That was a bit naughty of me!

Well so far it's serving its purpose of getting me achievements. Plus it's always nice to change it up.

I done the domestic treble, Celtic finished 4th! Behind Hearts (2nd) and Dundee United (3rd). Beating Dundee United in the League Cup Final and Falkirk in the Scottish Cup Final. With easy runs in both to be fair.

Bayern Munich battered me on aggregate 6-2 in the First Knockout Phase of the Champions League, after drawing 2-2 at home.

I'm also going to be managing the Olympic side.

I'll try and improve performance in Europe next season, as well as retaining at least the League and one Cup and then load the English leagues up I think.

Borussia Moenchengladbach, Pre-Season '11-12
I'm just shy of December in Season 3, but this is a little summary of the off-season.

The Gladbach finances improved by £13m season-on-season, which was basically the Champions League revenue minus the extra £5m a year on the wage budget. That raised the bank account to a healthy £41m. I was hoping for a £20m budget, actually earning £13m.

Central defence was the prime target, but Roman Neustadter's rapid rise from little-used DM to defensive fulcrum and Fans' POTS meant I was happy to eschew the search for a top CD and instead agree Solvi Ottesen on a Bosman. The funds went into improving the fullback position; Allan Nyom arriving in a £7.5m deal from Udinese. With Arango's physical level declining, another CAM was also a must. I narrowed down the options to Mehmet Ekici, Vladimir Weiss and Lars Stindl. Ekici's lack of willingness to run with ball or provide through passes rendered him unsuitable, and Roma jumped in with an 11th hour bid to snatch Weiss away in a bargain £2.5m move. So that left Stindl, and he signed from Hannover for £8m. Not too unahhpy with that; he'd proven a thorn in my side each time I'd played Hannover, and he felt like more of a Gladbach signing anyway and keeps the German quota up.

That was it for the first-team squad, but I signed a raft of youngsters as both the U23 and U19 teams were pretty short of quality, taking advantage of the cheap 'lesser' Eastern European and African markets. Most notably Nikola Ninkovic, £900k from Partizan, a clever attacking wideman. Erik Janza, a £350k leftback in the mould of Oscar Wendt, and also his teammate Mitja Lotric, a promising attacking mid/forward for £85k.

In all, £18m was spent and £2.5m recouped; Logan Bailly joining PSG for £1.5m, Yuki Ohtsu joining Karlsruhe for £425k, and Raul Bobadilla departing for Lens on a £450k loan-to-buy. Still struggling to get players off the books.

I was offered a few proven players over the opening part of the season, seemingly former 'unrealistic transfers' that I hadn't noticed had slipped into Bosmans. Declined Arnautovic and Benayoun, but snapped up Craig Gordon. Bit of a risk, as £25k, 4-year contract and a squad rotation role for a guy who won't feature ahead of Ter Stegen is liable to cause problems. But at least it gives me leeway if Ter Stegen wants to move again (managed to put it off for a year), and whilst young Stojanovic improves in the ressies.

Pre-season was a mish-mash of results; tried testing out a 'Christmas Tree' away formation I'd used in previous incarnations of FM, this time with mixed success. The 4231 and 41221 are still the favoured approaches on the road.

Squad

Stickmen
Ter Stegen is still the undisputed no.1, and his form has improved after a small decline when he first became unhappy. Heading into December, I've only conceded 4 goals in 12 league matches. Gordon is now the no.2, with the erratic teen Stojanovic pushed back down to the ressies.

Defence
Zimmermann-Dante-Neustadter-Nyom - thats the new favoured backline, Zimmermann shifting over from rotation RD to first-pick LD. Jantschke and Wendt offer good-quality backups. The central defensive backups are not quite as good; Anderson Bamba performs well, but I'm reticent to use him in the big games for some reason. Ottesen came in as a challenger for a regular spot, but his propensity to dive in and general lack of form has pushed him out to 4th choice.

Defensive/Central Mids
Schuster is the new fulcurm of the midfield, playing whenever fit. M'Bami tends to sit as the anchorman in away games, if I switch to the 41221. Nordtveit is still around, but no longer the lynchpin he was due to Schuster. I'm tempted to move either him or Diego Reyes into the central defence. Mohamed Abu is the other squad central mid, generally playing the home games where his creativity allows for a flowing system.

