[Archived] Football Manager 2010

[brfcshabba]

So I have started with Whitehaven in English Nothern League Division Two. Strike force both have 3 for finishing .

[Hughesy]

I restarted a game as Arsenal last night. About 14 leagues in 7 countries (all view only) and the game runs fine now.

Played 4 top of the league & qualified for the Champs league. Signed Dzeko (beat United to him) and Di Maria.

[tcj_jones]

Other decent shouts depending on budget are Cattermole, Camacho, Biglia, Defour, Appiah, Hamsik from experience.

Got me Steven Appiah with Sheffield Wednesaday in the Championship

Sebastien Viera is an absolute must for those without a budget and in need of a keeper. He's available on a free. I've also brought in Zenden, Fleck and Barazite on loan deals, and a couple of others.

Nearing the end of pre-season.

Oh, Hemdani is another great player for a free.

[G Somerset Rover]

I'm going to start a Rovers career tonight and just wondered out of those of you who have started one already, what did you do about the three (or four if you include Emo) right backs at the club? I know Chimbonda can play left back, but I'd prefer to bring in a natural left footer there. So basically, who did you ship out first? I'd be tempted to let Salgado go (35k pw), but players who have usually just signed are a nightmare to get rid of.

DD sorry if I've missed it but have you still got Kalinic in your squad all those year's in?

[DeadlyDirk]

I'm going to start a Rovers career tonight and just wondered out of those of you who have started one already, what did you do about the three (or four if you include Emo) right backs at the club? I know Chimbonda can play left back, but I'd prefer to bring in a natural left footer there. So basically, who did you ship out first? I'd be tempted to let Salgado go (35k pw), but players who have usually just signed are a nightmare to get rid of.

DD sorry if I've missed it but have you still got Kalinic in your squad all those year's in?

He's still in the squad but plays second fiddle to Cardoza and Guilherme, has about 70 goals in 150 games so done pretty well to be fair. The Hajduk Split researcher obviously saw something in him!!

As for fullbacks I plaed Jacobsen at RB and Chimbonda LB. Salgado probably is hard to shift, I kept him around to train others players etc but he never really played much, played Emerton in CM in first couple of seasons.

Joe Mattock is a great left back if you can get him cheap enough, Carlos Diogo did pretty well at RB for me too on a free transfer (Probably isn't that expensive too buy. Dirk Marcellis (sp??) is my current RB, still with the odd games for Diogo, Emerton and Phil Jones.

For the record in season 5 I still have the following Rovers

Samba - First XI (Regular for the last 5 years)

N'Zonzi - First XI (Regular for the last 5 years)

Hoilett - First 18 (Been in and out of the team for the last 5 years, was a regular until Judge's emergence.)

Judge - First 18 (Spent most of the early years on loan, turned into an almost regular this year swapping placed with Hoilett.)

Kalinic - First 18 (Was first choice until Cardoza came in last year, still 3rd choice striker)

Givet - First 18 (Hard regular spells at Center Back and at Left Back over the years, still an important squad player when needed, first choice sub.)

Emerton - Fringe Player (Regular in midfield early on, poor when at RB, still a useful squad player to have due to his versatility, legs are more or less gone now.)

Phil Jones - Fringe Player (Just coming into contention now really, too many good players in front of him though, goal on his league debut )

Gavin Gunning - Fringe Player (Almost went to Fulham but they didn't make the loan deal permanent, had a few runs in the first team when others are injured.)

Cameron Lindsay - Fringe Player (Couple of cup games here and there, decent player now but so many better in front of him. Would still walk into any championship team and lower table prem teams though - Just to show how good some of these guys can get with the right management )

Michael Potts - Fringe Player (Good player these days, just doesn't really fit into my formation being an AMC.)

Alex Billington - Fringe Player (Another good player, probably one of the most promising youngsters, Mattock and my Brazilian Danilo keep him out of the team, on loan to a championship club.)

