Besiktas: The Fountain of Youth

Now I've finished my exams, I want to try something a little bit different to the kind of save I would usually do.

Why Besiktas?

I've never really seen anybody manage in the Turkish league and I've never seen anybody manage to take a Turkish team to glory, so I want to give it a go. I also just like Besiktas in general so I wanted to try them out

Challenge:

I will be focusing on buying youth but I will be adding a little twist to it, the most I can pay for any player is £5 Million. Why? Well Besiktas are set to lose around 20-30 million pounds every season, I want to try and combat this loss while maintaining a strong enough team to take them to Champions League glory.

I won't be continuing my Journeyman save as it crash dumped and does not load anymore, so this will be my main challenge over the summer.

1st season transfers:

The loss of Tore leaves us with a massive weakness in Right Midfield, but I couldn't reject the 15 million considering how much debt we were in.

I've tried to bring in players that aren't very commonly used. Stanciu is probably the most recognizable transfer there, he'll mainly serve as backup to Ozyakup and will hopefully develop into a top class player in the future.

I've also brought in Juanpi as Tore's replacement, this guy is already good enough for the first team and still has the potential to go a long way in the game so £2.9 million seems like a bargain.

And finally Josh Emmanuel is someone I've never used in game, but will be mainly serving as backup. Possesses great pace and will hopefully become an important part of the team in the future.

Interesting to see a Besiktas save, best of luck!

A save in Turkey, really interesting!

Pre Season:

We had a fantastic pre season, not losing a game, although the 1-1 draw with Wycombe Wanderers was a bit concerning.

However we started picking up form as the team got used to the tactic, smashing Ebbsfleet Town 5-1 and almost beating Juventus (Who I consider one of the best teams in the world) but they managed to snatch back a goal in the 75th minute despite us leading for most of the game.

After pre season the squad is in good morale and the transfers looked to have got used to the team already which fills me with confidence about at least getting Champions League this year, hopefully we can topple Fenerbache and Galatasaray.



The Tactic:

Being an Arsenal fan, I wanted to try and get my team to play the simple passing play that Arsenal use. That kind of style is something players in Turkey are not very used to as shown in pre season. The players tend to be quite aggressive and we often commit 20+ fouls a game, this is something I want to sort out and will continue to work on it throughout the season.

With this tactic I'm aiming to bring exciting, fast attacking football to Turkey. The defense is just a standard defense with 2 central defenders and 2 complete wing backs. The midfield gets a little bit more complicated, While trying to think of how to maximize the amount of passes in a game, I put all 3 midfielders as advanced playmakers and the wingers as wide playmakers as I feel this maximizes the amount of passes being made.

The striker will be playing as a Target Man kind of like how Olivier Giroud does. But I think Mario Gomez will play this role a lot better than Giroud as I think he is an all round better striker. His finishing is top notch and he is a massive guy with a lot of strength.

We had a very good first game against Trabzonspor, completing 578 passes in the game with only 58 missing their target and 18 going out of play which is not bad for a team who aren't used to this style of football.

One criticism I do have from this game is that we are not clinical enough, 15 shots on goal and only 2 goals is not good enough especially with a striker of Mario Gomez's quality.

This game was a very exciting one with all the goals coming in the last 10 minutes. The scoring opened from our new signing Juanpi with an absolute peach from the corner of the box and then Trabzonspor managed to score 2 minutes later after Quaresma started trying to show off a bit and ultimately lost the ball, he will be sitting out next game because of it. We were then saved by Cenk Tosun in the 87th minute who ran the length of the pitch to score on the counter attack.

But all in all a 2-1 victory and completely dominating the 4th best team in Turkey is not a bad result, we just need to cut out the mistakes and not mess about with the ball in our half.

Good first win especially against one of the tougher sides you will face

Europa league Group:

We've been given a very competitive Europa League Group, with all 4 teams possessing the quality to go through.

We will have to play our best football in order to get through this stage but a I remain confident we can get through and maybe even top the group.

I'd like to remain in the Europa League mainly just for the money, I know we have no chance of winning it but I need to recover some of the clubs debt which currently stands at £209 million

The Istanbul Derby, one of the most violent and contested derbies in the world.

Fenerbahce were coming off the back of a 3-0 loss and us coming off the back of a 0-0 draw. I was confident we could secure a win against our main rivals and let them know that Besiktas aren't the small team of Istanbul anymore.

We had a massive crowd of 51,000 people to watch one of the greatest football rivalries on Earth. We had the home advantage which could make all the difference in a game like this.

From the moment the whistle blew, the game was violent and our team grew a quick hatred of Fenerbahce's players. We made sure we took the game to them by showing our aggressive side and Fenerbahce took the game to us as well. We managed to shrug off the aggressiveness of the Fenerbahce players and take the lead with a Jose Sosa screamer from 25 yards with the fans chanting his name, he ran wild with celebration with probably one of the best goals he has ever scored, and what a game to score it in. Sadly in the second half Rhodolfo lost concentration and allowed the traitor of Robin Van Persie to score a tap-in from Nani's cross.

I was disappointed I couldn't bring a win to the Besiktas fans but I'm happy that I proved to Fenerbahce that we are not push overs and that it is very tough to beat us. We did play the better football but in the end the hatred and aggression shown by the players of both teams meant we couldn't quite be as creative as we wanted to be.

Unlucky result mate, going to be some very fiery derbies in the future i feel!

Europa League Group:

We've qualified from our Europa League with 2 games to spare. The group turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be and considering the board weren't expecting us to get past the group stage, I'm extremely happy we've made it look so easy.

With making this look so easy, I'm wondering how far we can go in the Europa League, could we even be the dark horse?

You'd certainly go under the radar if you succeed further in Europe! Great start to this story mate.

New Signing:

I've been scouting around for a while for young players we can get for next to nothing and then I saw this guy, Husam.

I've never seen much talent really come out of Qatar with the exception of Khalfan Ibrahim from earlier FM's and this guy reminded me of him. He may not have the potential to become world class but at the age of 19 he has some very good stats for his age. He possesses great agility which I think is a very important stat for a winger so he can glide around players. Also his teamwork stat jumped out at me. 16 teamwork is a fantastic stat for a young winger, as usually wingers are quite selfish and like to try and do everything themselves. Couple this with his fairly good crossing and dribbling stats and he looks like he can develop into an important part of the team.

Best thing about this guy is he cost absolutely nothing so no matter what this signing looks like an absolute bargain for us and I look forward in seeing how he develops and whether he can challenge Juanpi for a first team place.

Next update will be a summary of our first half of the season, there's been a few surprises so far which I never thought would happen.

Should be a nifty little signing mate!

January Update:

So far we have been disappointing in the league, only managing to get 4th place in the league. A team of our quality should be performing much better than we are and should not be 8 points off the league leaders, Fenerbahce. In the Europa League we got through the group stage in first place and drew a relatively easy SC Braga in the first knockout round and I remain confident we can get through this stage despite the off field problems.

We are also set to lose a lot of players in the transfer window, they include Jose Sosa, Oguzhan Ozyakup and Atiba Hutchinson. They are 3 key players that we simply cannot afford to lose but if they were to leave, it would leave the club with enough funding to keep the club financially stable for at least 2 seasons.

However January is like Christmas for us FM players, and there are a number of targets we are looking at to sign on a free, however no players are yet confirmed to be a Besiktas player next season, but I remain confident that we will be bringing a number of talented players for free.