It’s really unlike me but I’m absolutely flying through this save in comparison to previous years. I have made a few tweaks to how I’m approaching the game which I think are much better suited to the time I’ve got to play these days. I’ll maybe write about them at some point, but it mostly involves not looking at the useless things in the game like the Medical Centre and Data Hub…

I’m now halfway through my third season at FC Nordsjælland and felt it was a good time to pause and reflect. Season two was particularly fun, mainly because of the focus of this post. Baby, I’m amazed by them.

Loan Stars

I already mentioned in my previous post that I’d lost my two most talented players. It looks as though Andreas Schjelderup has made an impact on more than just my save. Wonderkids usually don’t fly under the radar for very long these days. He got his big move to Manchester United after a ridiculous season playing on the left wing as an Inside Forward on Attack. His follow up season back on loan didn’t quite hit those same heights, but he was still someone that I called upon for the big occasions. He hit double figures for goals again (10) and laid on eight assists for his teammates. That combined goals and assists tally of 18 is a significant drop from the 32 last season but I can’t be angry at the baby-faced star.

Adamo Nagalo, the Burkinese wonderkid central defender, had an even better season back on loan at the club following his move to Chelsea. He made the Superliga Best Eleven for the season, alongside being shortlisted for both the Autumn and Spring Player of the Year awards. Will either of them make the breakthrough now they’ve entered the big bad world of the English Premier League? It remains to be seen.

Those returning wonderkids weren’t the only loan stars we had at the club this season. I had to keep our parent club happy by helping to develop some of their players didn’t I.

There’s always a Scottish link isn’t there. FM23 might not reflect this for some reason, but Lewis Fiorini has caps for Scotland from u16s all the way up to u21s. He played just over 2,000 minutes across the season as one of the rotational options in the centre of midfield. In terms of output, he didn’t match what our other midfielders were able to produce (two goals and two assists), but he was a solid option when called upon. Will he make the grade at Manchester City? I don’t think so.

Aguilar has such a great first name, his Peruvian parents must have been big Barcelona fans back in the 2002/03 season. Kluiverth joined in January to strengthen the squad and made 14 starts across the second half of the season. Club youth product, Oliver Villadsen, will remain as first choice and is happy to stay at the club, but I just fancied giving him a challenge to see whether he’d rise to it. Villadsen isn’t a natural Right Back and is only 5’7” so I think that position is prime for someone to make the breakthrough from the youth ranks in future.

Fiorini and Aguilar were fine, Liam Delap was next level.

Delap’s 22 goals in all competitions, 15 in the league, drove us on to achieve what we set out to at the start of the season. He led the line superbly and was the focal point for our attacks. He missed out on top scorer in the league to FCK’s Uroš Đurđević, but for me, he was the most talented forward in the country. He should have scored more, with his conversion rate sitting at only 18%. In contrast to Fiorini, if I’m Pep then you’ve surely got to have Delap in and around the squad as a young English hot prospect.

I feel like loan players get a bit of a bad rep sometimes amongst the FMosphere. It all comes down to what kind of club you see yourself to be. Loan players are far more commonplace at the top level of football these days too, with finances more stretched than ever before. If you’re in the lower leagues then a loan player can make or break a season. At this middling level of European football I’ve obviously shown that they’ve more than got a place as well if you’re setting out to achieve lofty aims.

Plus, if you’ve got a parent club the calibre of Manchester City it’s difficult to resist the dipping into that pool of quality players.

However, there’s far too much talent at the club to be bringing in five loanees every season blocking their chances of first team football. I wanted to attack the Superliga a certain way this season though, did it work out the way I wanted it to?

The League

Course it did.

Those draws from last season turned into wins this season and we romped home to the league title. Finishing with 20 extra points compared to last season, and improving upon last season’s goal difference win on the last day by finishing 16 points ahead of FC Midtjylland this season. FCM and FC København had already handed us two defeats by matchday eight, matching last season’s overall total, but that was to be the last time we tasted domestic defeat.

Delap’s arrival helped us score six more goals but the improvement in defence was even better. It’s all well and good improving forward play but I love to see a season-on-season decrease in the goals against column. The 10-goal swing and only conceding 16 goals across the 32 league matches is a great achievement and the 18 clean sheets for Emmanuel Ogura won him runner up in the Spring Player of the League award, ahead of Liam Delap in third place.

On the Continent

Real Madrid, Chelsea and Bayer Leverkusen was a tough group to be handed for my first foray into Europe in this save, especially after we’d successfully navigated through three rounds of qualifying against Dinamo, Ferencvaros and Maccabi Haifa. Real and Chelsea dominated the group, beating each other but also dominating against Leverkusen and us. A home win and an away draw in Germany saw us head into the Europa League. An eventual defeat against Inter in the round of 16 was tough to take but the money from the European run was hugely beneficial to the club coffers.

Looking Ahead

I’ve mentioned it, but there’s a lot of incredible talent at the club to start integrating into the first team. Sindre Walle Egeli, remember the name. He’s made an incredible start to season three.

I won’t be shutting myself off from bringing in new players, as much as I’m not enjoying the changes to scouting on FM23 I’m still enjoying finding new signings to make. There’s a lot of talent in Africa, which obviously matches the Right to Dream DNA. I’ll probably make them the focus of the next post.

So that’s that for now. Cheers for reading. You won’t find any promises of any scheduled regular releases of writing here from me this year. It’ll be as ad hoc as ad hoc gets and I’m probably more likely to be Tweeting or updating things on FMSlack, so if you don’t already follow me on Twitter or you aren’t joining in with all 12 of us over on FMSlack then rectify both of those things right now.