Downloaded it the other day and put the 20/21 data pack in. A few games into the second season, the story so far:
Started as the Reds, course we don't have any centre halves and the game doesn't recognise Fab or Hendo as any good, with Williams, Sepp and Phillips being too young. A pre-season knock to Matip led to Dayot Upamecano, Reece Oxford and Lucas Martínez Quarta coming in to see out the season.
Started off by winning the Charity Shield in a 1-0 smash-and-grab against Arsenal, but it just didn't click. My formation was:
SM RF MS
NK TA
Fab
AR CH2* DU TAA
AB
*The uninjured one out of Oxford, Quarta or Matip.
Wasn't conceding many (finished the season lowest GA) but just couldn't score for toffee. Was drawing at the dross (remind you of anything?) and spent Christmas in the bottom half.
Anyway, a few knocks to Fabinho led me to sign Harry Winks as a backup DMC in January - he's in the reserves now...
Season improved when I moved to...
RF
SM MS
NK TA
Fab
AR CH2* DU TAA
AB
...with Sadio and Mo coming in from the wings and started banging them in.
Won the League Cup v Forest in February, which was nice and sweet.
Got to the CL QFs and FA Cup semis where Man City (who won the domestic double) battered us both times. The CL run included (in the second group stage, remember that?) memorable hammerings of PSG home and away and a late 4-3 Bobby winner away at the Bernebeu. Imagine the Jamon Museum after that.
Going into the last game of the season we were unbeaten in 9 (8 wins) and could sneak into 6th with a win and 2 rivals losing. One of those rivals was Everton Football Club. Who lost 1-0 at home to Burnley to drop behind us, having been about 12 points clear at one point. Just imagine the fume. The following season they drew Napoli in the EL qualifiers and went out 4-0 on aggregate. I hope the ref diddled them as well.
Second summer I've shipped out Ox, Gini and Shaq as well as Origi, for whom League Champions Manchester City paid me £26.5m. To put that in perspective, the strange way in which the update has inflated fees means Mo is the benchmark at £45m, so I snapped Pep's hand off.
The Origi money was spent on Lucas Torreira as better DMC cover and Milinkovic-Savic to go next to Thiago/Naby in the midfield, as well as young striker Sam Greenwood from Leeds who scored a hattrick on debut v Shelbourne in the EL. One to look out for in real life?
Messi left Barcelona on a free and chose Atalanta over us...
Going to start integrating Elliott, Jones and van den Berg into the team this season too. Helps that we're usually 2 or 3 up on 65 mins. Elliott is slotting in seamlessly, the coaches love him.
Quadruple (EL version) incoming.
