Football Manager, Part I

[JohnR]

I spent $70 million on transers/incoming transfers in this first season so far.

Your team isn't Woking, as mine is!

Actually, I have never found the Lower League Manager thing to be that tough. I don't get hit by superkeepers as I'm working my way up the ladder, and the AI is not too good when it comes to player transfers. Pretty easy to raise money by selling a pretty good player, then snapping up a superior player for 1/5th the price of what you sold your previous guy at.

I agree about how fatigue is more prevalent apparently in the sim than in real life, but it makes it more challenging (aka fun for me) when you have to rotate players in and out and have to deal with some injuries and the like.

Yes, that is right. In this instance, the game is improved for being slightly unrealistic.

Anyway, the game rocks I'm sure we all can agree.

Yup.

I owe SI a temporary apology. Despite my fears of facing a superkeeper and being stuck with a stuporkeeper in my road game at Juve in CL quarterfinals, I won 2-0. The opposing keeper had an 8 (of course), but my keeper played OK and Juve stunk.

However, the next week's game forced me to rescind my apology. Played a second-rate Bolton team in FA semifinal. My international keeper, 7.26 average for the season, stops 20% of his shots. Earns him a sprightly rating of 4. The opposing keeper stops 90% of his shots, received a 9. Of course I am blown out, as 10 Ronaldinhos would lose to 10 Orlando Perez's with this ratio of goalkeeping.

Just happens too often. I don't ever recall an opposing goalkeeper receiving less than a 6 the latter rounds of a playoff (usually an 8, actually), whereas no matter who I have at keeper I periodically am hit with a 5 or even a 4 score. Which eliminates me from the silverware because you never win with goalkeeping scores like that.

Annoying.

Oh, well. Still alive in Champion's League. Lost to Feyenoord 2-1 on the road in the semifinal first leg. A 1-0 win at home will do it for me. In real life, I would be annoyed because (of course) I outshot them by a 2 to 1 ratio, but still lost. Conceded 2 goals on penalties, the last in stoppage time, which red carded my goalkeeper so that he will miss the next match. But you know, I wasn't mad. It's not like my team is always giving up penalties, or last-second goals. I don't mind unusually bad things happening when they happen unusually. It's when they happen routinely that I view it as a problem.

[TheImposter]

I have an interesting problem with my LLM game with CF Badalona -- I think I got promoted too soon. I was stumbling along in 5th or 6th place in my first season, well above expectation, board and supporters were delighted. Hit a rough patch, went 7 games without a win, but I could have lost every game the rest of the way and still avoided relegation, which was the board's goal. Then I switched to a lighter, more technique oriented training schedule -- figured the guys were all burnt out, though fatigue wasn't a factor with 1 match a week, and since they're all crap players lets work on basics. Won my last 5 or 6 games, then tore through superior teams in the playoffs. Now I'm in the second division. My $7.4K per week player is gone, so I have plenty of wages available, a 250K transfer budget that went up to 800K when I allowed my best player to move on to a bigger club. I'm golden, right?

I can't get anyone to sign for me. My keeper last year was a loaner who doesn't want to come back, even though he won't get any playing time at Espanyol. I'm giving other clubs way too much money for players that are just ok, but when it comes time to negotiate a contract "Player X is not interested in a move to Badalona", and the board won't allow me to offer any individual player enough to entice them, even though the current wage bill sits at about 6K per week and I'm allowed 18K. I have one keeper, who won't cut the mustard, the pundits have given me 5000-1 odds to avoid relegation. Even players who are on crap teams in divisions below me won't sign. I'm assuming that this is because I'm such a small club with absolutely no reputation. If I could have spent another year in division 2B I could have built the squad in a more methodical way, attracted players who fit my level and tried to move up from there. Now it kind of looks like I'm in an impossible situation. I've actually resorted to cheating -- I get up to the transfer deadline at the end of August having signed no one, then I quit without saving and try again. Done this twice now. If I can't get some warm bodies the next time I'll just go into the season with the one keeper and I guess use a CG player if he gets hurt. Not a very promising scenario, but I've tried signing has-beens, kids with no stats at all, with no luck. I'm starting to wonder if this club in real life is some kind of pariah, like a nest of Franco-supporting fascists or ETA terrorists or something.

