FM20: Celaya FC - ten years of club development

Everything has to end and I decided to end the main FM20 save at the end of the 2028/2029 season. The choice to play in Mexico was perfect and I enjoyed my time here despite it was not as long save as in the previous years. If you are interested, come with me: Celaya FC - ten years of club development.

The overall club development

When the save started, Celaya was not too common club around North America thanks to the recent successes. I'm sure 99% of the football fans know this club just because of the fact Emilio Butragueno played here.

And the save was dedicated to him mainly including the searching filter and view made in terms of the strongest attributes I thought Butragueno was best in.

There were a lot of players on loan in the squad at the beginnning. Media prediction for the first season was 5th place and average age of the squad was almost 25,9 with one of the key players was Franz Torres with 38 years.

A lot of changed during ten years. From the squad personality through the average age or the composition of the squad to club facilities.

One of my favourite kits I've ever made.

Finances

It's great I have the save file from each season so I can go back to check all these things I decided to write about.

And I have one from the beginning as well so we can see the finances from July 2019. We had €366,019 in our bank balance and we were about €4k per month over our wage budget. Transfer budget didn't exist.

If we move five years to June 2024, our financial situation was very different. We had €10,6M in the bank, transfer budget over €6,5 and wage budget was rising to one milion per month. We were able to have better coaches and we were able to keep some players with better wages.

But it's still was nothing in comparison with the end of the 10th season with the balance of €86,6M, transfer budge over €100M and wage budget over €3M per month (spending only around 50% of it).

I'm sure the club is in a great position financially now.

Facilities

Training & Youth facilities are usually one of the main things what we all want to improve within our saves (if you don't play with the club which already has the best facilities of course).

We started with the adequate training facilities and below average youth facilities. Aims of the club were to work within wage budget or sign Colombian players for example.

The club philosophy within the club vision changed one thing during the first 5 seasons. 'Do not sign players over the age of 30' replaced the 'Sign Colombian Players'. And we moved to good training and average facilities.

I expected the club board will want to improve the youth facilities to have the best possible own players but the board ignored my requests for some time as they wanted to sign young players ready for the 1st team.

It lasted for some time and they rejected me four times during two years. But in the end, some threats helped me and we now have both training and youth facilities at the excellent level with undergoing works for another upgrade. It will be done in October 2029.

Average attendance and ticket holders

There are several rules how to increase the stadium capacity or to get the new stadium in FM. One of them is the number of sold out matches during the season. It's clear from the table below we had a no chance to reach this.

But I think it was not needed within this save. The Estadio Miguel Alemán Valdés stadium was enough for us with the 23 300 capacity.

We had 1k season ticked holders and 6779 average attendance in the first season when we were in the 2nd tier. It raised both masivelly for the 2nd season after the promotion to the top tier but the progress in next 9 years was slower.

In the end, we had slightly over 20k average attendance in the 10th season and over 6,3k season ticket holders.

I would say it was quite natural progress. The number of sellouts ended at 6 in the last season. In overal, all the matches with the full house were in the league or the Champions League play-off.

The only surprising thing was only one sellout in the first season in the top tier.

Maybe if I would buy more famous players, the numbers of both would be higher but I didn't want to make it just because of this. I didn't think the new or expanded stadium was needed.

Age and team composition

As I mentioned earlier, the average age of the squad was almost twenty six at the end of the first season. All the data in the graph below are from the end of each season, usually from the end of May or start of July.

We were able to make it down to 22,4 at the end of the second season and the lowest average age of the squad was at the end of the 4th season when we hit 20,4.

The last two seasons were very similar with 21 and 20,98 as we kept the main core of the squad and just replaced the sold players with the new ones in the same age. The same with youngsters - when 17/18 years old left for some loan, we promoted others from the youth team.

