Taribo Stressed - Football Manager Adventures

16/12/2021

Evening all!

For anyone who watches streamers on Twitch etc come and join us!

Been streaming for just over a month now and we're a Twitch affiliate! We've got a great little community of regulars already who love to come and and have a laugh and chat about everything from Purple Aki, Brookside legends like Sinbad and Jimmy Corkhill, Neil Warnock rants and Mike Bassett quotes!

Currently in our 7th season with Tranmere Rovers up in The Championship.

If it sounds like your thing, give the Twitch account a follow and turn notifications on. I'm live most weeknights.

www.twitch.tv/taribostressed

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

13/11/2021

https://www.twitch.tv/taribostressed

First save of FM22 | Tranmere Rovers! Season 1

13/11/2021

Journeyman or Tier 9/10 save?

21/10/2021

So, who has the beta?

05/08/2021

If anyone wants to come and recommend any classic signings for CM 01/02, pop along!

https://www.twitch.tv/taribostressed

Greatest Football Game Of All Time!

05/08/2021

CM 01/02 downloaded! Best version of all time for me. To Madeira and Mark Kerr incoming!

16/02/2021

“Coming up after Futurama, we check in on the Journeyman whose unorthodox approach to lower league football has taken him from his home in Liverpool to Madrid via Craiova, Romania. How will the stars of tomorrow at Real Madrid B take to this blend of Scouse and Romanian vertical tiki taka. Stay tuned to find out”

**Sky One’s Dream Team Intro Music Starts**

Previously, on the Journeyman save… After two seasons at FC U Craiova 1948 (first job), which included a promotion and a consolidation season in the top tier, the decision was made to move on. The Real Madrid B team was the destination. Languishing in the third tier of the Spanish system and having no control of the squad was going to be a tough ask, but I was up for the challenge.

Real Madrid B! At a proper club here. Not having to personally pay for the club tracksuit is surely the first big bonus. Usually you would get your initials on the jacket as a manager, but I felt the need to ask for B TEAM MANAGER in fu***ng huge letters as well because not a soul will know who I am. Let’s remember that I’ve taken over from Real Madrid legend Raul! Imagine that as a 17 year old kid in the academy. Playing for the second highest scorer of all time, trying to make an impression only to come in one morning and he’s gone and instead a bald 31 year old man is sat in his office wearing a top which says “I went to Craiova and all I got was this lousy t shirt”. Poor kids must have been distraught.

Had a little look through the squad and some of these players were already classed as “wonderkids”. They’re honestly unbelievable. Theo, the French u21 international easily being the stand out player. Along with Bruno in centre midfield, I just couldn’t fathom how anyone could get sacked from this job. I checked the league position from last year and they finished 4th in the same division, which is the 3rd tier of Spain. Raul has had a fu***ng stinker here to be honest.

Obviously it’s a new country, so English was off the cards. Thought I’d test the water and introduce myself in Romanian considering I’m now fluent in that. But that didn’t go down well in front of about 25 mostly Spanish kids. Back to the thumbs up/thumbs down system that we developed in Craiova. One day I’ll write a book about it.

Pre season was strange, because when the the first team didn’t have a game, they would all drop in to my squad and the assistant would be play them instead of the team we were actually going to play the season with! It’s my fault for not being arsed doing the friendlies myself, but I didn’t need Karim Benzema slotting 8 goals past some fu***ng nobody team whilst my lads sat in the stands brushing up on their Romanian.

The season started and I quickly realised the squad is absolute overkill. I was destroying teams. To the point it wasn’t really fair. Young striker called Sala was on fire. Theo and Bruno in the middle pulling the strings. And I had an overlapping left back called Miguel who quickly ran up 14 assists in as many games. The rest of the defence was nothing to shout about, but I honestly didn’t need them. There were a few games when I just put manakins from the club shop in at centre back. Nobody realised.

