3 matches in, 3 rousing defeats, not a single goal scored...I would say that this is going to be a long season; I'm afraid that I'll get sacked before it goes on for too much longer. Any tips on how to survive with a seriously overmatched team? There's seemingly nothing I can do to avoid ceding massive amounts of possession and subjecting my below-par goalkeepers to a truly ridiculous amount of shots. Is there an advantage to sticking to a tactic from week to week or should I be switching around until I find one that works?
I wouldn't lose hope too quickly. The first few games at a new club or a new league can be tough especially if you've been active with tranfers, recently promoted, or are moving to a new tactic. The tactical difference between the top domestic league and the next one down is usually large in my experience. In my game before last, I had to change from an attacking possession team in the Coke league to a defensive counterattacking targetman tactic to survive the first season in the EPL. I then moved to a different tactical philosophy once I got my survival fixed. Once I've got a feel for the right way to use my squad in a new league, I usually vary between 2-3 tactics and just tweak for player differences and home/away. You don't want to make major changes to tactics/formations all the time. On your question of what to do when overmatched, it depends on how bad the mismatch is and what quality you have in your squad. I've got a couple of cup tactics I use for teams way out of my league that work great (won FA Cup in first season of my last game with a lower league team against an all EPL draw including a stacked Chelsea team which had Adriano, Ronaldo, and a great MC who I'm forgetting plus the usual Robben, Duff, Lampard, Terry, Cech, etc). However those tactics aren't suitable for mismatches within a league. I think I need more info before I can offer the best advice. What type of system are you using now? Can you use a targetman strategy? Do you have the players to make a possession, short-passing game work? What type of speed and power do your startng forwards have? Do you have creativity? If so, at which positions? What type of defense do you have? It sounds like your wingers can dribble, right? Can your FBs attack? Best player? Worst position? Better going forward or in defending? Do you have a solid DM or two? Have you worked on your set pieces? A good corner routine and a physical defender to head the ball can be huge over the course of the season. It sounds like you need to increase possession and take some of the burden off of your GK. The right way to do that depends on all of the questions I've asked.
This has been my major problem in the past. Transfers are the most fun in the game, but I used to bring in around 8-10 guys every summer, start 5-6 of them, and lose to teams far inferior to me on paper. This was the case whether I stayed in the Championship with Not. Forrest, was promoted with them, in the German second division with Dynamo Dresden, as well as the French Ligue 1 with Marseille. I guess its a question of moderation.
SI admits that there is a "gel" factor that represents how well the team play together. It is thought that formation, tactic, and player changes all can drop this factor. Hard to say what the cutoff is. I try to get my best team picked early in the preseason and get them 6 games prior to the season to gel. I found that doing this ended my pattern of slow starts to the season. On summers where I've made many transfers, I've even left out a good signing or two for the first game if I felt that I'd already made the max changes. I then add 1 player every game or two. In the meantime, I keep the new guys somewhat happy with reserve games. Unless they are a "poor attitude" player, you can usually keep them out 3-5 games with no impact on their happiness. Another reason to avoid the key player designation as much as possible.
Cannon, thanks for the suggestions. I'll apologize in advance because a lot of my answers to your questions are going to be questions as well -- I still have a lot to learn about FM and its inner workings. My 'traditional' formation is 3 DCs, 2 DMCs, 1 MC, 1 ML and 1 MR (with a 'short' forward arrow each) and 2 SCs. Recently one of my DMCs has gotten hurt, so I've dropped him, gone to 4 in the back, added an AMC and dropped one of the forwards. I'm...not sure. I've never really been certain what typifies a target forward in FM. I would imagine that it would be Heading, Passing and possibly Strength. Currently, my lone forward has 15 Heading, 10 Passing and 11 Strength. I did in the second division. I'm not sure whether I do now that the level of competition has been ratcheted up a notch. What attributes help in that area? My starting forward has a 10 for both Pace and Acceleration, I have 3 reserve forwards with average stats in both and 1 young player with a 15 for each. In terms of power, they all have average Strength and Balance aside from one player (different from the two mentioned above) who has 16 Balance. Up the middle, my DMC has 15 Creativity, my MC has 17 Creativity and my AMC has 14 Creativity. My wingers are all pretty average, above 10 but not greater than 12. A bunch of decent/good DCs, one excellent DC/R and really nobody who can play out left. In terms of what kind of defense that I play, I usually stick with Zonal. I'm not really sure what attributes mandate what kind of defense you should play. Although my guys aren't slugs, there isn't anybody with great speed. Does Marking apply more to Zonal or Man, or is it really required for both? What attributes should I be looking at when choosing my backline? One has a 10 Dribble, 2 have 13s and one has a 16. I have an RC who is good coming forward; I don't have anybody who can reliably come up the flank on the left. According to my Assitant Coach, it's Milos Ninkovic, my AMC. For me, it's Sipho Nunens, my MC. I admit that I may over-rate him simply because I really enjoy that he has a 20 in Long Shots, leading to some incredible goals over the course of the season. He does also have really high Dribbling, Crossing, Passing, Creativity and Decisions attributes. Probably goalie. In terms of field players, I don't really have anybody who can play left back/DML. I don't have a reliable DMR either. Going forward. Although I do have some solid defender, the bulk of quality in my team is in attack. Two, although one (Gavin McCann) is injured for the first month of the season. What's a good routine for setting up set-pieces? I do have a couple defenders with good physical stats and Heading. Should I have somebody challenge the keeper? I've never really tried anything beyond the defaults, to be honest. Thanks for any help you (or anybody else) might be able to give.
