Loved watching along with you as you progressed through your pentagon mate. I am currently doing a Vaduz save. In my 4th season now - unfortunately furthest I’ve got is the Quarter Finals of the conference league (always difficult when you get drawn against big premier league teams such as Newcastle, Chelsea etc). Great fun though
LOL that is ridiculously hardcore, good on you. Fight fire with fire any make sure all the random south americans you sign are on 5yr + 3yr optional extension contracts
My first ever UA-cam save was a Dafuge Challenge with Enfield Town with FM18! It's appropriately horrible, but I had a lot of fun with it. Was very excited to see them get promoted, am looking forward to seeing what you can do with them. Might be worth a personal save as well...
This year I'm doing a Journeyman that has the objective of ending up at a club I support) and get them back to being competitive in Europe. With additional rules of: When I leave clubs they need to be in a better place/be able to survive, have decent financials and have invested in their youth setup. I also need jobs offered to me. No applying to one as that makes it slightly harder and random. Its good fun to add these challenges and it mixes up my playstyle, as the past years I was mostly doing the Dafuge one.
I did the Pentagon challenge on FM23 and really enjoyed it, especially Argentina and that remains one of my favourites leagues to manage in. It also made me realise how messed up the MLS is, although I completed North America in the MLS, I will never go back! I’m currently doing the Youth Only Challenge and IMO it’s by far the hardest challenge I’ve done on FM. Failed 3 times in Italy, now in England with FC United of Manchester and I think I’ve spent 8 seasons in the Vanarama, failing in the playoffs the last 3 seasons.
That's so cool, and pretty much exactly how I'd lay them out. I always say I'm going to play journeyman and then end up doing a one-club challenge. This year though I've gathered the worlds best future talents at my club over the course of a few years so will now resign and start a Pentagon challenge with a brand new manager. I'll keep tabs on my former club (Let's say, my uncle's club) and follow the careers of those players while I grind away around the Pentagon. It's the only way I've though of handling having done far too well too quickly in the first part.
To me a youth academy challenge has been revolutionary to how I approach the game and assess players. It's another one of these really long challenges so you learn how to play quicker, what to delegate, which news to skip past and so on. During it you really learn a lot about player development how certain attributes change through time, reevaluating players regularly and so on. It's incredible how much form varies from season to season or even month to month. You hit a bad patch of form or maybe one of the starters gets injured and then the joy of finding a youngster who maybe wasn't in consideration for first/senior team suddenly starts making a difference. Additionally it also has a much more natural progression to the club. You don't fly from tier15 to CL title in 18 seasons but each promotion usually takes 3-5 seasons (assuming you are somewhat successful), squad quality doesn't increase dramatically from year to year. There is just something magical about not having the ability to go out and buying the perfect upgrade, you have to do with what you have. I strongly recommend people to try it at least once, not necessarily for the full duration but to observe the above mentioned things. Trust me it'll help a lot in player evaluation in regular saves as well as game speed and reducing annoying pointless tasts.
Completely agree with all of this. Can I ask how did you do the infrastructure improvements on a long-term youth only save? I'm presuming you do the junior coaching ones first given they are cheapest then do the training and youth facilities last? I struggle to remember how I did it but I'm presuming it's something like that
@@squirrel_plays_fof4318 I've actually spend a lot of time thinking about this. The short version of what I recommend is this: - focus primarily on youth recruitment (YR) as high as finances allow - after that sort of a combination of junior coaching (JC) and training facilities (TF) depending on finances, primarily TF when the club balance is high enough and I prefer saving up for that rather than increasing JC which is fairly expensive - last one and only really once there is money to spare are youth facilities (YF) Obviously this is my opinion and others may have different views. My own comes from various sources, mainly EBFM's youth intake analysis this year and my own "reasearch" on costs. The primary outcome I look for in an intake is as high PA as possible, players generally get quite a lot of game time especially in early seasons that they develop decently well even though TF are bad. And my understanding is that YR is the best way to increase the PA of intakes. The next best thing after YR is probably TF, but the upgrades are very expensive. First few levels are maybe around 400k, but as soon as you hit around 8/20 you're looking at like 1,5 mil per upgrade (each upgrade is 2 points out of 20) so it's kind of hard to do upgrades until you reach a well financed league like Championship in England. Last couple of upgrades are around 5 mil each. I leave YF until last because their effect is minimal but the cost is same as TF upgrades. In a normal save it's arguably even a waste of money to upgrade YF because intakes are not a good source of players and I think you can get that odd wonderkid here or there just with YR maxed - in a smaller nation even that is highly unlikely. As far as costs go these are my findings. Point for point YR is about 3 times cheaper than JC. For example 10/20 YR costs maybe 8k per month and 10/20 JC costs 24k. The costs are additive so around 32k total - you can see it as youth setup cost in finances, deducted on the last day of the month. Youth setup costs are dependant on club reputation as well as league reputation, possibly nation I haven't checked. The sheer effect of promotion can increase these costs significantly without any actual upgrade. Considering the effect of both I think YR is a no brainer to focus on first. I recommend pushing it to about 17-18, there is an interesting phenomenon where 20/20 YR costs almost double of 19/20, very uncharacteristic jump compared to all other steps. It is possible to jump from 17 to 20 in one go which is why 17-18 should be the stopping point until your finances can handle the jump. A full 20/20 in both YR and JC costs like 600k per month. The cost is significant! It's important to keep these under control and not push too fast. Especially because the rise through the leagues is not as fast as in normal saves and finances need to be managed more carefully.
