Concord Career - From Rags to Riches

by ZaZ, Dec 17, 2021

G1102 said: Great first season.6th is unthinkable in first season.
With Dulwich I managed 13th and with Blyth even worse 14th.
Seeing you playing I kinda want to start all over again :) and I might since I never used zaz 4.0.
Your scouting method is great. I used the opz elite skin , which show current ability number and that helped a lot since you keep increasing that number over the leagues as if in Vanarama National N/S a 65 current ability is considered great , then in the Vanarama National is not so much ,so you look for 75/80 current ability, obviously players with pace and accelaration, in regards to outfield players and reflexes and agility in regards to GK. The way you do it is harder but way more fair .
Looking forward to updates in regard to the new season.
Good luck.


Thanks! I hope you have fun in a new run.

Anyway, I have 50 mi euros for transfers and 50 mi for wage budget (currently using 18 mi), so I might as well hire a full new team and play with a 33 man squad, since there will be one more competition this season. I'll see if I can manage it within the budget while increasing the quality of my team.

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Very nice ZaZ.
Can you share your scouting filters? of course if there is :)

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pixar said: Very nice ZaZ.
Can you share your scouting filters? of course if there is :)


I just set it manually, because sometimes I need to tweak to reveal more or less players. I believe someone made a filter for FM in that thread for player attributes.

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Great thread, ZaZ. I've been enjoying following it. :)

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New season started and I hired exactly one player for each position, for a total of eleven new players. Since I exploded the budget and would still need to renew some contracts during the season, I have decided to sell/loan eleven players (obviously the worst ones) to keep a squad of 22 again. My main team is playing league matches, while second team is playing all cups (Carabao, FA Cup and Euro).

Right now, my team has the second lowest budget of the league and I'm predicted last again (but closer 19th than before). Season is going pretty well, challenging for the title on the league and qualifying to next stage of Euro League. I was kicked out of Carabao on the first match, but that's life. On a positive note, new players are doing very well and I think this squad might be able to at least get a spot on Champions League. Some positions can still be improved, but I'm not changing any player for someone with the same quality and higher cost, so I'll keep scouting for next transfer window.





For notable matches, I would pick my victory 5-1 against Manchester City. They got completely dominated and gave me three important points. I also had a good match against Liverpool away, but they stole my victory in the last minute (90+4). On the bad side, I lost points home against Leicester and West Ham, matches that I should have won.


Last but not least, Ben McNamee (my AMR) is not described as a wonderkid anymore. It's a shame, but I suppose he must have PA at least above 150 to have been described that way at some point.

By the way, I also noticed it's better to do additional training for endurance instead of quickness on defensive midfielders and wingbacks, since stamina and work rate are more important to those positions.

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Here is my Individual Training Focus based on the weightings by our Chinese colleagues and using the positional attribute costs.

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Season at 15 matches, leading the league and coming from 8 games without defeat. Notable match was against Manchester United, that would probably win if they didn't get a red card in first half when winning 1-0.

Other than that, I got some good news from the board and they will give me 40 mi euros more to spend on transfers. Time to splash some cash!





Anyway, some people have asked me how I do my subs during matches. In short, I always use all subs, and my priorities are the following:
- Very tired or injured players (at any time).
- Players with yellow card (at half time).
- Players with injured reserve, which means I need to use him again next match (at half time or 60+ min.
- Players with grade under 6.4 (at half time).

If none of those conditions are met, I put some player with low match fitness or someone without much match time. If I don't have any better option, I can also sub someone with poor body language, like when they say "about to get booked", "nervous" or something like that.

I always save at least one sub until 60-70+ minutes (depending on score), in case someone gets injured.

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Just some extra insights of things I usually do. In the picture below, you can see I finished the match with one striker in each wing and a defender playing as defensive midfielder. They are all proficient in the positions, just not being trained to play there. For context, this match was played with reserve team because I had an important match against Tottenham (3rd place) after just two days, so I wanted to have main team in good condition. The reason why I used strikers instead of wingers is because they use less energy during a match, meaning they would be able to recover better to next match than if I used wingers. For the defender in defensive midfield, the other player was just suspended, so it was lack of choice.