No problem. I love the game and always happy to help. Now lets look at your squad. From your description, your default formation looks like this: -------SC-------SC-------- --^-------------------^--- --ML-------MC---------MR-- -------DMC------DMC------- -----DC----DC----DC------- -----------GK------------- That formation looks very defensively weak out wide. I'm guessing most of your goals against come from attacks down the flanks. You are probably giving up 20+ shots a match. I'm guessing that this is your current one: -----------SC------------- --^-------AMC---------^--- --ML-------MC---------MR-- -----------DMC------------ -Lb-----DC----DC------RB-- -----------GK------------- That is a better formation but it sounds like you lack the personnel to really make it work. One obvious switch is to make the ML less attacking to cover the weak LB. You can then channel your offense through the center and right which would make use of the RB who you say is good going forward. I'll start at the back which looks like it is your problem. You have a poor keeper, no LB, avg-good DC, and an excellent DC/R. Shame about the lack of a good LB because in my experience it is harder to get a workable 3 DC formation to work with the FM match engine than in earlier CM games. For that reason, I try to use a 4 man backline as much as possible. If you have a chance, I'd make getting someone to sit on the LB role. I've found that even an average LB in a 4man line can be easier to make work than a 3 man backline with 3 pretty good DC. You said that the defenders don't have good speed. That makes it even harder to make a workable 3man backline unless you have very speed, high workrate guys to do a lot of defensive work in the dmid spot and along the flanks. Two good DMCs (with one gone for a month) are a good asset for an overmatched team. I'm hoping that they both have pretty good workrates and reasonable speed and ability to read the attack. They have to do some serious heavy lifting to make 3DCs work. BTW, you don't want that creative DMC using any of that creativity in your type of formation since he'll go on walkabout and leave holes in the defense. I should have asked what the workrate and defensive capabilities of your widemen are. They have to track back a great deal when you don't have FBs. It sounds like you have them both in an attacking formation with arrows forward. That is probably a mistake since it'll leave your flanks much to open and lead to goals. I've never seen a 3DC formation work with widemen on full attack. Your MC and AMC are creative and you have 1 good wide midfielder who can dribble. In that case I'd use the MCs to playmake with the one good dribble wide guy used to pressure the defense and cross (if he can) into the box. The other wide guy sounds very average. I'd use him to cover the flank and not press forward as much. Your lone forward (15 Heading, 10 Passing and 11 Strength, 10 for both Pace and Acceleration, and very average balance) doesn't sound to me like a reliable targetman at the league level you are at. He'd be fine for a lower level but not Bundesliga targetman. In that case, you have some options. You can bring in that speedy forward and do a poor man's big guy/speedy guy combo or make attacks from midfield the center of offense. You have a good AMC, a long shot MC and a dribble guy out wide so run the offense through them. You didn't tell me much about their passing or ball control so I'm not sure if short passing/posession will work for you but given the lack of a good targetman and the weakness in the back, I'd try to retain possession as much as you can. On the set pieces, everybody has a different strategy. The default is not that great and the AI doesn't select takers or put players in the right positions very well. In your case, I'd use the best heading DC and that forward to challenge the GK and attack a post. I'd keep the long shot MC at the edge of the area and use the other attackers to attack a side and make runs towards the goal. Aim the corner towards the post far post or at least at the box. If you find the defense clearing it to easily (probably because your headers aren't good enough then switch the aim to let the longshot guy be the focus of the corner. You'll need to keep a couple of guys back with your weaker speed. Hope this helps. Good luck.
