FMLiveBlog.com - A Football Manager Live Blog

It’s been a while since my last post, so this could be quite a long one! Season 7 is upon us and we’ve started our season in the XFA Premier League in average fashion, with just 1 win from our first 7 matches (1-3-3). It’s shaping up to be a long season and despite our stronger squad, some struggles look like they lay ahead.

Transfer News

Let’s look at the In’s and Out’s for Season 7.

IN:

• Simon Pouplin (GK) - Pouplin replaces our superstar goalkeeper Artur Boruc and expectations of him are high, with our record-breaking transfer fee of £2.5 million needed to bring the 29 year old Frenchman to the club. He has had a few decent performances so far, but will need to lift if he’s to satisfy the Blues fans.
• Sascha Dum (WB L) - The 28 year old German takes over on the left of the defense and has very high attributes in tackling, technique, decisions, off the ball, positioning and work rate. Like Pouplin, will need to lift his performances if he’s to remain a first team regular.
• Maik Franz (DC) - Another German, he has had limited chances so far with Roncaglia and Polga standing tall for us in the middle of defense. Should get an opportunity soon and will need to grab it with both hands.
• Tom (AM LC + FC) - The 29 year old Brazilian plays the role behind the striker, or on the left. Struggled when he first arrived and looked like he wouldn’t last long at Hastings Town, but recent performances have been encouraging with Tom being able to slot a few goals. Looks much better as an attacking midfielder and should be an asset to the squad if we keep our current formation.
• David Pizarro (DMC, pictured) - Pizarro, a current Roma star, is our big signing of the off-season. Despite him getting on in years (age 34), he brings something different to our very attacking midfield and has been a revelation so far with his pinpoint passing, outstanding technique and creativity, and his teamwork and agility. The question is - how long before he starts to show his age?
• Theodor Gebre Selassie (DC + WB R + DM) - shares a surname with the greatest distance runner of all time, the 27 year old Czech has been a substitute for us and has had limited chances at first team level.
• Marcelo Gonzalez (WB R) - Our final signing of the off-season, the brave 26 year old Uruguayan has been great on the right side of defense so far this season and has been a real find.

OUT:

• Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker (DC) - Sold for 750k.
• Jan Kromkamp (WB R) - Sold for 550k.
• Artur Boruc (GK) - Sold for 900k.
• Rickard Kapella-Karlson (D RL) - Released.
• Francisco Primera (D RLC + DM) - Contract Expired.
• Charlie Turay (FC) - Sold for 20k.

The first three were sold at the end of Season 6 to prevent them from being lost at wage auctions (see article: “Selling before the vultures swoop”). Kapella-Karlson was deemed surplus to requirements and Francisco Primera, a foundation player at Hastings Town, was not given a new contract after 6 seasons at Hastings Town. Primera was a fine servant for the Blues with 1554 appearances (4th highest of all time for Hastings Town), but his first team opportunities were seen as limited with the arrivals of Gonzalez and Gebre Selassie competing for the spot on the right of the back 4. Charlie Turay was also sold on, no longer eligible for the youth team after 720 appearances for 220 goals.

In other news, we have won our 3rd senior trophy overnight, the 16-club PRACTICE CHAMPIONSHIP (2nd season). Tom and Fernando Belluschi both scored first half goals to give us a 2-1 win over Dickie FC in the final. This follows up from our Quarter Final appearance in Season 1 and we take home a nice little purse of 100k.

Prices have been announced for Football Manager Live, which will launch throughout autumn - £22.99 for 3 months, £43.99 for 6 months or £72.99 for 12 months, though there are some discounts for beta testers who sign up for 6 or 12 month periods. It will be interesting to see the amount of people that sign up, with the poll ran on this website showing that 78% of people would only play if it was free or pay a maximum of £5 per month.

Am I going to sign up? I’m still sitting on the fence to be honest. The 3 month price is too expensive for me - equalling $50AU. The 12 month option with beta discount is more attractive at $80AU, but it is still quite a lot of money and will probably have to be renewed at full price next year ($156AU!)… so the question I’m putting out there, will you be signing up for FML and if so, how long for?