In the following match against Tottneham, you can see at half time that all players were at very good condition, which allowed me to completely dominate them. Since I didn't have anyone tired, I chose to substitute the guy with yellow card and low rate during half time, to avoid getting someone sent off and because he was probably in a bad day due to consistency / important matches.


I also wanna show something very hard to get, but every manage should try to achieve. After a couple of victories and lots of praises to training, I managed to finally get perfect morale on the team.


Also, I already told here that I always give rest to tired players, usually two days off for those at half heart condition, one day off for those at 75%. However, here I have eight days until next match, so I decided to give three days off to all tired players (half heart) and two days off to everyone else. This is done to reduce fatigue, since by the middle of season you can see most of my team with low fatigue (instead of fresh), even though I'm rotating a lot (players with most matches have around 15 while those with least matches have around 10). The next picture show the results, with everyone fresh before the next match (I gave one extra day off for those that were still fatigued four days before the match).

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ZaZ said: Also, I kinda hate the end of championships, when my team starts playing bad because of anxiety to the title and I feel like they will let it slip. That final run got me a bit nervous, even though I had a good advantage.

Hahaha, i know dat feelings aka seasonfinal.
I just read your whole carrerstory, great thread. Thx bro :D

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Now at 25 matches in the league and leading by 4 points. I don't want to talk too early, but this season is going easier than I expected. I mean, I lost in both Carabao and FA Cup, but I expected to be fighting head to head in the league until the last match. To be fair, I was expecting to only win Premier League in my third season coming from the bottom. Maybe I got better at choosing players to hire, or better at managing in general, or I'm just having luck with RNG, or maybe the tactic is just better than I expected. Anyway, I guess I'll be able to win the league this season, which was one of the main goals of this run. After that, only Champions League to go, which will depend way more in RNG.



I want to talk about how important it is to choose players properly. First, I will let you compare a young striker from Manchester City (wonderkid) with my best striker in the pictures below. As you can see, there is nothing to compare there, he is better in every single way. When the difference between CA is that big (not sure about exact numbers, but I would assume his striker is 180+ while mine is around 120-130), you need to focus on attributes that really matter. If you check the table of attributes in the first post of Blue, you will see that the priority for ST are acceleration, finishing, dribbling, pace, technique, stamina and work rate, all of which are well covered by my player. Focusing in the right attributes is key to overachieve when you play a weaker team, as well as using a strong tactic, and managing players physically and emotionally.


Another point is that I don't see the CA or PA of players, which means I don't have attachment with anyone. I hire players for the attributes they have right now, not by the attributes they might have in two or three seasons. If I find a player with better attributes and good cost, I just hire him and kick the weakest of my team for that position. I can consider the growth in case there are only options of similar ability, then I keep those that are still growing instead of those that stagnated for several months.

Speaking of choosing players properly, I hired two new players this transfer window, one left wing back (Rayan Aït-Nouri) and one left winger (Bryan Gil). The same day as the winger signed his contract, he got injured for two months. Just my luck! To make things better, my defensive midfielder also got injured for two months, so I recalled a player on loan (Gavin Kilkenny) to replace him. My best defender (Tenden Mengi) also got injured for around two months, but he was easier to manage since I could rotate with the other reserve.

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Season is finally over and Concord finally made it from rags to riches! This season was a bit too easy and I didn't even focus much during the last matches, leaving the game minimized when the my team was winning by two goals. We won the league with a couple of points to spare and a huge difference in goals. As a bonus, we also won the Euro Cup, even though I played it mostly with reserve team (except when league was already decided).



It feels really nice that supporters want to build my statue at the stadium (which is funny since it's in someone's else stadium since ours are still under construction). Other than that, I would like to talk about the match against Porto, in which I was doing bad until the very last minutes, when I did two goals in a row and qualified to the finals. That was a very nice feeling!


Anyway, that was a nice journey. I guess I will try one more season to see if I can lift the Champion's League, but my goal for the run was already achieved.