As I mentioned in the first post about this save, the clubs in the 2nd tier were too reliable on loan players. We had 8 players on loan at the beginning of the save. The record was 22 loan players from 34 in the 1st team by Club Atlético Zacatepec

It took me three seasons to get rid of all loaned players in terms I have good enough own players.

For example, my affiliate team Tlaxcala has 7 loan players now. But one or two teams still have around 10 players on loan. But it's much better than at the beginning when 10 was almost the minimum.

We were also able to have mainly Mexican based squad instead of a lot of foreign players. There were only 4 foreign players in the last season, the rest was from Mexico.

Transfers

The transfers history of these ten years are very easy. There were only free or laon transfers in the first season.

I decided to invest €875k before the second season, our first in the top flight. It was mainly between 20k - 220k but I bought players like Erick Vargas, José Manuel Dojaquez, Sebastián Osorio and more players who were in the club for many years. Or they still are here.

The forward Dojaquez was a great example as we bought him for €70k when he was 17 years old and we sold him for €13.25M after five years to Shakhtar.

We were able to get more and more money for outgoing transfers as the save progressed. We also paid €13M in the last season what is the club record. Same as €66M we received during the last season when I sold players to FC Porto, Sevilla, Leverkusen or Shanghai.

I'm sure it would be even more next season if I would continue.

The favourite real players

The first one is Emiliano Ozuna 100%. This Argentinian winger was already a key player when the save started and he keeps his role for the whole of the time.

Emiliano was 23 years old in 2019 when we started our journey. He was able to play as the winger in ML or AML position but he moved also to WBL position when I decided to switch to 3-5-2/3-4-1-2 formation. Ozuna was also able to play as a striker so his variability was great.

Emiliano Ozuna made 445 appearances in all competitions, scored 137 goals and made 100 assists.

Emiliano Ozuna and Sebastián Osorio were the only two real players in the squad at the end of the last season.

Osorio, born in Colombia, came to our club before the 2nd season of the save. That means he spent 9 seasons with us. He played mainly as IF(A) or IF(S). When we switched to the formation with three at the back, he lost his place as he was not enough already for the AM or striker role.

He made 386 appearances, scored 116 goals and made 55 assists.

I wanted to pick third real player but I was not able to select someone. No other player stood out.

Three favourite newgens

To select three best newgens of this save was really easy for me. I will start with the goalkeeper Erick Vargas.

I signed him for €40k in the 2020/2021 season after our promotion. He played mainly for the youth team during the first three seasons but he was our number 1 since 2023/2024. He made 'only' 17 clean sheets in this season. In the last season it was 38 what was a new club record.

The second player is the central defender Josué Infante. He is our own newgen from the 2021/2022 season and I wrote about him several times during the save. Mainly in combination with some set pieces as he was great for free kicks and corners. He scored 16 goals from the set pieces in the 2025/2026 season what was his best.

He is still only 24 years old in 2029 so he has everything ahead of him including the potential success with the national team.

The last one. And probably the most favourite of all. Midfielder Gilberto Erick Serrano. He was part of the same youth intake as Infante and developed into great midfielder.

Serrano played mainly as CM(A) or CM(S). He improved his attributes of Marking by 6, Decisions by 7 or Agility by 6 since he appeared in the club.

He made 318 appearances, scored 44 goals and made 100 assists. The only player who made it between legends of the club. Even the Emiliano Butragueno is only within icons.

My favourite number 8.

Conclusion

Despite I was not 100% sure about the save in Mexico at the beginning, it was a great choice. Mainly because it was something different again and the typical save in Europe with already know players.

As I wrote before my FM19 save in Chile and Argentina, I needed some fresh air and some new beginning. I'm glad it continued also within the FM20 cycle.

I found some very good players who I would buy for sure if I would manage some European club as they would fit great here. Not only my own players but many other players I played against when I reached the Mexican top tier.

Thank you, Mexico, it was great. I'm sure Emilio Butragueno would be happy.

Goodbye South America, goodbye FM19.

Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to Vincent Guzman and his perfect guides about South America nations, before Football Manager 2019 was released. It was one of the main reasons why I decided to leave Europe and I wanted to try a different continent.

Now, after almost one year, the FM19 cycle is over. And it was a good decision to try different nations, different league system, different continental competitions and to discover different players.

The first part was in Chile with CD Magallanes and I thought it will be my only club for the whole FM19 time. But I was wrong. As I already wrote in the past, the success with the Chilean club was too fast.

Simple stats summary: Nine seasons, 466 matches played, 327 matches won, 870 goals scored, 27 trophies won, new stadium, most reputable South American club in the world…

…the club growth was perfect in all areas but as I had a lot of time to play, it was too fast and I ended this part of the journey at the end of February 2019 of real-life date.

When I wrote about this part of the save I included my three favourite players. They were real-life players, not newgens. I wrote about the central defender Rodrigo Echeverría and two midfielders Diego Aravena and Tomás Aránguiz. You can read it about them HERE.

I decided to share my favourite newgen from the time with Magallanes. Despite the fact, this young player was not wonderkid and he was not the best newgen from the youth intake, he was able to develop in the player who spent a big part of his career in Manchester City.

His name is Alfonso Reiman and he was part of the Youth Intake of our affiliate club Unión San Felipe in 2021. I bought him for €195k and he played mainly as CM(S).

We sold him for €10M four years later to Corinthians and it was a new club record for outgoing transfer. He spent three and a half years with Corinthians before Manchester City bought him for €21M.

To my big surprise, he was not just one of many players here. He became a very important member of the squad and his value was €90M in 2035 when he was 30 years old.

He moved to Bayern in 2037 and to PSG one year later where he is at the end of this save in his 35 years and with 137 caps for Chilean national team.

I didn't have him in my own squad for a long time before he moved elsewhere but it was great to follow his career.

Alfonso Reimann in 2022, 2025, 2030, 2035 and 2040.

The seasons in Chile are from January to December and I knew during the last season already I will leave. I started to look around other nations and leagues.

I wanted a new challenge. And I spotted Arsenal de Sarandí. The bottom team of the Argentinian second tier. The magic of the relegation rules in Argentina is that you can stay in the division even if you end the season at the last place in the table thanks to "Average Points Over 3 Years Table".

And that was also the case of my first half of the season with Sarandí. It was a risk as there was a possibility we will not gain enough points, the club will be relegated to the non-playable third tier and I will have to look for another team.

But we made it, finished 21st in the table but 17th in the Average Points Table.

Since the 2026/2027 survive, I started to build the club on my own and as I like the most - young players, selling the key players to have enough money for club facilities improvement and playing with many own newgens.

We won the promotion in my first full season with the club and we finished 7th in the first season in the Superliga. Sixth place in the 2029/2030 season was the start of the next three years with the first trophies after many years.

We won the Superliga, Superleague Cup, Copa Sudamericana and Recopa Sudamericana.

When I wrote about the 2038/2039 season, the title was "The season like no other" because of some records and perfect results. But the next season, the last one of the save, was even more successful. We won 7 trophies including all 4 domestic competitions and also Copa Libertadores, Recopa Sudamericana and FIFA Club World Cup.

The biggest difference between Magallanes and Arsenal de Sarandí board was the willingness to move the club forward.

Every time we earned some money thanks to transfers or via competitions with Magallanes, the board accepted my requests to improve facilities. That was the main reason why I spent only 9 years with Magallanes but 14 years with Sarandí.

Finances of Arsenal de Sarandí in 2027 vs. 2040

When we won the second league title with Sarandí in 2031/2032 and the first Copa Libertadores trophy, the club still had the bellow average training & youth facilities, average youth recruitment and the board was happy with the level of everything.

And they also rejected all my requests despite a lot of money in the bank and prematurely repaid loans.