Cannon, thanks for your help. I picked up an aging but-still-servicable DL on a free a week before the transfer period ended and am rotating him with a backup player. It seems to be working out pretty well. In terms of formation, I've switched over to this: -----------SC------------- --------------------------- --ML-------MC---------MR-- -------DMC------DMC------- -LB-----DC----DC------RB-- -----------GK------------- Which seems to be working in terms of keeping their shots down and giving my squad a chance to nick a goal on the counter-attack. After calling out my main striker in the press and sitting him in favor of my speedster, I've started to get results from him, namely a 87th-minute goal as a sub on the road that wound up being the winner. Right now we're sitting in 6th in the Bundesliga with 20 points from 14 matches. While it's nice to think about a possible push for Europe, I don't expect us to hold onto that kind of position; it's still a fair cry from the bottom though. We're into the QFs of the German Cup after a scary match on the road that involved my left back getting sent off in the 24th minute, twice going ahead only for the home side to tie it up directly after the kickoff and winning 4-3 on penalties. After completely revamping my staff during the off-season, my scouts are starting to give me some results, finding a couple youngsters who will be immediately fighting for first team places, including a D DM R/L with good stats as a 19-year-old. Belgium seems to produce a lot of really good defenders in this game.
Good to hear. Glad I could help. I've been away from FM for a couple of weeks as I get caught up in the start of the real football season. I'm also not beta testing this time so I'll not get a chance to check out FM06 until its out for everybody. I'm thinking of holding off on FM06 until after the first patch this time but of course I'll probably end up breaking down and getting it right away only to get driven crazy by the bugs.
I think i'm about done with this game now. Played alot of LLM games when it first came out, took Hull to a CL victory, lately ive just been managing large teams and trying to focus on tactical perfection or close to it. Just finished a season with my chelsea 2009 youth team, sold everyone within the first 2 years, mainly playing with cheap pickups like guaring and mokoena now. Won all 38 league games, scored 128 conceded 7. Won CL with 1 draw in group stage home to roma. Won league cup, fa cup rather easily as well. Turned down the england job though. I play a 3-2-4-1 -------SC-------- AM--AM--AM--AM -v----v----v---v- ------------------ -----DM--DM----- LB----v-CB-v---RB
Yeah, Chelsea and other top clubs are still too easy in FM. Not really news especially if you snap up much of the good young talent. That is why I never play Arsenal anymore. What LL clubs did you try? I assume you aren't talking about Hull since they are hardly lower league. Try taking Vauxhall Motors to the prem or getting a bottom Brazilian team like SER Chapadão promoted to the top division for a real challenge.
Some of you may remember my relegation battle. I'm getting towards the end of the 2012/13 season and Forest will stay in the Premier League. In a critical home clash between Forest and Birmingham, mid-season signing Florent Sinama-Pongolle scored 5 goals in the first half to lead the Reds to a 5-1 victory over relegation rivals Birmingham. With this victory I am 9 points out of 18th place, held by Everton. I can't go down. There are four teams more likely to do that. I'm sitting pretty and feeling good. Before the season I was not expected to make it, now I'm fighting for 12th place and some more cash. Florent Sinama-Pongolle has been a machine. Since signing him Jan. 1 he has led Forest with 18 goals in 13 games. Nice. I got him from Sporting CP for $17 million. Well worth it IMO considering I had a -23 goal diff before his signing. I now have -9. Very nice.
I finished up my season last night in 12th place. The board are delighted. This off-season I'm just going to try and shore up the defense with a couple free transfers I signed in January. An amazing thing happened this year. My phenom striker, Florent Sinama-Pongolle ended the season with 21 league goals and tied for the top scorer in the Premier League...having been signed in January! He beat everyone else in half the season. No, he didn't come from another Premier League club. I signed him from France.
