Football Manager 2010

http://images.play.com/covers/11071646x.jpg

Who has it apart from Sam & I?

It's far superior to CM2010 (despite the fact i paid nothing for CM2010 apart from the transaction fee in a Radiohead pay what you like type deal)

dude i just started a thread :(

asked mods to delete mine

I bought Dudu as a promising 17 y/o and he ruptured somethin in his first game and is out all season. Knew I should have spunked all my money on Rodwell before becomes the best player in the game instead. :S

Dudu? Wikipedia has six different footballers called that, plus one king.

Are Madrid skint after their summer spending? Also Chelsea have a transfer ban lol

yeah, chelsea transfer ban made me lol. dunno about madrid. first day i got it i was messing about w/ barca and it came up with a bunch of loan shit i had to start paying off, so real presumably is realistic enough on a giant 'just ignore the bank manager' scale.

i just reloaded cm4 with patches etc.

Liverpool has loans to the bank too. But they always do in FM, so its impossible to make a profit unless you sell players. Its not like the old days when you could get players to sign really low wage contracts lol

Of course there's no chance of a new stadium on the horizon so it's quite realistic on that front.

yeah realism is a bitch

Kuyt is regarded as a quality player. And Man City keep trying to sign him and benny noon

kind of glad they've taken the inevitable downfall into consideration except man city superpwoer lols.

they just offered me 35m for arsh. tried asking them to come back with a figure that would buy me messi but alas, they suck at being rich.

Dudu? Wikipedia has six different footballers called that, plus one king.

― Ismael Klata, Tuesday, 10 November 2009 22:38 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

https://dl-web.dropbox.com/get/Photos/dudu.jpg?w=3ba82392

http://i38.tinypic.com/n3vjgz.jpg
you're doing it again

argh. whoever it was on ilx who told me to use dropbox as an easy way to put images on the internet LIED.

to be fair, it may well be me

i guess the resident pfunk child will be the judge of this.

i dunno what you guys are on about

can you see the dudu picture a couple posts upthread?

the tension is literally unbearable

I'm still in the relatively early stages of my FM09 game (if anyone but me counts 2015 with three Champions League wins under my belt as relatively early). Is 2010 better enough to be worth forsaking that?

FM09 was a shockingly horrible game and FM10 is a masterpiece. That said I only played FM09 pre-1000updates.

a smaller dudu that should load:

http://burythehammer.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/dudu.jpg?w=510&h=382

well that clears that up

xxpost shockingly horrible how? I am liking it except that all of the newly generated players are rubbish and everyone plays until they're about 40, which is advantageous because a gameworld of all newly generated players is going to be rubbish.

just obvious bugs in game (team couldnt defend no matter how you played, no-one offered more than a fiver for my players but babel was sold for like 70m is what i remember straight off)

no i couldnt see a pic earlier.

whoever it was on ilx who told me to use dropbox as an easy way to put images on the internet LIED.

hey it's excellent! ur doin it rong

btw who the fuck signed babel for 70 million?

barcelona. told you it was bullshit.

in my game Babel went to Villarreal for a few pennies so I guess the update is a bit better. Transfer system is a bit rubbish, tho. Don't appreciate being stuck with pretty good players who aren't quite good enough for me for their whole contract, and then losing them on a free because no one ever wanted to buy them (despite high profile loan spells). In fact I can't remember when I last got an offer for a player. After much tinkering I did manage to get a defence that works and an attack that works (the latter was my big problem, 0-0 draw after 0-0 draw ffs), but still I guess I'll tire of it and head to 2010 soon.

lol voronin

serves you right for going rangers merdeyeux

re: enke - morbidly pondering whether to buy him on fm10. he can be got on a free and is (was?) better than almunia...

maybe i should just save my pennies and buy an alive/properly awes keep

Sold Bendtner, Senderos, Djourou, Diaby, Almunia, Fabianski and a bunch of kids; bought Gourcuff, Enke (rip), a 16 year old goalie I am trying to turn into Dino Zoff but he is currently letting in goals for fun considering he is 16, and Gamberini plus the best kids available (but they have got fucking expensive ;_; goodbye the days of totally exploiting the system, cheers chelsea.)

Still can't figure out a winning formation and my players hate me.

well you're 16 with no qualifications, tbf. i think the programmers recognised this as a 'thing' in or about 2003.

"you're"? i'm pretty certain i'm not 16 and have qualifications.

this dude had like the stats of almunia when i bought him at 15, by 20 he should be one of the best in the world.

eh sorry if 'you're' isn't the correct abbreviation or whatever of 'you are'. think it is.

lol at ur (better?) football management qualifications, you should write to Eidos to inform them, it might make it easier :p

once went unbeaten 2 seasons in a row. wenger can suck it :P

/need-a-life

i've won the league in my first season. at spurs.

daaamn.

ok, it was in cm4 but i stand over it.

Sold Bendtner

I'm kinda sad that in my FM09 game I sold Bendtner (YEAH I'M ARSENAL) back to Copenhagen assuming it'd just be a little transition place for him before going onto better things, but despite early interest from Bayern he's still there three years later. :'(

altho I guess I should go to the FM09 thread and talk about this shit to myself. :'(

i sold him to real for 15m. just lost 4-0 in the cl qualifying, don't think i'm gonna make it :(

i really suck at this game.

as stated, i've only just reloaded my beloved cm4 but the good reports i'm getting about this are making me wonder if i should invest? howa re you finding it, inability to win trophies with the mighty arsenal aside?

most realistic management simulator i've ever played. everything feels like they've done it properly, from tactics to transfers to fear of the sack etc. only thing left is rape allegation news stories.

i am really fucking enjoying it, a lot more so than the past couple. i just can't wait till i have figured it out and don't suck at it.

only thing left is rape allegation news stories

there's an option to include 'player misbehaviour' stories iirc, but i can't remember the command you haev to use.

whats all this sugar daddy stuff thats supposedly on these games?

vicious daily mail rumour that feral kids are sucking off pensioners to earn the cash to buy it.

NO FACE NO FACE NO FACE NO FACE NO FACE

http://burythehammer.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/alan1.jpg?w=510&h=382

I got that in FM09 as the image for a story about a player receiving a facial injury. IT WAS AWESOME.

(I feel that now would be a good time to induce a stroke or two by announcing that in my game Jack Wilshere is currently starring for... DUNDEE UNITED.)

No stroke considering in my game he just won the league and played in the CL final (lost 3-2 to Chelsea) and FA Cup Final (lost 7-1 (!!!) to Liverpool.)

lost 7-1 (!!!) to Liverpool (!!!)

I just I out-Arsened Arsene by having a season in which I won the league undefeated (just four draws too), but got hammered by Spurs in the League Cup quarters and lost to Liverpool in the semis of both the FA Cup and the Champions League. I'll 95th minute penalty you.

from my 2008 game:

http://burythehammer.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/invincible.jpg?w=510&h=382

believe i did it again the next season but didn't take a screen shot.

scoring 5 goals not enough to get a 10/10 rating. Wonder what Eduardo's gonna have to do.

http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2009/10/football-manager-2010-wonderkids-and.html

is there anyway to update FM2006 (I know lol) to have even a semblance of up-to-date-ness? do ppl release db patches?

it is the kind of thing that people do, it'd be worth having a look around community.sigames.com (or whatever the site is - work internet filter is preventing me from checking).

with the recovery of my hard drive I've returned to my FM06 game myself - took Burnley from the Championship relegation zone to the Premier League and in my first season there I reached the FA Cup final, in my second won the League Cup and reached the 'Euro Cup' semis (tragic loss to an 85th minute Dortmund goal :'( ), and in my third had a record league finish of 8th, despite first getting out of the relegation zone in game 19. My second half of the season form was that of a top three finishing side, in the end I didn't even get European qualification. :'(

It makes me sad when the future superstars of FM games turn out to be rubbish nobodies. RIP, Nik Besagno.

I'm still in FM07, hopefully steering Nottingham Forest into the 2012 Championship play-offs. I get pitifully excited when one of 'my' players suddenly turns up doing something in real life (e.g. Lloyd Doyley scoring last week).

Last right back was just knackered by Ashley Young :( Andrea Pozzo, see you next season lad, you are going to have to be replaced by the 16 year old German kid I bought.

i have this, unopened. i didn't buy it, nobody bought it for me, but there it was under a pile of maagazine yesterday.

my Arsenal side's 55 game unbeaten league run just came to an abrupt end at the hands of 2016 Liverpool (still avec Rafa). :'(

Fucking love press conferences. Need a faster computer tho.

yeah i'm probably going to overhaul everythin in my current pc before bothering to install this.

and dump GF too, maybe

don't really feel the need to abandon my odemwingie arteta davies farnerud midfield of shock and awe just yet either tbh

It runs okay on mine, I use the old school 2D match engine and I'm not that fussed about being able to see the fancy whistles and bells 3D shite but I just want it to run quicker in general and to be able to play with the super ginormous database.

Otoh I'm managing Grimsby so maybe super duper computer would be inappropriate.

hmm true, cm4 with scotland premier and division down to 4 ingerland is on some real 'go cook a slow roast while i calculate norwich 0 ipswich 0' shit.

What's it like managing Grimsby? Once I do my obligatory 'make Arsenal the greatest team in the history of football (only need 6 more champions leagues)' I want to do the 'make a shit non descript football league team champions of the world' thing.

cm4 is really easy....as a statue outside of me outside real sociedad's ground confirms

therein lies the attraction. serge makofo 4eva

My OCD compels me to start with a league 2 team and Grimsby are the localest, I think. One of the many joys of recent FMs is that board expectations usually match the position of the club, so in Grimsby's case in FM2010 the board just wants us to "enjoy the experience of being in League 2" which translates as "try not to get relegated but we won't bust balls if you do" I think. Not getting relegated is tough enough tho: I started with a zero transfer budget, rubbish squad, wage bill more or less maxed out and mostly pitiful backroom staff. I guess partly the coward in me enjoys not having the pressure to win every match but there is a lot of fun to be had planning to grind out tedious away draws and desperately snatch enough wins at home. Altho the fans still slag me off more often than not when I mastermind a brilliant stalemate away at Rochdale or sump'n. Ungrateful twats.

I guess partly the coward in me enjoys not having the pressure to win every match but there is a lot of fun to be had planning to grind out tedious away draws and desperately snatch enough wins at home.

nothing cowardly about taking on grimsby, tbh

I think that might be FM's biggest unresolved failing btw, fans and journalists (and the player rating engine?) seem mostly incapable of evaluating the magnitude of each task, so if you grind out a draw against hugely superior opposition you will still get a load of shit about not creating enough chances or being v. jammy.

CM2 was the easiest. I played the Italian version and averaged 6 goals a game. Savo Milosevic (remember him) was my top scorer with 94 goals in his best season, playing for some unearthly reason as Lazio.

A question - I was in Game the other day and CM10 for PC was £10 while FM10 was £40. Is CM10 worth it?

No.

fans and journalists (and the player rating engine?) seem mostly incapable of evaluating the magnitude of each task,

you're kidding though right though?

I wd personally never touch modern day Champ Manager so I don't know. All critics say it's inferior. The old CM guys sold the rights to the name some years back so FM is now what CM used to be, CM now is an inferior knock-off.

in fairness mark, that's mainly going on the rather strong opinion of my younger brother, but then i don't know of anyone that prefers CM over FM.

xp

You can get FM2010 for a fair bit less than £40 if you shop around/use t'internet btw

seriously check through magazine piles

you can download it illegally pretty easily, my friend gave me a copy. I haven't installed it yet despite being off work due to illness for the last 8 days.

okay I've had a major relapse into playing this game now. as ever "doing well" is what makes it course through your veins.

I started off with Crystal Palace and basically did all I was asked to do with dire finances, finished them in 11th and board etc was happy, then Reading headhunted me and I figured they had more money and better players, so off I went.

Reading just wanted an upper midtable finish but after a slow start (rumours of my sacking in October) I went about 25 games unbeaten and ended up winning the Championship. They seem to have tiny expectations as winning the league has made me like Reading legend...

Now I'm preparing for my first year in the Prem by blowing all my TV money on players, as is customary, I signed Roque Santa Cruz for 2.1m from City. Also Kamil Zayate, Richie De Laet, and Jamie O'Hara.

Reading are back!

I started a new game at Millwall yesterday, looked like I was going to get promoted (joint 2nd on points with three other teams) in February and then my computer decided to fuck me over and do some updates while I wasn't looking. Fuck this 'restart my pc in 10 minutes?' shit when I cannot see it asking me. Back in October, cannae really be arsed to do it all again.

