Soccer Gaming Catch-All

1. Coaches - couple of months don't make big difference, whole season is acceptable if you're not in hurry. But longer than that won't do you any good. Look for coaches that have high attribute in one category (tactical coaching, attacking, fitness etc.) and a lot of auxiliary attributes at high level (such as man management, discipline, motivation, determination)
How much stars do you have in coaching screen in each category?

2. Players will be affected by workload but since you're playing in higher division they should be professional enough to adapt to pretty much any regime. So don't hesitate to put them in heavy workload.
I could send you over training regimes since setting them all up can be pain in the ass.

3. Younger players develop by playing games. If you have any promising talents you want to give them time on the pitch. But everybody benefits from training. It also does one thing: helps to shape players. Attributes that will rise depend on which training categories you select for your players. So it's like playing games gives your players a lot of additional XP, but training categories determines where to spend these gains.

4. Oh, and if you want to hire staff, start with having a look at Assistant Manager. Read his profile very closely and look at following attributes: tactical knowledge, judging player ability/potential and all auxiliary attributes that I've mentioned in 1. If your current assistant doesn't have first three attributes around fifteen, use staff search and look for someone better. It will benefit you greatly as your assistant will be the one who gives you advice during games and helps judge players at club. You have to be able to trust hisnjudgements until you're really good at reading player profiles (in squad screen you can select assistant reports view and it will give you great overview of players' abilities - its the first screen that I always go to when starting at a new club)

Oh man, nothing beats getting five star prospect in your U18. (By comparison John Arne Riise is three-and-a-half player) Guy's sixteen and worth five million already

I tried googling for some AARs that might help me get a grip on how a season plays out, what moves people make, etc.

I couldn't really find a site that had this kind of thing, which I find really weird.

Any recommendations?

You could phrase that a little kinder.

There's a section in there called "FM Stories" that's full of AAR's and what-not that you can look through, and while those generally aren't mega-detailed, they'll give you a general idea of how people run their games.

Prederick wrote:

You could phrase that a little kinder. ;)

Yes, but I wanted him to have a look on other sections too.

I lied about Lierse. The Canadian striker was injured for what probably ends his career, so interest in them died very quickly. Plus FM is too difficult for me so the only success I can garner is by either exploiting youth poaching like I did in FM09 or splashing the cash.

Meanwhile I'm biding my time until the next patch, playing as Liverpool and experimenting with using a 3-4-3 when I face a side playing a 4-4-2. Zonal Marking has mentioned that 3-4-3 can be very effective because you still have a spare man at the back and such.

It has worked splendidly. I have the middle striker player a complete forward role with the strikers beside him playing as advanced forwards. They actually seem to keep the fullbacks pinned back, my wingers drop back nicely without the ball and the central midfielders don't get forward too much and provide a nice platform.

The downside is my side can be in trouble when the opposition are supposed to play a 4-4-2 but don't. The switch to 4-2-3-1 without subs ends up with a CB at LB and a ST in the AMC role which is suboptimal. When a surprise like that happens, a substitution in the first 30 minutes is usually necessary.

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DonD how is your Bari game going? Are you starting to get the hang of things? The thought just came to me, but I think the team guides thread in the 'Good Player and Team Guides' part of the SI boards may be helpful to you, especially the first few posts. I don't see a thread for Bari so you're out of luck there, but if you go the big club route with your next team it might help.

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Finally, what does everyone do for training? I usually end up downloading a training pack from the forums but I haven't found one quite yet, so it's default for me right now.

The Canadian striker was injured for what probably ends his career, so interest in them died very quickly.

Tomas Radzinski, you mean. The Anderlecht pocket striker from our last great era in Europe (2000 - 2001, when we beat Man U, Lazio Roma and Real Madrid)

I'm currently playing FM 2011 with KVK Tienen, in Belgian second division. A nostalgia choice, as I played them in CM4 back in the day and brought them to European football.

Apparently the game has gotten even more difficult with this team. Transfer budget is 0 euro, and salary cap sits at 5k total. I replaced the Assistant Manager and Scout (I had to fire two scouts to hire one, even when the replacement was cheaper) and my budget was gone.

I created a tactic around my player's abilities and preferred positions, a 4-5-1 or 4-1-2-2-1 if you will. To compensate for the gap between defensive midfield and attacking midfield I set a central defender to push a bit higher, the DM to support and one of the AM's to pull back a bit.

After 4 friendly matches though I already had 4 injuries of 2 months or more, all among my best players. I decided to restart the game, but after one friendly my best central defender is out for 5 weeks. My training is set two notches below heavy, with a focus on strength to avoid future injuries. Anything else I can do to avoid injuries? If I have to set training intensity lower, I'm doomed with this team. I have no budget for signing new players, even players without a contract. My only hope lies with training my current players.

Roke wrote:

Zonal Marking has mentioned that 3-4-3 can be very effective because you still have a spare man at the back and such.

