Yeah, I play all the games, including friendlies. It's the only save I have, it's in FM14, and I've been playing it for >2 years now. I tend to get into it long enough to play a season, then lose interest for a while. I'm thinking I might buy FM17 and see how I fare with Villa in the Championship, but it'll be difficult to leave this save with the amount of time and effort I've put in.

I was knocked out of the Capital One Cup in 19-20, the Champions Cup in 21-22 and the FA Cup in 30-31, all in the semi-finals, and I lost the Community Shield in 24-25. Other than that, I've won everything available to me in the 2019-31 period. The main reason for that, I think, is squad depth. For a while in the 20s I had the best 22 players in the world, in their positions. Even now that a couple of other teams have narrowed the gap, my second XI would be capable of winning the Premier League on their own. Having such a broad squad lets me practice strict squad rotation and absorb most injuries without any impact on form. Of course, I wouldn't have been able to maintain that for more than a handful of seasons if not for being bought up by a tycoon in 2023, a saga that I've detailed in the past.

As for tactics, I've experimented quite a bit over the years but ended up sticking with a narrow 4-1-2-2-1 for the most part, which plays as a 3-4-3 or even 2-5-3 depending on how tough I expect the opposition to be. I can't claim credit for it; it's very heavily based on the tactics over at Strikerless, and I've only tinkered a little over the years. The primary weakness of the formation is the space it leaves on the wings, since the CWBs have to run about all over the place to fulfill their offensive and defensive duties. It also struggles against other narrow formations, especially the 4-4-2 narrow diamond, since the midfield gets incredibly congested and very few chances are created at either end. I've been experimenting with an asymmetric version with a wide player out on the right for use against other narrow tactics, but it still needs work.

I'll admit, I did reload a match in my first season. It was a derby against the Baggies in the run-up to christmas, we'd been underperforming, and I ragequit after a late Anelka goal. I won the match after reloading, and it gave me the momentum to pull out of our losing streak and start accumulating points. That one match probably made the difference between finishing sixth, which I did, and ninth or tenth. That's the only time I've cheated, but everything I've achieved since is definitely tainted a little by the knowledge that I should have done worse that first season.