Below is the FM Scout of my team, if anyone is curious about CA and PA of my team. They are not anything special, so anyone using FM Scout and following the tips I gave in this thread should have an even easier time than I did. I didn't know Peter Smith was so much worse than Gavin Kilkenny, I kept the former because he was the team vice-captain, but would have used the latter if I knew.


If you have any questions or comments about the run, leave it below.

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Cong. bro. :woot:

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Just started the new season to try winning the Champions League. I hired three new players for the team, all suggested by my scouts since I was too lazy to go head hunting (they are pretty good). Pre-season went fine, scoring 134 goals in 6 matches. To be fair, I played those matches with Light Blue since they were weak teams. Below are the three new transfers and the match with 34 goals.


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This final season of Concord run will probably be very anti-climatic. Since I won the league last season with points to spare, I expect it to be even easier this time after improving the team. My plan is to use first team on Champions League and in the league when possible, and second team for other cups (and league when there is a Champions League match within three or four days). In the first ten matches of the league, I played most of them with second team and got seven victories.



My last level of training facilities got done, which means I am definitely leaving a legacy to the club other than just bringing them from lowest division to Premier League champions. The team is also very rich and stadium is on the way.



Lucky for me, scouts are doing a very good job at recommending players spontaneously, so I already know who to go for next transfer window (it's currently closed) without even needing to scout manually. I'm not sure if they are recommending better players and more often because scouts have good attributes or if it just got improved in FM22 compared to FM21. Anyway, make sure to always have most scouts in assignments and a couple free for when you want to manually reveal someone.


At continental level, matches went very easy in the group stage and I'm already qualified to knock outs. I expect to have an easy time until it comes to the big teams like PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Manchester City, but even then, I think I have a good chance in two matches. My biggest problem will be the finals, so I'll cross my fingers.


If anyone doesn't understand how my team can overachieve despite being weaker than most at Premier League, remember that good tactics can bring the best out of players. We are talking about the top tactic in FM-Arena, so it's only natural that I can compete against stronger opponents and even beat them easily as difference between players shrinks. Other than that, it's just about managing players. Feel free to share your experiences here too, so people understand they can also do the same or even better if they try.

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ZaZ said: My plan is to use first team on Champions League and in the league when possible, and second team for other cups (and league when there is a Champions League match within three or four days).

Good luck with Champions League :thup:

Obviously, the reputation of your teams has increased after you won the league in the previous so now your opponents take you more seriously which means the difficulty of winning the league will increase gradually.

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Grimlock said: Good luck with Champions League :thup:

Obviously, the reputation of your teams has increased after you won the league in the previous so now your opponents take you more seriously which means the difficulty of winning the league will increase gradually.


Thanks! There is a lottery component to cups, since one bad day can make you lose the entire season. That's why I will only try once, so if I win or lose, that's it for the run.

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ZaZ said: Thanks! There is a lottery component to cups, since one bad day can make you lose the entire season. That's why I will only try once, so if I win or lose, that's it for the run.

I have a different approach, I never quite a save until I win Champions League at least once and the domestic league at least 3 times in row.

Yeahh... I should also add that to achieve my targets it usually requires having the best players in the game something like PSG team right now.

This game isn't only about tactics but it also about having the best players in your team and I find that getting the best players is also a lot of fun.

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Grimlock said: This game isn't only about tactics but it also about having the best players in your team and I find that getting the best players is also a lot of fun.

I agree with that. I also like brining the best players in the game to my team and with the best players I like to set different records like winning CL few times in a row or winning the league 5 times in a row and so on :D

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It's also because after so many seasons, I would rather take a break and start in a new setting. AI teams are pretty stupid buying new players, so their teams usually get weaker as time passes.

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Congrats zaz for a terrific job.I wonder how your third season is going to go , because that's where i stumbled with both Dulwich and Blyth.
Anyway, i started a new season , playing with zaz 4.0 , light blue and solid blue and the results have been spectacular. As you can see . When i started to play(picked the team) my media prediction was 5th , but at the start of the season i was somehow predicted 1st.
Nontheless the results have been spactacular. Looking forward to Vanarama National which I expect to boss without problems.
I started with 13 wins in a row.