Attacking Mids
Stindl is the new playmaker, with Arango now featuring bit-part. Rupp continues to be the chief backup, his form and creativity improving consistently. Away from home, Reus plays on the right and one of Reynaldo/De Jong take the LAM spot. Kamarouskiy also features when injuries bite, a solid pro. Ninkovic is the new exciting young talent at the club; he, Christian Gartner and Sebastien Maier all having good chances to become regulars in the future.

Forwards
Upfront the quality has increased dramatically. Fernando had a great debut season with 17 goals, and after a poor start Papiss Cisse suddenly exploded to life and is now in red-hot form. They are the central strikers, with any of Reus/Reynaldo/De Jong also taking the wide-forward role sin my home 433. All five of them are capable of brilliance and score/assist in good measure.

I finally order the game after reading Arsenal Land member posts and getting sucked in. Cheers.

This is my first experience with FM and I wanted to start with an upper division “good “ team as I learned the game, so after a short test run with Napoli (anyone who wants a really fun attacking team this could be it) I choose Dortmund. I will try my hand in the lower leagues later on, but for now I am just entering my 5th season with Dortmund. Managed to barely scrape the League in the first year, then second to Bayern, won again year three and really dominated last year without spending all that much for a top team. Bayern fell apart a bit last year and finished fifth, they have spent quite bit on some new players and I am interested to see how they rebound this year as even last year they were very tough opponents for me. I fear a bit of regression this as the squad is in transition to youth squad players. I’ll probably be happy with top three in the league.

We made it out of the CL group stage as the second place qualifier each of the first three years only to immediately get beat by eventual champs Man City the first year and Barcelona each of the next two. Last year we finally qualified as group winners which turned out to be harder than eventually winning the whole thing. After a nervy 1-1 home draw with Barcelona (yes, drawn for a third straight time) we somehow went to their place and won 4-0!? It was mostly smooth sailing from there as we eventually beat Arsenal in the final. Interestingly, we have also won 3 separate domestic cup finals on penalties after overtime.


The main formation is technically a 4-3-3, but it looks more like a 2-3-1-3-1 as I play with advanced wingbacks, a single defensive midfielder, a single central midfielder, then an attacking midfielder flanked by two wingers and a lone striker up top. The team has a lot of speed overall which helps to make it work. I also play with a deep defensive line to allow my wingbacks more time to recover when switching back on defense. I seem to have good luck playing the offside as my wingbacks are often advanced, so only the two central defenders need to be in sync. To play more defensive, I pull back my perimeter defenders, and then slide my central midfielder back as a tandem defensive midfielder and go to a counter attacking scheme.

My best win last season was against Hoffenhiem (a just above mid table team). After quickly going down 1 nil on the road and getting my right wingback sent off at about the 30 minute mark with a strait red card, the team clawed back even just before halftime, then promptly give it right back after the half. We responded with a header from a set piece corner to again tie it only to have my Striker Barrios sent off with a second dumb yellow at the 60 minute mark. With only 9 men I switched into a fully defensive approach moving everyone back till the 85th minute when I made my three subs and went for broke with an overload attack and the fresh legs just outran their defense, scoring on a breakaway ending things 2-3 my favor.

1st year missed signing: The first team squad was basically set after having just won the league when I took over. With only a 3.1 million transfer budget for my first season though I decided to invest in some youngsters as the youth squads were bereft of talent. Well right after I spent 1.2 million on a couple youngsters, Barcelona offers Affely for only 2 million and before I could dump an unneeded backup to find the 100k Ajax signed him.

The current squad is undergoing a bit of a transition to younger players coming through the youth system:

Strikers
Walcott - signed on a free and was last season’s top goal scorer in the league with 17. Way better than in real life, makes it even more disappointing to watch him play for us somehow.
Barrios - Starting to decline as he nears 30, has more hot and cold spells, but still put in 12 goals last season.
Joaquin - promoted youth player, also a left winger.

Left Wing
Gotze - my best player, but after winning two league player of the year awards had a bit of an off year this past season.
Guardado - signed the second season for around 3.4 million, he is also in the rotation at left wingback, has only been adequate on the wing, good at penalties, but doesn’t score many other goals.

