Alright. Welcome to my ‘save reveal’ for my ‘main’ save in Football Manager 2022 with Southend United. This blog will serve as a prologue to both the save, and perhaps my overall shift in the style of my blogging going into the new edition. The reason I write ‘main’ as ‘main’ is because I don’t anticipate that it will be a save that lasts the entirety of the edition/it won’t be my only save/the save may only last seasons. With that out of the way, I can focus on the more interesting stuff.
I don’t have many detailed memories of being at Roots Hall, but I went to around a dozen games during my formative years, travelled to Cardiff to watch their 2-0 loss to Blackpool in the LDV Vans Final (their first ever cup final appearance), and was even a ball boy once whilst playing for a local club:
I was a hugely unpopular member of the squad
Why have I chosen Southend United in FM22? On the face of it, it seems incredibly obvious, and unfortunately I have a feeble imagination and thus cannot fathom any reasons outside of them:
Recently relegated to Vanarama National - Southend United dropped out of the Football League for the first time in 101 years in the 2020/21 season
They are my local club - on foot I can reach Roots Hall in just under 15 minutes, and I can even hear the (sparse) crowd from my house when the Shrimpers score
New home - I doubt it will be hard coded in FM22 that a move to the long-mooted new stadium at Fossetts Farm is now afoot, but the location has existed as an option for Southend United to move into for a number of editions. Planning permission was finally granted on 26/10/2021, after over two decades of plans and failures to find a new home away from Roots Hall
Financial issues - for many years the club has staved off many winding up petitions due to unpaid HMRC bills, with 4 seen off in 2019 alone. Chairman Ron Martin clearly ends up paying these bills himself, as the club are not sustainable (and haven’t been throughout my adult life), but the club needs to be run differently to survive recent ill-fortunes on the pitch
So, as a TL;DR, they’re my local club, the finances are shambolic, they are struggling on-the-pitch, and they have potential in the long term to move into a large stadium.
Scrimping Shrimping
For too many years it seems as if the club have been chasing the glories of the past - Freddy Eastwood’s free kick winner against Manchester United in the League Cup, successive promotions to the Championship from League Two…those days are over, for now. The cold, hard reality is that Southend United are in a very bad place and need to act accordingly.
Short term: Get back into the Football League.
In the Beta the board demand Playoffs at a minimum, so chances are that if I fail to get promoted I’ll be under severe pressure. With this in mind I’ll need to be battling my instincts to go out and sign youngsters (regardless of how cheap they are), as I need players who can do a job here and now. I’ll be looking to handle General Training for the first time in the current iteration of the training schedule (I’ll be utilising FM Athlete’s excellent FM22 Training Planner to play around with my options before the save starts). My focus for the first year will be geared towards producing the best match performance possible, and once we’re stabilised in the Football League, and we’re looking to produce our own players (for on and off the pitch reasons), we can focus on improving our players instead.
Long term: Ensure a considered financial approach matches steady growth and results in order to make it to Fossetts Farm Stadium.
I’m not saying it will be a ‘youth only’ challenge, but in the long term great emphasis will be placed on producing our own players, as well as signing players from the lowest levels available in-game in order to maximise the value of player sales, as well as bang-for-buck in our own side. I don’t know if it’s realistic, but I’d like to avoid paying signing on/agent fees (or at least minimise them). There’ll be a big focus on how I look into finances at the club, and trying to upgrade facilities at the right time. I won’t be looking to improve our facilities for a few seasons as the cost to maintain them is exponential, and we need to be patient. There’s a possibility I will stop blogging the save should we make it to Fossetts Farm Stadium, and every season becomes remarkably similar to the last.
Impressions
Having loaded up the save during the Beta for research, I’ve noted that the main strength of the current squad is the defensive spine, with the likes of John White solidifying central defence, and Arsenal alumni Abu Ogogo offering a solid presence in defensive midfield. We will begin the save lacking any depth at left back as Tom Clifford will be out of action until at least 2022, which is worrying, but we do have Nathan Ralph as a versatile option across defence. It is said that good defences win you trophies, and that’s how I’ll be trying to build the club up for the first year or two, especially as we are a little short of quality in the forward positions to begin with. I’ll be starting with the opening transfer window being turned off, so in January I’m expecting a bit of a fire-sale of almost all U23 and U19 assets, simply to save on some wages. We can focus on balancing the squad a little bit better once we know where we stand going into Season Two (if we get that far).
I’ve noticed that a few ex-Southend players I’ve seen in the flesh are doing quite well for themselves as backroom staff, with Mark Gower a scout at Liverpool, Adam Bartlett assistant manager at Milwall, and Shaun Goater an u-18 coach at Manchester City. The only ‘Icon’ available is ex-centre back, and local lad, Spencer Prior. He is available and willing to join as a coach on the Beta, so here’s hoping that continues in the full game as well.
We start out with ‘average’ Training and Youth Facilities, and a Youth Level of 3. The training ground is dated in real life, and I’d know as I have to walk past it if I’m going to the gym. I’d love to improve the facilities, but, as mentioned earlier, this has to be lower on the priority list unless we make a lot of money through player sales quite suddenly.
Our bank balance starts out at around £743k, which will no doubt be decimated by our £29.6k p/w wage expenditure (which is a grand per week over budget). We will make a loss this season, which makes it doubly important that we get back into League Two at the first time of asking. The longer we wait, the harder it will become.
Conclusions
I’ve been looking forward to this task for almost a year, having decided very early in FM21’s cycle that this was going to happen, however now I’ve seen what I have to contend with, I am a little worried. As with all Football Manager saves, I feel like if I can get past the first year unscathed then I’ll no doubt succeed with all of my objectives, but it’s not often I take a job in Football Manager that requires immediate success.
I do hope you’ll follow along for the ride, and if you have any advice about managing at this level, then please do get in touch. I’m scared.
Thanks again to FM Athlete for making his FM22 Training Plan spreadsheet - it’ll be my entry point to getting my head around this training UI at last!
A special thanks to Ondrej Rensie for his absolutely ridiculous work on his Football Manager skin, which I will no doubt be using once the game comes out. I’ve also followed his article in regards to other graphics in order to maximise my joy from the game, which can be found here.