Or to phrase it differently: you have player who will be completely useless for most of the game.

Roke wrote:

Finally, what does everyone do for training? I usually end up downloading a training pack from the forums but I haven't found one quite yet, so it's default for me right now.

I've created my own schedules this year. Training makes sense now so I don't have excuses anymore ;] Read this:
http://community.sigames.com/showthr...

@dejanzie: I'd say that's just bad luck, that level of training is acceptable even for lower leagues.

My assymetrical formation is improving with every game:
IMAGE(http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1272142/random/fm.jpg)

Sam Allardyce? FIRED.

Alan Shearer? HIRED.

I love this game sometimes.

Could be worse - in my game, I resigned from Bayern in a fit of pique after winning the double and was replaced by...Steve McLaren, whose Wolfsburg had finished 2nd. They then offered me the job, but McLaren had sold Edin Dzeko before he left, so I declined.

I then hung around scanning the job market until Mancini was fired at City. I sent off my application and they picked...Harry 'Fingers' Redknapp. I then applied to Spurs, only for them to pick....Big Fat Sam.

Still, ever upwards. I have now started as boss of Palermo (and judging by the fact that they were 16th in Serie A, 'Pretty in Pink' is not the club's theme tune). A couple of 1-0 wins and a 2-1 victory over Benfica in the Europa League has cheered everyone up - for now. Apart from the players who want out, that is.

There's only one way out in Palermo.

Roke wrote:

DonD how is your Bari game going? Are you starting to get the hang of things? The thought just came to me, but I think the team guides thread in the 'Good Player and Team Guides' part of the SI boards may be helpful to you, especially the first few posts. I don't see a thread for Bari so you're out of luck there, but if you go the big club route with your next team it might help.

Well, I'm still getting familiar with the team and the game itself. In our first real match we were utterly destroyed, which surprised me after our friendly matches went so well. We couldn't keep possession and most of the match was played on our half of the pitch.

I tried to change up tactics, but with very limited success.

Any team can have a bad day (or so I said afterwards). And some are just better than others. I have no real idea what the relative strengths of the clubs are at this point. I'm still very much getting my feet wet.

DonD wrote:

I tried to change up tactics, but with very limited success.

Any team can have a bad day (or so I said afterwards). And some are just better than others. I have no real idea what the relative strengths of the clubs are at this point. I'm still very much getting my feet wet.

Well, if you introduced a new tactic to the team, you absolutely want to give it a while to settle in.

When you say the "relative strengths" of each club, how do you mean? Because if you scout AC Milan, you'll see they're a collection of far better players than the ones you have based on player abilities, but different teams do play differently.

UCRC wrote:

There's only one way out in Palermo.

For them or me ? I need the money, and even Mark Hughes's legendary eye for unfit footballers won't pass players wearing cement boots.

Still, he's not got much longer in post anyway - I wonder which club Maradona was referring to when he talked about taking up a post in England in Feb ? Maybe his appearance at Craven Cottage was a clue ?

IMAGE(http://www2.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/Diego+Maradona+Fulham+v+Manchester+City+Premier+JzzPbpgqNoAl.jpg)

I am both terrified and somehow bemusedly intrigued by such a notion. It'd be the Premier League's most fantastic train-wreck, that's for certain.

Well, it'll take something to overtake the classic that is Liverpool. Dalglish was indulging his talent for comedy afterwards, which wasn't quite as funny. Apparently he's not asked the owners whether there was money available for transfers...hmm, so he took over this team which clearly has huge talent gaps without knowing ?

He won't be there at the start of next season, that's for sure.

F**king FC Copenhagen. We were on a 6-game unbeaten streak, with a 4-2-0 record (picked up American striker Nate Jaqua on a free, he's been a gem), full of confidence, and Copenhagen just annihilates us at home, 4-1.

All I want, all I want, is to knock them off their f**king perch.

(Manhandles thread back towards topic....)

My Palermo outfit has developed a rather worrying tendency against teams playing 4-5-1. The '1' turns into some kind of superhuman and torches the defence. In the last 2 games, Alberto Gilardino playing for Fiorentina and Floccari (playing for Lazio) have helped themselves to hat-tricks. Guess I'm going to have to try and mark better.

I've also had an unfortunate example of computer bias (seethes). First round cup tie at home to Serie B opposition (Sassuolo, think that's how it's spelt). They go in front, we hit woodwork 4 times and have two goals chalked off...then equalise in the 88th minute. Four minutes into injury time, they get a dubious handball penalty from a corner, bang, goal, game over.

Have Man U moved ?

Was one of the goals chalked off for a wrong off-side call? My Celtic side were knocked out of the Champions League on an offside goal that was actually onside, against Spurs. We had played a wonderful match, needed a win and ended up with a nil-nil draw and heading out of the group stage.

On the bright side, I'm doing my best Harry impression leading Celtic to financial ruin. I started off the file cheekily purchasing Neymar and Lukaku for about £20m in total and it's been downhill from there.