I’m doing a Penty with a twist. Only managing nations that have never won their continent champions league ex. Malaysia, Canada, Peru (I think) but it was even harder and I love it
If you love fallen giants, Germany's 2nd Bundesliga is a gold mine. Sadly, my 1. FC Köln has been relegated AND they've got a transfer ban until next winter. So if you want a challenge on FM 25, pick Köln.
One thing I'm always not sure of when starting a game is how many leagues to include and how much detail to include... Even if you go for "club you support" it would be good to know which teams/leagues have good academies so future prospects are interesting. Generally a guide on starting settings would be appreciated.
Pentagon is the best FM save just as biggie is the king of new york: www.contacthighproject.com/blog/the-day-biggie-smalls-was-crowned-king-of-new-york
Hi @squirrelplays, hopefully you still read comments 😂 Im struggling to afford any players that I identify using the app. Anyone that is slightly above the quality of my current squad ask for exuberant wages. Is there a way you negotiate that makes it easier? I just can't seem to make the economy work out
In my opinion every save is more or less the same, if you start with Man city you have the challenge to win everything in the current season but also all the money in the world. If you start on the lower leagues, that will come later but it will still come, making the save basically identical. The only way I find the game fun is to start unemployed, having the challenge of the first few seasons to play in a random league with a random club kinda mixes a few save ideas from the video. I'm meaning Ferizaj in Kosovo, but it's pretty easy to win the league so I'm building the other clubs with loans and overpriced purchases so they can get more money and improve their facilities so we can get more places in the CL.
Hey squirrel, have been using the app you developed pretty much to a point where I don’t know if I couldn’t use it anymore in fm 😅 when fm25 rolls around is there any chance of the app still working for that instalment. Also wondered if any tweaks would be made if the fm25 game engine happens to be different to the 24 engine. Keep up the great vids 👍🏻
I just finished a dafuge challenge with my local team in Spain Xerez CD, I've been having fun winning 6 LaLiga in a row with a few UCLs too. Now I'm kind of overpowered and it's kinda boring to keep the save. Any idea of the best save to do until the FM25 release?
I’m on a journeyman rn. Started with YSCC Yokohama. Won everything in Asia even the Asian champions league. Took 7 season. Hansa Rostock offered me a contract I accepted. Come to find out we have a 90m bank loan being paid out until 2055 😭. So I’m stuck on 15% transfer revenue made available. Until I can request to increase it.
@@squirrel_plays_fof4318 bruh. I’m loving Germany Lolol. No real rules. South Americans on frees that contracts expire in December. The HGN players basically already at the club via the youth team. The registration is so easy compared to England and Japan.
In my opinion, every save that doesn't have house rules (tactically & transfer policy) is not that hard. Length of save doesn't equate the difficulty. For example: Lower league saves may seem hard from the outside, but as long as you go for the best physical player + pressing tactic, you will rank up the league structure pretty quickly. When you get to the top, just buy every wonderkid you can possibly find, sell for profit, and repeat. In 2-3 years at the highest league, your club is already financially stable then it's just the matter of time before you win it all. But, at the end of the day, it differs from person to person. And this is the beauty of FM game, you choose your own difficulty. My "challenging" save currently: went to bristol city at march 2024 (they were about to get relegated), deployed a counter attacking - low block tactic, saved them. Let my director of football do the transfers in and out, contract renewals etc. Kept the same tactic. Just be a head coach and think of how to win each game (PI, TI, OI based on opponents). It's challenging and realistic. Currently 6th mid season, hoping to get to the premier league.
Thank you for stopping by my Grêmio haha. We need titles like the ones you got!
Congratulations on the channel, it has helped me a lot.
Thanks man. Gremio is a really cool save - I think my favourite part of the Pentagon
Loved watching along with you as you progressed through your pentagon mate.
I am currently doing a Vaduz save. In my 4th season now - unfortunately furthest I’ve got is the Quarter Finals of the conference league (always difficult when you get drawn against big premier league teams such as Newcastle, Chelsea etc). Great fun though
LOL that is ridiculously hardcore, good on you.