Currently flying high-ish (3rd) in League One with Farsley Celtic in 2016/2017. I'm playing in a universe of entirely made-up players - unfortunately, there's a wee bug that means at some points you see the photo of the player a made-up dude is based on, so I know that the strikeforce that helped me dismember Blue Square Premier was actually Jordan Rhodes and Steve Morison. Also, you can kind of guess who some people are from their playing history: 38-year-old former Welsh international left-back from <a href=http://www.camberleytownfc.co.uk/whoswho3.htm>;Camberley Town</a>, for example, or the 30-year-old English attacking midfielder/striker who starts his time in the game at <a href=http://www.austinaztex.com/team/roster/index.html?player_id=14>;Austin Aztex</A>.

gf away until tomorrow, all chores completed- do i install this y/n

fm has always seemed dangerous to me
i don't even want to think how much time i could waste with it

^ One of my mates has this exact outlook. we spent 20 hours a week at college on LMA 2001 and he got out, got clean. I thought I could handle my shit, thought I was a real tough guy. One night at a house party I let a dude feel me up for a hit of CM2001, now I can't hold a job and my family don't bring me to weddings anymore.

sometimes i install it to look at the stats and see who the next lulinha might be
thankfully have never got srsly into playing it

ok it's nowhere to be seen. bizarre.

sometimes i install it to look at the stats and see who the next lulinha might be
thankfully have never got srsly into playing it

― nakhchivan, Monday, 5 April 2010 14:21 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i40.tinypic.com/2vjpqwh.jpg

2 time world player of the year ^^^^

2010/11, Grimsby going strong in 7th, my name finally get linked with every shitty job that comes up, pressure starting to grind me down, divorce imminent.

divorce imminent

those programmers really think of everything these days

Mrs V can't come to terms with me swearing and groaning at dots moving around the monitor.

didn't know you had wives in fm now too

ah shit yeah xp

coutinho isn't a proper fm kid cos he's actually pretty good irl apparently whereas lulinha is nowhere to seen

hmm well then franco di santo scored a late equiliser against me for utd a couple games back?

that's more like it

Lulinha is apparently living the high life on loan at G.D. Estoril-Praia. HE'S GONNA MAKE IT. Just like my boy Nik Besagno, currently aged 21 and playing for Tacoma Tide.

btw http://i44.tinypic.com/169p5d0.jpg

RIP

Downloading the demo for this right now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladstone_Pereira

my ongoing FM06 game has this guy on 157 caps over the period of his 13 years starring for Milan. :'(

xp to nv- same as- i'm allowed pro evo, as long as the fire's down and dinner made, but text based football simulation is right out

This dude was the spearhead for Hyde United's improbable rise to the Championship under my stewardship in FM09. Never played him out wide from what I can recall, wound up with him up on his own up front where he was basically awesome. We also had Jack Rodwell at centre-back, his career's turned out a bit better.

This feller helped me get Cheltenham from Division Three to the UEFA Cup in CM01/02. I left Cheltenham when they refused to expand Whaddon Road, wound up back in the bottom tier with Bristol Rovers. Cheltenham decided they didn't want him anymore, so I signed him for the Gas, and he helped them get into the Premier. And the same went for this feller. Who was defnitely at VFC Plauen when I signed him, and I don't think has ever left. And he wasn't a ruddy centre-back either.

Alejandro Sanchez Fernandez, king of the FM06 baffling career collapse (signed for my Championship Burnley, league top goalscorer twice, was somehow the Premier League top goalscorer in his first season there with 32 goals in 34 appearance, then gradually fell to shit over a few seasons, was released, and settled in as a Motherwell benchwarmer) doesn't seem to have had a real life career beyond Perugia's youth team.

Are we gonna get nostalgic for Saviola soon?

can't believe olisadebe didn't belt them in for man city that time tbh

Are we gonna get nostalgic for Saviola soon?

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Monday, 5 April 2010 20:49 (31 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol bet liverpool were wishing they could have a player of his quality instead of him slumming on the opposition bench on thursday.

huh a quick wiki says he is actually doing pretty well in portugal. whowuddathunkitetc

saviola was never a 'cm only' player in fairness, he was just slightly overrated by the game- like jenas rather than ze mario or fabio paim

whoops, started playing this again today after a few years out. how have i managed to spend four hours not even getting to the end of pre-season?

have ballsed up somewhere along the line not selecting the big database but for practice's sake seem to be getting along ok at qpr with what are no doubt ultratedious provincial no-brainer championship signings like smolarek, shorey, aron gunnarsson, mark beevers (ha ha... beevers), and marvin elliott.

anyway, just played a full-strength bolton and came back to draw 1-1 having had like 60% possession, 75% tackles won, and 18 shots on goal to their 4. seem to lack a bit of a cutting edge, possibly because i'm playing (or still figuring out how to play) a 4-2-3-1 to accommodate all my fannydanglers; already i am sensing tension between myself and assistant manager/moustachioed iago john gorman, who i suspect is sceptical of my cultured philosophy and keeps hissing in my ear that perhaps damion stewart can't cope as libero. the fuck he can't sunshine, just you wait.

wondering if i should splash out on amr zaki, but he seems suspiciously obvious and will probably throw a big wobbly and racehate on taarabt. might go for marlon harewood or benjani instead.

after three days i am in the championship promotion spots w/ charlton and still haven't 'bought' a player over 17 (spent 80k each on two ridic youngsters from div 2, had to before any proper club noticed them.) also reduced the wage bill immensely to get kanu on a free (a mistake in the end, what with being 70 years old he can only play the odd game, but he's great coming off the bench.) Never gonna win it but could still go up.

Don't go for Harewood. Aim for players of the standard you want to be at (i.e. midtable premiership players.)

(I was using 4-1-2-1-2 and it was immense for the season I won the league and up until about November when teams figured me out and starting beating me 3/4/5-0 e'ery game. Now on a 4-2-4 w/ defensive wingers and battling it out with Burnley and Palace for that important #6 spot.)

(It's ok, I gave a cute girl my number in the park earlier after talking to her for like 5 minutes, so I can still spend my life lost in a football management game knowing that i have washed myself, eaten healthily and not totally cut myself off from sunshine.)

hm, thing is i dunno how badly i need an extra quality striker yet (until the 4-3-2-1 is proven to be a collossal folly) - gonna feel a bit of a plonker signing benjani just as a 20k a week impact sub.

meanwhile bloody stoke have turned akos buzsaky's head with an enquiry -- i offer him a new contract and give em the hands off, mentioning by the by that i think he can get to the promised land with our happy family; he responds by signing the contract and then immediately smudging the fresh signature with a tearful transfer request cos he won't stand for being bullied. i'm guessing s.i didn't put in a "headbutt tart" option on here huh.

and lo and behold up comes the next friendly fixture which is indeed STOKE!! ur gonna do me proud akos, i know it.

my bet- go for the great ignored strikers from around europe on loan (gudjonson, chevanton, vela, utd's diouf is a good 'un, kerlon or suazo from inter etc. etc.) if you have time on yr hands, you can spend ages bothering all of them w/ 0% then 10% wage bids etc. until you can get one on the cheap.

also lol wtf just checked serie a in my game, rip

http://i40.tinypic.com/2cy0dy1.jpg

3-3 draw with stoke and a right old ding dong. two pens, delap sent off, and big damo in beast mode throughout. akos kept his head low though.

really need to work out how to stop getting done on the long diagonal throughball. same as fucking i.s.s!

diouf's still on loan at molde but they're letting me have macheda. benjani ended up going to west brom for 5 grand a week less than i offered, weird.

hi dere l0u1s jagg3r

http://i42.tinypic.com/f23tow.jpg

http://www.thedugout.tv/community/showthread.php?t=65350

madness that may be of interest

in the prem with reading now, but got tonked 6-1 by man u in my third game. the only plus side is on a late night radio phone in fergie spoke of his admiration for me and said he expected reading to comfortably avoid relegation with me at the helm.

cmon fergie would never patronise a manager he respected

as a little sidegame, mainly going on in the background while I do other things, I've decided to see how effectively I can destroy Liverpool, with the only conditions I've given myself being that I can't offer players out for less than their value and once I get fired I can't take over again till the season's done. Three years in and I'm in the Championship, having just jettisoned the last of the old first team (Carragher stuck around forever, determined to finish his career at the club, before the administrators finally decided they had to release him), £446m in debt, club value down to £13m, and a £4m per week wage bill with a £60k budget. Not bad. The end of last season was gutting - sitting at the bottom of the Championship table, me long fired, the only way to escape relegation was to beat runaway league winners Wolves. AND THEY DID. They surely can't do it again this year, with their team of Blue Square South refugees on £150,000/week contracts.

rafa

he wishes.

or do I wish? I dunno, it's late and I'm reading fucking Lacan.

tbh, not sure how getting rid of carragher would be a tactic 4u

one of my players just retired because he had a damaged spine and no treatment cuz I fired my physios. I feel bad about myself. :(

when will u be sated u monster u have destroyed lives

merdey- who did you spend such a ridiculous amount of money on to b-rupt them?

how did you not get sacked? by cheating?

i've got my season going now, had a few fixtures against clubs at my own newly promoted level. 2.1m for Santa Cruz is proving an amazing deal, he's scored 7 in 7. Also signed Mame Birame Diouf from Man U on deadline day. all the board wants is survival, reckon I can deliver this.

was 2 up against Arsenal (! ty mickey owens on a free), they dragged it back to 2-2 thanks to bendtner brace, we go 3-2 up with 5 minutes to go... they score while 1 of my players is injured and in agony and then get another while he is off the pitch getting treatment. Pinkboots 4 goal sensation cunty cunt.

what team are you again ronan? reading? santa cruz didn't want to come to charlton, couldn't afford his crazy wages.

reading....i had major probs with his wage but i upped the signing on fee and goal bonuses to the max and he agreed. city tend to be a free for all on loads of good players after two seasons or so.

i did miss out on ibrahim afellay on a free transfer because i hadn't got my tv money yet and had a tiny wage budget. such a loss, he just tore me open playing for fucking fulham, last minute goal for the second time this season, need to be making more substitutions i think.

my current team, a 4-1-4-1

gk: federici
dl:julian kelly (this hard working young irish chap has ousted chris armstrong, much touted scot who keeps moaning about wanting to move.)
dc: alex pearce (amazing player, constantly above 7 in every game, my captain also)
dc: kamil zayatte (signed for 3m in summer, ousted matt mills, see chris armstrong above, moaner.)
dr: richie de laet (solid)

dmc: khalifa cissé (great player)
mc: jamie o'hara (just bought him, he's prob better than darron gibson or gylfi but still settling in.)
mc: jem karacan (really good player, both my mcs are box to box and this guy gets GOALS)

aml: jimmy kebé ("explosive winger", has an off game now and again or gets an 8.7 now and again, v good overall)
amr: james henry (young reading chap, great season last year to get us promoted, settling into the prem)

st: roque santa cruz

subs: darron gibson, gylfi sigurdsson, matt mills, david nugent, mame birame diouf, chris armstrong, simon church, etc etc

xposts - I went to AFC Telford and signed pretty much their entire squad - little money down, but an entire transfer budget's worth (by that point something like £60m) of 'after 1 game' fees. (They're now one of the richest clubs in the world, but haven't done anything with it.) Also massive signing on fees for all, and contracts that see them end up earning something like £200,000 a week.

re getting sacked, I eventually would, around November or December, but only for poor results (that 2-2-2-2-2 formation with everyone down the left wing didn't really come off for me) - the board didn't really seem to notice that I was exploiting their financial policies. The hope is to put them in enough trouble that they can't recover, then take over again at the end of the season and get back to work in the next division down.

A lot of my good work went to waste last night as a consortium came in and pumped £700m into the club, ffs. With no transfer budget and all of my big money contracts coming to an end, it may be difficult to make much further progress.

have any of you tried the "additional comments" field in the press conferences? it's hilarious. eg...

Fitzgerald replied "Ivar will have to remain patient I'm afraid," before adding, "He can suck dicks in hell as far as I'm concerned."

It is thought Fitzgerald's words will illicit a positive response from Ivar Ingimarsson.

Ok I have a player that has been at the club since I took over (he was on loan the first year) and he's awesome. He's Ivorian (Ivory Coastian?) and not yet played for the proper national side so he cannot get a work permit for a new contract, meaning i'm almost certainly going to lose him on a free this summer :(

I just discovered if you swear in your additional comments it says "Fitzgerald launched into a string of expletives"!

I was asked who'd win World Player of the Year and I said C Ron, adding "Even though he is a total fucking cunt."

Best part is it said my players were thought to have responded well to my comments!

Oh man I've never noticed additional comments. I want to run home now so I can hit the unknown journo from Radio Humberside with a potty-mouthed tirade.

works for fergie

just won liga and champs league double in 2011/12 with valencia. pretty gd pleased with myself i was too. david villa is just astounding in this game. 40+ total goals each of last two seasons. 4-4-2 diamond with villa and džeko up front, gourcuff on the right wing, 3 of 4 in defense made up of young spanish prospects i brought in in first season and developed. 8 players in spanish squad now. for the whole season us and barcelona swapped 1st and 2nd, us 1 point in the lead, then them 2 points, back and forth. met at camp nou on penultimate game of the season and pulled of a blinding 1-0 to win the title. 6-0 glory lap at the riazor to finish off the regular season, then 2-1 thriller vs man utd in the champs league final, who offered me manager position shortly afterwards.

financial difficulties, out of interest?