About half way through the season I started to understand the downside of being in a B team. Despite being unbeaten at this stage, the board were raging at me because I hadn’t been playing some players who had dropped down from the first team. It was the keeper! I swapped him over and within 2 weeks I’d gone from a C rating to A+ which is nice of them. I was hoping to get a few more of the first team drop down over the course of the season, but no such luck. They weren’t finished though. When the window opened, they accepted a bid for the left back Miguel from Lille for €10m so he was off. Also Theo who was 17 goals and 8 assists from centre mid was loaned out to OGC Nice. (They were both that good that even though they played half a season, they both finished the joint highest rated players at the end of the season on 7.70).

I went through a little spell of drawing games after that. Although the squad was still good, it was tough to get a few other players to settle in to their positions.

I was also playing in what seemed to be like a Champions League for u23 and B teams which was interesting and fu***ng pointless. Won my group and got through to the quarter finals. The quarter final draw was on a Tuesday, with the actual game on the Wednesday?! I got Barca. The game was at a neutral ground… IN ENGLAND. Absolute organisational nightmare. Beat those fools from the league above me in extra time but was eventually knocked out by Arsenal u23s in the semis who very sportingly played Aubameyang, Maitland-Niles and Saka?! Wankers.

I won the league comfortably which is the minimum the board expected. I was headed for an invincible season until 4 of my starting lineup were on international duty for the u21s and I came up against Sevilla B who inflicted my only league defeat of the season! What a load of s**tehawks they are. They couldn’t just play along for the fun of it.

Still, champions on 99 points and up to LaLiga 2! Another year on the contract and another year of bathing in Raul’s tears.

07/02/2021

“Coming up after Malcolm in the Middle, we’re off to Eastern Europe to catch up with events at FC U Craiova 1948 following their promotion to the top flight of Romanian football with a 31 year old novice from Liverpool at the helm. They can’t understand him, he can’t understand them. Mediocre football is the language that connects then”

**Sky One’s Dream Team Intro Music Starts**

Previously, on the Journeyman save… after starting unemployed with zero badges or experience, I was handed the reigns at FC U Craiova 1948 in the second tier of Romania. No money. Weird squad rules and some funny player names, we got ourselves promoted. Finally up to the top to face off against the elite of Romania and the rival team in Craiova, the students!

So after being promoted, the board were brilliant about it and gave me absolutely f**k all extra money. Which was nice. So we had to try and keep the core of the squad together. I was able to extend a few loan signings, the most important being Martin Petkov, a left winger who can also play up front from Levski. He’s a class above if I’m honest. I kind of treat him like a celebrity he’s that good. When he walks in to the changing rooms, I stand up and offer my seat and see if he wants a drink. Yes Mr Petkov sir. No Mr Petkov sir. Please don’t go back to Bulgaria Mr Petkov sir.

I made the big decision to switch to two up top and needed to bring in another starting striker because Mr Petkov sir feels most comfortable on the left wing. I also thought it would be nice to be able to understand at least one of my players, so England is were I started looking. I already knew who I wanted. I’m a Tranmere fan. James “The Lord” Norwood has been our saviour over recent years and was out of favour at Ipswich. Despite my wage budget being no more than the co***ne budget at a Tory party conference, I was able to throw £1400pw at him and convinced Lord Norwood to jump on an EasyJet and join us in Romania.

PopaPop&Git carried on their good form from last year, specifically Vlad Pop as my deep lying playmaker, only 18 but a mature young man. Taught him how to shave and put up some shelves during pre season, said he can call me dad if he wanted to, but he pretended like he didn’t hear me and things seemed weird after that.

The u21 rule is still a pain in the arse. Pop is one of them and Popa the keeper is the other. They have to start, or we can’t play. Only problem there is both of them keep making u19 and u21 squads, which seem to be played on the exact day my games are. That’s when I have to go into the crowd and see if any full kit wankers are in the crowd with some shin pads and tell them to just stand in the corner and don’t say anything.

I still have the same backroom team. All Romanians. Can’t communicate with them whatsoever. Currently on a thumbs up/thumbs down system at the moment that works well. We had a game recently were the striker for the other team was also called Martin Petkov and my assistant managers head absolutely fell off trying to grasp the concept of them sharing a name.