With Season 6 ending in 6 days, a few of my starting lineup’s contracts are set to expire in the coming days including Andre-Pierre Gignac (contract on auto-extend), Jan-Ingwer Callsen-Bracker, goalkeeper Artur Boruc and Jan Kromkamp. After the experiences of the last set of wage auctions where I saw decent players go for highly inflated wages, I’ve decided to sell on Callsen-Bracker, Boruc and Kromkamp rather than fight to keep them at wage auctions. While there is a chance I could keep them, there’s every possibility that someone will be willing to pay more than me for them (particularly given their form) and I’d rather cash in now and then try to make my own splash during the wage auctions. As I said in the previous post, it’s impossible to build a squad and keep that squad together for any sustainable period of time… I see it as a major flaw of the game, but others might prefer that they need to have a practically new squad every 1-2 seasons.

Anyway, these players will be truly missed at Hastings Town, but with every cloud there is a silver lining and hopefully replacements at competitive wages. Their departures will slash 65k off the wage bill, plus 16.6k in exceed wage tax (81.6k total), which should give us plenty of room to move.

For the record, I have four senior players on auto-extend - Andre-PIerre Gignac (S), Fernando Belluschi (AM RC), Djorde Lazic (AM LC) and Hector Font (AM RLC) with one spot kept free for any future signings or talented youngster coming up through the ranks.

As for our performance in the XFA Premier League, we’re currently mid-table with a 17-13-17 record - recording 7 wins from 13 matches overnight including a fantastic 2-1 victory away from home to Fleetwood Town (currently 3rd overall in the world rankings and sitting atop the XFA Premier League). Just shows what the team is capable of…

I know I’ve harped on about the problems with wages in the game in the past and am probably starting to sound like a broken record - but last night was a new low. I recently acquired Judging Potential 5, which took almost one calendar month to complete, meaning that I can accurately judge youngsters and the potential they have. Anyway, last night I searched through the game and identified no less than 5 top notch youngsters, with no contract offers made.

As soon as I put the bids in, instantly others started bidding away for these players - people who have filters set to identify players with contracts expiring (which is what happens when a wage auction becomes active). At the end of 24 hours, of course - I miss out on all of the players I had done the research on… most to ridiculous wages for players that have barely reached their 16th birthday. £16,001, £7,776, £6,667… the list goes on.

Sure they’re good players… my gripe is the fact that I did the work in identifying these players and have NO chance in signing them unless I want to bid through the roof which is downright stupid. It also makes building and keeping a squad together near impossible - you can only auto extend 5 contracts and as we saw with the last set of wage auctions (see Adalton/Nenad Adamovic), again I have NO chance of keeping my second tier players. So the game no longer is about building a good squad, it’s about keeping ahead with wheeling and dealings in the transfer market…

Unless something is massively changed with regards to wage auctions/keeping players/signing youngsters, I can say with quite certainty that I won’t be paying for FML because at the moment all I’m doing is going around in circles and passing the time.

The definite highlight was the return of our captain Fernando Belluschi to the side after a 7 match suspension. Belluschi led the side to an away victory at The Hairy Nosepickers, a massive achievement for any side despite their recent slump in form. We went on to win 3, draw 2 and lose only 1 of our first 6 matches - but then the poor form came back from last season with 3 straight losses, followed by a draw, another 2 losses and another draw before finally coming good for a 3-2 win away to the 20th ranked Terror Pigs to show the potential they have but can’t consistently produce.

A howler from Boruc allowed a 45 yard goal to sink us at home to West Ham United, but the boys were back to their brilliant best away from home again with 4 first half goals at Maryhill Magyars (ranked 3 places above us!). We should have followed it up with a victory at home, only to be denied in the final minute of injury time with a dubious goal.

