Darren: FM 2011 Newcastle’s August to December — Just wow! 2020/21

Hey guys and welcome back to the North East for another episode of my FM 2011 Newcastle story. I dropped a bombshell during my last post with the departure of Sanogo and many more players. All in all we raised £95 million and I already have replacements prepared, all of which were promoted from within Saint James Park. Today we will see what sort of damage I have brought upon the Toon with the sale of our legend (Sanogo.) All the results in all competitions shall be revealed up until the end of December, so sit back, relax and lets focus on Newcastle’s first half of the 2020/21 season starting with my Euro Super Cup tie against Barcelona.

Euro Super Cup vs Barcelona

I know this match is played after a few EPL fixtures, but thought we’d be best starting here. After winning the Champions League last season I earned the right to fight for another novelty in the Super Cup. My opponents are Barcelona, believe it or not they won the Europa League last year, which is crazy because their team looks incredible, just how the Spanish giants wound up in that competition is beyond me. Either way I have the match highlights below so please feel free to see how the Toon performed.

An excellent performance and very nice strike from Anconetani guaranteed victory. While some of you may worry about Sanogo’s departure, I am very optimistic for many reasons. First of all I have three very capable strikers and one of which is the best around. But more importantly, my ‘Manchelona’ tactic was created to be fluid and despite using a 4-5-1 can quickly change to 4-3-3 meaning the two wingers join my lone striker without me changing their literal position and Anconetani is pure brilliance from the right, if he can keep scoring I’ll have no issues. Just look at Newcastle’s domination over Barcelona, the match stats below say it all.

Premier League results — August to October 2020

The 2020/21 season opener was against Chelsea. Due to the Olympics I was without 8 first team stars and fielded a weak XI but still destroyed the London club 3-0. Then my stars came back to really impress against Hull as we won 7-0. I watched on as the clean sheets kept coming, in fact during our first three months Newcastle conceded just one goal which came against Portsmouth. We won all 10 fixtures with relative ease and any hangovers from Sanogo’s departure weren’t apparent.

Premier League results — November to December

The ridiculous run continued into November as Manchester City were slaughtered 5-0. After that my side struggled a little for goals but an iron clad defence kept our run going. From November to December we conceded just one goal and won all 10 matches yet again. This run included the 4-0 thrashing of Arsenal, 5-0 thumping of Manchester United and 4-1 mauling of Chelsea.

Premier League table

After the first 20 games I find myself comfortable in top spot with a 14 point gap to Spur’s in second and we still have one game in hand. We only conceded two goals and won every single match not to mention an average goals per game tally of three. Sanogo…Sanogo who??

League Cup results

OK so we waltzed the league, but cup competitions are far tougher aren’t they? Well the League Cup certainly isn’t and this was demonstrated early on as QPR were thrashed 4-0 by my second string XI. West Brom were drawn in the fourth round and put up a good fight but lost 2-0 thanks to Anconetani and Hernandez before Chelsea were destroyed in the quarter-final 5-0. My semi-final opponents could offer some resistance though, Manchester Utd have a good team and I’ll be forced to rest some stars.

Champions League results and table

No one seems to be offering a challenge domestically, but Europe is always a different story and as the Champions League develops I’m sure Newcastle will be tested. The group draw provided some tough opposition on paper, Juventus are the third best in Italy, Marseille are the best in France and Fenerbahce are the top team in Turkey. However, in reality all these sides couldn’t stop my boys in full flow. We won all six group matches including a 7-0 thrashing of Marseille in France and 3-0 mauling of Juventus both at home and away.

Like in the Premier League, we only conceded two goals and these came while using a complete second string XI. The winning streak continues and should do in the first knockout round as I don’t envisage Benfica offering much of a threat.

Club World Championship results

This competition has become batting practise for my youngsters and this season was no different. ES Tunis helped me kick the competition off 4-0 as youngster Fernando bagged a brace alongside Da Silva. The final pitted us against last seasons opponents, Velez, the Argentine’s enjoyed a solid first half but fell apart in the second losing 3-0. Another trophy and lets hope the second of many this year.

Well my unbeaten run is still going and now stretches to 171 games, we’re so close to 200. Having said that I feel like we have managed more impressive records already like conceding just 4 goals from 32 matches and winning 32 matches on the bounce since the start of this season.

Squad stats and finances

After the start we’ve enjoyed you would expect some large average ratings, well 7 squad members have managed higher than 7.5 and just two players came in with lower than 7. That is impressive, but my best player by far is Anconetani who scored 16 goals and assisted 18. I’ll let you examine the rest as there’s so much to see, my team is simply brilliant and the fact they all grew up together from the ages of 15-19 years old is rewarding. Very much like Sir Alex Fergusan’s 1999 Champions League winning team, who were raised through the United ranks together.

Just to demonstrate my squads recent form, lets check this years World and European player awards. Below is the long list and every single award has one of my players names etched into the trophy for a second year running. In fact ‘Defender of the year’ was dominated by all my defenders getting 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

During the end of pre-season my bank balance read £333 million and this was after some very big transfers. Now I am at the start of January and the bank balance has dropped to £329 million, this is actually very good as I usually experience a loss of around £15 million during the first six months of a season.

Well that about does it for today guys, I hope you enjoyed the post and thanks for stopping by. Next update will reveal the end of my league campaign and reveal how far I went in all competitions. Until then please feel free to ask any questions below and I look forward to reading your comments as always.

P.S. Ana Garcia requested a look at Sanogo’s career history, so here you go. Just remember the stats below are from league matches only.