Yeah, Sinema-Pongolle is 'The Truth' in this game -- unfortunately by the time that I had managed to get even close to signing him, he was worth 18 million Euros and thus completely out of my price range. Incidentally, after finishing 11th in the Bundesliga, my board decided that next season the target would be qualifying for Europe. And gave me a 1.9 million transfer kitty to accomplish this with. I managed to bring in Hugo Viana, Kaspar Bogelund and Mark Van Bommel on frees, as well as Alexander Madlung (excellent DC) for 1.8 million; still, making Europe seemed to be asking a big much. So, in a fit of pique, I asked the board for increased transfer funds. Imagine my surprise when they opened the doors to the bank vault and gave me 20 million to throw around. I wound up splashing it out for Adriano (the left back), Frank Demouge (Dutch striker), Van den Borre (Belgian center-back) and Igor Akfineev, who is one of the best young keepers in the game. Oh yes, and Mokoena, who was unbelievably still in South Africa. With a backline of Adriano, Madlung, Van den Borre and Bogelund, plus Akfineev between the posts, I'm tied with Munich for least goals allowed and I can push up a lot more. My current formation: --------S------- --------^------- AML---AMC--AMR ----MC--MC----- ----------------- DL--CB--CB---DR Although I'm currently in a CL spot, I'd be pretty happy to make the UEFA Cup. I'm still waiting for the crowd size to catch up to the team's performance, we'll draw 50K when Munich is in town but fall short of 30K against most other teams.
--I decided to take a spin at Marseille and had Sinama-Pongolle and Hanne Hagary as my strikeforce. Such a great pairing.
Ive decided to have one more run at LLM with my favorite conference team to manage - Exeter. We start with our wage budget already over the whopping 10k a week alotted to us, so signing players was a bit of a challenge. Friendlies are going well enough, won all 3 or 4-0, but we did lose to fulham 2-1 which was rather encouraging considering my team is as crap as they come. Board expects respectable league position, its currently looking very achievable as long as my main striker doesnt get injured.
I managed to finish the season 3rd in the Bundesliga, good enough for a Champion's League spot -- or at least a playoff match to qualify for the CL group stages. I went into the draw fairly optimistic -- there's a lot of decent-to-good teams that I could have gotten matched up against, although I wasn't seeded. I wound up getting Chelsea, who now had Donovan, Podolski, Saviola, Rosicky and Woodgate as well as the usual suspects. The only sign of weakness was at keeper, where I was surprised to see that I had two players who would be a starter on their team. When I was done swearing, I figured my best chance was to be fairly attacking on the road and try and sneak an away goal. A Kezman strike in the 2nd minute was worrying; by no means did I start to panic. After getting a corner out of nothing, Madlung smashed a header just under the bar and we were in business. Then, straight off the kickoff, we hit Chelsea on the break again, Mokoena getting loose and slotting one past a stranded keeper. Going into the break 2-1 up was beyond my wildest expectations. I didn't want to completely bunker; still, I knew Chelsea would be throwing everything they had at me. 15 minutes into the second half, Akinfeev punched Terry on a corner, giving up the penalty. Then he made amends by saving it. 10 minutes after that, Podolski got a look and slotted it far post. 2-2. Amazingly, Chelsea didn't generate a shot on goal after that and I took my 2-2 draw and ran. The return leg was pretty tense, I decided to go with a defensive, counter-attacking strategy and it worked out as the game went scoreless into injury time. Which is when Van Bommel took a knock. And the game immediately went to the tactical screen, Chelsea surging forward with my captain sitting behind their goal. So of course I hit them on the break, Mokoena slipping it into the side-netting and effectively icing the fixture. For laughs, I scored again in the 95th minute. Through to the group stages, drawn with Manchester United, Dynamo Kiev and Banik Ostrava. Could have been much worse.
--In my game there's this kid. He started in San Lorenzo's youth team and then moved to Independiente. After a couple of good seasons there he moved to River for $12.5 million. After 2 years there he moved to Boca for $13 million. He spends two years with Boca and moves back to River for $14.5 million. After another two years he goes back to Boca for another $14.5 million. 2 more years and another $15.5 million and he's back with River. As I'm typing this, he just completed an $18 million move to Boca, yet again. I'm seriously thinking of buying him just to stop this constant back and forth.
