Oostende Odyssey Part I

 Welcome to my very first attempt at a blog! 


My name is Dean, and I have been playing Football manager since I was 14 or 15. With the delayed release of FM25, I needed something to keep things interesting, and I had thought about creating a blog for some time. I thought of a catchy name with the help of ChatGPT of course and here we are, Stoppage Time Stories.

This blog will hopefully keep tabs on the saves I am currently playing. At the moment, I am starting a save with Belgian side K.V Oostende. 


I had vague memories of this club from Sky Sports News and from the various editions of Fifa I had played when I was younger. As it turns out, this club no longer exists. They dissolved about 6 months prior to this blog post. Im actually not sure if the team should even be in Football Manager anymore. They have since joined another club called KSV Diksmuide to form Koninklijke Voetbalclub Diksmuide-Oostende.

Looking at the club finances, we can see why they went into administration and had to dissolve. It will take a very long time to fix these finances.


The net debt of the club is just 35 million... Yeah that's a lot of debt. I don't think I've ever managed a club with as much debt as this. Sure, there are premier league clubs, maybe, but they can have their debt cleared pretty easily with the TV money. 

Moving onto more footballing things, we can see that the club is projected to finish in 1st place with ease. We also can see there are a number of players in the league's media dream team eleven. 


According to the media, the stand-out player is Maxime D'Arpino, who previously played with US Orleans in France. It's safe to say this guy is way too good to be playing in the 3rd tier of Belgian football.



We are playing a somewhat bog standard gegenpress with this group of players. We were missing  a players in a few key positions such as an IF, CM-S and a CB.


Tactic for this season.


The signings we made this season are as follows. Keep in mind, I spent money on players before I realized that we were massively in debt. Although I doubt an extra 50k or so will make a difference.



Fadel Gobitaka - Quick winger who can play all across the front line. Played a lot at this level already.



Jerome Deom - Option for an attacking midfielder



Noel Atom - Center back option on loan from Brighton



Jamal Baptiste - Another center back option on loan from Man City.


Thats all for this week in the Oostende Odyssey. Next week I will have updates on how the league is going and which players are performing the best.




Comments

  1. SazDecember 9, 2024 at 12:35 PM

    Interesting, can't wait to hear more. Love the name!

    ReplyDelete

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