Season went okay in terms of results. We drew both games against the brainy student wankers from the other team in Craiova. They actually had a great season and almost won it. We finished just outside of the play off places before the league split off. So we dropped in to the “Relegation” play offs. You start with 50% of your points and play the bottom 8 teams I think it was. No problems here. Finished top comfortably and survived. Season over. Or so we thought…

Out of nowhere, I’m drawn against the team below me in a play off semi final for a place in the Euro II. Madness. Smashed them. Lord Norwood with a hat trick. Which draws us against FCSB (Steaua Bucharest) who are a very good team from the Champion play offs. 0-0 up until 73rd minute and WHAT THE JECK?! Niklas Jeck my Nigerian centre back smashes home. By the time I finished celebrating, we had conceded two goals. 2-1 literally 3 minutes later. Raging. Season really is over now. Amazingly the squad were given a one day holiday from the Sunday before pre season started on the following Monday. Enjoy it lads.

It’s around this time that I’m wondering how much further I can take them. The club is in financial ruin and has £0 budget and a terrible wage budget. And me, a scouser stuck in Romania just casually nodding whenever anyone talks to me. So I applied for a couple of jobs that were available…

I was offered an interview at Reggina who had just been relegated from Serie B to C. A team with good foundations and a good team. I was offered an interview only to be told by them that they can’t agree a compensation deal with Craiova. So it gave me the option to have a chat with the board. So with incredible difficulty and a Romanian/English dictionary, I said listen, lower your demands, so you at least get a few quid for me, or I’ll resign and you’ll get nothing. Well then, they only double down and said, well thanks for everything, but no problem. So I went back to my bedsit, packed up my suitcase, gave Vlad Pop a cuddle and off I went.

In the meantime, I was offered another interview at a different club which went really well, because two days after I was offered the job. And I accepted! I checked the flights from Craiova to… Spain, and booked some extra leg room.

Welcome to Real Madrid B, Peter Conroy. That’s right. After dropping in to the third tier of Spanish football, Raul had managed to get himself sacked and I’ve taken over managing the wonderkids of Real Madrid’s future. It’s certainly going to be a challenge not being able to bring in my own players, but managing some of the top young talent in Europe is an opportunity I can’t refuse considering two weeks ago I was renegotiating contracts for 36 year old Romanians who wanted an extra £10 appearance fee and I literally couldn’t do it!

Another new language, another strange set up, stay tuned to see how the move from Craiova to Madrid unfolds!

28/11/2020

“Coming up after The Simpsons, a 31 year old football manager from Liverpool takes his first ever managing job, deep in Eastern Europe. No coaching badges, no experience and he can’t speak the language. Stay tuned to see how it unfolds.”

**Sky One’s Dream Team Intro Music Starts**

Welcome to the Taribo Stressed “Journeyman” save.

You know the drill by now. Start unemployed, no coaching badges, Sunday League experience and try to make it to the very top. Safe to say this save started off extremely weird. Applied for the usual roles as you do, and before I could even switch from the Job Centre website to PornHub, the Wigan manager is inviting me for an interview?! I had to double check that I didn’t have the badges and experience wrong, but low and behold Wigan actually did want to interview essentially just a man, any man, to guide them out of League Two. I can only assume my next door neighbour and Wolf from Gladiators had already had their interviews, but I gave the answers you’d expect. Also had a few Zoom interviews in a few of the more obscure leagues around Europe. My philosophy being that I’ll accept the first job that is offered to me. I’m not really in a position to be too choosy.

Two days later, via a call with such poor signal it sounded like they were calling in a coup in a West African war-torn country, I accepted a job in the Romanian second division at FC U Craiova 1948. I did a little Wikipedia research on the club before I headed over to the EasyJet website. Genuinely really interesting history behind the club. Back in the day the university in the city had a team, known as Universitatea Craiova who were the first university team to ever win a National Title in Europe. They had a couple of golden generations and some more national titles, but the university dissolved the team in 1991, but carried on under a new name FC U Craiova (my team). They weren’t the best, to be honest, and hit some legal issues of their own in 2011. They left the official league for a bit and when they reapplied to join the leagues in 2013, the local authorities reformed the old university side as CS Universitatea Craiova, which you would think that’s the new club. No no. Despite carrying on through all that time directly from the university, all the history and the honours of the original side went to the brand new reformed university team and my lads were left looking like wankers in a little side club. After a few years back in the leagues, the new university side is flying in the top division, and we’ve just been promoted to the league below.

