It's been some time since the abrupt ending of my eariler tale, Revenge of the Bloods, since then I've taken on a few quests including one with Undinese which went pretty well and expanded over a few seasons. The motivation however as faded in every game so I figured I'll try finding it through writing instead.

Intro

This time around the challange will be to unlock as many Steam-achivements as possible. I don't want to put down all the hours requierd in the minors to work myself from the unemployed sunday leauge footballer I usualy start out as, however the goal is the same as always - become the nr 1 Hall of Famer!

My first stop will be a team who have seen some of the greatest managers and many class-players who are usualy too expensive for me to bring over from their beloved... Porto!


Squad/Transfers

In the squad are many of my favourite players:

- Falcao - a brave man and good gifted goal-scorer, pure class
- Hulk - he makes reason for his name, uses his strength and speed in an exceptional way to make the net rassle
- James Rodriguéz - became a beast in FM10, fell in love with him then, haven't had the honour of having him on my squad yet in FM11, but the flair the precision still seems to be there
- Jorge Fucile - the hardest motherf***er I ever saw - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quMlAPBY3pQ - being knocked out for almost a minute (if not more), yet he finished the game as if nothing had happened, a true hero!
Nicholas Otamendi - One of the most gifted players in the FM-series (not totally sold on him irl), the kind of defender I feel is favoured in FM11

There are many more great players in the squad as well but the ones listed above are my personal favourties.

With this in mind as well as the limited finances at my disposal I didn't feel too hungry going into the transfer-market. I needed some depth in the middle of the park as well in the back-line, other than that I only looked for young talents and players I would benefit from selling later on.

Expectations

I've set my official expectations to a 'title-challange', however anything other than a win will be considered a poor preformance in my mind. On the continent I expect a good run where the trophy is within our reach, however a semifinal or quterfinal doesn't necessarily translate into disaster providing that we're faced with a strong enough opposition

Getting down to buissnes

Transfers

As I said there wasn't going to be too much activity here. A few players who wasn't up to speed was let go and in came just a few new faces:

Badelj is brought in to compete with my MC's for their spots, Enoh to compete with Fernando as DMC and Lukaku as cover for Falcao. Lukaku is a very expensive sub but I figuerd he'll sell for even more any way later on.

Opening Day!

My first competetive game was the Supertaca against Benfica. I wasn't sure at all what to expect as the pre-season had been okay, no more, no less and the tactic was fresh out of the drawingboards for this season. I think I got it right!

Benfica was beaten senseless and the result was by no way flattering to the game. What stood out the most was the partnership between my winger Hulk and Rodriguez, Hulk scored a hat-trick while Rodriguez finished the game with no less than 6(!) assists!

And the victorytank rolls on!

The supertaca was by no means a one time expreience, it was rather a sign of what to come. Since then we've never lost, in fact Dinamo Kyiv is the only team thus far who have denied us victory and even on that night we were the better team by far!

Looking at the leauge table I'm pleased but not letting myself fly out to space either. Yes, it's undoubtably a great start, but the portugese leauge isn't that competetive, sure we've beaten Benfica twice and they're a stong side, but most other teams aren't that good in the leauge and our EURO Cup group was on the easy side, so I guess the real challanges still lay ahead!

And to finish things off, here's the current table:

Very great start! You are poised to win the league title as early as now. You're ery well ahead. And I think you should set your sights on the EU title.

Yes, can't ask for more! Well as I said eariler I definetly see us as candidates for the title but I won't say that we SHOULD win it until we've tried ourselves against better oppositions.... we'll just have to wait and see!

Everything must have an end

The salty taste of defeat

We're deep into the season with 2/3 of the leagu played, semifinals ahead in both our domestic cups and the second knock-out round of the EURO Cup. My only worries right now are injuries as both Hulk and Falcao are out, and I blame these injuries for this:

I'll admit we're not in the monsterous form that has been consisten for most of the season, but it felt really unnecissary to lose our unbeaten record, espacialy in the leauge. The fact that the loss also came from the damn set-pecies that I just can't seem to get right in FM11 only makes matters worse... Well hopefully this will help me in keeping my players heads down to earth as things have seemed to be too easy for some time... I'll keep you posted on the cup-situations as those are the most exciting now that the leauge is pretty much shut down and the perfect record lost... arrivedercci!

From imperfection to utter dissapointment!

I figured the loss against Sporting would work as a wakeupcall, however this was clearly not the case! I could blame it all on the fact that we had our entire attacking-trio Hulk, Falcao and Rodriguez out on injuries, but the truth is that we should still have won this if we would have just played on top of our game... whatever the reason this is the result:

Once again we were the better team by far, but the lacked the concentration and determination up front and in the end it ended up costing us the perfect season competition-wise!


Well nothing to do but to take a step back, evaluate what went wrong, learn from the misstakes and bounce back better than ever!

to be continued...

Closing in on the end

A good news bad news situation

First of all, good news, we secured what everyone saw coming:

Job well done, but not exellent, still pissed about the Sporting defeat...

Bad news, EC... I must take some resposebility here as we came out way too offensive on Anfield considering the inefficiansy on top with out Falco. The game was evenly matched but they simply had more quality up front. I should have seen it alot eariler and walked away from the shoot-out it became. It cost us a 3-1 disadvantage from the first leg, a bad situation, but certianly not impossible.
The second leg however started with disaster as they got an early goal, all was not lost yet but the hill was very, very steep... We managed to pull two goals back, but it wasn't enough and the quaterfinal-exit had come upon me:

A dissapointing result, but I feel I've figured out why and what I need to change
so providing that we win the trophy that's still up for grabs this season I'll hit the transfermarket with a good feeling.

End of the virginride

Competitions

The leaugedominans was total, which makes the Sporting-defeat sting even more as a perfect run is so rare and I came so close... I guess there's not much to improve here as we were two goals from prefection and radical changes would probably hurt more than it'll improve our side. Here's the final table:


As you know by now if you've been following this story the cups have been more of a disapointment with the 3-1 loss against Liverpool in the EURO Cup and 1-0 defeat against Braga in the Bwin Cup as low points. However we managed to find some consolation last night as we ended on a high note:


Transfers

If the last transferwindow was characterized by low activity this one will be anything but, I've already finished a few deals waiting to go thorugh and some are still yet to come... my only headache at the moment is cancelling my deal to bring Alexis Sanchez to the club to the benefit of Willians who will be brought on board instead. Both are great players and I guess only time will tell if I've made the right choise. Anyway here are the transfers ready to thorugh:


Looking forward

Next season I'll be working towards the following goals:

- Bringing home all domestic trophies
- Stay undefeated in the leauge
- Make an impact in the knock-out round of the CL

I figure the increased all-over depth of the squad as well as improving my starting goalkeeper and CB alongside Otamendi will bring glory next season. The only transfer still in mind is another FB who can challange my current players and force them to pick their game up