. City scored two and won 2:1 in the end but we don’t care.

Premier League 2033/2034 champions = Reading FC. We scored 102 goals, conceded only 36 (the best effort of these six seasons) and we gained 101 points. All top five clubs in the table scored 100+ goals in this season.

Tactics through the Reading FC part of the save

Every single tactic/formation had something special but I enjoyed using the last one the most. It offered us the most attacking things and I think we played the most enjoyable football from all the six seasons I spent with Reading.

Maybe I will use it with the next club so there’s a possibility I will write more about it.

The magic of Moneyball transfers

I love buying cheap and selling for a lot of money. Who doesn’t? I had a lot of players I signed for almost nothing in comparison with what I got for them. Japanese national team was almost full of players I would be able to buy for around €5M each and sell them later for ten times as much. At least.

There are some examples in the gallery.

Conclusion

Four cup wins and one league title in the five and a half seasons when the club was bottom of the Premier League in that first season. I think that’s a really good review of this part of the save.

It was great to add some big trophies to the Reading FC history. I’m in the favoured personnel only right now but I’m happy with it.

Dijon continues finishing in the top 5 within the Ligue 1 and they are doing very well in overall since I left them. Perugia, my first club of this save, is struggling and battling against relegation from Serie A every season since I left them. They finished 13th, 15th (twice), 18th and relegated, 17th (twice) and 16th since I left the club after finishing 4th in the opening Seria A season. But that’s history already.

I won’t return for Dijon or Perugia within this save. That’s 100% sure as I already rejected a job offer from both of these clubs while I was with Reading.

“This is my last FM24 club, I don’t know how long I will be able to play this save but I’m one season ahead of the schedule in terms of playing with two clubs already. I feel I will focus on the club development the most now as it would be the one-club save…”

I wrote this in the first blog dedicated to this part of the FM24 save. But it’s not true anymore. With the already knowns news about the FM25, I will continue with this save with another club.

Bonus club - I already mentioned the fact I had a quite long list of possible clubs. The same as I had a lot of favourite clubs/saves within the last 20 years of Football Manager, I also had a lot of favourite players. It’s not only that great regen Loader, but there were many others. If I have enough time, and some of my previous clubs connected with some favourite players would be available within the job centre in the game, I can move here too.

This quote is from the opening post about this “Honorary save.” I don’t know if some of my former FM clubs will be available, but I resigned from my Reading manager job and will wait for the right offer. I know I want some challenge for a couple of months again.

I already added Poland, the Netherlands and Belgium to playable leagues of this save. I thought about going back home to the Czech Republic and play for some my favourite or former clubs within FM saves. I also already had some job offers from Premier League clubs during this last season but I rejected all of them as it was from Chelsea or Brighton. I didn’t think about it as some kind of challenge.

We will see what will come next after I will resignate from Reading job…

Thanks for reading, take care and feel free to join FM Slack.

What FM Slack is?

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.