But the situation has changed after elections in 2032 and the new board was willing to move the club to the highest level. That was the moment when I got new blood and new motivation to continue in the save. I said to myself I will improve all facilities to the top and the save will be over.

We are in June 2040 and all facilities are within the best possible level except the Youth Facilities as they are "only" Superb and the last upgrade will be done in November 2040.

I mentioned in the last post one of the reasons why I joined this club - the captain Agustin Chocobar. The central midfielder who was able to play in several roles including BWM but also DLP or classic CM. If you missed it, you can find it in the bottom part of THIS POST.

You can see there are several players included in the club details section as Icons or Favoured Personnel.

There are almost all my favourite players from the time with Sarandí including Santiago Ortiz, Lautaro Contreras, Franco Somoza, Damián Guevara, Marcelo Pérez, Darío González or Luciano Cambiasso. 

The last one is probably my most favourite newgen from the Sarandí Youth Intake in 2031. He played mainly as CM(S) or CM(A) and despite he didn't score too many goals, he usually broke the net when he scored from the long distance.

22df9b128ff39ba559b05264ee129908.gif

Luciano Cambiasso in 2032, 2035 and 2040.

I used several tactics during this FM19 save. It all started with defensive-minded 4-1-2-3 but it continued with a more positive version of this formation and several variations of 4-1-4-1.

And (almost) as always it ended with many versions of 4-3-3 with the flat midfield trio - Development of 4-3-3 with Magallanes.

The 4-3-3 with the flat midfield trio was the main tactic for the time with Sarandí as well. You can find some versions and modifications in the previous posts.

The last part of the save, the last half of the season, I used 4-4-2 formation with very simple instructions and it resulted in stupid results (click to see the results).

The Football Manager 2019 save in South America is over. I mentioned it in the Football Manager 2019 (#FM19) - in retrospect I was able to contribute to thanks to FMGrasshopper that FM19 became predictable and I didn't enjoy it as much as previous versions of the game. 

On the other side, as I already mentioned at the start, it was great to discover something new outside Europe. 

If you would like to read the whole South America save from the beginning, just open this link.

Now, it's time to find some ideal challenge for the Football Manager 2020. 

Thank you, everyone, for following the save. 

FM18 Epilogue | BFC Siófok 2017 - 2045

The long journey has ended. It was one of the longest save I've ever had. And thanks to many reasons also unforgettable. BFC Siófok will always be in my memory as a club I enjoyed managing. Despite the (forced) sacking in the end...

I don't want to repeat myself and I don't want to write about the specific years and specific eras of the save. Not all of you like success and trophies 😜

One of the main key moments of the save was surely the promotion to the top tier but also the fact we won the first league title in our second season in the first division.

And we won it 24 times in a row. MTK Budapest was the runner-up for the most times.

The league titles meant Champions League football. And Champions League meant more and more money.

But it was not as easy as in the domestic league. We finished third and fourth in the group in our first Champions League participation but after some time we were better and better.

We won the first title in 2035 when we beat Tottenham and we beat the same team in the Final after five years to win it for the second time. This trophy was the first of five in a row.

As you can see in the picture below Manchester City was our bogey team but we also beat them three times in the Final.

It had to be City who beat us in the last season of this save as we lost 1-0 on aggregate in the Semi-Final.

Siófok changed from the very average second-tier club to the most dominant club in the country.

I'm sure if I would play it for the next six years I would win six other league titles and we would have 30 league titles same as Ferencvárosi, the most successful Hungarian club in terms of league titles.

But never mind, that was not my dream or my aim. I changed the recruitment policy several times during this save. It went from "Around The Lake" to the more international-based squad and back to the domestic-based squad in the end with 98% of our own players.

Same as we have dynamic rivalries in the game (we 'made' a rivalry with MTK Budapest and Puskás during this save) players and staff are always add to favourite personnel, icons and legends.

At the end of the save we have five people included between Legends - Gerardo Paolacci, György Benedek, Dominik Szoboszlai, Manos Pasas and Keysi Rensie.