Right Wing
Chamberlain - loaned from Arsenal, played great for ½ the season and predictably cooled a bit when I executed the 16 million option to buy, still likely to improve and be a fine player.
Ross – versatile youth who was promoted for the second half of last season and was actually played mostly as a central midfielder due to injuries, scored some scorchers from long range. Had five goals in ½ a season, 4 from outside the box and 1 rebound.
Sauter –another youngster with just above average potential.

Attacking Midfield
Almost all my attacking midfielders are versatile and can play lots of the offensive positions giving me great flexibility.
Kranjcar - free signing two years ago, plays well, but has been injured off and on.
Bittencourt - good with either foot and great at delivering corners, OK on the wings as well.
Yaisien - versatile, needs games so I will make him available to my under 23 squad as well.
Rantala - probably will be the best of the bunch.
Golasa - paid 1.1 million, had decent potential, but seems to be regressing as he has only been healthy for about 20 games in three years. Can’t get rid of him fast enough.

Central Midfield
Gundogan - solid a good portion of the time, but gets lots of little injuries and one of the few slow players on the team which sometimes just gums up the works.
Bahloul - 18 year old bought right before the season, tons of potential and only 2.7 million, I was looking to loan a player here, but just too good to pass up.

Defensive Midfielder
Sven Bender - just plain old solid, most of my players rotate, but he plays almost all every game. I only sub in for him when games are in control.
Assis - another very young player, actually DM is his best position, but good anywhere in the center of midfield, may get significant time here because of Gundogan’s propensity for injuries.
Hummels - primarily a CB, but gets some play here for rotation and when in the dog house for poor marking at CB.
Cristieg - adequate young player with not a lot of potential.

I do have 3 young defensive midfielders in my youth squads that are all quality, hopefully a couple will pan out.

Left Wingback
Krul - newly promoted youth player that is in line for greatness.
Gonzalez – good quality youth that I purchased for about 2.7 mil just before Krul came in with the youth prospects. I had thought to keep Schmelzer who was quite decent for a bit longer, but these two made him expendable.
Guardado - will be utilized here as a rotation option to ease in the new kids, but hopefully one or both will perform well and make it unnecessary.

Right Wingback
Petsos - purchased for 6.1 million 2 years ago has probably overtaken Piszczek at this point, but both are rotated, can play as a CD and at DM as well. Probably overpaid slightly, but good players at this position are really hard to find in my game for some reason.
Piszczek - good rotation player, picks up a lot of yellow cards for some reason, 1 in almost every game he has played, but has only once gotten the dreaded second and sent off.
No real third option, but Hummels can cover here in a pinch. I have two youth prospects that will be ready in a year or two.

Central Defenders
Subotic - very good to great player, defends well, scores a few headers on set pieces and never complains.
Hummels - mostly OK if a bit slow, but sometimes erratic and prone to marking errors where he just stands there and lets players run by.
Santana - great for rotation at both spots and scores a lot of headers for me.
Ilori - youth with moderate potential, rarely gets play and will be moved on when some of my better youth players develop.

Goalkeeper
ter Stegen - bought him before the third season for I think 16 mil and has mostly been a monster, responds well when challenged on match day, especially for big games.
Righetto - youth with good potential, only as backup in case of injury to ter Stegen.

I haven’t splurged much in the transfer market for first team players (other than Chamberlain and ter Stegen), but instead invested in both my under 23 squad and too an even greater extent in my under 19 squad. In fact, I sold Kagawa after the first season to AC Milan for 32.6 million as he was a malcontent from the word go, this I also invested in youth players a couple of which are just now starting to break into the club and will make up the squad majority for years to come. Funny note: Since buying Kagawa from me AC Milan has listed him for transfer the last two seasons after only a single season there and they have been unable to move him as of yet. I have had a lot of my transfer budgets left over the last couple of years as I just can’t bring myself to spend money I don’t see as necessary. I guess that is telling me I need to take up the challenge of building a team from the lower leagues like many of you. But since I am still learning and enjoying my current squad I will play it out a while longer yet.

I'm now in the 2019-20 season and I don't find it as fun to talk about the team as half the world is regens and you won't really recognise the players. Still, I managed an almost unbeaten season, a treble and a Champions League final place in 2016-17, and am currently on the back of 3 prem titles in a row (all, in fact, sealed on the last day) as I transition into a newer, cheaper, younger squad. Robin van Persie retired at the age of 35 just now after buckets of goals, including 6 in his last season, and is now a scout at the club (not a very good one, though).

