With each edition of Football Manager, it gets harder to pick a side or find a side that I can have a connection with for a save. The last two editions of FM have been based around reviving the fortunes of Auxerre in France. I enjoyed taking a team who had fallen on harder times and bringing them to the very top of the game. Coming up from a lower division and establishing the club as a European powerhouse always makes for a enjoyable challenge.Picking a club for an FM18 save has been problematic and after much deliberation, many chats with the likes of Samo and FM Grasshopper, I settled for Union Berlin.

I wanted to take over an East German side as many have not done amazingly well since reunification in 1990. A few candidates were considered, but what attracted me about Union was how the club is run in real life and how passionate their fans are. There’s a cool wee video on Copa 90 that I highly recommend watching, in fact, I’ll just include it here. From the top of the club down to the fans, everyone is included. The ‘Bleed For Union’ campaign was quite an interesting way of fundraising!

I’ve inherited a rather good squad of players and I certainly think with the likes of Felix Kroos, Atsuto Uchida and Akaki Gogia in the squad, we should be aiming to get into the promotion play-off spot.

At the moment, I’m unsure how to approach a new tactic. I fully intend to spend some time writing about tactics in this version. I shied away from it in FM17, despite promising that I’d write about my 4141 tactic. There’s a good chance that the 4141 will appear again in a very similar setup, but I’m hoping to branch out a little bit more and be a bit more flexible. I do love a 4141 though!

I’ll be aiming to put an emphasis on youth yet again and hopefully attract some of Germany’s hottest youngsters to Berlin. Developing youngsters is one of my favourite parts of the game, so I’ll no doubt be writing a blog or two about the journey some of my youngsters take, possibly focussing on how one or two youngsters careers develop.

The long term plans for the team are set out below:

• Win promotion to Bundesliga
• Cement our position as a top flight side
• Become a hub for youth development
• Overtake Hertha as the big club in Berlin
• Win some silverware
• Challenge at the top of the table and win Bundesliga

There will be some other goals that I want to achieve, perhaps we’ll expand our stadium etc, but I can’t really plan every little detail of the save out. What I do want to really focus on is getting the right type of player in at Union. In real life, they sign players who they think will be good a good fit at the club, they want to see players give their all and that’s something I’d like to replicate here. I suppose in a way, a bit like FM Grasshopper’s Fibra, but on a German scale. Getting the right balance between hard work and intelligence will be the key for me. Again, I’ll delve into the player types I like to sign when I have a little bit of money to spend.

I don’t see myself doing lots of seasonal updates this year as I play too quick and I end up a fair bit ahead of where my blog is. I’ll be sure to update on how things are progressing in other posts and in my channel on Slack, but there will be content coming to the blog that will hopefully keep you coming back.

Progress might be a bit slow on here for the first few weeks of FM18 as I’ve not long moved home and I’m in the middle of trying to decorate as much as I can. When this blog comes out, I’ll also be on my way to Edinburgh for a weekend of eating and drinking! There’s going to be game time though and I’ll be trying to explain my methods a bit more for those who are interested.

Thanks again for reading.