I'm not buying that any of these matches are write offs or unwinnable especially when we won some of them last season. Even this season other teams around us have managed to pick up the odd result in these fixtures. Brighton won at Man City, West Ham beat Arsenal, Tottenham beat Arsenal. I know there's a big gap in quality between the top teams and the rest and I'm not expecting to win many but we should at least be competing a bit better IMO.
Just noticed Cameron Archer has turned into a bit of a beast in my San Marino save. He scored a decent number of goals for Sheff Utd before moving to Napoli on a free. Weirdly he's hardly played for them but he is now part of the England set up scoring a few goals which is where I noticed his name pop up.
Nice! Me and my pal have actually been playing a network game in Latvia with the aim of building the nation. We took a couple of the smaller teams though (Jelgava and Tukums) rather than Riga or RFS. We are about 6 seasons in if I recall. I have 3 or 4 league titles while he is still awaiting his first The multiplayer element has definitely been fun though.
So both my saves right now are build a nation but both enjoyable in different ways
As for San Marino I've just started the 28/29 season. Lost in extra time of the CL playoffs to Celtic so back in the Europa League again. I've managed to drag us up the coefficients quite a bit so we now get 4 teams in European qualifiers.. unfortunately they don't get very far right now so all down to me I'm helping them as much as I can though with loans. Think we're up to 80 something players out on loan to the rest of the league right now. They have been a hassle to arrange though, I'm basically having to buy their bad players and send them players in part exchange most of the time. I do feel like I've laid good foundations at a few of the other teams though now as long as I can keep renewing the loans.
I've no problem with Mainoo getting a call up but I struggle to believe it happens if he wasn't playing for a 'big club' and there in lies the problem with Southgate's selections. He places far too much value on who someone plays for rather than how well or regularly they are playing. Players that play for the 'others' have to do a lot more to even get an opportunity.