Fight fire with fire any make sure all the random south americans you sign are on 5yr + 3yr optional extension contracts
My first ever UA-cam save was a Dafuge Challenge with Enfield Town with FM18! It's appropriately horrible, but I had a lot of fun with it. Was very excited to see them get promoted, am looking forward to seeing what you can do with them. Might be worth a personal save as well...
ETFC forever
This year I'm doing a Journeyman that has the objective of ending up at a club I support) and get them back to being competitive in Europe.
With additional rules of: When I leave clubs they need to be in a better place/be able to survive, have decent financials and have invested in their youth setup.
I also need jobs offered to me. No applying to one as that makes it slightly harder and random.
Its good fun to add these challenges and it mixes up my playstyle, as the past years I was mostly doing the Dafuge one.
I did the Pentagon challenge on FM23 and really enjoyed it, especially Argentina and that remains one of my favourites leagues to manage in. It also made me realise how messed up the MLS is, although I completed North America in the MLS, I will never go back! I’m currently doing the Youth Only Challenge and IMO it’s by far the hardest challenge I’ve done on FM. Failed 3 times in Italy, now in England with FC United of Manchester and I think I’ve spent 8 seasons in the Vanarama, failing in the playoffs the last 3 seasons.
Yeah youth only is hardcore. And getting out of the conference is probably the hardest promotion in the English pyramid, I'd say
That's so cool, and pretty much exactly how I'd lay them out. I always say I'm going to play journeyman and then end up doing a one-club challenge. This year though I've gathered the worlds best future talents at my club over the course of a few years so will now resign and start a Pentagon challenge with a brand new manager. I'll keep tabs on my former club (Let's say, my uncle's club) and follow the careers of those players while I grind away around the Pentagon. It's the only way I've though of handling having done far too well too quickly in the first part.
To me a youth academy challenge has been revolutionary to how I approach the game and assess players. It's another one of these really long challenges so you learn how to play quicker, what to delegate, which news to skip past and so on.
During it you really learn a lot about player development how certain attributes change through time, reevaluating players regularly and so on. It's incredible how much form varies from season to season or even month to month. You hit a bad patch of form or maybe one of the starters gets injured and then the joy of finding a youngster who maybe wasn't in consideration for first/senior team suddenly starts making a difference.
Additionally it also has a much more natural progression to the club. You don't fly from tier15 to CL title in 18 seasons but each promotion usually takes 3-5 seasons (assuming you are somewhat successful), squad quality doesn't increase dramatically from year to year. There is just something magical about not having the ability to go out and buying the perfect upgrade, you have to do with what you have.
I strongly recommend people to try it at least once, not necessarily for the full duration but to observe the above mentioned things. Trust me it'll help a lot in player evaluation in regular saves as well as game speed and reducing annoying pointless tasts.
Completely agree with all of this. Can I ask how did you do the infrastructure improvements on a long-term youth only save? I'm presuming you do the junior coaching ones first given they are cheapest then do the training and youth facilities last? I struggle to remember how I did it but I'm presuming it's something like that
@@squirrel_plays_fof4318 I've actually spend a lot of time thinking about this. The short version of what I recommend is this:
- focus primarily on youth recruitment (YR) as high as finances allow
- after that sort of a combination of junior coaching (JC) and training facilities (TF) depending on finances, primarily TF when the club balance is high enough and I prefer saving up for that rather than increasing JC which is fairly expensive
- last one and only really once there is money to spare are youth facilities (YF)
Obviously this is my opinion and others may have different views. My own comes from various sources, mainly EBFM's youth intake analysis this year and my own "reasearch" on costs. The primary outcome I look for in an intake is as high PA as possible, players generally get quite a lot of game time especially in early seasons that they develop decently well even though TF are bad. And my understanding is that YR is the best way to increase the PA of intakes.
The next best thing after YR is probably TF, but the upgrades are very expensive. First few levels are maybe around 400k, but as soon as you hit around 8/20 you're looking at like 1,5 mil per upgrade (each upgrade is 2 points out of 20) so it's kind of hard to do upgrades until you reach a well financed league like Championship in England. Last couple of upgrades are around 5 mil each.
I leave YF until last because their effect is minimal but the cost is same as TF upgrades. In a normal save it's arguably even a waste of money to upgrade YF because intakes are not a good source of players and I think you can get that odd wonderkid here or there just with YR maxed - in a smaller nation even that is highly unlikely.
As far as costs go these are my findings. Point for point YR is about 3 times cheaper than JC. For example 10/20 YR costs maybe 8k per month and 10/20 JC costs 24k. The costs are additive so around 32k total - you can see it as youth setup cost in finances, deducted on the last day of the month. Youth setup costs are dependant on club reputation as well as league reputation, possibly nation I haven't checked. The sheer effect of promotion can increase these costs significantly without any actual upgrade.