So after 23 matches in the XFA Premier League, our record stands 7-7-9 and already a top half finish looks beyond us. But time will tell! Here are the results:

GAME 5 (HOME): Defeated Meadfoot Celtic 3-1 (Brandao 9′, 20′; Gignac 73′)
GAME 6 (HOME): Drew with Queluz FC (Font 8′; Nunez 20′)
GAME 7 (HOME): Drew with Maryhill Magyars 1-1 (Gignac 11′)
GAME 8 (AWAY): Defeated The Hairy Nosepickers 2-1 (Belluschi 35′; Callsen-Bracker 45′)
GAME 9 (HOME): Lost to Lakers 0-1
GAME 10 (HOME): Defeated Woking FC 1-0 (Gignac 67′)
GAME 11 (AWAY): Drew with Lakers 2-2 (Nunez 63′; Gignac 70′)
GAME 12 (HOME): Lost to Lakers 2-3 (Brandao 47′, 74′)
GAME 13 (AWAY): Lost to Queluz FC 1-2 (Gignac 44′)
GAME 14 (HOME): Lost to Splatch FC 1-2 (Gignac 13′)
GAME 15 (AWAY): Drew with Tilecote Park Rovers 0-0
GAME 16 (HOME): Lost to Queluz FC 1-2 (Brandao 48′)
GAME 17 (HOME): Lost to Fleetwood Town 0-1
GAME 18 (AWAY): Drew with Woking FC 1-1 (Gignac 58′)
GAME 19 (AWAY): Defeated Terror Pigs 3-2 (Belluschi pen 9′; Gignac 27′, 85′)
GAME 20 (AWAY): Drew with West Ham United 0-0
GAME 21 (HOME): Lost to West Ham United 0-1
GAME 22 (AWAY): Defeated Maryhill Magyars 4-1 (Belluschi pen 19′; Gignac 28′; Nunez 32′; Turay 38′)
GAME 23 (HOME): Drew with Woking FC (Gignac 5′, 69′)

In other news, our hopes of going one better this year in the XFA Cup have been dashed in the second round by two England superstars - Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney - as we went on to lose 3-0 on aggregate over two legs to Chesterfield Town FC.

Our Season 6 XFA Premier League campaign looked set for a tough opening contest, with captain Belluschi (7 games!), Edno and Callsen-Bracker all serving suspensions and Ngcepe out with injury. But it took 48 seconds for us to score the first goal of the campaign through Hector Font. Unfortunately, the reply came just 5 minutes later but Gignac got on the board in the 20th and 30th minute to put us up 3-1. Brandao put the icing on the cake and sealed the match in the 55th minute as we went on to win 4-2. After that win, we had a mixed bag with two narrow home losses and a come-from-behind win at Lakers. We certainly are missing Fernando Belluschi, who is serving a 7 match ban carried over from last season from accumulating too many yellow cards.

GAME 1 (HOME): Defeated Hardy Athletic 4-2 (Font 1′; Gignac 20′, 30′; Brandao 55′)
GAME 2 (HOME): Lost to Terror Pigs 0-1
GAME 3 (AWAY): Defeated Lakers 2-1 (Turay 47′; Gignac pen 60′)
GAME 4 (HOME): Lost to West Ham United 0-1

There’s been minimal action in terms of our Premier League campaign, so this article looks back at some of the superstars that graced Hastings Town over the past 5 seasons and where their in-game journeys have taken them.

El-Hadji Diouf (1599 appearances, sold to FC Skazka for £800,005)
- Diouf has made 27 appearances for his new club with 9 goals and 7 assists.

Adalton (1592 appearances, lost in wage auction to Fc Zoetermeer)
- Adalton has made 21 appearances this season with an average rating of 6.64. Not as much of a significant loss as first thought.

Michael Jansen (924 appearances, lost in wage auction to Wilkinson Warriors FC)
- Left back Jansen was lost in a wage auction at the end of season 4 which slipped under the radar. He has made 62 appearances this season for his club, with an average rating of 6.70. Had a good season last campaign.
Jesus Palacios (910 appearances, sold to Jonah’s Babes FC for £250,001)
- The highly gifted Palacios made just 60 appearances with Jonah’s Babes FC before being transferred on to winners fc for twice the transfer fee we sold him for. Has made 9 appearances this season with an average rating of 6.76.

