[Archived] Football Manager 2009

[tcj_jones]

Not really, no. Most of the time when you transfer list a player that's pretty average, you won't get any bids.

Half the time you'll have a player and will offer him to every club in the game, not one choosing to make an offer. Jason Roberts was an example in the last game. I offered him to clubs for £0 and not one club wanted him, this mid-way through the summer. I reckon a couple of Premier league clubs would be interested, plus half the Championship in real life.

If a club were interested in an average player, 90% of the time, the only way to offload them was to sell them at a fraction of their value, which, again, is totally unrealistic. A player of good age on average wages might be worth £3m, but the most you'll get is about £500k.

If you wanted to shift, say, seven players, it always seemed as though, whoever they were, only three or four would be bid for and the rest would be left just clogging up the reserves.

The only thing which seems to prevent you selling your players in this version is the fact that they've just joined the club. I experimented with Rovers quickly and by just offering around managed to sell:

Reid: £3m

Dunn: £3m

Derbyshire: £3.5m

Roberts: £1m

Brown: £750k

McCarthy: £3m

These are all pretty realistic prices considering their value and importance to the club and I probably could have got more for them. On top of that, clubs were interested Ooijer, Mokoena and Santa Cruz and even the likes of Fowler. What is more, I managed to sell them all within a week, I didn't have to wait months to receive an offer. Conceiveably then, I could have shifted up to ten players in a week and for reasonable sums. That NEVER would have happened in any previous FM. The difference is very noticeable.

[Hughesy]

Ah get you! Yeah thats much improved then.

What other new features have been added into the game other than the media interaction and the 3D engine?

[LeChuck]

The transfer system is the biggest plus point I think, SI said they completely rewrote the code for that instead of just modifying it like with the rest of the game.

The AI controlled clubs now know how to negotiate as well. They've now learnt the art of 'meeting in the middle' instead of bumping their price up every time you make a bid. Also, their bids are becoming more complex, I've had quite a few teams try to loan Elano with a view to a permanent transfer at £8 or so million. Plus, as a lower league team (or top team I guess) you can go to other clubs and ask them who would be available to loan.

Hughesy: Assistant manager feedback is probably the other biggest addition. He'll now recommend some players for your weakest positions, and you can look at his view of the game where he'll give you tips on how to improve things. These are usually things like "xxx is used to be asked to close the opposition down more", "there is too much of a gap between our defence and midfield" or "xxx would be less of a threat if we showed him on to his weaker foot". Not word-for-word there, but you get the idea.

The only other thing really worth mentioning is that you can train players to have certain Preferred Moves (those listed when you look at the positions he can play), such as shoot from long range, dive in to tackles, run out wide etc. etc. I think I might be right in saying you can also ask him to stop ones that already exist as well.

[Hughesy]

What about the boardroom and the running the club side like New stadiums/ stands, developing training etc? Is that practically the same?

What date it out again?

[LeChuck]

As far as I know that side of the board room is the same. A manager has absolutely nothing to do with stadium expansions so I can't imagine why they'd put this in, they're trying to make it as realistic as possible. I'm not sure about the training side of things, the demo only lets you play for six months so I didn't see the point in setting training up. I haven't read anything about major changes though. The only thing that comes close to that is improved options for reserve sides - you can now make first team players available for the reserves if you wish (permanently, not just for 5 days like 08), and before every reserve match the manager will come to you and ask which first team players would be available for the match. Useful for keeping match fitness up, or bringing players back from injuries.

It's out November 14th I think. I could Google to that to make sure, but then again...so could you.

[Guest Kamy100]

Agree what has been said above, the improvements have really added to making FM even more addictive than usual. Sure there are bugs but most of these will be sorted out with the patch they are going to release on 14th November (release date of the game).

Having said all of that I am really struggling to win games, normally with Rovers I can develop tactics which get us secure in mid-table, but thus far I am in the relegation zone, I think I am going to have to change my approach. Loving the assistant manager feedback, it makes it feel more real, particularly feedback on where things are going wrong in matches.

[Mc Love]

There will be a patch available on the day of release. Thank God, because the injury bug makes the game unplayable. While this is a relief, it is also a poor show from SI, who seem to overlook the same bugs every year.

Nevertheless, I think this game looks unbelieveable. Every year it gets better and better.

The best thing about the game? You can actually sell your players, and for reasonable fees! I was able to sell all the deadwood in my squad - some six players - and loan a few out within one week. Thank you SI for FINALLY making this more realistic!

Thank god for that, i havent tried it, but i actually did manage to sell Moko for a good bit of money. Although buying players is still an ardous task.

[ackroyd75]

KAMY

Having said all of that I am really struggling to win games, normally with Rovers I can develop tactics which get us secure in mid-table, but thus far I am in the relegation zone,

I am in the same boat!