It's hard to believe the number of 1 and a half star chancers in the lower reaches of the English/Scottish leagues who believe they're worth 800 quid a week for some reason.

xpost no, i had been ballsy at the start of the season and set my budget as 'challenging for the title' but i ended up getting gourcuff on the cheap (hidden minimum release clause ftw) and no other big signings, so had $25m or so in transfer kitty and $400k room in wage cap. finances secure.

took me a while to realize that a player with 1.5 stars could still be great. my left back, xavier, is 1.5 stars potential 3, and finished this season fourth highest average rating in the team on 7.25ish.

called fletcher syndrome

yeah but I was thinking of 1.5 stars potential. The star rating is very contextual it's true, but it doesn't often lie I don't think.

Anyway, my Grimsby side is now an exciting blend of French-speaking dudes picked up on the cheap cos we were allowed to scout in France.

BNP candidate to criticise you in press before too long

We are the League 2 Arsenal except with 2 forwards who like to shoot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branimir_Kostadinov

this dude is on fire

(It's ok, I gave a cute girl my number in the park earlier after talking to her for like 5 minutes, so I can still spend my life lost in a football management game knowing that i have washed myself, eaten healthily and not totally cut myself off from sunshine.)

― he might have even have gone in. (a hoy hoy), Friday, 9 April 2010 17:12 (3 days ago) Bookmark

HARDBRAGGIN' 2010

was gonna say but forgot tbh

i am in a weird limbo in my first season in the prem with Reading, stuck in 16th basically. the teams below me are about 6/7 points behind and the ones above 6/7 points ahead. fairly sure i'll finish safely in 16th. which wouldn't be bad at all.

jesus, hardly. if it's realistically difficult then 6pts above relegation's quite the result

xpost re: gourcuff

i bought him on my arse game for £25m, stuck him in the hole in front of cesc and i don't think i ever had to worry about the rest of my team for like 10 years.

yeah, gourcuff is rated a bit generously in the game. otoh, chamakhattack seems to be dump.

finishing 16th in the prem with a lower league team is kind of the dream, but this valencia game is the first good team i have played with and the first time i have got anywhere. i had a wretched five seasons of mediocrity with luton, and then i started over with northampton (partly in memory of fallen ilx soldier dom p) who i at least got into the playoffs with but that was it. maybe my mentality is more suited to the spanish game and i can drag rápido bouzas to glory.

into 13th after i gave roque santa cruz a bollocking following my old club crystal palace knocking us out of the fa cup at home. his personal info said "determined to prove a point to the manager" and he scored four goals in the first half in the next game. hero! also amazed that a random swiss right back i bought for 300k has turned out to be as good as his scores, got into the team through two injuries and has ousted the first choice.

Finished my first Premiership season at 16th and FA Cup Finalists (damn you Torres!).

Now worried I've gone a bit tooooo far in my Wenger ways-

http://i42.tinypic.com/4tuhq9.jpg

First team squad now w/ an average age of 19. This is partly because I sold my two 30+ strikers (just made 1.5m prof on Mickey Owens signing of a season), partly because the likes of ol' Tits Bramble and Bentley got offered better deals at the end of their contracts (wage structure! piss easy when only playing 16 year olds), partly because i refuse to signing shitty players just for their experience etc.

Predicted 19th by the press, aiming for Europe!

i got offered the cameroon job but a bug in the original version of the game means when you accept nothing happens. SO ANNOYING. since my copy is pirated not sure i can download a patch either.

dragged into a right old relegation ding dong now...with about 6 games to go.

stayed up on last day of the season...and managed to fix the bug so I'm Cameroon manager also now. reckon a summer clearout for Reading and I can consolidate next year...

can't believe they managed to get a passable port of this onto the iphone

that seems like it'd be a dangerous purchase

wait - an iphone FM app?????? jeez, I have the feeling this is some kind of tectonic life-changer

yup, sounds pretty dece too for what it is
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/football-manager-handheld-2010-review

the thought of an ipad version with the same depth and feature set of the PC version kinda makes me drool

oh boy i am so glad i'm poor. ronan, how much money do you have to spend and what are you spending it on (re: summer clearout)? I went for frees where I could and English/Belgium/Brazilian/Turkish youngsters (kids from fancy countries like Spain and Italy don't care for London's 4th best club.) In my second Premiership season, in quarters of FA Cup and 13th. Beat L'pool twice in the league this season, and City and Chelsea at home. :) Quaking in their boots at my skillz.

i seem get a huge cheque just for being in the prem. eg this year i got 29m, about 22m of which was given to me as transfer kitty. i sold about 30m worth of players and my squad is way smaller now, but overall i feel i've made the team better. free transfers are great tho.

my current team

gk-federici
lb-chris armstrong
cb-alex pearce (this guy, my captain, gets better and better, everyone wants him now)
cb-kamil zayatte
rb-michel morganella (my best signing, 750k now man u bid 10m for him, but not selling)
dmc-khalifa cissé (really solid)
dmc-mehdi lacan (just bought this guy, have faith)
aml-landon donovan
amc-marquinhos (13.5m from brazil, scouts reckon definite purchase)
amr-milos krasic (club record 17.5m!)
st-roque santa cruz (now my vice captain)

my subs include darron gibson, david nugent (actually scored in first game of new season after 10 months out with a cruciate, i drew away to city) julian kelly (decent irish full back), des jones (hilarious photoed dublin guy i bought from bohemians, he is a hot prospect and man u bid 6m for him just now, even tho not sure how good he actually is!), a 5m dude i just bought off psg as defensive cover (don't want to open it up to check as i plan on using this day off), plus some reading favourites like jem karacen, gylfi, etc.

is it better than previous incarnations for other teams actually making decent bids for your players?

fucking hell. I got given a 7.5 transfer kitty and spent it all on kids and high wages (by which i mean about 15k) free transfers. We did upgrade The Valley though, now a 40k stadium! It only fills about 25k a week, but its a full house for bigger games so money money money. My youth grounds are being upgraded in the summer so I don't expect much more, even if I did sell Ben Afra to Bayern for 8m and my random Brazilian lb to Liverpool for 12m.

did the prem not give you a massive cheque? charlton must be in debt or something.

darragh that's one of the best things about it now, you click "offer to clubs" and within a day or two you get a zillion bids.

The transfer bids are pretty realistic, for better or worse. i.e. Messi cost me £85m at the age of 32 on my other game, and Man City trolled me into paying ridic wages for my high earners and exciting yut products. Also you can't just offer an ok player for 40m to clubs and expect them to bid for it, they will turn around and either dislike you and not want to deal with you in the future for taking in piss or just offer you what you know deep down he's actually worth ( ;_; only making 8m on ben afra even though if he's wank, injured and annoyed at charlton then he most prob. ain't even worth that.)

More confused and bitter than ever now about my phantom copy

I'm a bad man for eagerly anticipating my gf moving to do her postgrad in September, amn't I?

7.5 was the massive cheque! not in any more debt than any other prem team (i.e. pay off about 100k a month in loans for the rest of my career but that's nothing.) Mebbe the game is smart enough to access my policy (peado Wenger on crack + random dudes no-one else wants on a bosman) thought it would get me no-where and didn't want to overspend on what'd end up a Champ team.

ok ronan and i contradicting each other on transfers.

pay off about 100k a month in loans for the rest of my career but that's nothing.)

in ireland, that's called a mortgage :(

xp maybe your players are just rubbish, and his aren't?

also have this 15 year old kid who's just come into the youth team, with amazing stats for so young. coaches say he's the best youth prospect in years and is worth 3.2m!

x-post that is bizarre! where did you finish? when i got promoted i got 19m, and saw about 12m of that. for consolidating and finishing in 17th i got 29m and saw 22m. are you sure your initial figure was not higher than 7.5m? or did it say that was what you were awarded?

i realised i am playing this game too much today when i thought i'd go out to a cafe for lunch and then got that guilt rush you get when you've spent too much money in the previous few days....except it was due to me having just signed krasic for 17.5m

presumably he'd have lasted you at least a few dinners tho

damn i really want this.

doesn't explain why they wouldn't give me ££££££.

I finished 16th first season. Only currently 13th due to gd, could go up to 9th if i win my next match. I got a similar amount for league position and all, its just only 7.5+135k wages for 'safe mid-table finish' when they ask yr expectations. Maybe 'Arry and Storrie took over while I wasn't paying attention.

bastards! mine is 22m plus i think 267k per week to stave off relegation!

i have been v v in the black with finances tho at all times...

felt my double glory was a ceiling for valencia so am taking my lessons learned to the mighty montrose at the foot of the scottish league. unbeaten in 9 leagues games, tied for the top with livi and forfar. picked up an argentinian trequartista on a free, $180/wk. this is real football.

a hoy hoy obviously needs to take on an international job to up his profile

Great threads guys. I think it's time for me to go back. Too bad spring is just starting

annoying that after i took cameroon, scotland, england, italy all came up. prob wouldn't have got england or italy but still.

applied for the brazil and england jobs, not just gonna take any shit though (would take cameroon, stick everything on 'pass to eto'o, you fucks and then get in position defensively for when he misses').

cameroon have about 7 great dmcs

just trounced stoke 4-0 at home, my new look team is taking shape after a slowish start. two goals for krasic, one for marquinhos, and one for landon donovan (who is amazing, a bargain at 4.8m) this is the new Reading!

Got 20m+250k this summer :DDDDDDD Have already bought the best looking English centre half and am looking at this Mexican 18 year old CH who looks fucking beastly. (Also need a back-up rb&lb desperately.) Was thinking of having a print screen link explosion to show what my team looks like after my brekkie/final score.

firstly, autogoons represent

I recommend a career as a mediocre sprinter.

Searched for a Jagger & Raggett but :(

well hi dere

http://i43.tinypic.com/316axw0.jpg

had my two toughest tests, away to man u then away to liverpool. BOTH FUCKING TIMES conceded a goal in 93rd minute to lose.

btw how do i shot screen grab in this game?

press print screen on yr keybrd.

my two superstar creative midfielders now want out and i've slipped from 4th to 9th because they are fucking around :( but i can't get a buyer for more than 7m for 1, 10m for the other, so fuck 'em. (i got them for free so maybe this isn't such a bad deal but i can't find a cheap and great left winger.)

i tried that but it seems to grab firefox or whatever rather than footie manager.

just lost four on the trot, thanks to fixture calendar for giving me chelsea, man u, liverpool, arsenal, villa, all in a row and only two at home. i even drew with chelsea!

yeah on W7 i get the same prob as Ronan.

Charlton, atm

GK- Either Victor, just got on a free or Fox, 500k, mebbe future England keeper because they all suck

DR- Perfetti, 2m
DL- Jones, 1.2m, also currently got a free bid on Marco Motta I think may pull off
CH- Barker, 70k, Yaziki, 1.2m, already an international at 18 and although my fans hate him, my 8.5m super signing (or he will be once he grows up a bit and stops having the occasional game he gets a 3 or 4 rating, the cunt) Collins

MR- Valdivia, free! Wants out but fuck it, with the shitty offers I keep getting he can wait out his contract or Hoyle, 6.5m He can play like Messi for 5 games, making defences look like retarded children, and then be anonymous for like 10 games after.
ML- Willian, fucking awesome, wants out.
DM- More Brazilians! Thiago Motta, free! p. good as he is in real life and Felipe, 19, just under a milli, I like him but the fans haven't forgiven him a couple horror shows when he first came and had to fill in at centre half incl. games against Arsenal and Spurs
PM- Williams, 19, 2.7m, already my capt and most prob the most important signing I'll ever make at Charlton.

Poacher- Neymar, 18m. His form has dipped a little (lol brazilians in winter cliche) but up until dec he was top goalscorer in the league and killing it wherever he went
Target man- Berreta, free, has too many niggly injuries but should turn out a v. v. good player or Green, 70k, just came back from injury but is v. good. Currently having to tell Chelsea and Valencia to fuck off until they offer 25m+ on him

Oh and Ryan Giggs is my asst. Overall doing pretty well, but feel I could do better.

Dunno then, I just press print screen, open it up in paint, save and use tinypic. (Also use firefox.)

Oops, Green is still Berreta but fuck it.

it's annoying as i want to repost some of my wild comments to the media. eg when asked if we could go on and win the league cup i clicked "as long as we're in the competition we're in with a chance, regardless of our stature." then added "if we do win let me tell you i'll take loads of Es and go on a three day sesh."