Dominik Szoboszlai has a big part in my heart thanks to this save after he signed for BFC Siófok in 2025 and played for us until 2037 before he became a U19s coach and first-team assistant manager later.

Paolacci was my favourite foreign striker, Benedek was our long-serving master at right-wing and Manos Pasas was our record signing from PSG and he won five Champions League titles in five years.

There were a lot of other players I liked and I refused to sell them and waited until we will have enough funds to give them big contracts to keep them around.

We sold 173 players for €1.94B during this save and we bought 161 players for €393M during this save. Just only Manos Pasas was bought for €115M...on the other hand, our own newgen striker László Szalai was sold to Real Madrid in 2035 for €75M what was the club highest fee received.

If you want to know how much we paid to agents, it was €38.5M. Probably the cheap area...

One of my favourite thing within this save was to try to get the affiliate clubs from different nations.

I always had one domestic affiliate in the second tier, some of them were promoted to the top flight thanks to our players who were on-loan there until I made a link with Nyíregyháza Spartacus - an ideal average club in the second tier for 18 or 19 years old players to give them playing time.

But during the time I also arranged a link with clubs in Slovakia, Croatia, Serbia, Spain or the Czech Republic. And at the end of the save we also had Sydney FC, New England Revolutions, Henan Jianye and FC Hiroshima. Many foreign nations with many newgens who could appear in our own Youth Intake.

🤑🤑🤑

The club developed into an absolutely monstrous thing financially during the time. We had around €1.3B in the bank balance in 2042 and we had more than €1B on transfers and €26.5M on wages per month. 

Board decided to deposit €115M in 2043 and €250M in 2044 into a reserve investment fund. I never had this message before, this is how finances look in 2045.

And we are almost at the end of our journey because we can talk about the biggest pain of the second half of this save.

The club board decided to build a new stadium in 2022 and we moved there in 2024. The Siófok Stadium was great during the first years and the 12k capacity was absolutely fine but as we grew up we had 9k season ticket holders and I'm sure we would be able to have a bigger stadium. At least with 20k capacity...

When I asked about the possibility to have a new stadium again I found out it usually takes at least 20 or 25 years before the board will think about the new stadium again. 

Just in the half of the penultimate season of the save I realised I can finally ask about a new stadium.

The board rejected my request due to a small fan base.

If I take it from a selfish point of view, it's absolutely stupid. But it's probably right in terms of how the Football Manager is set up and 'coded'.

This is not an official statement of SI but I think the fan base in FM works within the specific area so as we are a small area near the Lake Balaton we are unable to attract the same amount of people as in Budapest for example. 

And that's probably the reason why they rejected my request four times due to the same reason. When it happened for the last time in June 2045 I decided to leak this into the press.

The board invited me to a meeting and I was sacked because I criticised the board publicly. And that's the end of Keysi Rensie's journey and relationship with BFC Siófok...

It took 10243 days, 1110 wins, 268 draws and 155 defeats. BFC Siófok scored 3460 goals and conceded 1166 goals. Keysi Rensie ended his Hungarian journey with a 72% win percentage, 24 league wins and 42 cup trophies.

Life Around The Lake after Keysi Rensie...

Keysi Rensie didn't leave the game immediately and he decided to follow BFC Siófok for next years. Mainly because of his sons Jiri and Robert...

Gary Monk took a charge of BFC in the summer of 2045 and he decided to change the whole squad. He spent €545M on new players during the first season in a charge and sold players for €39M.

What about the Rensie brothers? The younger one, Robert, was sent for a loan spell to Japan where he spent the season with FC Hiroshima. The older one, Jiri, was sent to the reserve squad.

After 24 years, BFC Siófok didn't win the Hungarian first division as MTK Budapest finally won the league title.

Jiri Rensie was released by BFC Siófok in summer 2047 and he ended his professional career later and became Director of Football when he was 33 years old. He became a DoF of Nyíregyháza Spartacus in 2049 and started his new chapter as a boss.