I thought it'd be interesting to show what's happened to Arsenal players I've let go in that time:

• Marouane Chamakh was sold to Genoa for 7.5m in 2011, and is still at the club at the age of 35. He's been great for them, scoring over a dozen goals every season save one.
• Nicklas Bendtner was sold to Sunderland for 9m in 2012, and has been mostly a rubbish drifter from S'land to Lyon, Porto, Bremen, and now welding himself to a Leverkusen bench.
• Carlos Vela was sold to West Brom for 7m in 2012, and later was picked up by Marseille where he had a decent spell. But never hitting big time, he now is a key player for Panathinaikos.
• Denilson was finally offloaded to Malaga for 3m in 2013, and apparently played quite a few games without doing much. He is now at Santos.
• Park Chu-Young returned to PSG for 5m in 2013, and had a decent couple of years before warming more benches. He's still there, still warmin'.
• Andrey Arshavin too went to PSG for free in 2013. He played a total of 9 games for them, and 10 for Athletico Madrid, before retiring pretty early.
• Per Mertesacker was the third departure to PSG for 4.4m in 2013, but barely played; after barely playing at some small German clubs, he is now an unemployed AssMan. Figures.
• Abou Diaby left for Lazio for 3m in 2013, and has been Denilson-like there - playing but inconspicuous.
• Johan Djourou went to Villa for 9m in 2014 after some pretty good games for us. He is still there, slowly being phased out in his dotage.
• Mikel Arteta left for Athletic for 2m in 2014, had some good times, and is now a coach.
• Ryo Miyaichi never made it for us and went to Racing for 4.1m in 2014. He is now at Mainz, doing alright.
• Andre Santos went to Toulose for free in 2014 for a total of 6 games before an early retirement, but was a good player for us.
• Alex Song left for Lyon for 12m in 2015, probably the first player I let go still in his prime and doing well for the club. He has been excellent for them.
• Bacary Sagna left for PSG for free in 2015, and did well there before retiring.
• Alex Chamberlain went to Birmingham for 2.7m in 2015, and is still there, doing quite well as a mid-table prem winger. Still encounter him in league games.
• Kieran Gibbs went to Blackburn for 8m in 2016. He did well there and West Ham's now bought him for 10m - the first player on this list whose valuation has increased since I let them go.
• Theo Walcott left to Man City for 12m in 2016, and has started exactly 16 games for them in over 3 years. The Hleb Effect.
• Gervinho, after a glittering career, went to PSG for 10m in 2018, and is doing well there thus far.
• Wojciech Szczesny, finally pushed out by Ter Stegen, went to Sunderland for 11.25m in 2018 and remains their main goalkeeper.
• Thomas Vermaelen went to Lyon on a free in 2018, and is now at Lens, playing very little. Which stinks of mismanagement, as he is still a good defender.
• Laurent Koscielny went to Fiorentina on a free in 2019 at the age of 34, a great servant to the club until the very end.

After all that, plus Robin van Persie's retirement, the only Arsenal first-team members that remain at the club are Ramsey and Wilshere, a key part of the midfield. I'd say that the first half of the list is mostly fluff, the second half mostly very good players that did a lot for my career in this save. Gervinho's won the footballer of the year, in particular.

For 48 hours FM2012 is £6.99 I believe on Steam. Is it easy to download through this? Only ever buy a disc version.

Steam is terrible, but FM2012 is entirely on steam no matter what version you buy, so might as well.

I haven't been able to play my Rangers file since they've financially capitulated, it really takes that realistic edge off it.

As of yet I've not committed to a Spanish or Italian file. So I may try a bottom league side there.

EDIT: 12.0 UPDATE IS NOW AVAILABLE

(Which means yes, I'm starting a new file!)

Game Quirk: I had just started up the computer and game when my young son asked to play on the computer for awhile. Of course he shut it off when he was done, but no big deal I had only done two or three minor things that were lost including seeing that a new crop of youth players had been brought in for evaluation none of which were good enough to consider signing. When I restarted the game and looked at the recruits I got the second time though, well there were two 4 gold star rated players and some three stars too!

So, for any Bob Ross fans out there, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents”.