That's hilarious. I've always wondered if the game has mechanics that weigh against that kind of move, i.e. a player switching between rivals. I've noticed that there's a fair amount of Real Madrid-Barcelona switches (Iniesta is on RM right now) as well as Celtic-Rangers switches. I got through the group stage of the CL with the following results: 0-2 against Man U, A 2-0 against Kiev, H 2-0 against Banik, A 3-0 against Banik, H 4-0 against Man U, H 1-1 against Kiev, A I even briefly topped the group after the 4-0 home win over the Red Devils (Scorers: Santi, Van Bommel, Tiffert(x2)); the away draw against Kiev meant that Man U beat me out by 2 points. So I didn't get a seed and was drawn with Milan in the knockout phase. They're even more of a powerhouse than they are now and I don't give myself much of a chance. In the league, I've got a 10 point lead over Munich with 14 games remaining and a game at their place coming up on the fixture list. My team is so young that I'm worried that we're going to fall apart down the stretch and a 6-point swing could precipitate such a swoon. However, I did knock Bayern out of the German Cup with a 1-0 win at home and now face an amateur side in the quarterfinals. I'm planning to put out a mixture of reserves and veterans in the hope that the reserves will keep the vets from getting complacent and the vets will calm down the kids. I'm still debating whether to try and completely overwhelm them from the first kick of the ball or to sit back and bide my time. Despite having finished 3rd, my board decided to continue with the low transfer amounts, giving me 2.5m Euros to spend. Granted, they had given an incredible amount of money (for me) the year before, reducing the bank balance to only 6m Euros. After selling two of my backup strikers, I finally had enough money to pry Guarin away from Frankfurt by buying off his contract. Add on a couple of decent players (Santi, a Colombian named Rivas, a young Frenchman named Kitambala) that I picked up on frees and my squad is looking pretty good. It'll look even better next year, as I add right-winger Maxi Rodriguez and, I hope, a servicable D CL and another striker.
What really annoys me is when you put a bid in for a player, a player that nobody else is intrested in, then as soon as you put a bid in every tom, dick and harry come in with a bid. This happened with Orlando Pirates forward Mokoena, i bid 275k and it was excepted, agreed personnel terms then all of a sudden about 10 other clubs bid for him, same thing happened with Freddy Guarin, agreed a £1million fee and terms then everyone else decides they want him, the bastard ended up going to Fenebach. After narrowly missing out for a place in the Premiership, these two would of been ideal for my push up the league this term, oh well, i have purchased some cracking free transfers and still have my transfer kitty full, i wont settle for anything less than top 2 this season.
Annoy me too but its very realistic. Ask Wenger if other teams use Arsenal's transfer plans to decide who to buy. There is also a big moan from Boro about it on the SkySports site today. I don't have a problems with it. It is already to easy to get good players in FM.
My God, how could you? You...you're not even a man, go..go sit in the corner and think about what you've done. And praise God if your lucky that you actually regain your manhood by the time Football Manager 2006 comes out. "I Can't find my CD", Lord of Mercy that the worst most inappropriate thing I've ever heard...you should be massively, massively ashamed of yourself.
Some great stories in this thread I started a game as the Crew as it pains me quite a bit to see them suck so much (dont ask why). The first thing I did was get rid of Sanneh and Fraser and brought in Ryan Suarez. Now in real life this would have been a disaster of a move but he played like a demon for me. I also signed DeRosario, Djalminha on a free, a Canadian called Jonothan de Guzman from Holland and Dong Fangzhou from Man Utd (he flopped). I made the semi-finals but the team needed some work. I went nuts in the off-season. Dempsey was traded in, Freddy Guarin signed on a free as did Bergkamp for his last 6 months in the game. Adam Boyd came in from Hartlepool Utd but didnt do much. Karbasiyoon and Otsemobor joined him. I stormed the league. Undefeated. Buddle and de Guzman played superb all season, as did captain Guarin. MLS Cup I beat D.C. 5-0. de Guzman then went to VfB Stutgart for £8m. The following season was similar. I won the Champions Cup with McBride and Convey (£3m of the de Guzman money) in my team. Now, I thought this would easily be enough to get me a Premiership job. Not so. I tried and tried for months to get to England but no-one would have me. I ended up taking over Bournemouth - 16th in League One after about 10 games. 3 matches later - all wins - and West Brom approach me. They are about 4 places above me after suffering consecutive relegations. Strange this is, they are rich as hell. Chairman says I can have £10m so I turn my back on Bournemouth. I got them promoted in second place thanks to a guy called Anatolij Doros. A Macedonian I picked up from his home country for about £1m. He hit 21 goals in 13 games. The next season was spectacular. Armed with Adu, Ugur Yildirim, Junior Khanye (Wizard of the Dribble), Luca Franchini and Billy Jones, I just stormed the Championship. I added Senderos and Donovan amongst other for my assault on the Premiership. I also bagged the USMNT job. Tipped for certain relegation I finish 4th, 2 points of 3rd and in the CL. My ambition now I reckon is to win the Prem with these guys then go back to MLS with maybe DC or San Jose.
You thought 2 MLS titles would get you a Prem job? In FM06 news, it looks like I may be beta testing it soon after all. Hadn't heard from SI so I figured they were just doing internal testing or had already had enough testers but now it looks they are bringing back some of last year's testers. I'm really looking forward to seeing the new features. Now, to explain to my wife that I really need to play Fm more. That should be easy.