The great part about the division as that all of the ultras fan groups had to decide which Craiova team they wanted to follow and has lad to some fu***ng great reading, like this…

“In March 2018, FC U Craiova supporters attending a friendly game between Romania and Sweden at the Stadionul Ion Oblemenco (university sides stadium) booed CS U player Alexandru Mitrata upon being substituted. They also broke chairs, and as a response CS U fans symbolically used insecticide to "get rid of the stench" left over by Peluza Sud 97 ultras”

Which is the greatest image ever, loads of ultras in balaclavas spraying fly killer after our ultras had been at their stadium. Nice one, lads. Annoyingly their stadium is a lovely new shiny thing. And ours looks a little bit like an old athletics track with the biggest ever disabled/wheelchair ramp outside the ground I’ve ever seen. Also, it’s not even in our city. Our home matches are an hour and forty minute drive away. Lovely.

Suppose I best let you know about the first season. The board wanted me to get promoted. No messing around. They want some of that Liga I action. £0 in the transfer budget and nothing left in the wages. So that’s nice. I mean I don’t know what I expected after they hired a man from England who doesn’t speak Romanian two days after he decided to become a football manager.

The Romanian squad rules are annoying as f**k. You have to have two u20 Romanian players in your playing 11 at all times. So if one of the kids is playing s**te, you can only take them off for another u20. Slightly different in their top league which is only one in your playing 11 but 2 in the squad, which has led to managers (Romanian legend Dan Petrescu did it) starting a kid to meet the rules then subbing him off after 30 seconds for a better player. It has only stung me a couple of times when my decent u20s were on international duty with Romania (you’d think they’d schedule it for when it’s not a league game) so I had to play one a kid from the u18s who was honestly fu***ng horrendous. I just gave him some colouring pencils and told him to sit by the corner flag. Problem is because I needed two in my playing 11 at all times, he had to stay on all game. The pictures he did are now on my fridge.

Got some decent players here. One of the kids I gave a chance to was Vlad Pop. Playing him as a deploying playmaker. The other kid I’ve gone with to meet the rules is a 17 year old keeper called Robert Popa. That’s right, Pop and Popa. Pop n Popa have got loads of potential to be fair, so I stuck with them. Honourable mention to my right back called Git for making the small list of people with ridiculous names.

I brought in a left winger/striker called Martin Petkov from Lefski in Bulgaria. No wages needed. He’s been quality. Even getting an u21 call up. Claudiu Balan led the way up top with 28 goals in all competitions.

The league set up is strange. You play every team once. So after 20 games we were top of the league on 46 points, clear of second by 3 points. Then it splits off into play off leagues. A bit like Rugby League if you’re familiar. There are two relegation play offs, bottom 2 of each group go down, and whoever is third bottom of each group play each other in the relegation play off and the loser goes down. You carry through your points from the league and play each team in there twice, adding to your total.

This is when PopaPop&Git and co twisted the knife and won every single game in the play offs, finishing on a fu***ng massive 76 points ahead of 2nd place on 57. The club at the end of the season announced we are ditching our stadium at the 400m track as the owner wants to move the side officially back to Craiova.

We’re coming for those fu***ng students!

27/11/2020

Anyone doing airport drop offs?

26/11/2020

It begins...

16/11/2020

Didn’t intend to write about my first save on this years FM, however, two seasons in and this s**t is writing itself! Update to come soon.

13/11/2020

Right then, time to start the first Taribo Stressed journey for this years Football Manager!

The first escapades we’re going start with are the same as what we ended on last year… a sibling rivalry online save. As previously mentioned, me and my brother Andy have played these games for over 20 years (back when we both had hairlines to be proud of) and we decided to document our online games in the same way as the other FM adventures I share. We were originally going to wait for the full version to come out, but we both feel the Beta is robust enough to handle it.

Last year we threw all the leagues in Europe into an online roulette wheel thing and ended up in Turkey managing Trabzonspor and Istanbul Basaksehir for a good 5 years before Andy jumped ship to Hoffenheim. Was a great save with a few twists and turns, so we’re back.