Later, in 2051, he moved to FC Vysočina Jihlava in the same role.

Siófok won the league between 2047-2050 four times and they are dominant again but without some European success.

Gary Monk was a manager of the club until 2050 and there were only five domestic players in the first-team squad after so many changes.

The first team squad included players from Australia, Brasil, Colombia, Netherland, Italia, Portugal, Serbia, Spain...

Meanwhile, the older son Jiri became Director of Football, Robert came back from Hiroshima and he then went for loan spells with Mezökövesdi SE, Nyíregyháza Spartacus and Duna Aszfalt TVSE and he signed for the last mentioned club as a free player in summer 2048.

He is playing the third Hungarian tier and during the 2049/2050 season, he played 30 league matches, scored 4 goals and made 19 assists. In 2050/2051 he played 27 games, scored 4 goals, made 20 assists and helped the club to win promotion to the second division.

In the 2051/2052 season, he played 36 league goals, scored 2 goals and made 21 assists. It looks like he found the right club...

The journey and FM18 adventure of Keysi Rensie end there.

The board of BFC Siófok decided to build Keysi Rensie Stadium with a capacity of 56,102 in 2050 and the club moved there in July 2052. 

The weird and very high Keysi Rensie Stadium during the Hungarian Super Cup between Siófok and Videoton. Keysi Rensie was there but only in the stands, not in the dugout...

Thank you, everyone, for following this Rensie's journey...

FM17 | 24 years with Reading FC

It was a pleasure, isn't it? If you read the previous part of my Football Manager 2017 save with Reading you know I decided to end this journey at the end of the 2039/2040 season. As we started in 2016, this save lasted for 24 virtual years.

We started as an average Championship team and ended as the best club in the world.

The proper fairytale.

I'm sure I don't need to go back and repeat the same words I wrote in the past in a couple of parts. When I finished the FM16 save with Akademisk Boldklub I thought about to not write about FM17 save.

It was mainly because I wanted to play with Reading just for a fun and share some things about the game on Twitter for example and write a post just only time from time. But as this save continued I enjoyed it more and more. Mainly thanks to the development of players like Danny Loader, Liam Kelly, Josh Barrett and more.

All of you who followed this save know there were a lot of great players and it same as was a joy to watch their development it was also very sad to see when they retired or when they decided to leave the club.

The last man from the original squad was Danny Loader. I don't want to write other paragraphs about him as I wrote a single post about him but when he retired in 2038 I very quickly found out it's time to end this save because it will not be the same.

If you ask me what was my TOP 5 moments of this save I will say these...

1. Promotion to the Premier League

We were very close to the promotion just in the first season. We finished 6th in the Championship but we lost to Cardiff in the Play-off Final after extra time.

Reading won the promotion in the third season when we won the Championship with 112 points.

33 matches won in a season, Jake Cooper sets new league average rating record (7.77), Dominic Samuel became the new best goalscorer in the club history with 72 league goals and of course, 112 points were the new Championship and club record.

2. Danny Loader

As I said above I don't want to repeat everything that was written already. Danny became a first-team regular in the first season in the Premier League. If I remember it right it was the fourth season of the save.

He was lucky Dominic Samuel (our striker number one) was injured and I decided to play Loader instead to send him to the lower league for a loan spell.

And he delivered and became our first choice. The rest is history. He played the most matches and scored the most goals in club history. I only don't know why he was not more involved in the England national team as he played only about twenty matches.

3. Champions League

It was the fifth season I called "Dream season". We overachieved straight in the first season in the Premier League and finished seventh in the league. The next season we won the Premier League. Just only two years after the promotion.

And we also secured our first Champions League Group Stage place for the 2021/2022 season. We started this season as a Europa League finalist from the previous season as we lost to Real Madrid in the Final.