Should be an interesting season.

[JohnR]

Imposter -

Ah, yes.

My first season in EPL was harrowing. I spent 2 years in the Conference getting strong. The second year was a romp, so that when I got promoted to 3rd division I was already the best team, even before adding players. Easy. Pretty much the same story in 2nd division. In 1st division, I was thin. Very thin. However, I was lucky with injuries and a new tactic worked very well. To my shock, I was promoted.

Scary stuff. Like you, nobody wanted to join me. I couldn't even get Division 1 players to come! I guess they figured this thin, impoverished nobody team with a stadium of 13,000 wouldn't last long in EPL. It was a struggle. I was in the relegation zone 2/3s of the way through the season, at times in 20th. Then another tactical switch, plus a lucky signing, the team got hot, and I won a few games for safety.

Relegation battles are scarier than championship battles. Good luck! You'll need it.

[ibreak4coffee]

Alright after a lengthy spell of travel I came back to my Nottingham Forrest team and quickly lost control of the squad (too much criticism in the media, I got carried away) and was fired promptly at the end of the season. I started a new game yesterday with a new tactic: I sold 8 players immediately worth a combined 6.1 million euros. So I have all this money to spend like a premiership team now... I plan to bring in a bunch of aging has-beens to establish a good spot in the championship, and take my younger players and let them have a full year in the reserves to be ready for a promotion push next year. So far I've gotten Mostovoi, De Boer, Bogarde, Fernando Couto, and Les Ferninand to sign.

And it seems I shouldnt worry too much about the keeper situation, since so much of that seems to depend on the AI.

I'm also not a programmer, but its my understanding that AI is not advanced enough, and may never be, to adapt on the fly to human tactics. Pretty much everything I think needs to be written into the code and is largely determined before you start playing (with changes and reactions during a season the result, once again, of set parameters that trigger certain responses from the AI)

[JohnR]

And it seems I shouldnt worry too much about the keeper situation, since so much of that seems to depend on the AI.


It might have changed, too, since I'm playing CM 3. (I have Football Manager but the seasons take too long to play.)

[subbuteo]

Your team isn't Woking, as mine is!

I definitely have been taking advantage of the transfer budget. Usually I manage one high class team, one really lower division team and DC United. With the high class teams I had never found myself making the blockbuster (aka really expensive) transfer moves and never using my budget. I'm usually so wrapped up in getting the lower-division side up the charts. This time I decided to get crazy, however ;)

[JohnR]

With the high class teams I had never found myself making the blockbuster (aka really expensive) transfer moves and never using my budget. I'm usually so wrapped up in getting the lower-division side up the charts. This time I decided to get crazy, however ;)

How much did you spend?

My most expensive acquisitions have been in the past couple of years (2011-12). I spent 8.75 million pounds on Jose Antonio Reyes -- still a 20 something pup! -- and 7.75 million pounds on the 18 year old regen of Zidane.

Baby ZZ now has his stamina up to 14, but he's the tiredest 14 I ever saw, still gets exhausted each time I play him, even though he's subbed at halftime and never, ever asked to press -- or play defense at all. Call him Freddy Adu II. Howeve, this Freddy will turn 20 over the summer. Maybe that'll do the trick for his energy level.

On the bright side, his decision making rose from 13 to 16 this year, to go with his 20s for passing, creativity, dribbling, flair, and technique. What a talent. I could sell him for 20 million pounds, all the bigname clubs want him. As they should.

[Cannon]

TheImposter,

Your situation is pretty common. There is a known issue with your rep and your club's rep not adjusting fast enough to reflect your performance. Thus when you get promoted you are hit with the player acquisition problem. Your club is still seen as a club in the lower division and well below the reputation of the league you are currently in. This seem to produce a large penalty in the formula SI uses to determine if a player is willing to come to your club. Thus a player who would gladly join you on the final day of your last season in the lower league will now not want to join even though you've been promoted. Not sure if SI is going to fix this in the patch being tested or not. The good news is that if you manage that first year, you should be golden the following transfer window.

Overly quick promotion can really kill a game. If you play LLM and fly too fast up the leagues you'll basically be forced to switch jobs due to the issue you mention, the wage budget problem, and stadium issues. It is much less common to see clubs go from conference or below to the CL as it was in previous CM games. This is a good think in general but can produce its own set of unrealistic results in some situations.