Ha. Do those comments come up in the overview in yr inbox? They always just ignore me.

i've started posting comments on every question so that whatever they use in the overview features one.

it's a bit like editing wikipedia, it's so kind of po faced normally that putting in "fitzgerald added 'i am feeling strange lately, i hear the voices of dead children telling me to sell gylfi sigurdsson" is more amusing than it should be

and when you get asked a question you had previously they then remind you of what you said the last time
Last time you said "fucking cunting fuckity fuck"

if you swear sometimes it reports it in the papers as "an expletive laden rant"!

if you go to settings and play the game as "windowed" in display settings the screen grab works!

yeah a foul mouthed tirade if you storm out

http://i41.tinypic.com/eah4if.jpg

shit that's too small!

lol at the picture/"it is thought the reading players will react well"

http://i44.tinypic.com/6y01sh.jpg

i know! my friend and me are wondering if you get fired for racial slurs.

well let me load up my saved game and try.

if this makes me give up my steam account for quoting ice cube lyrics, i blame you ronan mcirish

still in a job

http://i44.tinypic.com/11ifvh2.jpg

i wonder do these press conferences make you lose or something...

just had a humiliating home defeat to sunderland after my rant

http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2009/10/football-manager-2010-wonderkids-and.html

http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2009/10/football-manager-2010-wonderkids-and.html?commentPage=3

Grimsby now 4th in League 2 with 4 games to go. Media prediction for the season was 23rd. We're 6 points behind arch-rivals Lincoln City for automatic promotion but unfortunately it won't seem to let me break out the mind games on Chris Sutton. My most valuable player, 20 year-old midfielder Michael Hall, is having some kind of nervous breakdown so I sent him on a leave of absence for a month. Will post sweary press conference reports when we make the play-offs/promotion.

Assume we will still have no fucking money and shite facilities even if I make League 1, so next season cd be a pig.

3 games to go and I'm tie w/ Arsenal and Utd for the last European place. Unfortunately my gd fucks me here and my last games are Blackburn away, City home, Chelsea away :( Luckily points tally assumes I won't come lower than 7th if I lose them all (61 pts!). £400 p/w over my wage bill as well :(

I had worst injury crisis imaginable to fuck my season up. My entire defence plus back up, roque santa cruz, captain broke his leg. Now in 10th but got man u, chelsea, liverpool, arsenal, villa in a row again. I'd almost change clubs for a fairer fixture list.

We've had a terrible season for injuries, 3 or 4 key players out for most of the time. I was starting to wonder if it was the new Patch 3.0 but you're not playing with that so god knows tbh. None of the players are moaning about their training schedule, maybe it's just cos our facilities are so shit.

yeah i just got angry at the game when it had me calling up 16 year olds etc from the reserves, i can't field a proper defence.

and the players who are playing are all at 60 per cent by half time

There've been injury bugs in earlier FMs I think but I haven't read anyone complaining about FM10. Maybe you should sack yr physios.

urgh...let this fucking awful chelsea/arsenal/man u/liverpool sequence be over

i take that back, just beat man u 2-0!

sorry practically live blogging now, but napoli just offered me the job there. they have 30m to spend and a big pile of great players. v tempting indeed.

goal difference stopping me getting in europe :(

http://i42.tinypic.com/a40xap.jpg

fair play league i kiss you! charlton in europe suckaz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Wow congrats. I turned down Napoli, i think one more big season and if Reading isn't my ticket to the bigtime my rep will get me a big job. Also everyone back from injury and team playing well again.

Adebayor, at 30, on a free, only 30k wages? How the fuck does my captain still think we aren't an awesome big club he should want to sign a new contract with? (Especially as it is up in a year and no-one w/ money is interested in him.)

i spent 22m on angel di maria!

We won the playoffs! Am now in pre-season preparing to fight my way to League 1 safety. Job security went from "Untouchable" in May to "Secure" by July. It's a bit "what have you done for us lately?"

My status is just "pleased" now, every good player wants to move to a bigger club which is mega annoying and I fear will make them play worse. Might leave Reading soon.

I'm just waiting for Big Mick to fuck up so Wolves can offer me the job tbh

ugh fu guys and this thread i'm trying not to do this anymore.

hahay seconded. I'm following all yr updates altho I've yet to take the plunge back into that abyss.

still puzzled as to where the copy i never actually bought went

Oh man after a ropey start to the season had me tearing my hair out and wondering how what I felt was my best Reading side yet was so shit I did a huge tactical overhaul.

I changed every players individual role and gave my front four total creative freedom, and have won six in a row conceding one goal. I'm in third and di maria has an 8.2 average.

Marquinhos who cost 14m but never played well last year is now amazing.

Wow!

just beat chelsea at home then trounced liverpool 3-1 at anfield! move over "big" four, reading have arrived! fairly comfortably in third with about 17 games played. 3 points off the top with a game more played.

okay more liveblogging basically, but i just beat man city away too, i am top of the league albeit having played two games more than chelsea, who are three points behind me.

angel di maria, played 14, scored 9, av rating 7.96, assists 4, motm 5.

BUY ANGEL DI MARIA.

fucking hell

i have found and installed this on my week off. psyched.

what team ye pick?

i dunno if i can be bothered loading my charlton game back up, may start w/ le arse again

i always start with spurs, i get a kick out of sacking most of the cunts

this season, there's just not the same edge tbh

i dunno, there will always be hutton and jenas and keane and

BAE, regardless of what the game engine reckons imo.

are the coach's squad assessments worth listening to?

depends how good the coach is but at premiership level, most prob

i have my doubts- he's picked BAE, Bentley and Keane in teh strongest XI.

what a gwan d00dz, tell me your latest woes.

i restarted my game with the full database and am now a few weeks into my first season in the prem with qpr, where i have foolishly promised the board a midtable finish. i'm doing ok early doors but much like my promotion season very rarely seem to convincingly be in control of a game,it's all 1-0s, 2-1s and nicks and scratches here and there, even though i've got quite an expansive formation on the go.

                          joe hart
jukka raitala alex pearce matias jorgensen joe mattock
                        anthony annan
                        aron gunnarsson
     xabi prieto       juan riquelme       akos buzsaky
                        kikin fonseca

couldnt resist riquelme on a freebie even though indulging his whims is kinda fucking my shit up right now - he's not firing on all cylinders either but i'm putting that down to the language barrier so far. (he's been rubbish as deep lying playmaker where i'd originally thought i'd put him.) ronan was right about alex pearce though, dude is the bomb.

spent a large chunk (£8.5m, half now) of this summers transfer budget on my first regen - exciting!! - a boss-looking targetlad called lorenzo bellucci from atalanta. trouble was i didnt realise he'd stay on his agreed loan at heereveen all this season first :(

this will wait until my gf starts college tbqh

grow a pair iirc

i grew a pair, want to keep them and use them going fwd tbh, thks

Grimsby just finished 2011/12 season in 9th. Media prediction was 24th, I promised the board I'd keep us up. Struggling to grow from here I think, the wage bill is tiny compared to League 1 big hitters, and I need at least 3 or 4 big players if I'm gonna challenge next season I reckon. Loans may help but finding dudes available for loan who are actually good League 1 players right now is always a bit of a lottery. Mostly playing a Spain-influenced flattish 4-5-1 with a lot of possession play - one of the best defensive records in the division but goals are generally hard to come by. Need a big mobile target man pronto tbh.

q: does everyone always play fm entering their real name? every screenie i see online suggests they do but i've never got the appeal

Yeah. I don't even give it any thought tbh.

yeah see when i don't give it any thought i just put bummo arseington in or something :/

How can you worry about the management career of Bummo Arseington tho?

NB I only use my real name in sports games apparently.

what else can bummo do in his life with a a name like that though? if he effs up this one opportunity that's it for him basically

this will wait until my gf starts college tbqh

― Everytime I hit 'submit post' the internet gets dumber (darraghmac), Thursday, 15 July 2010 17:02 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait how young are you taking them these days?

mind yr fukn bus imo

(she's a post-grad, smartass)

I name my first manager after me but everyone after that has an awesome made up name, such as my half-English half-South Korean manager Percival Park (and the English/Dutch coach before him, Percival Values).

The board upped the wage bill quite a bit, let me get more coaches on board, and gave me a bunch of transfer money I'm struggling to spend. Got 3 big hitters, I hope, plus a good centre half on loan. Promised them a top half finish but will be secretly pushing for promotion and the record for consecutive 1-0 victories. Biggest problem I can see at the moment is keeping 4 home grown players in every match squad plus the club just isn't big enough to be Championship contenders I don't think - need to balance growing the infrastructure with keeping some upward momentum.

can you not just use yr 7th sub for some random 15 year old?

Also you don't need to be big enough to be contenders, just making the jump and being able to stay there is a big fucking deal imo, which will translate into mo money (...mo problems).

Early September league game, 2012/13 season, at home to Norwich. I open up their team sheet to do the player instructions and fuck me, who's this at MR? D. Beckham?? Fuck knows what they're paying him.

Smashed them 3-0 btw.

any specific instructions for his marker? wear white socks with black boots kind of distraction tactic? be a posh nanny?

Would love to play this game but it would be death to my productivity

you measure productivity outside of work, or do you have a relationship with a supervisor?

My life/work boundaries are extremely blurred, let's put it like that. If I had a "normal" job I would be on this thing. It wasn't meant to be disparaging to those lucky enough to play it. I'm jealous!

any specific instructions for his marker?

Dude was 37. I left him to it and concentrated on the players that cd run.

Nah, tbf his stats were still pretty hype. Can't argue with a 3-0 whooping tho.

It wasn't meant to be disparaging to those lucky enough to play it. I'm jealous!

jeez, no i didn't take it that way, you are in fact 100% correct- this shit is numeric heroin

i will not look fwd to my gf moving out.

(repeat to self ten times)

I've been between jobs for 3 weeks, I'll be going cold turkey come Monday.

strategy for weekend? one last blast or tapering off

Depends whether Mrs V comes after me with a blade, probably.

Anyway who am I kidding, I'll just have to go back to evenings til 2 in the morning shift.

i suppose twould be the height of naivety to expect you to have any spurs-worthy player recommendations? left back/DM if at all possible?

Nah, my first choice left back is this guy - http://www.sport24.com/football/ligue-2/clubs-ligue-2/chateauroux/alseny-camara/ but he's not gonna be much more than a mediocre Championship full back I think. Can't afford to be buying/paying Hot Prospect money tbh.

better than ekotto y/n. yr answer is v unclear on that?

I have come to love Alseny in that special way one comes to love a bloke one knows only as a set of digitised statistics, but tbh it's probably n.

mayne your affection for the downtrodden really is becoming a thing

i suppose twould be the height of naivety to expect you to have any spurs-worthy player recommendations? left back/DM if at all possible?

― Everytime I hit 'submit post' the internet gets dumber (darraghmac), Wednesday, 21 July 2010 17:01 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Santon? Rodwell? Some regen or other?

in my spurs game i bought rodwell for a million, it was magical. his contract was running our and they were offering a rock-bottom deal for the dude. i still want another though, for maybe a 4-2-3-1 type situation. palacios in the middle as a ball-winner isn't bad, but, you know.

yeah, i know. *sigh*

i hate it when your fave players irl aren't up to it in FM. it's like killing ur babies, in a very small way.

whats sandro like?

sandro's just this guy, y'know.

(i know nothing about sandro)

i am still playing on the pre-sandro-2-spurs patch and never bothered buying him, his stats didn't look partic. thrilling when i scouted him.

in 2012 i ahve edin dzeko and romelu lukaku and an insane italian regen with 18/18/18 pace/acc/finishing who looks to become a superstar, but who's scoring most of my goals? it's still peter "i'm 32!" crouch, usually with his feet!

wtf just clicked tottenham hotspur on wikipedia and it says robinho is the team's current #11 :/

breaking news

the internet has not heard of this btw

So, bought this about 5 months ago.
And resisted playing it. And resisted. And resisted.
The ACTUAL World Cup proved both a great distraction from the malign presence of the game calling to me from beneath it's cellophane wrapper. I knew no good could come of *actually* playing it but I couldn't resist buying the thing anyway, like some recovered alcoholic who convinces himself that he can keep a single unopened bottle of booze in the house and resist the temptation.

But every time this thread appeared near the top of New Answers in I came to get my vicarious thrills. Sure I wanted to load it up but I knew I couldn't because my job entails me getting up for work at 2am, which means bed by 8pm at the latest or I'm worthless the next day.
Unfortunately the post World Cup lull kicked in and the new season started to look pretty far away, and after all I could always just limit my playing to the afternoon right?
Right??

So three days and not much sleep later I'm managing Liverpool (rip rafa) feeling actual concern about the fate of 17 year olds that I'm not offering contracts to. Scratching my head as to how the club could possibly be losing 9.78 million pounds a month, lolling at Arsenal getting knocked out in the qualifying round of the 'Champions Cup', wondering why I don't just change my fucking name to equivocal seeing as that's what I get called after *every* press conference, and debating just how angry the fans will be with me if I sell Stevieme!

All that and my early stint riding high atop the Prem League table comes to a crashing halt at FUCKING Spurs of all places *pause to allow Darragh a wry smile and a muttered "well I did say it was realistic".* It's bedtime now but Bolton have just beaten me 2-0 with only 2 shots on target one of which was a free kick from Jussi Jaaskelainen from 10 yards outside his OWN penanlty area FFS!!

ahem *penalty*

looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool jussi goal
lllllloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooool

a wee while ago I saw the result: Bristol City 5 (scorers: some guys), Chelsea 1 (scorer: Cech).

