Saving Everton – A Football Manager 24 Story – Part 1 The Rebuild

Everton find themselves in a dire situation in the real world, and that is reflected in Football Manager 24.

Everton are in a bind. Spiraling debt, a new owner without approval, and a squad with bulging wage costs. While a new stadium is due to be completed in just over a year, can Everton hang on long enough to see out this revolution? That's where we come in, and we've got a lot of work to do.

Join us below as we begin our adventure with Everton in FM24. For a look at our other FM24 Stories, you can read our Early Access Newcastle United story.

Football Manager 24 Story – The Rules and Settings

• No mods, no add-ons
• No use of the editor which has been disabled in the setup
• No save scum, we roll with the punches here
• We are using the Winter Update Database
• All top 5 European leagues are loaded, alongside Brazil, Scotland, Portugal, Netherlands and the MLS
• We will also have all players who are British in the game
• We will use the “Original” Game Mode with the first window transfers enabled
• We are running a massive database

A New Era at Everton

Sean Dyche kept Everton up last season, but the Everton board have decided that change is needed for the club to push forward. Up steps David Holly, a young manager picking up his first job having acquired all his coaching licences last year. But is this inexperienced first-time manager the man for the job or are Everton doomed to fail?

“Holly will be gone before the end of this season, wait and see.” claims one fan on social media, while others seem to think he's the man for the job. Time will tell, but the work starts immediately, and there's not a lot for Holly and his new team to work with.

The Clubs Vision

In fairness to the board… they don't expect much of us. Work within the wage budget and don't get relegated. An FA Cup run seems to be the best they hope for. The main elephant in the room, however, is the budget we have to work with. Before a ball is kicked, we have no money to spend on players, and just £20,000 in weekly wage budget left. And with a -10 standing in the league from day one, it's going to be some ask.

The Tactic

The tactic is fairly simple, and one that worked well for us in the latter stages of our Newcastle United Story. Our two DM's will give us the cover we need out wide to allow over Wing-Backs to overlap, while the AM/10 gives us an overload in the middle of park. The two Inside Forwards will create running space when the Wing-Backs push forward and… well it should result it a lot of goals.

We might change down the road, but for the first few seasons, this will work out for us. The squad we have is a little weak overall, but we have a solid base to work with.

The Squad

The Everton squad is a mixed bag. For the formation we are using, it has a few holes that we need to fill quickly, but we have no budget to do it. The key areas we need to improve are:

• 2x AM – Everton simply have no one that can naturally play here, so we need to get that situation sorted asap
• One winger – Everton start off with a bit of an injury crisis, with loan player Jack Harrison out for the first few months
• At least one CB, ideally to replace the one we sell

The reality is, we don't have the money for anything else after this, and this will be a stretch. Everton lack major sellable assets in the first window, as we intend to build around Branthwaite, Patterson, and Onana. Though we might be forced to sell in future.

That's it for part 1 of this series. Check out Part 2 here, where we look at our transfer business, and how we deal with the tough fixtures that begin our season.