Gustavo Manduca (891 appearances, lost in wage auction to Butler Juniors)
- Manduca was allowed to depart Hastings Town to give Walter Nunez increased opportunities and he has shown what an underrated player he still is, with 188 appearances for Butler Juniors with 4 goals, 27 assists and an average rating above 6.90.

Albano Bizzarri (884 appearances, sold to ThE BaBiX FC for £350,000 plus Olivier Werner)
- Bizzarri, our first choice keeper from Season 2 to Season 4, has been solid for ThE BaBiX FC with 163 appearances for 66 clean sheets. However, his first team chances at our club were limited with Artur Boruc firmly entrenched in the number 1 jersey, making this transfer a win-win for both clubs.

Nenad Adamovic (607 appearances, lost in wage auction to Bredeweg HC)
- Easily the biggest blow was losing Adamovic, who we invested heavily in during his younger years only to see another club reap the rewards. He has made 81 appearances this season with an average rating of 7.04, following his late last season where he averaged 7.14 for his new club.

Alan Smith (419 appearances, sold to Noble FC for £1,300,000)
- Our marquee player alongside Diouf for Season 1 and Season 2, Smith has travelled to 6 other clubs since leaving Hastings Town, enjoying success at most. In 5 appearances so far this season, he has shown he still has what it takes with 3 goals and 3 assists.

I will look at the progress of some of the players we let go when the youth academy was disbanded a couple of seasons ago in a later post, checking in to see if names such as Oscar Sanchez (5 million), Ricardo Barbosa Costa (1.8 million) and Nick Pino (625k) have been worth the big money paid for them.

It’s been a while since my last update - I’ve just moved house and unfortunately the internet hasn’t been connected yet… and there’s only so much FML you can play at work without being caught!

So expect an update over the weekend… the only news I can bring you is that El-Hadji Diouf has left Hastings Town for 800k after spending 5 seasons with the Blues. Look for more news soon.

Spanish Attacking Midfielder Cani has arrived at Hastings Town overnight, with the Blues winning the race to sign the player. Cani came to the Blues for 665k and wages of 40k, and will slot right into our potent midfield brigade alongside the likes of Belluschi, Font, Kewell, Lazic and Nunez. His debut came against The Hairy Nosepickers, probably the most famous team in FML and #1 in Gameworld 7. And Cani didn’t disappoint, firing off an assist as we FINALLY defeated The Hairy Nosepickers after multiple attempts! The victory was celebrated hard - it was a fantastic achievement and hopefully a sign of things to come from an underachieving squad.

Hastings Town are through to the XFA Cup Final! We defeated Firefly United 3-2 on aggregate in the semi finals - 2-1 at home (Callsen-Bracker 3′; Gignac 27′), 1-1 away (Lazic 36′). Our opponents in the final are SE GLOCK RIDERS, who are one place below us in the rankings. In our four meetings this season, we have won 2, drawn 1 and lost 1.

First Leg (Home) - DREW 0-0
It was a new look defense, with Jan Kromkamp, German Rivarola and Anderson Polga joining Callsen-Bracker in the back four. Our top scorer for the season, Andre-Pierre Gignac, went off injured in the 16th minute, a severe blow. Diouf had a great chance to score late in the first half, but his shot went straight at the keeper. Both sides had their chances to break the deadlock, but a nil-all draw was the end result. Now we have it all to do in the second leg.

Second Leg (Away) - LOST 3-1 (extra time)
Gignac scored in the 51st minute and the cup looked set for Hastings Town, until an equaliser in the 86th minute broke our hearts. The game went to extra time and GLOCK RIDERS substitute Mauricio Gomez was the hero, slotting two goals in injury time of the first half of extra time.

A disappointing result - but to have reached the final is a fantastic achievement by the lads considering some of the competition. They now have two official runners-up trophies, adding this one to runners-up in the DFA Cup.