Has anyone found a half decent tactic? One that i could win the odd game!

[Mc Love]

Only games i won were in pre-season, even beat hibernian 5-1

I think the feedback in the matches might be messing things up, because we tend to follow this and make umpteen changes which i think affects the in game players

[LeChuck]

The best advice I can give is that tactics from 07/08 do not work at all, so don't try and stick to tactics you've used in the past. They're using the match engine system from FM Live so it's completely different. Apparently people are having success with a short passing, quick tempo game, and use of a target man with supply set to 'mixed' seems to work for a lot of people as well.

Also remember the arrows don't signify runs anymore, they're just used to show the 'forward runs' setting in the player instructions (i.e. back arrow = rarely, forward arrow = often). I originally had my central defenders with no arrows (because I didn't want them dropping deep), meaning their forward run setting was 'occasionally' so I was conceding loads of goals. After I worked out what the arrows meant I stopped conceding as many.

[Mc Love]

So CB's need arrows? Prob pointing back to the goals? I have tried most if not all what you have said LeChuck, and have experienced mixed results with more draws but no wins

[LeChuck]

Yeah centre backs need arrows going backwards (just means CBs forward runs are 'rarely' - who wants their centre backs going forward?). SI have, in effect, removed arrows from the game. All the current arrows do is signify what the 'forward runs' setting is. Try playing with that setting and see the arrows change accordingly, you'll see what I mean.

To be honest I'm struggling to have success as well, but the things I mentioned in the last post did turn results round somewhat and have been pretty widely reported on FM forums.

[Mc Love]

Yeah true, so we can basically forget about the arrows, makes a lot of sense really, i guess SI were trying to make the tactics settings easier by including that.

[Mc Love]

Just played one of the best matches, and it all came about after changing my tactics through the game! Playing everton, they went 1-0 up, cruz scored header in dying mins then extra time, saha scores again for them and santa cruz and benni score two in quick succession, then saha scores again to make it 3-3 and rovers won 5-4 on pens!!

Brilliant

[Amo]

Quick question because I never played FM2008. Was it possible to use the FM2007 template because I didn't like the look of dark font on light background. And the FaceGen system reminded me of something out of a footy sim.

[Hughesy]

Im hoping on this game they have sorted the player pics? On the last version very few players actually had pics - has this one?

[LeChuck]

Quick question because I never played FM2008. Was it possible to use the FM2007 template because I didn't like the look of dark font on light background. And the FaceGen system reminded me of something out of a footy sim.

It wasn't possible to use the 07 skin (I assume that's what you mean) in 08. The default skin with 09 is a great improvement though, I usually hate the default one but I do quite like this one. The game comes with 'light' and 'dark' versions now anyway, so I'm sure you'll like one of them.

Im hoping on this game they have sorted the player pics? On the last version very few players actually had pics - has this one?

That's a legal thing rather than SI being lazy. There are plenty of non-official facepacks released though to fill the gap, http://www.sortitoutsi.net will have them when they come out. The same goes for proper club badges, kits etc. in the Premier League as well. All you do is download the .zip/.rar file in to a folder called 'graphics' in the FM folder in My Documents, it's incredibly easy.

[Hughesy]

Didnt know there was patches for things like that on this game - cool. Yeah your right its easy stuff.

Il download them all when the game is out. Cheers

[Ricky]

Does this have the youth teams and stuff? We were chatting last night at football and weren't sure if one of our players might be on there. He's only 16 but is with hereforunited after being released by Middlesboro over the summer.

Have a look if you can spot him on there, it's Chris Hyde.

[Amo]

@Le Chuck - Thanks for the info. How about the FaceGen feature? Has that returned to FM2009? Is there anyway you can disable it altogether? I've never cared so much about having player's faces gaping at me.

[Anti-Dingle-Brigade]

Anybody have a link to the demo, which ISN'T via Steam because it's being a pain in the arse.

There was one posted earlier but it has expired.

[Mc Love]

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/entertainm...puter-game.html

[LeChuck]

@Le Chuck - Thanks for the info. How about the FaceGen feature? Has that returned to FM2009? Is there anyway you can disable it altogether? I've never cared so much about having player's faces gaping at me.

As there's only 6 months playable in the demo you don't really get far enough for the game to use the FaceGen feature. I have no idea if you can turn it off to be honest, I think the only way might be to stop it showing any face pictures at all. I wouldn't expect this to be a new feature though, so if it's not possible in 08 then I don't think it'll be possible in 09.

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/entertainm...puter-game.html

I think that's the link that's dead. You can get via torrent if you want, try this: http://www.mininova.org/tor/1968608

[awhom111]

Just another point that nobody had mentioned yet:

Rovers start with 10 million to spend! That actually leaves us better than quite a few other Premier League sides.

[Mc Love]

Still sh*te if you dont have good tactics