In the 2022/2023 season, we won our first Champions League. We played with Benfica in the Final and we won 1-0 after the extra time thanks to a goal by Dean Castle. It was the first Champions League trophy and we won this competition 16 times this year.

I think some people around the community hate me just because of this. Mainly in Football Manager Slack...

4. Tactical changes

This is one of the things which kept me interested in the save for a long time. Same as I set side challenges in the game like transfer policy or development I also want to try some new formations and I'm interested if the same players are able to play in a different system.

In this save we started with a 4-3-3 formation. This one we used for the first two and half years. It was slightly modified during this time but the main things remained in the same way.

A couple of months before promotion to the Premier League I decided to change formation to 4-3-1-2. This one was so good that I wrote two separate posts about it because I changed some things during five seasons and I decided to publish a post about both versions.

I also decided to drop back a player from the Attacking Midfielder position to Defensive Midfielder with various roles so it resulted in a 4-1-3-2 formation.

We also played with 4-3-3 wide with a defensive midfielder and with a flat central midfield trio as well.

And the last formation I used was my favourite one - 4-1-4-1. I didn't write about this formation, I just only published some screens about it on Twitter and in FMSlack. As I used the Wide Playmaker role in the FM16, this year I created 4-1-4-1 with wingers at both sides and after one season I changed the left winger to the wide midfielder.

I also experimented with Deep Lying Playmaker and Roaming Playmaker in the DM slot but that was mainly because of formations we faced in different competitions. But the most important thing is this formation was and will be my favourite.

5. Consistency & development

We talk a lot about the way in this save. The philosophy was very easy from the start - just play with 10+ players from the original squad as long as it will be possible.

Finances were tight at the start of the save so I had to sell most paid players to balance the books. I'm sure I sold some players I would normally keep in the squad and I like their style in the real life but it had to be like this.

For more than 15 years I had almost the same squad, respectively the starting XI and our key players were mostly the same as players like Liam Kelly, Josh Barrett, Jake Cooper, Dominic Samuel, Luke Southwood developed in world-class players. At least in my eyes of course...

If nothing more I'm sure this squad policy and philosophy helped all these players to develop into perfect players despite nine from ten FM players would don't trust to all of these players they are able to play Premier League regularly or they are able to win Champions League for more than ten consecutive years.

As you know I had a couple of seasons during them I bought many foreign players despite I knew they will not receive a work permit. It was a part of my way how to stay interested in a save and I made a solid profit from these players despite after some successful season I didn't need money or sell players because of financial struggle.

It was only part of the game and I wanted to have fun.

From a historical point of view, I'm used to playing mainly with domestic players. And it doesn't matter if I manage the team from England, Serbia, Denmark, Bolivia... I like to play with players from that nation. And I decided to develop a squad mostly from my own newgens.

It was my last aim of this save. At the end of the 2039/2040 season, I had 29 players in the first-team squad and 21 of them were from our own academy.

That’s all for this part of the Reading FC save in Football Manager 2017.

Thank you everyone for the continuing support and thanks for reading.

FM16: Seventeen years with AB

This is the last part of my FM16 AB save. You were able to read the last season summary and story about regen Nichlas Meyer in recent time and this part is about club changes during the long seventeen years with the club. 

We started as a semi-professional club and ended as the best Danish club and part of the Champions League knockout stages.

It all started in 2015 when I took charge of this club. We were a semi-professional club in the third Danish tier. We have won promotion straight in the first season from the 2. division to the NordicBet Liga.

We stayed in NordicBet Liga for another three seasons before promotion to the Superliga. We finished 7th in the two first seasons in the top flight, second in the third season and we won our first league title in the fourth season in Superliga. There were another nine league titles in the next nine years...

Finances

When 2015/2016 started club had a balance of about -£200K. During the last seventeen years, we made a big step forward as we had more than £100M. We had no money for transfers at the start and we had more than £150M before the last season.

