I started with the same formation as the last game.

Ricard from DC scored in 23rd minute in what clearly looked like an offside goal. It still does not take anything aways from the fact that our keeper is kind of useless. Come back quickly Greg. I am missing you.

Some inspiration from me in the half time and the team was looking all changed. Then, in the 64th minute Guevara equalised from a nice assist from Viti inside the box. In the 68th min DeRo was tripped in the box and referee gave nothing. DeRo was furious. He would have probably killed the Ref. Instead, he ended up getting a yellow for arguing with the referee.

Leonardo Sena pulled one back for DC from a corner. I almost gave up after that. There was no way we were going to win this. The players all looked tired. Come on, its Toronto. We don’t score late goals, we conceed them. That too by bucket loads.

And then this happens. DeRo scores a header from a Jim Brennan cross in the 92nd minute.

The match ends 2-2.
DeRO and Guevara are forming a nice understanding. I am playing them the same way as John Carver plays them in real life. Two Attacking mids in the centre in a double pivot system.

The defense still looks shit and needs some work.

The first game has us paired against Columbus crew away from home.

In real life we play them for a useless piece of silverware,the trillium cup. But its not so in the game. Well, I don’t really give a damn about that trophy. And a fake rivalry with Columbus is the last thing anyone cares about in Toronto.

Anyways getting back to the game, I had Sutton injured. So, I had to try my rookie keeper Edwards. Line up is given below.

Dichio was injured and there was no way i was going to leave one of the two best attacking mids out of the game. So, I gave both DeRo and Guevara a start. Guevara was playing more like a second striker, just a bit deep.

So, the game started and Columbus Scored in second minute. Now, I know we have the 2nd worst defence in the league ( Worst is L.A.), but this is ridiculous. Moffat scored from outside the box. Shitty goalkeeper I guess. Its 2 mins in the game and I am already missing sutton.

Guevara equalised for us after a beautiful one-two with Carevic. If you remember Carevic was the new signing we did from atlante. I feel like Arsene Wenger (cough-cough).

Everything is going nice and smooth. Its the 92nd minute of the game and I am already preparing for the press conference. And then, Wynne trips Rogers. What the heck? Its a penalty. Andy Williams scores. Damn.

Typical TFC stuff. This game is way too realistic. Last season, Toronto lost at least 5 to 6 games in dying minutes.  We are chokers even in the digital world.

I signed only one player this season. I didn’t have enough salary cap room to make some big signings. Attack was already quite good with Guevara, DeRo, Carl Robinson and Viti. I don’t think I could have bought anyone better than them with the kind of money I had at my disposal.

So i went ahead and bought a Defensive Mid.

And the player is :

Andres Carevic from the mexican club atlante. He has a decent stats and can play MC as well.We payed $65K for him. And then I made a stupid mistake.

I released Stephen Frei to free up some salary space. But later on i realised that he was a Generation Adidas player. This means that all his salary was payed by MLS and he didn’t count towards the salary cap. I lost a decent player who was playing for free for us.

MLS and its stupid rules.

Anyways, I promised a preseason report and here it is:

Just one loss. The teams were not MLS level, But still a win is a win.

My current formation is a 4-1-3-2 with following starters

———Vitti———DeRo————-

————Guevara—————–

Smith———————Ricketts

———–Cerevic————-

Brennaan—-Velez—-Attakora—Wynne

Ricketts and Smith move between wide mids and wingers depending upon situation.

Guevara is the main focal point of attack and the playmaker.  DeRosario is an attacking mid too but I am using him as an Fcd.

Brennan and wynne have forward runs set to often.

I will see how this formation works and change it accordingly.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

As I said in the previous post, here we are going to talk about my staff and training methods.

The first thing that I noticed after joining TFC was that my ass-man and the whole staff were useless creatures. Thankfully, each one of them was in last year of their contracts. So, I fired them all and started from scratch.

My ass-man Chris Cummins was on a $2500 per week contract.

As you can see, his skills do not command that much money. Plus, that was more than what most of the players in my squad earn. So, I fired him immediately and
bought a replacement for only $1200 per week.

.

.

.
Ladies and gentlemen, here I present my first ever signing
Bob Liley.

Its not much of an upgrade, but his wage to stat ratio is way higher as compared to Chris.

Next thing I corrected was training regime. I fired all my coaches and trainers and bought new ones for less money. Also, since I was starting from scratch I was able to buy what I thought was needed and not something a stupid executive sitting in his neo-modern office forced upon me.
I have always used Tugs training schedules for scheduling. They are tried and tested and players always grow at a good pace.

Here is how my current training looks like

Nothing great, but still an upgrade over 2 stars that I was getting before.
So, with everything else taken care of, it is time to move on to some real stuff.
My next post will talk about our pre season and one very important signing I am going to make.
Stay tuned.

The board already knows we are shit. Just a look at their season expectations proves that.

Here is the message I got about the club background.

Good youth setup my foot. They don’t even have a youth team.

……

This was followed by a press conference where I tried my best to do nothing morinhio-esque.

I took a look at the staff available and a local pub team from England started to look like having world class training facilities.And most of them were crap at the jobs they did. So,I fired all my staff including my ass-man and hired people  way more skilled for less money.

Here is the my squad at the start of the season. Dwayne DeRossario or DeRO,as we call him in Toronto, is the only world class player we have. Well, world class is a relative term this side of Atlantic

Looks like its time to get my hands dirty in the strange player transfer system of MLS.

Since i am already using all my salary cap I will need to trade someone to bring new players.

American or Canadian players are preferred because of a stupid rule that allows only limited number of internationals on a team. Any suggestions on who should go and who comes in will help for sure.

Next post will introduce the new staff and training regime. Stay tuned for updates.

So, I thought about starting a game with an MLS team just to see how different it can be.

So, ladies and gentlemen, here is the beginning of my new adventures with the team having best fans in whole North America. And the team is:

TORONTO FC or TFC as we call it in the city of Toronto.

My initial aim is to get Toronto into the playoffs in the first season.
The best thing I like about MLS is that you can finish 8th out of 13 teams and still win the league. Didn’t I say MLS was a strange beast.

Let me tell you about myself. I am an engineering student. So, sometimes you may get long delays in between the posts. Please try to bear with that. I am an out and out fan of TFC and the red team of the city of Manchester. The only team i have ever managed in FM is United. In that sense, managing resource deprived Toronto is like sending a rich child to live in a slum and taking all his toys away.

Plus, there is this stupid salary cap. They pay less money to the whole team in a year than Christiano Ronaldo earns in ten weeks. And no, you can’t increase it even if you somehow get Bill gates as your owner as this is how the league works.

So, stay tuned to see how all this pans out.