So my glorious mostly-regen Arsenal team won the quadriple in my 9th season, including going the Premier League unbeaten... then lost to an 82nd minute winner at Stamford Bridge after 47 games without loss, when my best centreback decided to give away a penalty.

Their next league games would have been Hull, Nottingham Forest and Birmingham.

Probably coming to an end of this file now that the world is starting to run out of real players, might go for another lower league game at some point.

Well, being the sucker I am, I begun a save with Borussia Monchengladbach. Although they are currently flying high on 4th, in-game I am starting on the back of a 16th finish in 2010-11, where they had to survive a relegation playoff. With a shoestring budget and low reputation I had to pass on many interesting opportunities, like a Mahamadou Diarra on free transfer or Oxlade-Chamberlain for loan. Hell, Arsenal even wanted to loan me Chamakh for a brief window but I couldn't afford the 50% wages. Thus the squad:

GK:
None other than Ter-Stegen already our keeper, and Heimeroth as typical useless backup.

Defence:
Stranzl and Dante form a solid centre-back pairing, except they are both criminally slow; they are supplemented by Daems and Wendt, two decent left-backs, Jantschke at right, and a promising youngster RB in Zimmermann. I also brought in, for only 160k, Vanden Borre. A promising player in past FMs he is now decidedly mediocre, but can fill in at right back, centre back and DM.

Midfield:
The star is obviously Marco Reus, whom I immediately recontract to remove the minimum release clause. We also have fairly good players in Juan Arango and Patrick Hermann. I brought in Bakary Sako, Promising French Winger #42, on just 750k, to fill out the ranks; they are backed up by Neustadter and the familiar Havard Nordtveit as DMs, and a couple of youngsters.

Forward:
The team's forwards were pretty pathetic; Mike Hanke and Igor de Camargo, both of which looked decent but completely mediocre. I stretched and stretched money, including freeing up wage bills selling reserve players on the cheap, to bring in Lacina Traore for 7m, half up front; a 20-year old big, versatile Ivory Coast striker that can handle the one-top role.

---------------------------------------------

The season is now half over and it's been surprisingly competent. Although Reus does not seem very motivated and definitely not our best performer, he's been OK, and the new signings Sako and Traore have been very good. We get caught out now and again by our Twin Mertesackers at back, most notably a 3-6 thriller loss to Bremen, but it's also helped that the rest of the Bundesliga is extremely competitive. We beat Dortmund 4-1, only to note the team slumped as low as 15th and Jurgen Klopp was fired -they are now back on the up. Podolski's helping Koln contest the championship with Schalke. After 18 games we are 7th, sandwiched between Leverkusen and a resurgent Dortmund, and I'm hoping we can stay there - it would put us in Europe, depending on who wins the German Cup (We're still in it, but our quarter-final opponent is Bayern, so...)

I'm interested to see how your Moenchengladbach save compares with mine, Arca!

I've been meaning to post up my 3rd season for a couple of weeks, must get around to it tomorrow.

Does anyone else get a kick out of the fact that there is an eccentricity rating for goalkeepers? Did the game’s developers have such a hard time coming up with attributes for goalkeepers that they said screw it, “there’s some crazy goalkeepers out there, just put eccentricity on the scale as an attribute”. Or maybe one of them was just a big fan of Mad Jens.

And why is this attribute only for goal keepers? What would the eccentricity rating be for players like Joey Barton? Would Mario Balotelli even fit on the scale? What about Eboue? Wouldn’t it be fun just to have a whole other set of attributes exploring all the elements of eccentricity? Why are there not player attributes for drawing fouls and penalties? How about faking penalties, or fouls in general? Who would score highest? Er’um lowest? Lois Suarez, the entire Barcelona squad?

How can rating a player for an attribute that creates more questions than it answers even be helpful? I’m not even sure how the eccentricity scale works; do I want a player with a high eccentricity rating or a low one? How does the game’s artificial intelligence use this factor as to how a player performs in matches? I have only questions.

This eccentricity thing just kills me for some reason. Anyone else?

And yes this was a blatant attempt to see how many smilies I could justify in a single post.

Gladbach 11-12
It all went pretty well in the end. We couldn't afford any reinforcements in January, but the second half of the season saw Marco Reus get his act together and justify his star status, younger players like Felix Kraus and Johannes Geis put in some good shifts, and in the run in, several crucial 2-1 wins, including one against Bayern where Mike Hanke suddenly decided to score a goal! That would be his third goal in the entire season, and Camargo finished with two.

