If you haven’t already make sure you go and check out the last two posts on me winning the league with Monaco and trying to restore some greatness in the French League, did you know French clubs have the same amount of champion leagues as Romanian clubs?

Part 1: The French Revolution: How To Handle Finances Using Soccernomics – Part One

Part 2: The French Revolution: How To Handle Finances Using Soccernomics – Part Two

Okay now thats done, where were we?

That’s right, we were conquering the French league once again and trying to succeed in Europe. Here’s how we managed to get on, on the last episode you saw that we beat PSG 0-1 Away, what a result that was and a sign of the times to come.

If you know, recently was the champions league final, I put a bet on Bayern to win over PSG because there have been only 1 French Champions league winner compared to that of the Germans, who have won it 8 times as well as Bayern winning 6 now, being the 6th in 2020 this year. However Bayern were probably the hottest team in the Champions League after lock down from COVID-19, under their new manager from December after Niko Kovac got the sack for being far too conservative for a Bayern style of approach.

Enter Hans-Dieter Flick, probably one of the most soon to be highest manager prospects, similar to how Zinedine Zidane popped onto the scene with Real Madrid winning those three consecutive Champion Leagues.

Chapter 8: Finishing where we left off.

Okay so in the last part, we managed to get knocked out by Juventus in the round of 16, not great, but not bad for the team we have, although we should be doing a lot better than what we did. However, we’ve managed to win back to back Ligue 1’s despite PSG, meaning that away win against the team seemed to be massive in the end, here’s what happened in the last 10 games or so:

As you can see, we managed to win the league by 3 points! Meaning the game against PSG won us the league and what a 1-0 that was, very tense and we got battered, however we walked away with the 3 points and that is the most important and vital thing.

How well did the players do?

Belotti was the star man with Sarabia leading the way, Belotti managed to get 25 goals and set a new club record for most player of the match awards which is obviously brilliant. Sarabia managed to get 14 assists which when you compare to Kevin De Bruyne in the Premier League we’ll see he nearly got 20 assists but finished on 19 with a joint record holder with Thierry Henry. So not bad at all from Sarabia

Dominik Livakovic has managed to pick up the goalkeeper of the season.

Here is how the team of the season managed to look as well towards the end of the season:

Something I’m very proud to see, my full line of defence including the goalkeeper, all in the TOTS, we now just need to either get Belotti in there or just buy Dembele for 100m, but as we’re trying to win things within a money balance, we’ll do the first rather than the latter.

Chapter 9: Perfecting, Perfection and Preseason

Going forward I’m going to be using @footballmanagertipss tactic to help the centre backs score and thats because we clearly have two solid centre backs that could contribute towards the goals, therefore we will be trying that out in the next season whilst also selling and signing some new players.

If you haven’t seen the article on how to get a centre back on 20+ goals a season, then you MUST read this:

How to Get 20+ Goals From Centre Backs on Football Manager 2020

If you read that, it will 100% make you better at FM, taking what you’ve learned from me about finances and growing any club in FM and taking @footballmanagertipss examples of how to get 20+ goals from the centre backs then you’re bound to consistently overachieve.

I don’t usually use peoples ideas or tactics, I much prefer to look for inspiration or just take little notes and try and develop my own, however I’ve seen a lot of football manager fans saying that @footballmanagertipss tactic of 20+ goals is phenomenal and they’ve been smashing and getting hat tricks from obviously defence, therefore I want to add it into my team and see how far I can get into this years Champions League.

I’ve already demonstrated that I could win the League defeating PSG’s domination consistently now and therefore we need to grow into the UCL now and get more reputation glory for the French Clubs.

Going forward we managed to get a set piece already and because of that a foul was given on the edge of the box where one of my players were fouled and because of that we got a free-kick, scored and they got a red card, further proving that set pieces are just important as signing the best players and developing the best tactics. We then played the rest of the game against LYON in the Trophee Des Champions, meaning we managed to get a second and control the game comfortably and it all came from that set piece that I used above. Result!