The countries got thrown in to the generator and we were headed for the wonderful country of ROMANIAAAAA! (feel like I’m hosting Eurovision). After plenty of dicking around and indecisiveness we settled on teams that were predicted to finish 5th and 6th to make it reasonably fair. I’ve taken over at Dinamo Bucharest and Andy has headed two miles to the coast to FC Viitorul Constanta.

I decided to have a little look at the Romanian 1st Divisions reputation compared to other leagues to see what level of players we might be able to attract. I was absolutely fu***ng appalled to see that reputation wise it is 32nd in the world! Let me provide some context. Kazakhstan, home of fictional pest, Borat, is number 28! Azerbaijan is 5 places higher than us at 27! And the biggest kick in the bo****ks, the famous Cypriot First Division is 18th! My expectations of building a Eastern European dynasty were being trampled on by an old lady with a headscarf and an accordion.

The next thing we checked was our facilities. Now, my team plays at the National Arena in Bucharest (fu***ng massive) and Andy’s team plays in a more modest 4500 seater stadium. Unlucky you might think. Well there’s a catch. Of course there’s a catch. His stadium is part of the Gheorghe Hagi Football Academy. An €11m academy founded by the legend himself. Which just so happens to be the best youth academy in the country and directly supplies his team with all the best youngsters in the fu***ng country! Like a conveyor belt of 15 year old Romanian wonderkids with moustaches.

So considering we had absolutely zero money and Andy was busy shuffling through his surplus of talent like someone with a load of footy stickers on swap, I decided to draft in some experience with none other than Sulley Muntari. At a spritely 36, his stats are still decent and he’s going to come in and do the dirty work in my midfield. I honestly can’t imagine how a man like Sulley may be received in some of the far away corners in Romania, but I’m sure it was a shock all around.

I also asked the board for a senior affiliate which they actually went for and suggested the least obvious choice ever in Cagliari. They’ve loaned me a left footed centre back who’s media description is “touted as the next Franco Baresi” which just cements this save as fu***ng hilarious already.

We’ve started the season and had a couple of games so far. I won both of mine against some honestly awful teams. Andy has a loss and a draw but has already come across the mighty Dan Petrescu’s CFR Cluj, who are the champions for the last 3 years, so no doubt he’ll pick up.

Got a feeling this save is going to be fu***ng weird!

11/11/2020

What does everyone think of 21 so far? Who is your first save with?

10/11/2020

Love this feature!

"It’s going to be one of the first things you’ll see. Intra-squad friendlies no longer have to be just against your youth team. You can now have First XI v Second XI, First XI v youth, or a combination of all "

10/11/2020

Brace yourselves, fellas.

08/11/2020

Who is everyone fancying for their first save on FM21? Straight in with a Journeyman or unemployed save? Or the team you support to give it a little test first maybe?

07/11/2020

When you're in the 9th tier of the football pyramid telling your centre mid on £4 per week that we need more assists.

07/11/2020

Assistant Manager's can get in the bin.

05/11/2020

Everyone got FM 21 pre ordered?! I can't wait to get going on a new save.

What would people like to see on here moving forward? Planning to keep as engaged as possible on the new FM.

Obviously we'll have updates and stories of saves, are people interested in other things? FM memes? Tips/hints? Videos?

Me and my brother will be posting whatever content people like as well as potentially live streaming sessions of our online save together.

Let me know what you wanna see fellas.

01/10/2020

Absolute TEXTBOOK signing for the Turkish league

15/09/2020

The online Turkey save: Goals, has-beens and sibling rivalry.

*Warning: Long read! Will keep you busy when you’re having a s**t and hiding from the wife and kids*

Afternoon guys. Been a while since I updated about my journeyman or Hereford saves. I think I’m stuck in that downer of waiting for the new FM and not being too inspired. Obviously I can’t just stop playing, c’mon now. So me and my brother decided to start an online save (feels weird calling it that, always referred to as a netty between us!) It’s been a great little save so far, so I thought I’d bring you up to speed and maybe keep you updated until the new FM, hopefully get a few laughs along the way.

