Soccer Gaming Catch-All

So, Martin O'Neill does one from Villa. Five days before the start of the season.

Word from my Villa supporting chums is that the Milner deal isn't the problem, but that MON was told that not only would he only receive a proportion of the money from that deal, but that the board was likely to accept a bid from Twitcher to take Ashley Young to Spurs.

Speculation on Sky Sports News is that he's done a Brian Clough - lodged his resignation with the club to express his annoyance, then received a surprise when the club said - "OK, thanks for your efforts, drop the keys at reception on the way out."

Almost the right thread Dave.

Well, it says soccer

dum dum dum

BTW I really like the way they announce new FMs. Solid ten-minute overview of all features in neat video, more studios should do it like that. And they're very frank about everything with almost no marketing jibba jabba inside ("Here's training. It was always broken but we didn't get around to fixing it 'till now.").

I've mentioned these features on last page and now we've got a chance to look at them. I still expected one more thing: improved or revamped scouting. At the moment it makes the game really tedious and prone to exploitation (e.g.: get 15 scouts, get reports on 5 thousand players in one month, sort by scout recommendation, re-scout, sort by price, buy; rinse, repeat). Maybe that's something they will announce later.

I'll grab it at the first sale after the January patch.

SI knows what I like to hear.

After seeing Psych's steam profile logging some hours on Football Manager, I decided to give the demo a shot.

Totally sucked in - the "holy crap, this rabbit hole goes all the way down" moment for me was when I signed Jay DeMerit to my FC København squad, only to be immediately confronted with messages about him having a hard time fitting into the squad or communicating on the field because he didn't speak Danish.

I bought the full version shortly afterwards.

Wait til you try managing one of the Basque clubs....

Welcome Dimmer, always nice to have another manager enter the fold.

Prozac wrote:

Welcome Dimmer, always nice to have another manager enter the fold.

We're pretty much like dope users out here, not really wishing anyone to get into it but always happy with new partners in crime

I'm in middle of another season (following that one where I got close to eliminating Real Madrid) and expectations now go sky-high: fans got disppointed with 1-2 away to Arsenal...
I have squad strong enough to dominate in league and big group of huge talents in U21 team (I spent something like 15mil over two seasons for youngsters) which means I'm just playing super-fast, waiting for next season or season after that when all this talent will be available for first team.

Thinking about it, I have never played the game you describe UCRC. I have only ever played LLM in FM09 and FM10. I think the highest league I've managed in in the last two iterations is English league 1. It is amazing the breadth and depth available in the game.

It's like... football? I often start in lower divisions, but always try to pick teams who have a shot at glory in two-three seasons. Perfect example was my MK Dons career in FM09 about which I wrote a lot in here. Four seasons from League One club to Premiership winners.
I probably don't have enough serotonine to manage a true LLM style losing week-in and week-out I'm terrible loser so I prefer to pick games where I can be hard-working winner.

I usually start unemployed, or if I pick a team it's usually a Blue Square North/South team with relegation battler expectations. Getting them up to league 2 or 1 even is a huge achievement. I guess if I had the stamina and time for a 30 year career game I could get them winning EPL.

I never have the patience to play out the lower league games. I just sign a decent scouting assman, sign a bunch of players, and vacation my league matches. It's interesting, but I can't say it's much fun.

Probably not news to anyone in this thread, but trying to manage the relegated West Bromwich Albion past Arsenal in the League Cup will leave bruises.

Arsenal is invincible against English teams in last few FMs (at last that's my experience), whereas they're usually struggling in Europe (I just easily got draw with them with my Greek champions and enjoyed a lot of freedom, time on ball).
I'm out of CL but in style: Ive beaten Fiorentina four-nil. And my stadium got expanded to... 17000 seats. Maracana!

The Hellas Verona game i'm doing now is, I think, a good halfway point between LLM and something else. Don't necessarily start with some Swedish Amateur side, starting there is only worthwhile if you have the patience for it and the understanding that you're not going to be lifting any major silverware for what, 5-7 years, minimum?

Don't get me wrong, I think the game is a much richer and fuller experience if you don't start with Chelsea/Real Madrid/Arsenal first (that can certainly be a fun, I just think it's still a bit too easy to win with said sides, which is simultaneously realistic and unrealistic). West Brom's a good choice, so is Torino or Celta de Vigo. Holland is always a good nation to choose as well, since then you're only a single promotion from the top flight.

I personally used to like to look for clubs that interested me somehow. I have had like five or six aborted starts with Notts Co, since I like the notion of bringing the World's Oldest Club some silverware, or maybe old powers like Dynamo Dresden.

I had quite a lot of fun with my 'duoist' team, 1860 Munchen. Often described as the 'Man City of German football', they've lurched from disaster to disaster for the last decade, but still command hefty support from the locals, as opposed to the suit and prawn sandwich brigade who follow Bayern. They'll probably never recover financially from the decision to share the Allianz Arena, but it does look something when it's lit up in blue.

Be prepared for a couple of season of Bundesliga 2 mediocrity and some youth development / loan players.

People who are smarter about club soccer than I am:

Can someone help me understand the advantage of loaning out a player? Is it primarily a way to shed payroll?

I'm playing Football Manager, and have West Brom up in the Premier League, but all the offers I get for player loans want to give me some minor percentage of his salary (in the 30-50% range). Why would a club ever loan players out (especially without the ability to recall) for less than 100% salary coverage?