[JohnR]

It is much less common to see clubs go from conference or below to the CL as it was in previous CM games.

Yeah, that's a guilty pleasure. Not in the least bit realistic but I have a hard time giving up that perk of CM3.

[gaijin]

My club is Grasshoper Zurich

1st season, I basically stabilized the club and go them an UEFA cup spot on the last game of the season, which effectively cost Servette the title as well. :) I brought in Freedy Barrerio (big target man) to play with Nunez upfront. Also got Demel for 40k in pre-season (another great buy.)

2nd season, I bought in some good signings (namely Naldo for 40k - great value - won player of the year that season) Seitz (free from Kaiserlautern) then I bought Marrazzi from Yverdon (totally injury prone but amazing stats.) and brought Dahl in from Helsinborgs to replace my pissed off midifelder who failed to sign a new deal, so I shipped him off to Tenerife for 1.3m. I lost in the semi-finals of the Swiss cup but claimed the Swiss title after winning 17 out of last 18 games.

3rd season just in the middle of the winter break, Bought in Adu on a free-transfer, some Nigerian striker (good stats) and Cipri from Tirana (CB) on a free. After winning my frst 7 leagie matches, I qulaified for the group stages of the Champions League beating Brugge on away goals in Belguim.

Hopefull Adu can develop and I can keep my title. :)

btw: Speaking of promotions, on CM4 I was Swansea City manager - I got my team into the EPL in 4 seasons. And in my first EPL season got UEFA cup football and reached the quarter-finals. But the problem was, you would expect a manager like that to be head-hunted by the top clubs. Nope. I saw guys like Moyes get sacked and move clubs about 6 times a season. Thankfully FM2005 has got rid of that. And now my reputation shoots up after you win a title.

My stats at GCZ are like tempermant - 1, media handling 20. I slag everyone off after a game and all my players love it.

[TheImposter]

TheImposter,

Your situation is pretty common. There is a known issue with your rep and your club's rep not adjusting fast enough to reflect your performance. Thus when you get promoted you are hit with the player acquisition problem. Your club is still seen as a club in the lower division and well below the reputation of the league you are currently in. This seem to produce a large penalty in the formula SI uses to determine if a player is willing to come to your club. Thus a player who would gladly join you on the final day of your last season in the lower league will now not want to join even though you've been promoted. Not sure if SI is going to fix this in the patch being tested or not. The good news is that if you manage that first year, you should be golden the following transfer window.

Overly quick promotion can really kill a game. If you play LLM and fly too fast up the leagues you'll basically be forced to switch jobs due to the issue you mention, the wage budget problem, and stadium issues. It is much less common to see clubs go from conference or below to the CL as it was in previous CM games. This is a good think in general but can produce its own set of unrealistic results in some situations.
Thanks, Cannon, that's interesting input. One of the things that's interesting is that, besides the fact that players (and staff) don't want to come because of my rep, the board is really restricting wages -- not in general, as I've got a very generous total wage budget that I'm currently well below, but with regard to signing specific players -- they won't allow me to offer anybody over $1250, even when I've got a player saying he might be tempted if the price were right. I don't want to be back in a situation like I was the first season, when one player made more than everybody else put together, but it would be nice to be able to go up enough to entice some players good enough to help the squad.

As far as other jobs, I'm getting offers thrown at me left and right -- all from clubs in lower divisions than I, with much smaller wage and transfer budgets. I suspect that their reps as clubs are higher, so that it might be seen as a move up for me. I reject them all.

Right now CF Badalona are in last place in their first season in 2nd division, with 2 points from our first 7 or 8 matches. We've only gotten blown out once, and most of the matches are close. I've just made a tactical change which looked promising in the first match I used it in. Injuries are killing me. My only keeper was injured, and I had an alien come in and perform quite well, though once he got injured and I had to use the alien backup. Now my keeper is healthy, and the aliens have disappeared, so once again I have no backup at all. I'm still cautiously optimistic that things will look up, maybe I'll sign somebody in January and somehow scrape enough points to stay up. If I can't, I'll at least play the first season after relegation, but if it looks like I'm just never going to be able to build the squad I'll either jump ship or start a new game. On the positive side, the board has agreed to upgrade the training facilities, and attendance is way up. I have a 10,000 seat stadium and last year my attendance went from several hundred early on to a couple thousand later in the year when we were pushing for promotion. This year we're drawing more like 6-7K per game. If the board was smart and raised ticket prices when we were promoted we should be pulling in a lot more money, so maybe that will eventually make a difference.