Quick bit of back story, I’m 31 and my brother Andy is 35 and I think the first FM/Champ Man we ever played was 97. So we’ve had plenty of time to be competitive bastards with each other. Much easier using a network game from opposite sides of the country rather than one computer back in the day and having to let the other person sit down to have their go.

First problem was which league to choose and what teams to go. We didn’t want anyone that good, and maybe a bit of an obscure or weird league to make it interesting eg. Hungary, Slovakia, Greece…. Scotland. We stuck them all in an online roulette wheel selector thing and ended up in the land of hair transplants and false teeth, TURKEY! After browsing through the league, Andy settled on Trabzonspor and I, for whatever reason, selected Istanbul Basaksehir.

Season 1:

I’m going to start with an absolutely massive FU***NG HELL. Without a doubt the most randomly selected group of footballers are knocking about in the Turkish Super Lig. It is just a ridiculous graveyard for anyone who ever played at a decent level in Europe. At least in China you have some superstars move just at the end of their prime. Not in Turkey. If Stanley Matthews was still alive he would be 106 years old and probably be playing for Genclerbirligi S.K. Our favourite thing quickly became a sort of bingo style game about which half decent 34+ year old was playing against you. Because the names of a lot of the teams are hard to pronounce they also because used as identifiers “Oh I’m playing against the Pappis Cisse team here”. At Istanbul Bas, the good honest family club I selected, I had Demba Ba, Martin Skrtel, Gael Clichy and convicted ra**st Robinho. Amongst his ranks, Andy also has John Obi Mikel, who to be fair was still half decent. The only real problem we found is they’re all on massive fu***ng wages. And were mostly s**te. That’s actually two problems. Oh and they weren’t Turkish which made registering a squad really tough. Four problems. One of mine was a ra**st. So I’ll say five problems for me, four for Andy.

The registration thing we realised has potential to be a massive ball ache. Maximum 14 foreign players in your squad to be registered. Maximum 12 in your match day squad. Not too bad in most countries, but Turkey aren’t exactly swimming in talent. So the task half finding the best Turkish talent started.
First season was always going to be tough. Neither of us had much money so we delved into the loan market. I brought in Reece Oxford at the back, Pellegri up top, Will Vaulks from Cardiff was a great signing and most randomly, Jack Marriott from Derby. Half way through the season I managed to convince Robinho to f**k off to China. He’s probably just trying to avoid extradition. Also managed to offload Clichy and a load of other dead wood. Halfway through the season I lost my best player, Edin Visca to Everton for £25.5m. Certainly not bad for a 30 year old who wanted to leave but it left my f**ked for the rest of the season.

Andy did the same in offloading a load of s**te. He used the loan market again very well bringing in Curtis Jones from Liverpool and Angel Gomes and James Garner from United who has been fu***ng superb. His greatest piece of business though was already done before he arrived. Alexander Sorloth. This Norwegian bastard who is on loan from Crystal Palace bagged 33 goals in 47 games and I just still don’t understand how. He doesn’t have bad stats so to speak, but it certainly surprised the pair of us.

Andy ended up missing out on the league to Galatasaray by just one point and I had a shocker and finished 6th, outside of all European qualification spots. Nightmare. He also beat me in the Turkish Cup semi final before going on to lose to Fenerbahce in the final.

Season 2:

Time for the big clear out and rebuild. Sold half my squad basically. Useless f**ks. Tried to keep Skrtel but he went to Marseille on a free. Quality move at his age to be fair. Brought in permanent signings Scott McKenna at the back, Patrick Roberts from City, Josh Cullen from West Ham and Lookman from Leipzig. Actually a free signing as well, Teboho Mokoena from SuperSport United in South Africa. What a fu***ng player he is, can’t recommend highly enough. After I signed him I spotted another South African player called Innocent Maela who is a left back I got from Orlando Pirates for £375k. Lovely. Topped these up with some loans. Pellegri renewed. Joined by Troy Parrott, Oscar and Kubo from Real Madrid and Martinelli and Mavropanos from Arsenal. Starting to get excited about this gang of misfits.

Andy trumped me in the free transfer business, bringing in Marco Van Ginkel and Herbie Kane (more to follow about this bastard later) and Adama Traore from Monaco. Rhian Brewster came in on loan as well as Todibo from Barcelona who is just out of this fu***ng world.