Hm, well in no particular order..

1. If it's a younger player, loaning them out is a good way to get them experience if you aren't willing to use them in your own team. It may also boost their value if they do well at the club they are loaned to.

2. It's a good way of getting rid of a player who is going to cause trouble if he stays at your team and doesn't play. It also gets him into the notice of other teams if you then want to sell him.

3. In seasons 2010 onward, it's also a way of getting players off the payroll who aren't going to be in your 25 man squad for the Premiership, and thus are largely ineligible.

4. Loaning players in situations 1 or 2 is a good way of getting an idea about whether you might want them in future - everyone who has ever played FM has sold players and then regretted it.

In any of these situations, even getting 30-50% of their salary is better than nothing, particularly if you are working with a limited budget.

If you're loaning out a young player for experience, make sure the "future fee" is set to "not set" so the other club doesn't end up purchasing him.

If you're playing West Brom then your reserve team competes in league of its own, so you don't necessarily have to loan out your reserve players. Therefore in Premier League you should look to loan youngsters who are close to breaking into first squad or guys who earn too much. In other leagues there are no reserve leagues (or there are quotas for number of full-time players playing in reserves) so you basically have to loan out everyone.

Remember how players become scouts, coaches, even managers after they retire? How about... Edwin van der Sar becoming chairman of Atletico Madrid?

UCRC wrote:

Remember how players become scouts, coaches, even managers after they retire? How about... Edwin van der Sar becoming chairman of Atletico Madrid? :D

Even for a Red. he's a lot more stable than anyone who's been there in the last 20 years.

Plus he should be used to corrupt owners and massive debt, probably put it on his CV

Two things I noticed in my game.

One, Jose's making $20M a year at Real. Compare with Carlo, making $8.5M at Chelsea.

Two, how much has winning a sweep of Balon d'Or, World Footballer of the Year and World Player of the Year awards burnished Cristiano Ronaldo's image? Well, his minimum release fee clause? $1.4 billion. But my scouts think he's available for at least a mere $80M, which would be 7000% of our total transfer budget.

Also, BARCA REJECTS ARE AWESOME. Victor Vazquez is just killing it for Verona.

So after couple weeks break I banged out the rest of my 2011/2012 season at Oxford City in Conference National. In November I was sitting at 6th and at the end of the season I wound up finishing 11th after being a relegation favorite in preseason. In January my main striker and one of my central defenders picked up long term injuries. Around the same time my DM and captain seemed to crack. He was having a poor run of form and then he got sent off three minutes into a game. He picked up a three game suspension and when he came back he scored an own goal and missed a penalty in consecutive games. His form never really recovered.

So at the beginning of September in my 2012/2013 season I am 2-2-1 in 9th. My squad were given 40-1 odds at promotion. But that was in preseason when things were in flux. I missed out on a couple of awesome signings I had as trialists, but on paper my side is much improved over last year's squad. I sold one of the strikers I picked up in panic mode for $16k and my 31 year old DM captain that went off the rails for $5k (he still lists me as favored personnel though).

I think it is time for a tactics change. I can't seem to buy a goal this season with my 4-2-3-1 Asymmetric (which is really 4-1-2-2-1 with a DM, MC, ML, AMC, AMR making up the asymmetric part). This tactic kind of hinged on a MC playmaker who is now out of favor and my Bulgarian striker who is currently injured.

I've tried that kind of asymmetric formation in League One for short time once and it didn't really set the world alight. I think 4-4-2 and 4-1-4-1 are only choices for English LLM.
I'm back to square one and Cardiff. I just wanted to play one or two seasons of English football before FM11 comes out and Cardiff was my favourite side in last three FMs because they have no money for transfers and starting with them is a nice challenge.
Any Americans familiar with name John Thorrington? It's right midfielder from Chicago I've signed for 70k and he's a type of player I really love: 18 pace, 16 stamina, teamwork, workrate, 17 determination, 15 bravery, zero creativity Perfect defensive winger.

John Thorrington is not a name I think of if you were to say fastest guy in MLS or in the US Men's National Team pool.

I wish this game was a smidgen more edit-friendly, or at least a bit more transparent with how the ratings work, as it'd be a lot of fun (I think) to see how the likes of Puskas, Di Stefano, Duncan Edwards and Dixie Dean might fare (even though, especially in Dean's case, the game of football he played is so different to the one played today it might as well be a different sport).

Prederick wrote:

I wish this game was a smidgen more edit-friendly, or at least a bit more transparent with how the ratings work, as it'd be a lot of fun (I think) to see how the likes of Puskas, Di Stefano, Duncan Edwards and Dixie Dean might fare (even though, especially in Dean's case, the game of football he played is so different to the one played today it might as well be a different sport).

SI actually toyed with this idea at one point, probably towards the end of the 90's, but junked it because they couldn't really work out the ratings issue. Not that they couldn't program it, but their reasoning was that you either end up with a game where some teams are just full of 20's, or where they are reliant on scant sources and documentation for their analysis.

Problem is that these players were 20's compared to the other players of their day. If you've ever seen film of a 1950's game, what strikes you second (after the ludicrous shorts) is the slowness of the players - you might say that Stanley Matthews was a 20 pace, but only compared to some slow lump who was being paid £6 a week and supplemented his income by working as a plumber.