The end result was no less than a 4th placed finish on the very last day, with Bayern losing to Schalke and dropping to 5th, and then a German Cup trophy against Leverkusen. My aim was 6th and German Cup semis, and to be honest we overachieved only a little - the gap between third and eighth was 5 points at the end. Most importantly, we received over 20 million pounds in prize cash, which can hopefully help us stay competitive.

Off-Season
The team needed a lot of surgery. Neufstadter, our best DM, was already off to Schalke on a free at gamestart; Lacina Traore scored 10 goals, not too bad not too great, while the other two strikers were positively useless. We also needed to prepare long-term against the retirement of Martin Stranzl after another year. Thankfully, due to the prize money, promising another CL place gave me a budget of ~400k wages and 10m transfer. Flogging a number of players, we were able to bring in no less than 7 first team players. First:

• Johan Carrasso (GK) 450k, as a cheap backup for the still young Ter-Stegen.
• Omer Toprak (DC) 5.25m, who barely played at Leverkusen for some reason but is a solid centre back.
• Diego Buonannotte (AMC) 1.9m, the Anderlecht wonderkid who is the very definition of fragile tippy-tappy man but hopefully provides the creativity we missed in that position, with neither Arango nor Reus really flourishing there.
• Aliaksandr Hleb (AMC) available on a free transfer; probably not going to be a world beater, but who knows?

After that remained the strikers. Selling off Hanke and Camargo, I was then presented with a surprisingly tenacious Bayern Munich, who were willing to pay 14m for Lacina Traore, whom I had signed last year for half that. He did score ten goals for us, but I was pretty sure I could do better, so I accepted. That left us with zero strikers, and some work to do; I really wanted to bring in Chamakh, who was available under 5m, but he just wouldn't open negotiations at all - same with Arshavin. In the end:

• Yaser Al-Qahtani (ST) 3.3m, I still don't know if I made the right choice on this one, a 29 year old Saudi who spent most of his career outside Europe. But his stats seem alright.
• Mattias Suarez (ST) 8m, we all know the potential Arsenal target from Anderlecht. Pretty much replacing Traore with Suarez and pocketing 6m sounds like a good deal to me.
• Mattia Destro (ST) 2.6m, a late buy when he handed in a transfer request and became available on a cheap. He famously (?) ended up the best striker in the world by some distance in my 10-year Arsenal file some time ago.
• Julian Schieber (ST) Free, a Stuttgart reject who seems decent enough, and free.

So significant changes to the squad after just a year, which is unusual for me, and switching to a Villas-Boas Porto formation of 4-1-4-1. Al-Qahtani and Schieber are poachers, Suarez and Destro trequartistas; with Hleb and Buonannotte also, there's plenty of creative, attacking players down the middle now. I am now at the end of October and doing reasonably well; 6th in the league, but we beat a Portuguese team (0-0 and 2-1) into the Champions League group stage. The first game was a predictacle 1-0 loss to Real Madrid after parking the bus, but we then beat Rangers and Sporting, and might even progress to the knockout rounds.

Borussia Moenchengladbach Season '13-14
So, after two 3rd placed finishes, I felt this season a title charge had to be the aim. The frontline had improved enough to justify it, and allied to a continually strong defence, we shouldn't lose too many games. That was aided with runaway previous Champions Dortmund suffering a calamitous decline; the sale of Barrios to Bayern was an odd one last season, and this campaign they played Balotelli and Adam Johnson all the time, and one or two other underperformers. They started badly and were never a factor, Gotze injured for long stretches of the season.

Opening the campaign slowly with one win in the first four games, including a 0-1 loss at Bayern thanks to playing 88mins with 10-men after Nyom's red card, we picked up form after a handful of games, once the new players began to settle. Towards the halfway point of the campaign we were in that rare 'FM Zone' where your team is in such good form every fixture looks a victory. Papiss Cisse was the catalyst; finding his feet in the back end of his debut season, this campaign he performed in a vein of form like the real one currently. All season; finishing with 31 goals in 32 apps.

