Here we are the start of FM 24 and as revealed last week we are spending our Beta (Early access apparently) time in France with Stade Rennais. If you would like to catch up on the reveal post you can do so here.
Hired & Welcome
The Journey begins. Lets meet the squad and see what we are working with.
The Squad
Its a healthy mix of experience and youth with a lean more towards youth.
Senior Players like Steve Mandana and Nemanja Matic will be steady experienced heads playing alongside exciting younger stars such as Amine Gouiri, Ludovic Blas and the currently injured star player Martin Terrier.
We will be without our star man for another 3-4 months after damaging his Cruciate Ligaments which is not a wonderful start to our reign.
Objectives and Finances
Lets check out the boards expectation for the season.
Not going to lie, these are some tough expectations. Qualifying for the Champions League will require us to finish in the top 3 for group stages and 4th for qualifying phase.
Lets hope the finances available to us match the boards expectations.
Clearly the money men have very little faith in our goals. With just 12 million in the war chest is well below what id expect for a team being asked to compete up at the top of the league.
Transfers
With our measly budget it was all about wheeling and dealing during the window whilst also staying within the wage budget.
Some strength in depth added with Leo Mana being a real project.
We are aware of Facundo Pellistri and he will add some real quality in attack.
Ignacio De Arruabarrena is a natural successor to Mandana as he reaches the twilight of his career.
Season Preview
Lets check out what the "experts" think about our chances this season.
PSG will undoubtably run away with the league considering their budget and already star studded squad. We sit just outside the top 4 so some work to be done to break into those elusive Champions League spots.
Tactics
After evaluating the squad and strengthening where possible I've created two tactics. One which we will focus on now which is based around the players we have for the start of the season.
Its conservative to begin with but I feel it plays to our strengths currently. Our future tactic will be revealed later on in the season.
Pre Season
I always like a good run of fixtures in pre season with a increasing degree of difficulty. As you'll see our mini tour of Asia was very successful but we suffered when returning home, in more ways than one.
We succumbed to our first and only defeat of the pre season run and we aslo suffered a major injury to one of our new recruits.
Pellistri breaks his foot being tackled in the second half and will need to see a specialist meaning he will miss the first 3 or 4 months of the season. Not a wonderful start to life in France re injuries!
That is all our pre season work completed.
We will cover the beginning of the season in our next episode and start our journey to becoming French Champions (Hopefully)
I hope you have enjoyed the start of this series and thank you for reading.
Cheers
Panda