Benni McCarthy - Scout (He's useless but I kept him around anyway, has something like 4 and 5 for judging ability and potential)

Think that's about it, might be a few other youth players knocking about. Just offloaded Marrow for 4m and Banton, Hitchcock, Ramm etc for low fees, the rest went long ago. This doesn't nessicarily mean these are the ones to keep, just how things have happened, often sold some of the better prospects to raise funds early on and some of the others have simply progressed late and were of no value to sell before.

What I really like about this version which is almost nothing to do with the game and is something you would expect to be in there but anyways.... In season two the rule about having 25 man squads, 8 of which must be English and 3?? (Can't remember off hand, might be 4) have to be trained at your club so it means you do actually have to pay attention to the youngsters coming through with the knowledge that in the future you'll need them as part of the squad.

I actually bought Joe Garner to get around this problem, needed a player who trained at the club and he has actually turned into a decent player! Now he's playing champions league football haha when he gets the odd outing!

Current Best 18

GK - Ochoa

RB - Dirk Marcellis

CB - Samba

CB - David Luiz

LB - Mattock

RM - Judge

CM - N'Zonzi

CM - Defour

LM - Adu

ST - Guilherme

ST - Cardoza

S1 - Carson

S2 - Givet

S3 - Witsel

S4 - Kalinic

S5 - Judge/Hoilett

S6 - Elm

S7 - Garner

[G Somerset Rover]

Thanks for that DD. It's good to see that you've still got many original Rovers still in and around your squad. It's often too easy to sell them on and bring in some unknown quantity. As you say the limit of foreign players will promote the need to spend more time and effort in bringing on younger players from the academy. A quick question for you or anybody else-i've just started my first game with rovers and I'm struggling to get any kind of decent results with the new tactic creator. Are people generally having success with it or reverting back to the sliders? Does anyone know why when I use the tactics creator that even when I put a centre back to 'defend' their mentality is still neutral? As opposed to the sliders where if you simply click 'centre back' then the defenders mentality will go to ultra defensive (which it should do). Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I'm on the mobile.

[Cocker]

I have given the PSP version a go and am a little disappointed mainly because its the same one from last year but with a new skin and updated players. Some might say that I should have expected this but the text and what the players say etc hasn't even been touched. The match day engine is the same aswell and I thought that would have been tweaked. Had a few players randomly disappearing too e.g. At the start with Rovers I have 3m to spend. Went to get Adu but he was too much. Later sold a couple of players and went back freddy but he had gone. Even typing his name didn't bring him up.

Dont get me wrong, I will still spend many hours on this but dont feel it was worth the £25 upgrade which I paid for it.

[DE.]

Thanks for that DD. It's good to see that you've still got many original Rovers still in and around your squad. It's often too easy to sell them on and bring in some unknown quantity. As you say the limit of foreign players will promote the need to spend more time and effort in bringing on younger players from the academy. A quick question for you or anybody else-i've just started my first game with rovers and I'm struggling to get any kind of decent results with the new tactic creator. Are people generally having success with it or reverting back to the sliders? Does anyone know why when I use the tactics creator that even when I put a centre back to 'defend' their mentality is still neutral? As opposed to the sliders where if you simply click 'centre back' then the defenders mentality will go to ultra defensive (which it should do). Sorry if this doesn't make sense, I'm on the mobile.

I sometimes get results with the tactics creator but it rarely lasts. I'd only just mastered the sliders system so to learn a new system now is taking some time.

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/tactics-ebooks/tactical-theorems-10/

have a look at this, it helped me a little.

[awhom111]

Has anyone hired Tugay as a coach? I have him at Wolves and he is pretty helpful for the attacking and technical training.

[Miker]

I just started my Blackburn career. Will keep you posted on how things go. Results have been fairly positive so far. I'm only two games into the new season at the moment though.

Pre-season fixtures

5-1 Win

6-1 Win

2-0 Win

3-0 win

2-3 Loss

1-0 Win

Hull vs Blackburn 0-2 Win

Blackburn vs West Ham 1-1 Draw

Top Scorer

Roberts 3 (he's scored all my goals so far!)