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G1102 said: Congrats zaz for a terrific job.I wonder how your third season is going to go , because that's where i stumbled with both Dulwich and Blyth.
Anyway, i started a new season , playing with zaz 4.0 , light blue and solid blue and the results have been spectacular. As you can see . When i started to play(picked the team) my media prediction was 5th , but at the start of the season i was somehow predicted 1st.
Nontheless the results have been spactacular. Looking forward to Vanarama National which I expect to boss without problems.
I started with 13 wins in a row.


Thank you and good luck on your run! As long as you manage well the physical condition and morale of your players, I'm sure you will breeze at least until Sky Bet Championship.

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@ZaZ, how is it going in CL? Have you managed to win it yet?

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Droid said: @ZaZ, how is it going in CL? Have you managed to win it yet?

I'm taking it slowly, because I limit myself to play only around 10 matches a day. More than that and I can lose the entire day or weeks in the game, which isn't a good idea for me. I also test some new tactics when I'm not playing, but I didn't get much luck in anything new yet, only subpar options.

I'm now reaching half of the season, 20 matches in the league, and things don't seem so good. I mean, I'm not doing badly, barely the same points per match as last season, but opponents seem to be doing a better job. Since my rep went up, they are now taking me more seriously, so I hope to have a better second half of season. Maybe I'm paying for focusing on UCL and using reserve team in 14 of 20 matches, but it couldn't be helped since I have two matches per week. If I repeat main team in the league, I'll end up tired and injured for the later stages of UCL.



Transfer window opens in one week and board increased my budget to 40mi euros, so I might bring one new face and see how it goes.

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What kind of training program did you use during and before the season when you were a semi-professional?


edit: now i see this post. sorry :)

https://fm-arena.com/find-comment/10376/

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pixar said: What kind of training program did you use during and before the season when you were a semi-professional?

When you are semi-pro, training for gaining attributes is useless. Your facilities are poor, your staff sucks and your players have low PA. For that reason, it's always better to focus in match bonuses like Teamwork, Defensive Positioning and Attacking Movement. That makes three out of four sessions of the week, considering you have a match during the third day. I use the last session for match practice, because it gives happiness and cohesion.

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A little update . I was expecting to boss the league , but not like this :).
Trashed Grimsby , at that moment in second place 6-1 in their home.
Exceptional tactic ZaZ.

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G1102 said: A little update . I was expecting to boss the league , but not like this :).
Trashed Grimsby , at that moment in second place 6-1 in their home.
Exceptional tactic ZaZ.


Gratz! As long as you remember to rest players individually after matches and praise every week after training review, you will keep overachieving for sure, since morale and physical condition are the main reasons why you could go downhill.

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A couple more matches into the season and things went pretty well. I mean, I qualified to quarter finals of Champions League, won Carabao Cup and got kicked out from FA Cup by Chelsea. On the other hand, even though I got 28 of 30 points in the last 10 matches of the league, Arsenal is still 8 points ahead of me. I don't think I'll win the league this year simply because Arsenal doesn't lose.



About UCL, I got two victories against Porto to show below. First match was pretty even, but we won 2-0. Second match was home and we completely dominated the match, but in the end it was just 1-1.

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It's so frustrating when that happens. It is even worse when you lose on equal points and goal difference.

Anyway second season over. Predicted 6th. Won way too easy , even for my liking .
Even got 24 wins in a row in the league and won 27 of my last 28 matches :).
The only draw came away at second place wrexham. My advanced forward scored 48 goals with the second best striker from Wrexham with 42 which is insane.
The tactic is just insane in the lower leagues , granted that you sign the right players and follow your advice on the first page of ZaZ 4.0.

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Four matches left to end season, two from Premier League and two from Champions League. In the league, I managed to reduce difference from 8 to 2 points, but when I had the chance to take the lead, I lost to Manchester United. Now the difference is 3 points with two matches to go. In the champions League, I lost the first leg 4-2, but I believe I can turn things around at home.



Since those will be some stressful matches, I'll play when my mind is very clear so I don't get so annoyed if I lose.

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