Ive not played this in months

I hadn't played for months, thought that in the midst of intense dissertation work would be a good time to restart though. Just sealed the 2021/22 league with Arsenal with only 30 games played, although in the midst of that I had a 35 game unbeaten run ended by Zaragoza putting me out in the FIRST KNOCKOUT ROUND of the Champions [Cup]. Haven't been out that early since my first season. :'( Since then I've gone on a run of league draws, presumably because the players, as ever, don't care about potential broken records when I already have the league won.

lol pandemic

tho tbh the real truthbomb in that post is the paternal worrying about the youth members you release. i keep tabs on mine every few months whenever i'm playing. i hope they're eating properly.

But every time this thread appeared near the top of New Answers in I came to get my vicarious thrills.

Me too - I haven't bought FM for 3 or 4 years but I still follow every FM thread.

o ffs. FA Cup final, v Middlesbrough, take an early lead, all is going smoothly, 25 minutes gone and a long ball is punted hopelessly by a Boro defender. My keeper, the third choice owing to injuries to my first two, casually wanders out of the box and picks the ball up, with no Boro player within twenty yards. Straight red, on comes my 16 year old fourth choice. CAN ARSENAL WEATHER THE STORM?

^^^ Chillingly true to real life

tik a boo young goalkeeper Josh Williams, my apologies that I'll probably be releasing you over the summer cuz ur shit.

maybe staying up till after 2 when I have to sign on at 9 isn't a great idea, but hey, ya don't win the 2022 World Cup every day. Worra performance from the amazingly named Imanol Aurrekoetxea. And worra last match for the retiring 41 year old, 214 times capped Casillas. :')

cocngrats to you tho i do not understand team name

or is that a player?

yeah, player. Anyway it's now time for me to leave this behind for another couple of months, so I expect to be vicariously pleased by you lot.

Errrr so I tried to re-install FM2008 just now and...

http://i30.tinypic.com/2agjjow.jpg

Try running it in compatibility mode maybe?

Nah 2008 shd run fine. Corrupt file?

Tried it again earlier and it worked. Currently underperforming with my underwhelming Aston Villa team.

tbh i can't see any reason to go back to 2008 with Villa?

it's like going back to 2002 (CM4) for me is kinda ruined by how shit spurs are in it

you guys know of any good tutorials/beginners guides for stuff like transfers? i'm baffled by it at the moment.

http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2009/10/football-manager-2010-wonderkids-and.html

there is that. Or is it more the technical side of thing you're wondering about?

(tbh I've found that the best way is to just plod on through intuitively until you start to work it out.)

i saw that upthread (and it looks really useful), but i'm confused as to the actual process re: transfer fees, wages, etc. just tried to complete a transfer but my board wouldn't approve any wages, so i'm not sure what i've done wrong... (i'm just using the demo right now, but i'm guessing i'm going to get really addicted to this already)

what i've always run into trouble with is the training- you seem to get higher star ratings for having one talented coach per routine, but the default is everyone on everything. stresses me out man.

It seems that I've taken my admiration of Rafa to extremes and my FM results are now mirroring his. Mediocre League performance alongside Cup successes. Man Utd dispatched 2-1 with stoppage time Yossi B. goal(another r.i.p) in League Cup Final. Unfortunately the board don't give a fuck about League Cup and are singularly unimpressed. Champions Cup Q-F also vs Man Utd, 2-2 after 2nd leg, triumphed 7-6 on pens during which I sat cross legged on the floor watching my pc screen in homage to the man himself!

On a side note DarraghMac's proselytizing on behalf of Pavlyuchenko irl has led me to buy him in FM life (only appeared 6 times for Spurs up to April). Don't let me down Darragh;)

Also. nice tip about the training. I hadn't noticed that about coaches.

yeah but my prob with the training is that i'm not sure does it reflect what works or whether it's just 'lol stars'.

will rep for pav in real life, but i mean it's FM mayne i can't hold your hand through this stuff

http://bonzollm.net.tc/

^ handy

will....not.....save....bookmark....for.....later

I thought everyone knew to have specialised coaching! It's been a part of the game for years.

wmlynch- who are you playing as? A game as a Premiership team is a lot different to a game as a third division one in terms of transfers.

My tips for transfers in a Premiership (or equivilant) team-
-When starting a game, have the best leagues active in terms of where great players come from (England, Spain, Germany, Italy, France, Holland, Brazil, Argentina first leagues, wherever else - I have been getting some good players from Belguim and Turkey lately).

- Overspend on the best scouts you can get. Set them to the leagues you have open and then to the continents most likely to produce superstars (Central Europe, South America).

- Listen to your scouts, get scouts reports on every player you are ever interested in. (Remember that a scout can only watch a game if he is going to see them in the league soon - so if you want to scout Messi but don't have La Liga active, you'll have to wait for the CL/an Argentina match for example. If a player is in a league you'll never have activated at the start, won't play in European or international football then just get lots of 'Report Card only' scout reports - it still counts for the 'the more they know, the better info you'll get' idea.)

- Keep an eye on your finances and wage spending. It doesn't matter if your board say you have £x million transfer budget, if you were £y million in the red last season, it cannot be wise to keep spending. And then look at why you were in the red - if its development plans then fair enough; if its for wages and transfer fees than ship off your deadwood immediately. A good idea, if you are unsure about wages, is to change them from weekly figures to yearly ones and then you can put it in an easier perspective compared to transfer fees and season-long budgets. iirc you can do this under Preferences or whatever it is called

- Think about key areas a player need his attributes to be in. A centre-half for example needs great tackling, heading, marking. Everything else is a bonus but if he doesn't have these then he isn't worth it. He really isn't. After their KEY attributes the next thing to look at are the obvious ones: strength, pace, stamina, passing, technique. Then look at how they'd do if they moved (i.e. think of Frank Lampard - he is an attacking central midfielder at heart so you look at passing, creativity, determination etc. but when he moves forward then you have to wonder about his finishing, long range shots etc.). If a player looks suited to only one position then fine but especially if you are on a budget and trying to reduce your wage bill a player who can do what two used to is really worth considering.

- It really doesn't hurt to spend a bit of time coming up to the end of December going through the players who's contracts are six months away from expiring.

- If you have a couple scouts who aren't covering an essential area, get them prepared for when new academy kids are announced at the start of a new season and get in before anyone else with offers. Most clubs (in Europe anyway) will announce new players in June or July but in Russia and Brazil I know it is in January. Set them to Age Under 16 and make sure you turn Roaming off so it will only take them a month or so and then you can move them on to the next important yuf development country and you can hopefully find the next cesc or rafael or whoever :)

whoa, thanks for all the info. i guess looking at this game for the first time is essentially overwhelming. i'm going to print our yr post or something.

i'm on the demo playing as arsenal and we scored 8 times in the last match then arshavin told the press that i didn't know what i was doing. under player interaction i couldn't find the 'slap that smirk off his face' option, but tbf he's right. arshavinshrug.jpg.

probably going to buy the full version. on a mac is there any reason to get the disks or just go through steam?

My other advice would be to ensure you have an individual role for each player. I mean perhaps it's the same for your centre backs but you really want to micro manage things like how often a dude goes fwd, how often he shoots from distance, creative freedom, where a guy stands on corners, nice to have big burly guys on the keeper etc.

Consider using a playmaker if you're a big team or have an obviously brilliant player. I tend to give them loads of creative freedom and encourage them to run with the ball.

All this takes time to set up but once you've done it you can just tweak it....

to that effect i'd also suggest actually watching a couple of your matches in full early on and seeing how it all works on the pitch - seems obvi i know but some ppl i've talked to seem to just blast through it with only goal highlights on.

this really helps with tiny little things you might not think of immediately otherwise - for instance stuff like having a man or two hang back at offensive corners once you've seen the oppo counter with ease.

btw note down all your in-game changes and apply them to your general between-matches tactics screen cos the game won't remember them.

got a question actually - if i want to retrain a young player's position do i just plonk him into a different training regime and play him there every so often or is there a specific retrain dialogue i have to go into? can't seem to see it if so. (has anyone done this with any success? i was thinking about turning jonjo shelvey into a striker.)

and i assume there's no way of choosing my own mentor for a young player either right? the game picks lame ones sometimes.

to that effect i'd also suggest actually watching a couple of your matches in full early on and seeing how it all works on the pitch

yeah i think this has become progressively more worthwhile with each incarnation

is there a specific retrain dialogue i have to go into?

there always was before so i'm guessing there's an option somewhere

Do you set up individual training routines other than 'general' rtc? Whenever I try to do this it certainly helps to have them on a more personalised routine to suit their new position. For some reason I think it helps going a stage at a time as well (i.e. turning a right winger into a right back I've had to go right midfield > right wing back > right back until they are accomplished) but then I usually start them as young as possible i.e. 15. If I buy them from 18+ (from South America then - rarely is it I just buy an experienced player, I wonder what coach must have influenced me...) then fuck it, they stay in position.

well i have position training (target/poacher/winger/bsb/dmc etc) but not player-specific tailoring or anything beyond that. but for instance shelvey's (who's still 18) is a natural amc anyway so striker is the next up anyway. my question though is is there a specific "retrain position" button thing or do i just move him into striker training and wait?

Sure there is. Go onto the players profile, click position, then position training.

Downloaded the ipod touch fm demo, haven't yet tried it out.

i'm in player > positions but i don't see position training? sorry to be a dumbass, i'm sure this is staring me in the face.

do you have to have a coach set to do it anywhere else maybe?

haven't played this one much yet.

hmm, let me load it up and take a print screen or two.

if you go into training / players i think there's a dropdown in the upper left that allows a new position to train, and in the lower right there's a dropdown to see the position training of everyone on that schedule and you can change more than one player at a time there.

sorry my internet was messing up earlier and then i had to go out, here is the picture

http://i34.tinypic.com/szagc8.jpg

Not played this in an age due to concentration problems and just not feeling in the mood for playing it, but here is the squad with young players brought through mostly. I only signed players who have a 3 star potential (preferably under 18 so they can count as home grown) plus a few big money signings obviously.
http://i33.tinypic.com/21jxfyt.jpg
http://i35.tinypic.com/5b6wk4.jpg

I brought through some players too that sold for like £25 million that i had a surplus of 3 star ranked players in their positions. Then there was a club takeover and the new chairmen pumped in £700m and built a new stadium to be named after me. As you see I bought Messi with some of that. A bargain at £50,000m!

wait so you can sign players with three star potential but they can improve on that?

oh yes

if they're under 23/24 or so usually.

that's good news- cos thudd's criminally underrated at 3 stars, i mean honestly.

makes you wonder what the point of paying a coach with high 'youth potential' spotting skills is tho.

yeah depending on how much you play them etc.
50,000m = fifty billion?

I signed a young Romelu Lukaku for £5m and sold him 4 years later to Arsenal for £40m. Sold another guy to Spurs for £30m. And a few others to barcelona and real madrid for like £25. All of these deals had a 10% of future fees too

lol 50m

and £25m haha

goddamn i want to get playing this. developing wonderkids and the subsequent sales are 100% the best thing about these games imo

i didn't need to sell once the club got tookover. Though I usually would sell one a season just to stay in the black due to high wages. Some 2 1/2 star rated players fetch £15m+ sometimes. So its worth getting good youngsters in, you can still profit from them even if they dont make it. A couple of times a 2 1/2 star rated player (like Iker Munian) i sell aged 21 (so hes home grown) for £10m but then he graduated to 3 stars so i got him back on a bosman when his 2 year contract ran out at Atletico or whoever it was i sold him to.

the last game i played with any regularity was CM4 and the impossibility of getting fair prices for sales always pissed me off- sounds like that's out the window anyway.

Im sure it helps if you're at a big club. But I would assume Spurs counted as one.

that wonderkids link posted up above helps a lot. But when you start the game, look out for the young homegrown kids I brought through. They dont cost much. I swapped Bojan for Kuyt!

takes too much time/effort though and i gave up.

these young players are good prospects
http://i37.tinypic.com/2585ls9.jpg

thks! will be launching into this again with gusto in a few weeks

also wtf at doubting spurs big club status

here is arsenals team. Wenger still signing young amazing talent
http://i36.tinypic.com/j9q3hy.jpg
http://i35.tinypic.com/11vtki9.jpg

Man Utd
http://i38.tinypic.com/li32r.jpg
http://i36.tinypic.com/x0r7v5.jpg

and just for you darrahmac - spurs
http://i35.tinypic.com/izul39.jpg
some of the 30+ players used to have a higher rating (like Kranjcar,gomes,dawson)

Lennon went down after being out for about a year i think.

ok guys lets see your squads complete with asst managers pot/current ratings

oh and darraghmac, you probably know this, but if you get all the 3 star potential under 18s out there, they can be in your squad for nearly 15 years, meaning you don't really need to buy anyone unless a really great player you missed comes out. As long as you have enough homegrown players you can then start to look for 18+ 3 star rated players.
18-23 year old 3 star rated players can still get up to 4/4.5
Get your scouts everywhere as i think winston said above. If you do well with young players usually a sugar daddy will buy the club eventually and chuck a few hundred million at you.

my current team isn't even in 2010 yet. so imagine arsenal with de gea for almunia, otamendi for silvestre and m diarra on loan

also cesc out for 5 months ;_; fuck you fulham beat me 2-0 and injure my best player.