Neymar was sold to Athletico Madrid for £31m 2 seasons ago and half of that was re-invested in prospects but it's not enough. Indulging in Bosmans, signing Lukaku and another young striker to long-term & big-wage contracts, and signing Balotelli for £4m and big-wages has us losing £31m this so far at the end of January and the bank balance is -£12m. Everyone but Lukaku is up for sale at this point (his wages aren't bad, only £50k/week).

I'm thinking it might be time to jump ship in typical Redknapp fashion. It would be a shame, what with the quality youth prospects now with the club and the success we've had. I have been insanely hands-off in my management, reading a book while playing the game because the Scottish League is a bit of a joke. I actually threw a match two seasons ago to make Rangers miss out on the Champions League. Wonder what would happen if one of the Old Firm teams did that in real life today. Moving onto a new challenge and actually playing the game again rather than going through as fast as I can might not be a bad idea.

I don't know how easy it would be or if it's at all feasible for the series, but I think something FM needs to look into is (essentially) permanently-fudged player ratings.

What I mean, is that in Out of the Park Baseball, your knowledge of a player's capabilities is based on how good the coaches and scouts you have are. Bad ones have a greater margin of error on judging a player's abilities, while good ones are pretty close to dead-on, but noone's 100% correct. That doesn't mean that you'll have a scout who'll tell you the league MVP is the worst at his position (obviously, there's talent everyone can see), but you might have to go against the word of your scouts about a particular player because you think their valuation of him is off.

Certainly, FM does this to a certain extent, but if you scout a player enough, you see that player's ratings, absolutely. If that striker's got a 14 finishing, you'll see he's got a 14. Sure, you can't see his hidden attributes, but I think it'd add a bit more depth if perhaps your scout's telling you that wonderkid's got a 17 finishing and you're thinking it's probably below 15, and he isn't going to be worth the price you're being quoted by his team.

That's just my idea though.

Roke, I restarted one of my games during the season based on stupid offside call. Some of them are dubious (and that's okay), but it also seems that game can be buggy in that aspect: in my game there were THREE defenders behind the ball at the moment of pass (and goalscorer was something like 4 meters inside) and there's no chance you'd see that goal given at any football game. I just alt+F4 immediately.
(But I don't think that it was "proper" bug, it was probably case of some variable that makes linesman make dubious calls gone totally wrong.)

I've tried to buy Neymar from the very beginning of my save but Santos wouldn't go anywhere lower than 20M so I've just decided to look into newgens instead.

Pred, ratings in FM are such can of worms that I don't really want to go into that (I'm finding new ways to hate them every day), but yes, way scouting works makes me really angry. With all-knowing scouts and coaches you can pretty much just scout everyone and buy guys who get most stars. Therefore finding few guys with high 'judging potential', using simple filter in player search and getting reports on, say, thousand players is immediate win button. And it also kills most of fun from the game.

SønderjyskE 3 - 1 FC Copenhagen.

EAT IT.

Wow, Swansea is the new Arsenal. Not only we're leaking goals right and left but I just had one of the famous "well, player X had a setback" moments: just as THREE of my first eleven players got into back into training after injuries in space of three days each one of them got injured in training and they're all out for another month

Never seen this before, and it's only 2011! Madrid just spent $107M bringing in ten new faces, including Mirko Vucinic and Lorenzo de Silvestri.

CSKA Moscow 7 - 2 Real Madrid

Everton just won the Premier league, and Arsene just left Arsenal...

...for Atletico Madrid.

IMAGE(http://files.sharenator.com/lolwut_RE_America_is_ {ableist slur}-s533x594-102700.jpg)

Phew, I haven't been following soccer too closely this season and for a sec I thought I was in the other soccer thread.

Been playing PES11 again ... sooooo sick of the "f*** you here is 7 star difficulty" AI every five games.

maxox wrote:

Been playing PES11 again ... sooooo sick of the "f*** you here is 7 star difficulty" AI every five games.

And here we see the major reason why I don't enjoy PES/FIFA anymore.

Meanwhile, due to an increasingly irrational dislike of Mark Hughes, I restarted with Fulham (hooray!). Diego Buananotte, just $8M, plays anywhere along the front line, and absolutely humiliated Glen Johnson for us, scoring two and assisting on two more in a 5-2 home trashing of Liverpool. I'd grab Erik Lamela too, but they're asking $15M for him, and I pretty much blew the kitty on Diego. I wonder if Santos will let Ganso go for less than $15M?

EDIT: No. Apparently not.

Prederick wrote:

Meanwhile, due to an increasingly irrational dislike of Mark Hughes, I restarted with Fulham (hooray!). Diego Buananotte, just $8M, plays anywhere along the front line, and absolutely humiliated Glen Johnson for us, scoring two and assisting on two more in a 5-2 home trashing of Liverpool.

Does he have 20 Flair? I remember that in past FMs he was one of few guys who did.