Wolves offered 4mil straight up for Olsson. Although he looks fairly good in the game, I sold him as I had Chimbonda and Givet who can play there and can always get another backup for about a mil if I wanted to. I invested in two central midfield players instead, Andreas Johansson, an attacking midfielder, (the fan favourite of Danish side AaB) and loaned Lolo (can play defensive midfield or central defense) from Sevilla with an option to buy. Both cost me about a mil all up, so fairly good business for the time being.

My current starting 11 for the first 2 games has been:

GK Robinson (Keeper - Defend)

DR Salgado (Full Back - Auto)

DL Chimbonda (Full Back - Auto)

DC Samba (Central Defender - Stopper)

DC Givet (Central Defender - Cover)

MR Emerton (Wide Midfielder - Attack)

ML Pedersen (Wide Midfielder - Attack)

MC N'zonzi (Ball Winning Midfielder - Defend)

MC Johansson (Advanced Playmaker - Support)

ST Roberts (Target Man - Support)

ST Kalinic (Trequartista - Attack)

I found that setting up the formation correctly using player roles to the optimum level helps a lot. Once all my players are fully fit, I will likely play Dunn in place of Johansson and Reid or Grella in place of N'zonzi. Reid's attributes suit the role of a Ball Winning Midfielder much better than any other role. Emerton does better as a Wide Midfielder, while Diouf is stronger in the Winger role, so what I've done is employed Emerton whenever I've had to be more defensive and Diouf when more attacking, changing the roles accordingly.

When I played the demo I had an effective partnership with Kalinic as the Target Man and McCarthy as the Trequartista, but given Roberts is on a hot streak right now in my current game, I probably won't be changing it any time soon. I will be replacing Kalinic with McCarthy though, as he's been fairly poor. I've identified that Di Santo or Roberts can play in the Target Man role, while Kalinic or McCarthy can play as the Trequartista, but Kalinic can do well as a Target Man as well, so where possible I will try to play Kalinic and McCarthy together.

I tried playing a 4-5-1 or 4-2-3-1 in the demo, but didn't get very good results. 4-4-2 seems to work better and it means that I don't have 4 players fighting for a single position.

[DE.]

I just started my Blackburn career. Will keep you posted on how things go. Results have been fairly positive so far. I'm only two games into the new season at the moment though.

Pre-season fixtures

5-1 Win

6-1 Win

2-0 Win

3-0 win

2-3 Loss

1-0 Win

Hull vs Blackburn 0-2 Win

Blackburn vs West Ham 1-1 Draw

Top Scorer

Roberts 3 (he's scored all my goals so far!)

Wolves offered 4mil straight up for Olsson. Although he looks fairly good in the game, I sold him as I had Chimbonda and Givet who can play there and can always get another backup for about a mil if I wanted to. I invested in two central midfield players instead, Andreas Johansson, an attacking midfielder, (the fan favourite of Danish side AaB) and loaned Lolo (can play defensive midfield or central defense) from Sevilla with an option to buy. Both cost me about a mil all up, so fairly good business for the time being.

My current starting 11 for the first 2 games has been:

GK Robinson (Keeper - Defend)

DR Salgado (Full Back - Auto)

DL Chimbonda (Full Back - Auto)

DC Samba (Central Defender - Stopper)

DC Givet (Central Defender - Cover)

MR Emerton (Wide Midfielder - Attack)

ML Pedersen (Wide Midfielder - Attack)

MC N'zonzi (Ball Winning Midfielder - Defend)

MC Johansson (Advanced Playmaker - Support)

ST Roberts (Target Man - Support)

ST Kalinic (Trequartista - Attack)

I found that setting up the formation correctly using player roles to the optimum level helps a lot. Once all my players are fully fit, I will likely play Dunn in place of Johansson and Reid or Grella in place of N'zonzi. Reid's attributes suit the role of a Ball Winning Midfielder much better than any other role. Emerton does better as a Wide Midfielder, while Diouf is stronger in the Winger role, so what I've done is employed Emerton whenever I've had to be more defensive and Diouf when more attacking, changing the roles accordingly.