January arrived, but I was content to make no further strengthening. Except for trying to sign Georgy Gabulov's £2m unprotected contract for the season end. I lacked the funds so asked the board to negotiate for me; bizarrely they paid £7m and immediately . It was actually a defining deal, as Gabulov was brilliant and a first team regular within five games. Possessing a wicked long shot and ability to sneak unnoticed into the box, he added to the squad what I'd lost through Arango's bit part role.

The CL was the inverse of last season. Drawn into a group of Lyon, Real Madrid and Olympiakos, losing 3 of the first 4 games. The one win was 2-1 at home to Madrid, netting twice in the last ten minutes. However, a routine win at home to Olympiakos on MD5 actually had me in 2nd on 6pts, ahead of Real Madrid of goal diff. Anything other than defeat at the Bernabeu would see me through. A tall order, yet the team produced their best performance in 3 seasons at BMG. Sitting deep on the counter with a stand-off instruction, Madrid couldn't get near the goal. Ter-Stegen kept out the inevitable long shots, and we took over in the 2nd half, creating no less than five clear-cut chances, missing a penalty, and still winning 2-0.

The CL dream ended yet again in the knockout round. Winning 3-2 at home to a super-strong Porto team - previous champions - but being murdered 0-3 in Portugal.

Defeat in the DFB-Pokal Cup semi at Frankfurt meant we finished the season with no other commitments, committing solely to the title. 13 wins in the 17 games post winter-break had burnt off all competition, and we even had the luxury of a couple of 2-3 defeats at Kaiserslautern and Leverkusen and still won the title with 3 games to spare, a huge 11pts ahead of Bayern.



A brilliant campaign overall, picking up 14pts more than my second season. In addition to Cisse's Golden Boot winning 31 goals, Fernando finished with 15 in 21 apps, Reynaldo 14 in 24. And goals were dotted all over the squad, most of the defence chipping in, and also a number from the less-attacking midfielders. A stable Zimmermann-Dante-Neustadter-Nyom defence the kingmaker to the joint tightest defence in the Bundesliga.

Season '14-15 Pre-Season
The World Cup presented a first opportunity to delve into International management, in the inevitable fallout of underperformance. There were a handful of positions available, both England and Switzerland actively headhunting me. I liked the idea of a lightning quick Walcott/Hoilett tandom on the wings - and they possess some great youngsters - but England don't inspire me at all. Instead I chose Switzerland; I had a few of their players on my shortlist, motivated also by the chance to take a 'smaller nation' to glory (until I realised Switzerland were actually no.6 in the world, and expectations would probably be somewhat higher!).

At club level, again I had a range of opportunities, but I've never had a career FM game and BMG is too enjoyable to change that. I wanted to keep squad alterations to a minimum, but still managed to make a few acquisitions. The most impressive was a Spanish regen DM, Juan Maria Ferraces, on a Bosman from Barcelona. He's basically a combo of Busquets and Fabregas at 19 .

The rest of the signings were pure overkill; David Alaba became unhappy at Bayern. Too good an opportunity to pass up, £7.75m secured his signature. I had pre-agreed Julian Draxler from Schalke, £3.6m. My last one was a usual project; after moving to Liverpool for £9.75m, Carlos Vela had had an insipid two years, making only 17 apps and then a paltry 7 on loan to Juventus. This saddened me, so in he came at £4.6m. I'd started using the 41221 with greater frequency on the road, so at least he presented another option to Reus/Reynaldo on the flanks, as well as being perfectly adaptable to the home 433 as a wide forward or poacher.

A range of regen youngsters were also added, including a couple of 15 and 16 year old German super-beasts. I've grown to dislike regen-dominated games somehow, so the next two years will be the most enjoyable period of this file, before they start to come through en-masse.

I still didn't manage to make any large sales, but crucially shifted on some squad deadwood; Kamarouskiy £2.2m to Freiburg, and Anderson Bamba joining him for £1.7m. Gartner joined Karlsruhe for £1.8m, by now I had too many talented young AM's to bring him through.

In total I spent £20m, recouping £8m. And the prizemoney from the title win and another CL Knockout has the bank balance at a healthy £34m.

Perhaps crucially I didn't need to make any major sales. After promising him 'one more season' to grow the club, the title success had removed Ter-Stegen's desire to join a bigger team. The only problem spot is with Craig Gordon, becoming frustrated with a lack of opportunity as the no.2