Considering the effect of both I think YR is a no brainer to focus on first. I recommend pushing it to about 17-18, there is an interesting phenomenon where 20/20 YR costs almost double of 19/20, very uncharacteristic jump compared to all other steps. It is possible to jump from 17 to 20 in one go which is why 17-18 should be the stopping point until your finances can handle the jump.
A full 20/20 in both YR and JC costs like 600k per month. The cost is significant! It's important to keep these under control and not push too fast. Especially because the rise through the leagues is not as fast as in normal saves and finances need to be managed more carefully.
I’m doing a Penty with a twist. Only managing nations that have never won their continent champions league ex. Malaysia, Canada, Peru (I think) but it was even harder and I love it
Love that idea. Copa Libertadores outside Brazil / Argentina is a cool challenge
If you love fallen giants, Germany's 2nd Bundesliga is a gold mine. Sadly, my 1. FC Köln has been relegated AND they've got a transfer ban until next winter. So if you want a challenge on FM 25, pick Köln.
Mustermann and his skin make attributeless a bit more palatable
One thing I'm always not sure of when starting a game is how many leagues to include and how much detail to include... Even if you go for "club you support" it would be good to know which teams/leagues have good academies so future prospects are interesting. Generally a guide on starting settings would be appreciated.
Have a look at this: ua-cam.com/video/Ccma3xP6MOw/v-deo.html
@@squirrel_plays_fof4318 Cheers!
Have to ask, why the Biggie photo, and why that particular one?
Pentagon is the best FM save just as biggie is the king of new york: www.contacthighproject.com/blog/the-day-biggie-smalls-was-crowned-king-of-new-york
Hi @squirrelplays, hopefully you still read comments 😂
Im struggling to afford any players that I identify using the app. Anyone that is slightly above the quality of my current squad ask for exuberant wages. Is there a way you negotiate that makes it easier? I just can't seem to make the economy work out
You might need to wait a while for your team's reputation to improve...that will help the wage demands calm down
In my opinion every save is more or less the same, if you start with Man city you have the challenge to win everything in the current season but also all the money in the world. If you start on the lower leagues, that will come later but it will still come, making the save basically identical. The only way I find the game fun is to start unemployed, having the challenge of the first few seasons to play in a random league with a random club kinda mixes a few save ideas from the video. I'm meaning Ferizaj in Kosovo, but it's pretty easy to win the league so I'm building the other clubs with loans and overpriced purchases so they can get more money and improve their facilities so we can get more places in the CL.
Hey squirrel, have been using the app you developed pretty much to a point where I don’t know if I couldn’t use it anymore in fm 😅 when fm25 rolls around is there any chance of the app still working for that instalment. Also wondered if any tweaks would be made if the fm25 game engine happens to be different to the 24 engine. Keep up the great vids 👍🏻
Dunno mate let’s see when FM25 comes out
I just finished a dafuge challenge with my local team in Spain Xerez CD, I've been having fun winning 6 LaLiga in a row with a few UCLs too. Now I'm kind of overpowered and it's kinda boring to keep the save. Any idea of the best save to do until the FM25 release?
Resign from the club you're in, find the club with the most broken financial situation you can find and then fix it. Loads of fun
I’m on a journeyman rn. Started with YSCC Yokohama. Won everything in Asia even the Asian champions league. Took 7 season.
Hansa Rostock offered me a contract I accepted. Come to find out we have a 90m bank loan being paid out until 2055 😭. So I’m stuck on 15% transfer revenue made available. Until I can request to increase it.
Ah but in Germany you've got no work permit / transfer restrictions, right? Let the signing and re-sale of cheap Paraguayans commence
@@squirrel_plays_fof4318 bruh. I’m loving Germany Lolol. No real rules. South Americans on frees that contracts expire in December. The HGN players basically already at the club via the youth team. The registration is so easy compared to England and Japan.
In my opinion, every save that doesn't have house rules (tactically & transfer policy) is not that hard. Length of save doesn't equate the difficulty.
For example: Lower league saves may seem hard from the outside, but as long as you go for the best physical player + pressing tactic, you will rank up the league structure pretty quickly. When you get to the top, just buy every wonderkid you can possibly find, sell for profit, and repeat. In 2-3 years at the highest league, your club is already financially stable then it's just the matter of time before you win it all.
But, at the end of the day, it differs from person to person. And this is the beauty of FM game, you choose your own difficulty.
My "challenging" save currently: went to bristol city at march 2024 (they were about to get relegated), deployed a counter attacking - low block tactic, saved them. Let my director of football do the transfers in and out, contract renewals etc. Kept the same tactic. Just be a head coach and think of how to win each game (PI, TI, OI based on opponents). It's challenging and realistic. Currently 6th mid season, hoping to get to the premier league.
I'm increasing thinking about how I might try to make it 'realistic' - would love to have a save where I'm battling to come 9th or something like that