When I played the demo I had an effective partnership with Kalinic as the Target Man and McCarthy as the Trequartista, but given Roberts is on a hot streak right now in my current game, I probably won't be changing it any time soon. I will be replacing Kalinic with McCarthy though, as he's been fairly poor. I've identified that Di Santo or Roberts can play in the Target Man role, while Kalinic or McCarthy can play as the Trequartista, but Kalinic can do well as a Target Man as well, so where possible I will try to play Kalinic and McCarthy together.

I tried playing a 4-5-1 or 4-2-3-1 in the demo, but didn't get very good results. 4-4-2 seems to work better and it means that I don't have 4 players fighting for a single position.

Do you alter your formation/roles for different teams, or for home/away?

[Miker]

Do you alter your formation/roles for different teams, or for home/away?

I tweak the tactics from game to game, but I've found only the need to change the starting strategy usually. The team instructions I did based on what I think is a fairly limited team technically.

For example, I've set my philosophy to 'Rigid' and rarely change it. I've changed it to 'Very Rigid' when I went down to 10 men against Wolves early on in the game and have changed it to Fluid or Very Fluid on occasion if I've been chasing a game, but although my team appeared to improve in their play, I didn't really get a result from changing the philosophy to Fluid, so not sure how effective it is.

The Playing Style instructions I've largely based on the team I'm up against and the pitch. For instance, on a smaller pitch I use short passing, while on a longer pitch I'd use More Direct. Since my team is pretty short on creativity, I've had that setting always on More Disciplined, as I want the side to be better defensively. Marking is set as Zonal when I'm playing against a formation that differs from mine, man marking when it doesn't. Crossing I usually leave on default, but if my backroom staff tell me that the team I'm playing against can be exposed by crosses into the box then I change it to Float Crosses.

Closing Down and Tackling settings I'm not too sure about yet... since I usually set these through Opposition Instructions in game, I haven't paid too much attention to this at this point. I haven't played around with Roaming settings either, but again, given the lack of creativity, I should probably leave it on default. I'm yet to play a top four side, so might change it to 'Stick to Position' when I do.

Most of the tweaking I do during the game, not before. Depending on who I'm playing, whether I'm home/away and what the odds are like... I will set my starting strategy appropriately. It's usually Defensive, Standard or Attacking, but if my backroom staff have advised me that the team like to keep possession (usually for a better side) then I will use Counter. If they tell me that the team is very defensive and like to catch teams on the counter and are hard to break down etc. then I will use Control.

I don't change player roles as they should generally stay the same no matter how attacking or defensive I am. The only change is the full backs and wingers. The full backs are set on automatic so change with my team strategy and the wingers I change from Wide Midfielder to Winger roles depending on the players and strategy I'm employing.

[Miker]

My away record has been disappointing so far. Since the West Ham game, my results have been as follows:

Wolves - Blackburn 1-2 loss

Southampton - Blackburn (League Cup) 1-0 loss

Blackburn - Bolton 1-0 win

Aston Villa - Blackburn 1-0 loss

I must be doing something wrong, but I was dominating throughout the Southampton and Aston Villa games with heaps of 'clear cut chances' and shots on goal, but in the end I wasn't able to break through. It was really surprising in my last game against Villa as I thought I had got my tactics spot on and was keeping their two fast strikers Delfonueso and Agbonlahor at bay by playing deep and setting their closing down/tight marking settings to never to ensure they didn't get past me, yet the goal they scored against me was on a counter. They were unable to successfully penetrate my defense all game except for that one moment. All my defenders had ratings of 7.2/7.3 as well, so it was very strange.

Currently sitting in 10th after 5 games with 7 points and +1 Goal Difference.

[DE.]

Interesting. My away record has actually been superb, have beaten liverpool 1-0 at anfield, got a 1-1 against Arsenal at the emirates, and beaten Bumley, Stoke, Birmingham and Villa away from home.