I think if you loan players they still count as trained at the club. If players haven't got to 3 stars by age 23ish, sell them because they probably want 1st team action. anyone under 2.5 after age 21 ,punt them.
Any young player under 2 stars over 18 probably aren't worth keeping unless you really need players for reserve team.
Only loan out players if they will get first team football (unless you need to get wage bill down).
If you dont pick the U18 team, then watch out the coach doesn't pick a crap player instead of a 2.5/3 star potential player. If you have 3 players in 1 position, free the worst one.
If you can get 1 or 2 2.5 players in the reserves you're doing well, you dont need to bring any more through really. Some potential 2.5s can get to 3 and beyond, some 3 star potentials can go down, but they can go back up too.

but sign as many -18 3 star potentials as you can, really helps in champs league.

also depends on who is rating them. my old coaching staff used to include ryan giggs (loved everybody) and zizou (no-one is as good as zizou, sell them).

also prices go up as players get older so i personally recommend trying to keep 2+ star players until 21-23, get them high enough loan places where they will play, will make muchos deniro.

yeah make sure your scouts are close to 20/20 for spotting current/potential.
Helps if your asst manager is too. If your scout has 20/20 and the asst man does, ignore the asst. But remember the asst manager is the one who rates your squad. So get a great asst manager. I have a really good asst in John Park. Having a world class rep doesn't mean he has high stats. But a dude with high stats will become world class if youre a top club.

oh and save before every game so you dont get long term injuries. fuck that shit :)

cheat :)

that's nothing..

you don't do the dreaded 'oh no i lost i will open my last save and pretend it never happened' do you? you watch scottish football on the regular, surely you are prepared for disappointment?

im not losing a champions league final to anyone!

especially to real madrid

Meh. Makes it feel even better when you do it properly the next season imo

how many players over 3 stars do you have?

I dunno. Personally I don't care so much about the star ratings, even a 20-20 scout can talk bullshit.

I do know that Diarra just made a complete cunt of himself getting a red and giving away a penalty. Luckily its against FC Kobenhavn and I'm already 2-0 up away but cunt, no wonder no-one wants ye.

yeah dont get herman's star mania at all - i've got a couple 20/20 or thereabouts coaches telling me john bostock's a 4.5 starrer for instance but he clearly fecking isnt, his stats are arse and he's averaged 5.8 in two seasons in spurs ressies.

is that potential 4.5 or current?

thnx for the screenie btw hoy hoy, knew it'd be right there

xp potential

ahh, well you gotta play him in the first team to get him up there, if you leave it, then his potential goes down, At least send him out on loan to a decent team who guarantees 1st team football.

anyway im not saying my word is gospel, just giving out some tips that I've found helpful when i actually played it.

this is all great stuff! thanks pfunkboy

no problem, hope it's of use to you!

GAH

just played two hours, ye bastards.

spurs team/squad is p fkn epic now that i know that youth stars will improve

i sent huddlestone on loan with a 4.5m buyout option the last time i played :(

preseason am kicking ass of all before me. van der vaart my only big signing, tho i have a lb coming in and a bid in for suarez.

do a search for some of the young players i had. sign up cheap before they hit 18. Just make sure you bring them through! Playing the best ones (the potential 3 stars) in carling cup when theyre 18/19 along with your normal 1st teamers around them helps blood them.

if you can tempt 1 of bojan/pato/ballotelli then you will do well.

Bojan can be a good sub for his 1st season, the other 2 can play every game. But Bojan will be cheaper.

not convinced they're better than lennon/kranjcar/dos santos

lol this game's turned me into sam already

Pato can get to 5 stars.

Here's a tip btw, if you cant afford Messi, buy Alexis Sanchez. He hits the same heights.

he can play lw or rw

cmon you're saying lennon won't get to 5 stars? pls.

:)

now BED ffs i've work in the am

trust me, sanchez is awesome

i will consider him

dos santos 'having trouble fitting into the squad' anyway- huge shock there eh

Lukaku is cheap too

If you look at the screenshots i posted, you can see who gets to 4/4.5 stars. Most of them I signed under 18 cheap.
Also trust Wengers arsenal signings.

and it wont surprise you but Modric is one of the best players in the game.

yeah he's at 5 already for me.

i think i'll give it a bash with what i have for the first game, see how i get on.

course, the only way to learn is to take over stockport but feck wading into it like that tbh

i thought you had gone to bed, lol.
trust me, sign the under 18s so they're homegrown!

Lukaku is cheap too

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Thursday, 5 August 2010 03:12 (8 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

cheap? CHEAP? I can't get them to go under £15m - gonna have to sell Eduardo/Vela/Bendtner before I start looking at other strikers though.

Darragh- ratings depend on what status you are. i.e. a five star player at Spurs is not a five-star player at Chelsea. 2 1/2 iirc is average for your avg league position/potential.

Which is another reason why I don't really share the love when it comes to the star system - it is different for everybody.

ah that explains it. it's the coach's rating of the player against where the club is.

but 5 star's still good though, right?

of course. Modric was City's first signing on my game.

that's a poor signing for them- his little arse wouldn't even warm that much of a bench ffs.

Hope you haven't gotten rid of crouch because he's been my top goalscorer for like 5 years now, even more than defoe and keane and pavyluchenko, and then when i brought in edin dzeko and romelu lukaku and a newgen kid who looks absolutely beastly, crouch was still scoring goals for fun, partic. in cups. and he's like 32 now. also, jonathan woodgate is on my coaching staff now and he's not bad! and ledley king is going to retire soon, i am going to try to groom him for assistant management.

i've kept all except hutton and jenas i think? and huddlestone on loan with an option to buy that looks sure to be exercised.

I loaded the game up to play, gave up before I got to the match. I've lost the will to do anything that takes concentration of more than 5 mins at a time.

yeah i blame

il

what formations do y'all use? I've recently tempered my super-attacking 4-1-1-2-2 (one DMC, one MC, two attacking wingers and two strikers) into an asymmetrical 4-1-2-1-2 (with two MCs and an AML) because 1. Messi's past it and 2. I have too many good young MCs coming through, but Fabregas refuses to die and let them take over. Seems to be working pretty well, with the right-sided MC taking up much of the role the AMR would have done anyway.

YES formation geekery

                  Gomes
Corluka   King/Woodgate   Dawson/Bassong  Bale
                   
                 Palacios
Lennon        Van Der Vaart         Modric
  |                                /
  |                               /
  V             
        Pavlyuchenko     Defoe            

lennon winger, modric inside forward, defoe poacher, pavlyuchenko target man

8-). yeah that's pretty much the same as my Messi-era lineup, except neither of my wide men were out and out wingers. Something like this, before the regens started to come and no one cared who was in my time (FM09, btw):

          Akinfeev
Santon  Sakho  N'Koulou  Clichy
  |                         |
  v  Veloso/Moussa Sissoko  v
         Fabregas 
Messi                  Vela/Fleck
      Aguero  Keirrison

Vela/Fleck more inclined to stay wide and cross than Messi, who dead realistically like enjoyed cutting in across the 18-yard line and shooting.

i'm still in preseason so can't tell how it's 'working' yet but modric lennon and defoe all killin it against portuguese part timers. i r managerial genius obv

Who's N'Koulou and lol scottish.

Currently, w/ obvious injuries:

        De Gea
Sagna   Otamendi  Vermaelan
                            Gibbs
         Song     Ramsey
                     |   Arsh
Walcott              v
        van Persie Bendtner

I think my most recent spurs team was like:

      1     
2   3   4   5
V     6     V
      7
8     V     9
V  10   11  V

A completely absurd tactic that seemed to work pretty well.

1 - GK, Rene Adler
2 - RB (full), Rafinha/Corluka
3 - CB, Cristian Zapata
4 - CB, Bassong/Ryan Shawcross
5 - LB (full), Bale/Marcelo
6 - DM(Anchor Man), Jack Rodwell
7 - MC/AMC (sometimes deep-lying, sometimes advanced playmaker) was Modric but he really wanted a new challenge so ;_; Gourcuff
8 - AMR (winger) - Lennon
9 - AML (winger) - Kranjcar/Adam Hlousek
10 - ST - Edin Dzeko/Romelu Lukaku
11 - ST - Peter Crouch/Mauro Fiori (regen)

My greatest moments:
- In 4 seasons, 4 premier league titles.
- A 'champions cup' or whatever they call the CL.
- I think I got a 'EURO cup' too? first year?
- record of like 7-1-1 vs. Arsenal.
- I won that minor English cup once!
- I got Jack Rodwell for under £5m because I guess he refused to resign with Everton and they were trying to get some money for him as there were only 6 months left on his contract. I got in, and offered him a good amt of wages, and he picked me.
- Snapped up Rene Adler on a free transfer, made him my #1 minder and Gomes STILL hasn't complained abt first team football. Adler is a god in 2013 btw.
- Edin Dzeko cost me like £15m but was worth every penny, bags of qualtiy up front, and somehow doesn't play selfishly.
- Somehow making Peter Crouch a goal monster.
- Selling Modric for some £40m.

Biggest managerial disappointments:
- Selling Modric for some £40m.
- Had so much money that I got kind of crazy, esp. in my want to find a good attacking RB and LB with some defensive talent, and a real out-and-out LW. Marcelo, Rafinha and Hlousek combined probably cost me in the region of £80m, and all have been worse than those they were meant to replace (Corluka, Bale sort of, Kranjcar) and each has needed to be sent home for homesickness once, maybe 2ce for Hlousek. YOU'RE GROWN ASS MEN WTF HOMESICK WHATEVER.
- After getting Lukaku and Dzeko for decent prices, decided to put them in a mentor situation, and now they dislike each other. It's not the worst since I have Crouch playing so much, I can keep them separate, but still, when Crouch croaks I'll need the other to step up.
- Gave up on Defoe because he was getting old and he went to Everton, I think, and scored bags of goals for another year or two.
- Still never won 'FA Cup'. Won everything but that. It's my albatross.

also my striker pairings are like this:
dzeko-crouch (complete/target man)
dzeko-lukaku (complete/target man)
lukaku-crouch (complete/target man)
lukaku-fiori (complete/poacher)

unless i drop a striker to mf, in which case i put two CMs -- a deep playmaker in kranjcar or gourcuff, and a ball winner in palacios, who i still have and play... man, i haven't played in like a month but i still remember all of this. insanity.

btw, i live in canada and nobody even knows what this game is and this is te first time i've talked about it and i am STOKED obv

Scottishes isn't lol, Fleck was cheap and is grate. :'( N'Koulou is a Cameroonian lad playing for some French team, although despite getting him early on (in my second year I think, when he was 20) he cost a pretty penny. Something like £15m. Worth it tho, eight years of good service partnering Sakho (although Sakho was better) before I replaced him with an Italian regen I bought for some absurd sum.

you know what I am going to love about next seasons game? the free agents right off the bat - riquelme, adriano & gallas = the cheapest and most awesome subs bench ever.

I won that minor English cup once!

I was probably happier when I finally, in 2019, won the League Cup with my collection of hot prospects than I was for most of my league and Champions Cup wins.

after winning the World Cup with Spain I resigned and joined Italy. Their first choice defence is:

DL Galetti, age 24, value £31.5m,
DC Carbone, age 27, value £30.5m,
DC Di Girolamo, age 28, value £18.5m,
DR Mirarchi, age 26, value £37.5m.

If I concede a single goal in the next ten years I'll be a national disgrace.

Is there anyone else who doesn't use wonderkid lists? For some weird reason it is totally cheating to me, while I am totally happy to use some internet guy's downloaded megaformation - no way of justifying it really :(

Will M. that's pretty much my formation atm!

i'll take note on keeping bale/krancjar/corluke, but had planned to anyway.

anyone kept Huddlestone/ have any notes on how he develops. my obsession is unhealthy but it must be acknowledged & fed.

it seems that we all have pretty much the same formation. My precious originality. Rafinha was one of my first Arsenal signings too, after being godly in my FM06 Milan side, but he didn't work out so well.

Darragh - it's 2022 and the uncapped Huddlestone (FM09, remember) has just been released by Aberdeen. :o).

LOL

He will be the Neo to FM2010's cruel Matrix when I have my way.

