The nature of the Promotion Hunter save means that I will pretty much always move on after a successful season. Most of the time, I am managing a team in the second division so a promotion means I have nowhere else to go with that team.
But when I achieved Promotion #8 with Plymouth Argyle, I had the opportunity to stay with the team that won League One and see what might happen in The Championship. After all, I easily won the league and also bagged the Papa John’s Trophy.
I chose not to stay in southeastern England in order to add another new country to my resume. But more on that later.
The year in Plymouth went like a dream, thanks partially to star Twitch streamer FMLlama. He extolled the virtues of wide playmakers in one of his streams right around the time I started the season. I had lost my first two matches and wanted to mix things up to get my team in the win column.
That unlocked the potential of my team even though some of my players didn’t have the star rating to really fill that role. They definitely had the attributes so I just had them power through any doubt.
I do want to say here that I hope one thing that gets tweaked either in the final version of this engine for FM24 or for the overhaul in FM25 is the conversations that take place with the manager of a player you have on loan. They make absolutely no sense.
The first interaction might be realistic. Like when Feyenoord asked why I wasn’t playing 22-year-old winger Nikolas Heidrich as an attacking midfielder like I promised. I gave the old “he’s playing a lot so does the position really matter” reply, and the coach was cool with that.
We then repeated that conversation 5-6 more times during the season. They either need to end that interaction after the coach accepts the answer the first time or allow me to defer those interactions to my loan manager or some other staff member.
I am glad that the Feyenoord brass liked that answer because Heidrich played a big role. He played some in that wide playmaker role, but ended up mostly contributing as a Trequartista on my front line with 20 goals and 12 assists in all competitions.
We had four double-digit goal scorers and three players with double-digit assists, and Heindrich was one of two to make both of those lists. Colin Burton, who mostly played in the AMC slot behind the strikers, had 16 and 15.
Our other key loanee Mohamed Bassiouny led the line with 27 goals and just missed the double-double with nine assists. Big ups to Aston Villa for letting us have him for the year.
The other player with double-digit assists was defensive midfielder Craig Fearn, who had 11 of them thanks largely to his corner kicks. Midfielder Volkan Sen had 11 goals, many of them off of Fearn’s corner service.
Over a 40-match stretch from the end of September through the end of February, we only lost two matches. We had a handful of draws – our EFL Trophy run included several PK wins – but we established a stronghold on the league. This is when I started to consider giving The Championship a run.
We then proceeded to win only five of our last 12 matches. Sure, one of those losses was a 1-0 loss to Championship side Birmingham in the FA Cup (we readhed the Fifth Round), but we had a bunch of uninspiring draws. We even clinched the title with a 1-0 loss away to Fylde.
That lack of success when we needed it the most made me realize that the next level would be incredibly hard with this group of players. Neither loanee wanted to stay so I would have had a big mountain to climb. Of course, we made it worse by winning the last two matches, which meant nothing. This team just wanted no pressure, it seemed, and that would not be the case up a level.
So I started looking around, I had a successful interview with Ross County in Scotland, but didn’t know if I wanted to go down to the First Division there. Grenada was being relegated from La Liga and called me in to chat about the job, but I got another offer before they made a decision.
We are headed to Portugal for the first time as I try to bring CD Santa Clara back to the Primeira Liga after their 2041-42 relegation. I had already managed (unsuccessfully) in Spain this save so I didn’t want to wait for Grenada. I had applied a bunch of other places, but hadn’t been interview so this seemed like the best decision.
I am digging into this Azores-based team and seeing if the wide playmakers will work here. Hopefully Promotion #9 will come quickly, and we can chart a course for our final destination.