My home form, unusually, is poor. I usually change from 'counter' away to 'control' at home but it isn't really working at the moment. I'm not doing terribly at home, but 0-0 against Hull and 1-1 against Portsmouth, both at Ewood, tells its own story

[brfcshabba]

Still going nicely with Whitehaven. Promoted in first season with 38 goals in 38 games.

What I did notice that Blackburn have acquired Real Madrid as a feeder team

[tcj_jones]

How exactly do I access the editor? I load the game via steam and I can't see an option to open the editor. Likewise, I go into the program files and there's nothing there...

Basically I want to change the injury status of the Rovers players.

[DE.]

No idea with steam, I installed it normally and the editor is as usual in a folder.

FFS, my team started playing really badly for a while, I had no idea why. Changed loads of things, nothing worked. Unfortunately I overlooked the fact that for some reason the game had set both my midfielders as "box to box" mids! Grella obviously did not excel in that role, now I've changed him back to deep-lying playmaker we're back to playing well. Damn it, all the points I've lost because of stupidly overlooking such a small thing

Edit: Was just leading Arsenal 1-0 at home, they get a penalty in the 93rd minute of 2 minutes added on. Seems the game has readily accounted for big team bias as well. Nice work, SI.

[DE.]

Ended my first season 13th after a dismal final day 2-1 home defeat to Wigan

Big changes made in the summer, though.

Out:

Hoilett - 4M

Zurab - 2.5M

Salgado - 2.5M (!!)

Poulsen - 1.6M

Fielding - 240k

Brown - 1.5M

Van Heerden - 2M

Benni Mac - 700k

In:

Michael Owen - 2.1M

Riquelme - free

Laszio Selpi - 400k

Zonneveld - 625k

Jo - 5.5M

First match, beat Wigan 1-0 away with a 92nd minute winner from that man Jo hopefully a better season this year.

[tcj_jones]

How exactly does the potential rating on the editor work with players who aren't youngsters?

For example, a 28 year old might be rated 145 for current ability and 160 for potential, but another 145 / 150...

[awhom111]

A lot of times the researcher just stops changing the PA after the player gets to a certain age. For older players, the PA is supposed to be the highest CA they ever reached in their career. Except for goalkeepers, no 28 year-old is ever going to increase in CA anyways.

In my game, Shearer is now managing Rovers. Pompey got taken over by a Kenyan and they hired Henning Berg.

[Majiball]

In my game, Shearer is now managing Rovers. Pompey got taken over by a Kenyan and they hired Henning Berg.

Ah but hows he doing with us?, hopefully better than at Sportsdirect.com United.

[G Somerset Rover]

Started a Southampton career and if you want a player to sign for a non-premiership side (then again he could still probably do the business there) then go for Emad Motaeb who is an Egyptian goal machine. The guy can be signed for 190k and will bag you more goals then he does games. I also signed his fellow countryman Wael Goma (CB - Rovers have been linked before) and he's a steal too..my scouts think he can still cut it in the prem.

[awhom111]

Ah but hows he doing with us?, hopefully better than at Sportsdirect.com United.

He did okay. He got Rovers to 12th after joining when we were just above the drop zone. and I finished in 11th with Wolves.

[Hughesy]

Not played it as much as I would like yet but im getting there........

Manager of Arsenal.

P35, W22, Lost just 3 (United, Liverpool & Blackburn Away)

In league - 23 games in - won 14 & lost 3 games....6pts off the top and 4pts clear of 5th place.

League Cup - Out on Penalties to Chelsea

FA Cup - In 5th round and put Spurs out

Champs Cup - Into knock-outs vs Bayern

Dzeko is a quality signing - blasted £20m on him, however so far he has played 29 games, bagged 21 and got 5 assists. I play him alongside or near to Van Persie (P26, scored 12, 6 assists)

3 main signings so far.....Dzeko (£20m), Di Maria (£4.7m), Lorenzo Crisetig (£4m)

[Billy Castell]

Stupid and rather pointless question here, but is FM 2010 a whole new game, or one of the versions that are an enhanced and updated model of the previous year? And are CM/FM legends Mads Jorgensen and Kennedy Bakirloglu still lurking on the database?