Is there anyone else who doesn't use wonderkid lists? For some weird reason it is totally cheating to me, while I am totally happy to use some internet guy's downloaded megaformation - no way of justifying it really :(

― Gravel Puzzleworth, Thursday, 5 August 2010 23:32 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yo. Not only do I find them cheaty, I just don't think they are that good. Anyone worth knowing I knew already (Lukaku, Wilshere, Canales before the patch)...

ya I don't use them, my scouts and my judgement seem to be pretty good at finding them already.

i don't use them, but i'll take note of who's turned out great from small beginnings when starting a new game and building a squad.

fwiw most of the players I signed were recommended by my scouts or spent hours searching for 3 star potentials under 21 and snapping them up, i didnt use the link i posted earlier.

but i posted my squads to give tips, if you dont want to follow them, then fine.

nah u totally count as one of 'my scouts' tbh

:)

Like i said, I found all these guys via hard work on my own. Bringing them through the U18s and Reserves. Use your scouting networks, scout everywhere and then search for Pot. 3 star kids. Then turn em into 4 or 5s.

One of the reasons I quit was cuz it took too much to do it. But if you have the patience & concentration, you can develop a great team that will last 10-15 years and you can bring 1 or 2 guys through each season.

Who took Huddlestone on loan? You could always add a new manager, takeover the job, release him, then retire the new manager.

tbh my excellent scouting usually ends up with the players I signed at about 17 reaching age 23 without really breaking through and being sold off on the relative cheap, only to become superstars elsewhere. Too many players, not enough time.

Who took Huddlestone on loan? You could always add a new manager, takeover the job, release him, then retire the new manager.

:O OMG u scoundrel

It's not really cheating as it's not going to affect any results.

yeah i might do that tbh. i'll be haunted otherwise.

is there any such thing as a youngster with > 3 star potential? i'm still kind of confused by how their potential can improve.

all for this thread becoming our own recommendations for particular problem positions, ie spurs badly need a left back that can defend for when ekotto/bale are just too attack minded to face certain opposition.

i don't like wonderkid lists either, i know of dudes like lukaku when i start but i jsut don't care to cheat like that. i already cheat enough i think (i download training regimens, but that's more out of laziness since i'd set them up virtually the same anyway and i love saving 20 minutes) (also i like using or in some older versions MAKING coaching calculators, this version's coaching stars are so insanely wtf/5-stars-is-impossible).

i mean it already feels like cheating considering i am tottenham (cheating cos it's already a big club) and i somehow won 5/5 leagues (how am i not cheating somehow) and crouch is a goal machine (wtf and also, wtf) and i already knew some of the players i wanted (eg. zapata as a cb).

i have definitely seen >3 star pot kids, in fact some have come through my own youth system! i am not amazing at developing them though. any tips?

Also, I think I might actually still have Huddlestone in my squad in that game... I'll check out how he's doing when I get home! I don't play him every game, probably a little less than half the time, but he's pretty decent, and good cover for Rodwell, and nice to play when I want two DMs (sometimes I go DM-DM-CM with 1 ST, huds/rods/gourcuff or palacios).

I almost feel bad that my team has so much quality because it means great players go underused. It must work though because I think I have the highest or second highest attendance in the league now.

i'm happy to start with what AHH and herman g went with above, get em in young, play them as often as possible.

/wenger- i mean they could do worse than just programming his philosophy straight in to the code, right?

lol moral guilt over unused players, we've all been there.

ps the shortened version of huddlestone is THUDD

I like Thudd. That'll do. I guess Jack Rodwell is J-Rod, then. What the hell is short for Kranjcar though?

eh, sorry, does it seem like i just randomly hit the caps lock to you?

THUDD

i'm not for turning on this, we've already dropped an exclamation mark because matt_dc hates fun.

Niko will have to be short enough for Kranjcar tbh

players are nicknamed according to how well they rate on the THUDD five star scale. I'd say Niko is a good THU, a THUD when he's at his best.

I've been better at buying em young and playing em lots in past games (I should really move onto FM10, or just wait for 11 I guess, 09 is ridiculous for player longevity), but in my current first team I have a two ~£25m rated midfielders I bought for under £1m each (one Portuguese guy I got aged 15, who I could tell immediately was going to be the man so I let him break Fabregas' youngest appearance record, and one Peruvian I got aged 17), a £35m rated Russian striker I bought for £10m, and a couple of midfielders who came up from the youth team and are currently valued around £8m, and will get higher.

I think, however, I was more pleased with the Australian striker who I bought for £3.5m from PSV, just as a fourth choice in case injuries hit, and as a result of him getting some good game time due to injuries I ended up being able to sell for £30m at the end of the season.

Yeah well in previous games I've always had to take large hits when selling players (ie below their market value for similar players) so hopefully from what i've read ITT that's less of a thing.

does market value mean anything anymore?

dunno about FM10, but the way it seems to work in FM09 is that it's usually a fairly objective measure of quality relative to league (which is a bit 'unrealistic' in that the best defenders are valued the same as the best strikers, and such), except for when a player's just been signed (then it's equal to transfer value, and balances out over time) and when their contract's running out.

In don't think it means anything anymore in real life! Like, we all have FM-informed ideas of "oh they've sold this 8m for 11m, that's good business" but I think in the actual world, once you get past a sort of Nigel Reo-Coker level the clubs bidding on you tend to be of the faceless benefactor/mountains of aimless debt type, rather than having actual plans for recouping that investment in on-pitch improvement?

ha maybe so but in real life there isn't a feckin computer system selling dozens of players to itself every week at prices you can't ever seem to get.

Meanwhile, in League 1 Real Talk News, Michael Hall is a whiny twat and that fucker is on his way out.

3 straight seasons of him having "personal problems", even tho I'm allegedly his favourite person.

(Never download training regimes or formations cos consider that shit weak but have read Tactical Theorems backwards and forwards and backwards again.)

wtf man aren't u mr 'rehabilitate the problem cases' IRL? shockin hypocrisy imo.

Ok, ok, it's THUDD then. My mistake. Maybe my capslock was broken or something.

What is this Tactical Theorems of which you speak M. Vague?

BTW I download training regimes because I checked them out once and they were almost EXACTLY what I was already doing, so I just used theme instead of rebuilding my own year-in and year-out. IT'S NOT WEAK IT'S EFFICIENT. Like a Prius.

i might download training regimes because i find them almost mysteriously bewildering. or bewilderingly mysterious. it just doesn't go into my head. can you put only one player in a training regime, with one coach? how many different regimes can a coach be assigned? can't remember the other problems and it's a legacy issue from older games but tbh if i can't just assign the kit and caboodle to the asst manager then yeah i'll look at just downloading it tbh.

I don't think you put a coach on a regime so much as you put a coach on a type of coaching, and they only get a heavy load if there are loads of training programs using that specific type of training, eg. the fitness guys end up getting more thana "light" load because i'll have like 12 different regimes (at least) all at least at medium strength training or medium aerobic training. But then you can just add another coach to back them up adn it goes back to light.

basically i try to get a 5-star coach on each section (str/aer/att/def/men/tec/tac/set/the other one) and then i build the tactics later (or DL them) based on positions, ie. full back, centre back, my own gk cocktail, wing, CM, DM, AM, big striker, little striker. Then I add one or two for specific players (THUDD usually gets a special one where I cut the ketchup from his diet).

"the other one" = gk i think hah

ta!

other one = shooting

have just employed scouts from scotland, netherlands, england and denmark that i wouldn't have bothered with otherwise, so if i set them on a youth search in their relevant areas hopefully i'll get some gooduns.

oh yeah. i always forget because i am from canada and my basis for sports = hockey and shooting and attacking are basically the same thing in that sport.

i miss eastside hockey manager by si :(

btw bid just in for BAE to the tune of 1.1m loan fee, 3.4m sale agreed at end of term.

bale out injured for season, bassong doesn't convince, naughton good but maybe a year too early for him just yet.

LB that can defend, anyone? budget not great just yet.

jsut realized that one of my favoured players from FM07 or 08 (i forget which) has moved to the PL IRL? hello jelle van damme! whose name i pronounce jelly! hello!

xp hmm... i remember having luck with a young'un Joe Mattock in one game, but no luck in another game, and also if you're not gonna play naughton i dunno why you'd play mattock. i think zapata can play LB if you're willing to splurge and then you also have a top-tier CB for when bale returns. or you could jsut keep BAE for a year... he's good enough.

re: keeping BAE- call it a decision based on principle

might try to wing it with bassong & naughton, now i check it bale is only out for another 5 weeks so why not.

having a real meltdown with reading...after finishing 5th in my second season and narrowly missing out on CL, I'm now 15th after 14 games, can't beat anyone, can't score goals, no real idea why. Have tried tweaking the system and bringing in some more coaches and stuff, but nothing is working. bought rossi off villareal and he's been a massive flop.

they found you out, coppell, THEY FOUND YOU OUT

started a new game altogether to take hold of trainging regimes etc- for some reason i don't have any transfer budget (hopefully it's just a first season thing) so it's keeping the boys together and seeing what works. not a bad way to get to grips with it maybe, tho getting a decent team of coaches together was a pain in the ass.

so i started playing competitive matches, and it reverted straightaway back to the good old '15 shots per game, 2 on target' losses to wolves and portsmouth (conceded three goals from a combined total of four shots in both games).

lol spurs, or fuck yr lazy stupid game? i've decided the latter for the next few hours.

The side has started to really kick in. Losses to Chelsea and Villa, draws against Everton and Wolves... down to fifth... man I cannot stop praying that Cesc will make a dramatic early recovery.

settled back into pre-set 442 and just went through all the 'tempo, direct passing' etc for all players and set piece instructions. now pavlyuchenko can finish the easy chances he was missing. go figure.

uncomfortable working under a crazy manager with wacky tactics, innit.

in 24 league games this season I've conceded five goals - two to newly promoted West Ham (a 4-2 win) and two to newly promoted West Brom (a 2-1 loss, ending my 59 game unbeaten run in the league). The fuck, lads.

lol steven fletcher world class striker at burnley, eh

When my injuries came back (Cesc, Gallas, Clichy, Nasri THANK YOU FOR STILL BEING ALIVE) I went to 4-2-3-1 and won like 10 games on the trot and made 4th on the last day of the season. Have sold Bendtner, Eduardo, Diaby, Almunia, Denilson and Traore w/ Fabianski, Vela and a few others going on loan. Bought like 4000 regens and Sakho/Lukaku/Beretta. Am still looking for bargains (think I can get Milito and Quaresma for >2m if I wait it out, and nearly had Robinho at 9m (!) but the fucker wants a Man City size contract.)

I sold megaflop Rossi for 18m, and the board gave me 3m of it to spend. What total pricks.

Still drifting around 15th but on the plus side I beat man u and Liverpool in the league cup and am one up on burnley in the semis after one leg.

Also won every game in euro cup so far.

personally speaking, i wouldn't have signed a player called 'megaflop' to begin with.

spurs are so inconsistent it's breaking my heart. can't get two performances in a row out of any one player.

Robinho at 9m (!)

Robinho had an amazing career collapse in my game - stuck in the Man City reserves by 2012, they accepted a £1m offer from me but again he wanted a massive contract. Ended up being released and going to Monaco on a free, and doing terribly.

ha. well i figure i can make him back into a superstar but i have too many lefties as it is w/ vela, nasri, rosicky, arsh, wilshere etc. so its alright that he didn't come.

ps. fuck you bolton for not playing wilshere all season.

Arsenal's legendary goalkeeper Igor Akinfeev has announced that he will retire at the end of the season.

The player admitted that persistent injury problems have caused him to seriously consider his long term health.

:( :( :( :( :( :( :( :( :(

I won the league cup and was unbeaten after January to finish 7th. Fuck the doubters!

I do kind of want to leave tho, they only give me 20 mill each transfer window and I need megabucks to break into top four.

Sagna wants a new challange ;_; and my exciting 16 year old Argentine regen is two years away - any suggestions? I don't think I can afford Maicon.

force him to stay if sagna has a couple of years left on his contract

Rafinha, always and forever.

made him stay and he was surprisingly cool with it.

have a bad history with rafinha, also refuse to sign anyone who isn't top 5 in the world in their position, unless they are an absolute bargain (dzeko for 13m? sure wolfsburg, i'll take that offer!)

if hes cool with it nows the time to extend his contract

http://i33.tinypic.com/2up6yv5.jpg

like woaaaaaaaah man.

so pissed off at Akinfeev, 30 consecutive appearances after coming back from the injury that drove him to announcing his retirement and he refuses my plea to reconsider. And at 37 years old he's still the best keeper in the game by miles. Which probably says more about the brokenness of the game, really. 2024 and there's not a newly generated goalkeeper in the world worth more than £6m, really?

From my previous experience, it's often best just to take the best 16 year old goalie you can find and play him until he's Zoff. Which is what I was doing with Andrew Jones

In other news, might sell Wilshere because the year he missed slumming in Bolton's reserves means he'll only become a 2 1/2 star player. Also trying to offload Arshavin and letting Rosicky's contract expire at the end of the season due to getting Gourcuff on the cheap. Also having to incorporate the next Ronaldo and the next Lampard or whoever.

also yeah ghosts be like whoa.

Have you guys had problems with players you cannot get work permits for? I have missed out on the next Lucio and am struggling to get a permit for the next Drogba?