Ins

We’ve signed four players:

• Daniel Podence – 13.25M – quality/ youngish winger with bags of pace and skill
• De Sciglio – 8.75M – can play LB/RB and was cheap for a decent player for the French League
• Machuca – 4.1M – 18 year old centre back that could grow into something very talented (might take a long time though – peak at 25 years of age probably)
• Reinier – Loan – Real Madrid loanee who’s 19 and has lots of talents already, bit like a Phil Foden figure for us as he is for Manchester City.Outs

We’ve got rid of

0

Players

We’re best not selling anyone just yet, we need to see how we perform in the UCL for one more season, if its bad again for really bad, then we’ll have to try and get rid of some other players because we desperately need to progress.

Champions League Group Stage

I don’t even understand how we’ve managed to get such an easy group, but if I don’t manage to get through after this piece of piss then thats me, I’m gone, I can’t carry on doing this challenge because clearly I’m underachieving massively, but I have 110% confidence that we can get the results we need to get through to the next stage.

After the first 10 games, we’ve managed to pick up four points in the UCL group stage and we’ve also managed to get 2nd place in the league and we’ve beat PSG away again! 0-1 meaning we’ve got a very good chance of winning the league again, wins like this can tell you a hell of a lot.

We’re undefeated in the league however still only 2nd place to Lyon who seem to be bettering us in the league with more wins, however they’ve already lost a game and it will only be a little whilst until they’ve lost again.

Here is how we are shaping up, very good at the moment and hopefully we can keep it going with the push on for the league and obviously the UCL.

Seems like at the moment the ex PSG player is the one pushing us towards our 3rd consecutive league title.

Champions League 16th Knockout Round – Chelsea

We’ve done it! We’ve managed to beat last seasons objective of getting past the 1st knockout round, we’re now into the quarter finals and as we know anything can happen at this stage.

The next team meeting us into the next stage is Manchester City, as expected we’ve managed to get excited and then smashed into the face, we won the lottery by beating Chelsea 2-1 on aggregate and then we get Manchester City, future expected champions of this title a lot of people might believe, especially with all of the money they pump into football.

Champions League Quarter Finals – Manchester City

This is going to be a tough set of affairs but as long as we focus and stick to the game plan, we should be okay, okay, whats the game plan? GIVE THE BALL TO BELOTTI.

Typical. I hate and yet I love this game so bloody much, that’s not the worst news either, more bad news to come later, however I’ll be able to get us out of this and make sure we push on next season for hopefully the final.

Overall we lost in the Quarters to Manchester City 3-2 Aggregate, very unlucky, we played poor at home and we got lucky away to not concede, they’re still on another planet to us with ability wise, we’re more determined by this result to make sure we change that.

Chapter 10: Creating Stability on the ship 

There is no point sitting here and creating problems by worrying and speculating of why we didn’t win the Champions League, the simple answer is, we’re not good enough yet, now it’s our job to find the players that are good enough and those that aren’t good enough, the team is a good Champions League mid side and league challenger, sometimes we’ll win it and sometimes we won’t, I obviously want to win it all of the time, sometimes I have to admit that, that isn’t possible, therefore I regret to inform you, we haven’t won the league for the 3rd consecutive year.

We’re now going to focus on balancing the ship because I’m not going to let PSG get away with this. Watch this space, we’re about to do some top notch Harry Redknapp plays, “wheelin and dealin”.

BIG changes are going to happen, cause we need to create revenue and decrease our wage budget slightly because its got far too big and we’re starting to lose money, this isn’t a big big problem because we haven’t gone into the red yet, however we definitely need to make sure we sort it in the summer or we’re in trouble.

The only ONE player that has kept there place in the team is Belotti, he’s hit 25+ goals, back to back and I know he’ll do it again, because he is quality for a ST at our level.

This is where we will probably have the most revenue come in however because we haven’t really sold anyone yet for big big money, only Golovin for 60M to Real Madrid 2nd season, we’re going to try and create 200M-300M if thats possible and reinvest it, into the squad.

Assessing the Season

We still got an impressive 87 points which is good, however we managed to lose some games that weren’t great results, we lost at HOME once and drew 5 times, if we add those points up, which I call maximum points, the points we should 100% be getting, we could have an extra 3 + 10 = 13 extra points and therefore 100 Points, which if you remember first season we managed to get 102 points, that was the difference, lost that winning edge and deadliness.

Wish us good luck for the next part.

Part 4 – 31/08/2020