Both of us happily forgetting about the squad registration and then spending about an hour between us trying to register a team without pi***ng someone off.

I’ll just jump straight to it. Andy fu***ng trounced the league. 89 points and only losing once. It wasn’t even close to be honest. By this point I was already calling them Sorlothzonspor after the Norwegian bagged 44 in 44. It was also around this point he quietly announced that he’d signed him on a permanent deal for £5.5m. Hahahakillmehahaha. The cup was an exact repeat of the first season. Andy beat me in the semi and Fenerbahce did him in the final. Starting to get a little repetitive.
I did slightly better this year, finishing fourth which unfortunately only meant Euro Cup II qualification. At least it would give me something to do on the Wednesday games when he’s off trying to salvage a result away to the likes of Rosenborg and Sevilla.

Season 3:

This year started with a much more relaxed pre season given that our teams are starting to take shape a little more. The one thing we noticed is that by renewing the loan signings of players we liked during the season, we are far more likely to have them accepted and therefore have kept good loan players for 2-3 seasons. I kept the majority of mine and only went after a new right back from Sassuolo who I’d been chasing for ages, Meet Mulder, who yes, you guessed it, IS TURKISH! Fu***ng superb. Also signed probably one of the best FM wonderkids on loan to boost my attacking line…

“I’ll take footballers second nationality for 600, please”

I play for Ajax and the Dutch u21 team, my second nationality is Turkish

**Bzzzzzzzz** “Who is Naci Unuvar?” CORRECT!

Signing these two made registering my squad so much fu***ng easier.

Andy has a bit more of a hectic transfer window. He brought in Rojo on a free and Harvey Elliott on loan from Liverpool amongst a few Turkish lads. But let me tell you something that I just can’t let go. Last season he signed Herbie Kane on a free from Liverpool. He had a good season in to be fair a title winning side (in Turkey). Decent player all round. Burnley only come in with a whopping £23m bid for him. Which is just fu***ng ridiculous. Still. I’m typing so much more aggressively right now. As well as getting good money from this, he’s been back well by the board in regards to transfer funds, so he’s been able to manoeuvre nicely. We have had several arguments about net spend (can you guess who he supports in real life?) But basically this has led to him doing arguably the best business of the save so far by bringing in Marco Kana from Anderlecht for £27m on a gigantic £72kpw. But he’s sensational to be fair. Quality business.

The league was very different this year. We both started a little slow. My form picked up and I went on some unbelievable runs, spending the majority of the season top of the league. Andy slowly but surely put some results in and climbed his way up leaving it a three way battle at the top with us and Galatasaray. In short, I absolutely bottled it. Losing to a team I still can’t pronounce who randomly had Carl Jenkinson at the back and a few others. Troy Parrott who has been a brilliant signing over 2-3 years just decided he was ridiculously bored of scoring and I couldn’t buy a win. Andy’s late run stumbled a little and leaving Galatasaray to pinch the league and massively p**s us both off.

The Cup curse was broken though! After surviving a new president taking over Trabzonspor and vowing to get rid of him, a failed Schalke job interview and a DISMAL (sorry bro) run in Europe, he managed to take home the Turkish Cup very comfortably in the final 4-1 over Genclerbirligi.

The silverware didn’t stop there though. This time is was the turn of Istanbul Bas! After a comfortable run through the Euro Cup II, I found myself in the final against the people who told Andy to f**k off after his job interview, Schalke. 20 mins in my internet drops. Fantastic. Jumped back in the game to see I went on to win 1-0. I couldn’t accept it. It wasn’t my win. The game had saved just before it kicked off so we reloaded. I didn’t care if I won or lost but I couldn’t win it that way. 1-1. Took it to extra time. This was also the moment Andy found out you get an extra sub in extra time. He is special. 119th minute, Lookman at the back post slams home a winner and Istanbul goes wild!

Fairly successful seasons despite the league fiasco. Overall, a great country to do a save in. I think we’d both highly recommend to anyone else.

And that’s where we find ourselves up to! If anyone wants to see any particular players or screenshots of anything, just let us know, happy to oblige.