The difficult second season syndrome

What happens when you mix a squad full of rubbish players you were stuck with from initial squad and XFA premier league?

Two words car crash. The second season could simply summed up this way might be a little harsh but then I'm the manager I have to analyze the teams performance. Now I saved what cash I could to introduce a new striker into the team. Scoured the free agents list for a classy striker who would be able to help me compete as it happens I came up with a fairly good deal my most expensive purchase Anderson (not the ManU midfielder). This wasn't all a bed of roses though as I was now spending too much on wages and struggling to shift the deadwood from my squad. A number of things put me in an unfortunate position as SI were in the process of changing contracts so that they would expire in the close season for all teams as a new team all players from my initial squad were locked to me for 2 seasons. Now I had replaced quite a number laying around and paying them off meant £100k payoffs so could only do 1 or 2 at a time save my cash repeat. The other factor was due to another 2 gw's going live at the start of our second season we didn't get many new managers into the gameworld. This meant most teams were more established then mine and not interested in my rejects.

After making a decent start to the league my sole ambition was to survive, In the middle of my season I hit a brick wall. 23 games without a win this in all comps and friendlies etc. The thing with runs like that is it destroys the morale of the team who then sulk for a fair amount of time. I tried different tactics, dropped players with lowest morale . Then after a few discussions with mods in my gw ( yes you fruitloops and the modfather Reevito). I trialled some players on better morale switched to a basic out of the box fm tactic and then lightly tweaked to fit the strength of my players and managed a strong credible finish to the season. Overall I was happy not to be on way to the championship but if I could have avoided that huge brick wall I might have been a very good season. As you can imagine my ranking also took a hammering during my good run in the season i went up to my highest point 84th the next week i was 150th but the real dip was in that week it went all the way down to 270th.

End of season was the time for me to really do some wheeling and dealing finally rid of those lingering from my initial squad i was ready to hunt down some new talent to further strengthen my Superstars. I made a decision to try and get some youngsters I could bring sharpen a rough diamond or two. Well as luck may have it The much acclaimed on FM08 centreback was being sold by Kaswell for £500k I chanced my arm with million in the bank and made the bid so one was coming together. Next came an exceptional 18yr old centreback again going in auction I bid 500k. The greatest time ever for this to happen but the servers crashed and were down for roughly 24 hrs which meant no one could outbid me in the auction and my next superstar was born. I then promptly added A 5 star potential left back who was free after one the high ranking sides decided to call it a day on the beta. I also added a young left winger and a young keeper to my squad my 1st team squad was to include 7 players under the age of 21 for the start of the next season.

My next blog will be meet the Superstars where I will go through the key members of my squad.