This article is a part of the series “Recurrently Generated Tottenham Hotspur” being run in FIFA 19. None of this is real and is simply for fun.

Now that you’ve met the new Tottenham Hotspur Football Club that has been recurrently generated, it’s time to set the stage for this squad. When we came up with the idea, Dustin and I discussed whether to do this in Football Manager or FIFA. Deciding that neither of us had the time for FM and I will always make time for FIFA, the decision was pretty easy.

I started off with generating stats for each player and randomly generating their builds and likenesses so that we don’t end up with 25 guys that have the same generic face. The ratings weren’t really a scientific thing. We wanted to highlight specific ratings based on their made up bios just to have some fun. I didn’t want the team to flat out suck so I tried to balance it out as much as possible. This team is in the Champions League, after all!

Next I had to figure out what to do with the players that are being shipped out via Daniel Levy’s rage-selling. FIFA’s AI tends to not care about players that are below 75 unless they’re young while also not caring about players over 30 unless they’re really good. I also didn’t want to just transfer players out randomly without getting money because that’s no fun. I wanted to see just how much profit I could rack up. Here’s the list of players transferred out before starting the career mode:

“FREE” TRANSFERS: Marsh, Parrott, Eyoma, Whiteman, Dinzeyi, Tanganga, Skipp, Oakley-Boothe, Amos, KWP, CCV, Gazzaniga, Vorm, Llorente, Sissoko

The youth players were sent to lower divisions of England, mainly the Championship or League One based on their rating. Llorente was shipped off to Bilbao while Vorm found a home at Ajax and Gazzaniga opted to join Mousa Dembele at Guangzhou R&F. I also had to go through the players on loan and move them around so that they weren’t on my list once the mode was started. Aston Villa is now loaded with several Spurs youth academy graduates, as a result. I moved Sissoko over to Paris Saint-Germain as it became a massive pain to try and transfer him for whatever reason.

So that left the following players on the chopping block:

TRANSFER LISTED: Kane, Eriksen, Lloris, Vertonghen, Alderweireld, Son, Dele, Sanchez, Lucas, Lamela, Rose, Trippier, Davies, Aurier, Dier, Wanyama, Winks, Janssen, Foyth

I had no idea if I could sell them all in the two months allotted to start the season, but that’s part of the fun with this! Surely I could get a mountain of cash to pay for the stadium and give Uncle Joe enough money to buy another yacht, right?

Well, kind of...

FIFA’s AI only seems to allow a certain amount of players to move from a club before it goes quiet for a couple of weeks. Because of this, the lower-value players went first and a few of the higher value players simply did not move because there were no offers. So, to help this process, I split this up into two windows. I simulated the entire first transfer window in a career, quit the mode, and then transferred those players to the clubs while noting the fee they went for. It was the best option just to see how much cash I could get. Also, I refused to sell anyone to Arsenal or Chelsea for obvious reasons.

Here are the results from the first window:

• Vincent Janssen - £8m to Burnley
• Kieran Trippier - £14.2m to Liverpool
• Ben Davies - £16.7m to Borussia Dortmund
• Harry Winks - £20m to Everton
• Danny Rose - £17m to Bayern Munich (Shouldn’t have a problem googling that squad!)
• Victor Wanyama - £14.5m to Besitkas
• Serge Aurier - £20.7m to Fenerbache
• Erik Lamela - £22.7m to Real Madrid
• Jan Vertonghen - £35.3m to Atletico Madrid
• Davinson Sanchez - £40m to Everton

For those of you who don’t want to do math, that’s £209.1 million in transfer fees for ENIC. If that was it, that’d be one hell of a Net Spend Championship right there, but we still had Kane, Dele, Hugo, Toby, Sonny, Eriksen, Foyth and Lucas to sell.

Round two of selling started out on the second day with Bayer Leverkusen jumping in for Eric Dier. He was gone in a matter of a couple of days. Grief stricken by the sudden sale of his best friend, Dele wasn’t long to stick around. Inter Milan opted to activate his release clause (TIL he has one in the game) and he was off to Italy. Sonny was next to go, also heading to Serie A, eventually landing at Juventus. Juan Foyth got a quick move to south London as Crystal Palace took him off Levy’s hands. Lucas was next, heading to Spain to join Verts at Atletico Madrid. Immediately after, Pep Guardiola handed a mountain of cash over for the services of Toby Alderweireld.

When August hit, I was left with three of the remaining members of the squad: Christian Eriksen, Hugo Lloris and Harry Kane. I rejected any offer for Kane that was under £100m on principle, even though I could negotiate. We all know that it would take nine figured to simply get in the door to talk about Kane, anyways. After these rejections, both Hugo and Christian had bids put in from Bayern Munich and Barcelona, respectively. Knowing that keepers are hard as hell to move in this game anyways, I accepted Hugo’s bid. I was curious as to what happened to Neuer and it turned out they had just sold him to Barcelona. RIP Ter Stegen’s career. There was some negotiation done for Eriksen’s transfer and I ended up just shy of the nine-figure mark for the Great Dane.

Finally, it came time to say goodbye to Harry Kane. Real Madrid got in the door with an initial bid of £115.7 million, and I quickly jacked that price up. Real had no choice but to agree to terms because I wasn’t selling for anything less than the value I had in mind. The fee was agreed upon, Kane agreed to terms a couple days later, and off to Spain he went.

And man do I feel dirty doing this. Tough job, but someone had to do it. The second round of transfers went down like this:

• Eric Dier - £16.7m to Bayer Leverkusen
• Dele - £87.6m to Inter Milan
• Son Heung-Min - £75m to Juventus
• Juan Foyth - £6.2m to Crystal Palace
• Lucas Moura - £31.2m to Atletico Madrid
• Toby Alderweireld - £53m to Manchester City
• Hugo Lloris - £41.5m to Bayern Munich
• Christian Eriksen - £93m to Barcelona
• Harry Kane - £150m to Real Madrid

FINAL PROFIT: £765.3 million

Daniel Levy would be proud of me...or sacrifice me to the football gods. I’m not sure which one, to be honest.

With all the transfers made, I moved the last run of players in the Edit Teams section and restarted the career mode with the team now consisting of just the recurrently generated roster. A new chapter begins while Daniel Levy and Joe Lewis have suddenly announced their plan for a Scrooge McDuck money pit at the training ground.

Stay tuned for part two as Jack Nichardsen gets the squad going.