Staff

At the start of this save we had three coaches including a goalkeeping coach and fitness coach and one assistant manager. The coaching team was bigger and bigger during the save including the reserve and U19 team.

Before the last season, we had 24 coaches for Senior Squad, 5 coaches for the Reserve squad and 14 for the U19 team.

The most famous coaches during the years were Cesc Fabregas, Dennis Bergkamp, Michu, Thomas Sorensen, Lasse Schöne, Miroslav Klose, Jon Dal Thomasson, Kasper Schmeichel, Urby Emanuelson or Magnus Wolf Eikrem...

There were also two coaches - Nicolai Hogh and Rasmus Hansen. These two players were in the squad at the start of the save and I signed them as a coach after their retirement.

Save stats, league history and records

I think it's not needed to write many words about it. The most important thing is that we won ten league titles in a row and 11 domestic cup trophies overall. We were also twice in the Champions League Semifinal and once in the Europa League Final where we lost on penalties.

During the last three seasons of this save we were unbeaten and we finished this save with 131 matches without losing. It was from 13th October 2028 until 9th May 2032. We also have a record of 84 wins in a row.

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During the 2024/2025 season, we were able to keep 11 clean sheets in a row and we had 108 points from 36 matches in two seasons in a row.

My stats

Same as players or coaches there was progress by myself during the save. I started with the low attributes and finished with some "20".

Memorable players & icons

There were many players during this save about I could write many words. As I wrote Nichlas Meyer was my most favourite player.

I also want to mention Alexander Tved Hansen. This midfielder came to our club in 2019, became captain for more than ten years and played more than around more than 300 matches.

Sergei Eremenko were a great player as I wrote earlier and one of the legends is also defender Lars Sorensen who was in our club for ten years and he provided many important assists.

I can't forget about Thomas Randrup who was in our club from 2016 same as Nichlas Meyer or Martin Hansen who has voted European Golden Boy twice. Goalkeeper William Thorhauge was also a great servant for many years despite he was no our no.1 he was patient and reliable.

Players who were in the club for many years had to play the last match of this save in the starting XI. (rounded) It was the emotional end of save especially when Nichlas Meyer scored the winner and Lars Sorensen was PoM...

FM16 is over for me and I want to thank you for your support here and on Twitter. It was a very good choice as I really enjoyed this save.

FM15: Twenty years with Spartans FC

This is the final part of my Football Manager 2015 career with Spartans FC. It was the best choice I could have done. I spent there 7270 days and received 106 awards. On the lines below, I look back on twenty years with Spartans FC.

I started this save as a 28 years-old manager with a regional reputation and very bad attributes as you can see on the screenshot. After 20 years in charge of Spartans, I have World Class reputation and “much better” attributes.

I was 7270 days in charge of Spartans FC. We played 1097 matches, we won 718 of them. We drew 204 matches and lost 175 games. We scored 2584 goals and conceded 1290 goals. We won 33 cup competitions and 13 league competitions. We were promoted four times.

We bought 101 players for a fee around 105M£ and we sold 61 players for a fee around 221M £. Highest fee spent was 11,75M £ for midfielder Juan Fernando Diosa in summer 2031. The highest fee received was 55M £ for Serbian midfielder Darko Popovic from Real Madrid.

There were a lot of famous players in the club during the past twenty years. Many interesting a quality footballers. Alisdair Sutherland, who could play on every position at the left side, has the most league appearances for club – 418 matches.

He is the oldest player who played in a competitive match. He played against Motherwell when he was 35 years and 265 days. He is the clubs oldest goalscorer as well.

Fastest goal? John Wilson scored against St. Mirren after 8 seconds. Another two records hold Graham Paterson. My favourite player of this save. He holds the record of most assists in single-season – 26 in 2023/2024. And this player scored 140 league goals for the club, no one scored more.

We finished this save with 335 matches without defeat in a row in Scottish Premier League!

The history of Graham Paterson

More screens from the save