I have a feeder club I could send them to, but I don't know how to say HEY FIFA OR WHOEVER, LET 'EM GO GET A SPANISH PASSPORT

kinda bored with this now after winning the treble with leeds twice in a row. That lukaku is an absolute beast of a player.

Kinda hoping fm 2011 fixes their engine a little bit, i can't ever seem to make flat cm playmakers like fab or xavi play as good as their quality would suggest. Maybe i'm just doing it wrong but i don't seem to have a problem with any other position.

Also i can't really manage to get inside forwards / inverted wingers scoring as many goals as they prob. would in reality, they seem to be much better as assist machines which works fine but i find it really hard to try and emulate a barca style of attacking w/ the engine.

Toast Modernism! Paul Morley coined that in about 1990!

it was for breakfast TV.

He also said that Terry Wogan was Host-Modern.

Akinfeev scores! That's his first ever goal for Arsenal!

:')

and yeah, I'm not gonna bother signing a replacement, time to alternate between my 18 year old Brazilian and my 16 year old Englishes who I, being a big saddo, signed only because he has my name.

something has gone wrong and my game file has, i dunno, got corrupted and even the advice on their website won't fix it. re-install or do something with my life until fm11?

reinstall and sign all the good young players?

I don't think regens work like that...

Does the pinefox play football manager? What a surprising idea!

the laptop i was using has winged it's way to college. considering cm4 again tbh

it is way to college

OH GOD.

Jan 16th 2016, Reading in 5th place.

"Liverpool consider Benitez's future. Reading boss Ronan Fitzgerald is being touted by the media as the favourite to get the job."

Can't decide..

GO FOR IT

tbh once get to the stage where my youth team are first team i'm usually looking for a new chellenge anyway

yeah sort of...i had decided to leave when i got a big offer, as i felt i couldn't bring reading into the top 4. but now i think i can bring them there.

yeah but this is liverpool last year's version, surely you could do a job there. not like taking over from woy tomorrow.

rafa is still there in 2016, i owe it to the club to take it. they've not sacked him yet, they have torres still, plus alexis sanchez and erm....marc pierre gignac

jeez rafa out already

Has a real life manager ever got a touchline ban for saying a goal shouldn't have been disallowed? f u fa.

it's the way you tell em

fucking rafa signed a new contract despite repeated speculation he wasn't going to, and me getting touted as successor. i won the europa and finished 6th tho, and i have won 5/6 games so far this season (having had villa, arsenal and pool away as first three games!). i basically think i can win the league or at least get into the cl and the best part is........RAFA loaned me some 15m flop they had called Marcus Berg, for the entire season, for 2m, and he has scored 5 in 5. angel di maria is basically the best player in this game btw...he's on 8.1 average, 6 goals in 6 games, 4 assists, 4 motms.

i have a new midfield lynchpin too.....JORGE JESUS. makes for some interesting commentary, "the referee wants to talk to jesus" or "jesus has had a poor game, riddled with mistakes". surely can get jesus involved with a cross somehow

you were used bro

jesus up for the cross but got nailed

marcus berg as in the swede who plays for psv iirc? that dude is going to grow up to be a beast.

yeah he actually has been linked with Liverpool IRL hasn't he? He's just turned 30. Banging in the goals. 9 in 9 now.

i assume you mean 30 on the game considering he was the star of the u21 wc?

fair assumption u clown u

"• In Dortmund, meanwhile, there was anger squared on the touchline. Both managers were deeply upset with the erratic performance of the referee Wolfgang Stark in the aftermath of Borussia's 1-1 draw with Hoffenheim."

From Rafa Honigstein's latest Guardian Bundesliga review. Anyone who's managed a Bundesliga club in FM10 will see the truth of this.

And as for Tommy Hill? Don't get me started!!!

might treat myself to an afternoon of this once I get this job app finished...

fuckin lost the Premier League on the last day of the season with my FM06 Burnley team. For the second time in three years. Fuck you, seven games in eighteen days. At least my Euro Cup and FA Cup wins mean that I finally have more than two league cups to show for my time with them.

i did that last season w/ real although that was terrible choking on apart of me playing my kids with an arrogant 9 point lead over barca. how i've not been fired i'll never know. oh yeah, not reality.

also ordered fm11

yeah the fixture congestion stuff can be mental. i also find it really irritating when you're in europe and end up with 5 games less than everyone else played, and that weird bug in the game whereby you play on sundays and mondays practically every fucking week.

4 points clear at the top after 17 games. THIS IS THE YEAR. never even been in cl before but I signed a Portuguese guy who has the same name as that manager, Jorge Jesus, and he's shored up my midfield a lot. Also Derdiyok is justifying me paying 18m for him. He had a decent first season but this year has got 12 goals in 15 games, before breaking his wrist. Di Maria still unholy.

My current team:

GK-Akinfeev
DR-Michel Morganella (800k when I was in the Championship, amazing player)
DC-Alex Pearce
DC-Magnus Troest
DL-Peter Heiji (Dutch guy I have on loan, DL has been a problem position but he's doing well)
DMC-Jorge Jesus
DMC-Ruben De La Red
AML-Des Jones (Irish lad I got off Bohemians for 50k when he was 16, he's absolutely amazing.)
AMC-Angel Di Maria (marked as a playmaker)
AMR-Milos Krasic (Gets better even as he ages, gets about 20 assists a season)
ST-Erin Derdiyok

Subs:
ST-Marcus Berg (having a quiet time after a good start)
AMRLC-Esteban Granero (he was a bargain and looks amazing, can be a good impact sub but hasn't really been the player I hoped.)
AMC/FC-Marquinhos (V inconsistent but good for cover)
DC/DMC-Kamil Zayatte (Servant to the club)
DRL-Gabin Fayet (Decent youth)
ST-Anthony Wall (Youth guy who's been coming through for way too long, probably amazing as all the big clubs want him but I can't settle him into the team despite giving him lots of chances.)
AMC/FC-David Lee (see above)

I also just signed Sandro for 8m, which I think will be the extra bit of momentum that gets me through the season. Am in League Cup semi against Huddersfield, it's a Reading takeover.

I'm at a point where my team plays wonderfully against lesser opposition and fails to perform at all against teams equal to them or better. We're blowing out Premier Leagues teams under 10th place 5-0, 6-0 and holding onto the ball 60-65% of the time, but losing to Liverpool 2-0 with only 35% of possession. Any idea how to fix that? Is it a motivation issue? They're totally capable of beating pretty much anyone but it's like they just don't give a fuck unless they know they can score several goals.

Otherwise, signed Dzeko at the start of the season and he scored a hat-trick in his first match. So far, 12 goals in 10 appearances in the league and he's scoring like crazy internationally as well.

my team is the opposite, i dick all the big teams but just lost 1-0 at home to sunderland who are 19th. first defeat at home all season. i'm still 4 points clear at the top tho.

have you tried setting up more negatively against the big sides? you often get cunted away from home if you try and attack, it's good to have a defensive lineup sometimes. i find you can only attack away from home and win against any half decent side if your team is totally brimming with confidence, say at the start of the season.

and you can still win 2 or 3 nil away with a defensive set up.

Home/away doesn't seem to matter much. I have them set to counter-attack away from home against any team with a solid defense. All the fluid ball movement I see in most matches just goes away and they can't pass, can't shoot, can't tackle (even the assman is telling me this during the match). We're playing Man U in the League Cup in a week after playing a string of just-promoted teams in the Premier. I just know the whole team is going to forget what to do with the ball after scoring 14 goals (and not conceding) over the past two weeks.

I feel like your team is facing standard complacency. Is this the opposite of that? Then again, I am managing Arsenal and maybe the game developers just really know how to model this shit.

i had that exact thing for years where a game against the big sides just equated to a loss, but a lot of it was them scoring 2 in the last 20 mins. do you reckon you have good enough players to beat them?

Yeah, definitely the players are there. I wasn't having this problem in the previous season (won the league only having lost once at Old Trafford). It's probably some tactical problem that I'm not seeing. Or some other motivational issue (like they're too pressured to perform well against strong teams?). How did you end up overcoming it? A handful of my players now are concerned that we're underperforming and will 'strive to help the team' do better or something. Well, stop talking about it and just perform better you idiots.

did you enter your name as martin jol?

My solution I think was just upgrading the team slowly. I think I've really noticed biggest improvements since I got Akinfeev in goals, he is amazing. World class keeper helps you to beat the big teams a lot.

I agree with Ronan when it comes to a more balanced approach against big teams. Something as simple as making sure your full backs are set to fullback-defend can be v. important, especially if you have arshavin-esque wingers who never defend and want to balance it out. Also it doesn't hurt to make little changes they aren't expecting (switch wingers, instead of playing two centre forwards drop 1 creative type in the hole etc.) as I think the game relies a lot on what you did in yr previous match for opposition tactics.

Yeah otm. One thing I've noticed is that the more tweaks you have in your formation for various scenarios the better. Eg I'll play my dmcs in front of the back four often but at home or chasing a game I might move them both into centre mid, or take one off for a striker. Having lots of options like this is good and does salvage you points,

Anyone sussed out the different roles for players? I never can be sure whether my striker or strikers are poachers, complete forwards etc ecc.

Same with my midfielders, I have them as standard central mids but the description of that suggests if they're a better player you should have them as box to box or ballwinner.

Ballwinner is obv for yr def mid (change it to defend for away games and whatevertheotheroneis for home games).
Box to Box is yr Kakas and Gerrards - i.e. as much as about physical attributes and determination as anything. Playmakers are ones more suited to sitting back and running the game, i.e. good on passing and creativity.

Poachers and Advanced Forwards are there for finishing&heading ability alone really. Complete Forwards seems to be best with those with an all round game. Deep-Lying Forwards for those who are fast but not much else (i.e. if I play Walcott up front, he can stay high up the field luring out slow defenders). Target men is super obvious. Treq is for your Totti's.

Yeah all those things are like what I figured, seem like common sense. But it's hard to be sure you know. EG Sandro is a DMC and has the stats for ballwinner, but also is good enough for box to box, he can attack, dribble etc.

Same with the strikers, I'd have thought Walcott would be good as poacher cos he has pace and part of the poacher description talks about breaking the offside trap. I sort of think of Michael Owen style players, quick and with a decent finish.

Complete forward is like.....I assume that's the ideal for when you have a really good striker based on the description, or is it just another equal potential role?

And target man also presents probs, cos like I have a big lad up front doesn't necessarily mean I want the team to start spooning the ball up to him at every opportunity. Is calling the individual player target man what ensures you don't do this, as opposed to making him a target man in "team instructions"?

i think so yeah. also set passing to shorter.

yeah i do my passing mostly via the individuals so most are on short. i'm 8 points clear at the top now towards end of feb!

kudos. i think i have given up on my game but it was only a stopgap before fm11. valencia reluctantly agreed to sell me a 31 y/o villa for 5m as my last act but i couldn't be bothered figuring out where to fit him, pato, benzema, lukaku and an awes regeme called alvarez

yeah not sure what is left to do if i win the league, it sort of eliminates the need to go to a bigger club besides reading. i guess a tilt at the cl would be nice. i would love to win the league having not broken the top four yet, old school!

ubeaten? not cheating like kerr?

how does Kerr cheat?

(also what is the point?)

no i'm not unbeaten! never said that. last three games, i had an eight point lead and it's now cut down to three, with chelsea in second. last three games, west ham and man u away, chelsea at home!

squeaky bum time :)

Nah I meant as something to achieve- try going unbeaten.

Kerr cheats by saving before matches and going back if he loses iirc.

See I can understand saving before big boss battles in RPGs but it seems really wrong in a management sim.

(& I occasionally use ammo, weapons, etc. cheats in games so I'm not exactly morally opposed to it)

So Chelsea draw their third last game and I'm away to West Ham with a chance to go 5 points clear with two games left. I'm all over them for the entire game then they score a header in the 76th minute to go 1-0 up. Double substitution and I put two up front and go crazily attacking. Marcus Berg, out of favour for 2/3 months, scores to equalise in the 86th minute with a 35 yard shot. Then in the fourth minute of four added on minutes, Milos Krasic runs clear and puts it straight at the keeper, only for Berg to convert the rebound!

It is of course only a computer game.

the above is why cheating is stupid

i have done this occasionally, but i try to apply some sort of moral code to it i.e. only reload once, only do this against better teams at home or whatever xp

champions!

CONGRATULATIONS TO READING AND THEIR YOUNG MANAGER ON THIS FANTASTIC ACHIEVEMENT!

Added bonus, my final game is against Man U and I can stop them getting into the CL. No alcohol will be consumed by the players until we've finished the job.

irl I always save before interviews then go back if I fuck it up

FUCK YOU SHEFFIELD UNITED TONY FUCKING ADAMS YOU'RE HAVING A LAUGH I COULD'VE SERIOUSLY PISSED OFF ME OWN FANS WHEN YOU STARTED FLUTTERING YR EYELASHES I HOPE YOU GO DOWN TONY BASTARD ADAMS JESUS WEPT

feel so used

yellow card for football simulation