[JohnR]

Reputation is an unrealistically tough barrier, but I'm glad that SI did it this way, for the extra challenge.

After all, you can always opt for Barcelona or Juventus and sign whomever you want! I never play teams like that ... so I'm pretty much always shut out from the world superstars, no matter how much money I have or how successful my teams might be. Please come to me, I won Champion's League, I beg. But no, Romario's regen (or some other Brazilian superstar forward, I'm not quite sure who) thinks Woking is unacceptable and Lazio is great, even though I've beaten Lazio 3 times and drawn 3 times over the past few years in Champion's League play.

Putz.

[Bluto11]

So I'm two games into my season with Arsenal and I beat Bham 3-0 at St Andrews and Citeh 4-0 at home. It was crazy, the opponent had no shots on goal. I'm sure everyone will eventually get tired and injured so I will be screwed. My new computer should be ready in a few weeks. Not sure if I'll go with a gig of RAM, but it will have 512 and a nice fast processor

[TheImposter]

I suppose sometimes we must look for other indicators of success. For example:

11 games into my 1st season in the Spanish second division CF Badalona are in last place with 4 pts, 0W, 4D, 7L, 4 for, 18 against. The board are delighted with my performance as manager, happy with the club's financial status, and satisfied with the club's place in the league. The supporters are delighted with the progress the club is making and in full support of my management of the club. Financially, last year I had a bottom line of -$192K. So far this year I have a balance of $3.1 mil, a remaining transfer budget of $720K, a wage budget of $17K p/w but a total wage bill of only $7.8K p/w. Last year's gate receipts totalled $720K. This year through 13 home dates (6 of which were sparsely attended pre-season friendlies) gate receipts total $1.1 mil. Season ticket revenue last year was $4.4K, this year so far it's $433.3K -- and the figure changes every month, so we're either selling more season ticket packages still, or people are paying installments. Average attendance last year was 2,221, this year it's 8,609 (not sure if this is only home dates, but just looking from match to match it seems my home attendance is better than road -- my fans coming out to see bigger clubs than they're used to, I suppose, while away from home I'm not much of a draw).

So even if I get relegated, I've immeasurably strengthened the club. Renovation of training facilities is supposedly under way, no need to expand the stadium as we're still aren't filling it. The question will be, do factors like improved financial status and better training facilities/youth program (the board unanimously agreed that a better youth program was necessary when I asked to improve training facilities) improve my rep, and will better players ever be willing to sign so that I can get better performance on the field.

I also figured that, since I have plenty of money available and the transfer window is closed I might as well try to sign some staff. I managed to get another physio and a coach who's 20 for keepers (!), but nobody else is willing to sign for the money the board will let me give. I ran adverts for a coach and a scout, but the guys who apply are even worse than what I already have.

This is turning out to be a very interesting game, but if I can't eventually get some better guys to play for me it could get boring real fast. I'll soldier on.

[JohnR]

Imposter -

At least your board is intelligent!

Wonder how many of these fans will stay with you if you're relegated. I guess as long as you haven't inflated your wage bill you'll be OK.

I offered a new contract to my 20 year old Zidane regen last night, 2 1/2 years into his contract. No dice, he's not biting, not even at "indispensable" transfer status. Don't know yet if that he means he'll never re-sign or if he's mad I'm not playing him enough. We'll see. As always, he's exhausted by October thanks to stupid France but I don't care, he's gonna play the first half of every game until either he signs or the season ends!

And if not, I'll be forced to sell him. Which sucks. I already have enough money, and there is no other A Mid as good at any price. At its current status, my club should be a buyer of players like this, not a seller.

[prk166]

I suppose sometimes we must look for other indicators of success. For example:

11 games into my 1st season in the Spanish second division CF Badalona are in last place with 4 pts, 0W, 4D, 7L, 4 for, 18 against. The board are delighted with my performance as manager, happy with the club's financial status, and satisfied with the club's place in the league. The supporters are delighted with the progress the club is making and in full support of my management of the club. Financially, last year I had a bottom line of -$192K. So far this year I have a balance of $3.1 mil, a remaining transfer budget of $720K, a wage budget of $17K p/w but a total wage bill of only $7.8K p/w. Last year's gate receipts totalled $720K. This year through 13 home dates (6 of which were sparsely attended pre-season friendlies) gate receipts total $1.1 mil. Season ticket revenue last year was $4.4K, this year so far it's $433.3K -- and the figure changes every month, so we're either selling more season ticket packages still, or people are paying installments. Average attendance last year was 2,221, this year it's 8,609 (not sure if this is only home dates, but just looking from match to match it seems my home attendance is better than road -- my fans coming out to see bigger clubs than they're used to, I suppose, while away from home I'm not much of a draw).

So even if I get relegated, I've immeasurably strengthened the club. Renovation of training facilities is supposedly under way, no need to expand the stadium as we're still aren't filling it. The question will be, do factors like improved financial status and better training facilities/youth program (the board unanimously agreed that a better youth program was necessary when I asked to improve training facilities) improve my rep, and will better players ever be willing to sign so that I can get better performance on the field.

I also figured that, since I have plenty of money available and the transfer window is closed I might as well try to sign some staff. I managed to get another physio and a coach who's 20 for keepers (!), but nobody else is willing to sign for the money the board will let me give. I ran adverts for a coach and a scout, but the guys who apply are even worse than what I already have.

This is turning out to be a very interesting game, but if I can't eventually get some better guys to play for me it could get boring real fast. I'll soldier on.

It's nice to see people strugglin' with the lil' clubs. I'm so used to seeing folks try to plow thru a season with a big club.

[Bonji]

Has anyone started a game unemployed? I am thinking of trying that but I worry it will be impossible to be hired. It'd be cool if you could start unemployed, get hired as an Assistant, get experience there and then move apply for head coaching jobs. I don't think you can do that.

[ibreak4coffee]

Has anyone started a game unemployed? I am thinking of trying that but I worry it will be impossible to be hired. It'd be cool if you could start unemployed, get hired as an Assistant, get experience there and then move apply for head coaching jobs. I don't think you can do that.

I'm sure you'll get a lot of D2 offers in some lower leagues and outside the big countries.

Funny thing happened to me in my last game though: I finished 17th with Nottingham Forrest, then shot up to 6th the next year, lost in the playoff on penalties... then the wheels fell off and I got fired midway through the next year with Forrest in 15th. HOWEVER... I applied for the head coaching vacancy at Wigan, which was 7th at the time, and they offered me the job! Even though Forrest has more rep, it seemed weird that would happen. I just started a new game with Forrest again though, and I'm happy to report that my star striker just got a 5 match ban for a red card... lovely (at least I'm in 11th)

[Cannon]

Has anyone started a game unemployed? I am thinking of trying that but I worry it will be impossible to be hired. It'd be cool if you could start unemployed, get hired as an Assistant, get experience there and then move apply for head coaching jobs. I don't think you can do that.

The unemployed feature needs some work. If you start the game with england's leagues active you'll get Exeter every time. They should have added some randomness to the start. So you can hang around an wait until soemthing else opens up or just take the exeter job neither attractive if you ask me. Instead, I'd recommen using this link. (http://www.mitchellsclose.co.uk/fmteamselector/llfmteamgenerator.html)

It selects lower league teams for you. You can keep hitting the links there until you get a team in the right country. Much better than the unemployed feature if you ask me.

BTW, pay attention to your nationality when selecting unemployed. If you enter that you are a Croat, a Korean, American, or whatever it has a big impact on the jobs you are offered and effects the club and fan's initial view towards you. The limits it puts on your languages can hurt your gaeplay for awhile.

[subbuteo]

How much did you spend?
$89 million on transfers/future transfers for 11 players

I've made $45 million on transfers of 7 players

~~~~~~~~~~~
After my mini-slump with bad draws to lower-tier Prem clubs Chelsea have strung together a club record 12 straight wins....all with the same tactic still so who knows?