[Archived] Football Manager 2011

[cmb211087]

The 48month trick, I landed sissoko, hazard, piatti, shawcross, Romero, walker, one of the two Belgian cb wonderkids (the one beginning with a)

Then with the left over I just bought will keane, gueye, jack robinson, another who I can't remember, and wellbeck on loan.

Oldest player is Givet at 29, average age 20, and I'm top of the league in November having not lost once. The only players I have left from the original are givet and hoillet, but JR will be putting givet out soon.

[DE.]

Started a game where I'd updated the database as much as possible and gave us a realistic transfer budget with the Jones sale considered, about £26M.

Holidayed for a couple of seasons, needless to say Steve Kean did not spend the money well and Rovers finished 12/13 season in 14th. Venky's, true to form, apparently had no desire to sack him and his job was 'secure', so I had no choice but to forcibly remove baldy from his position and assume the helm myself. I quite enjoy taking on challenges a few seasons in, as different players are usually released/transfer-listed, as opposed to basically the same players always being available at the start of a new game.

Had quite a bit of work ahead of me, and not a huge transfer budget, so my dealings consisted of:

In:

RSC (300K) - 32 years old, was still at City.

Roman Pavlyuchenko (300k) - 31, still at Spuds.

Iriney (free) - 32, a random DMC who is completely average. Was a legacy of Kean, sold him for 250k to Peterborough in Jan !

MGP (free) - 31, had been sold for 3.5M to Werder Breden back in 10/11. Still decent on a free, short contract, small wages.

Pierre Ducasse (free) - 26, a DMC. No idea who this fella is but he was a free and is decent if not spectacular.

Daniel Sturridge (free) - 24. Looked like a good idea at the time, but he's awful.

Dimitar Berbatov (free) - 32. On big wages but a good player.

Djuric Roelofsen (2M) - 19, a regen. Flagged up by my scouts as a player with mega-potential, stats for 19 years old are amazing. £2M an absolute bargain!

Owen Hargreaves (free) - 32. Only on £17k a week, stats are still excellent. As backup for Ducasse he's pretty good.

Total: £2.6M

Out:

Mancienne - 2.5M

Gunter - Loan fee 180k

Andrews (still hanging around) - free

Paul Robinson (the defender) - free

Ryan Nelsen - free

Jake Kean - 725k

Linganzi - free

Fellaini - £13.25, didn't really want to let him go as he's a good player but he made it clear he wanted out as soon as I arrived.

Elimane Coulibaly - 250k

Abubakari Yakubu - 575k

Bunn - 2M

Ramm - 500k loan fee

Benik Afobe - 240k

Goulon - 2.3m

Total: £23M.

My starting 11 is currently:

Robbo

Olsson

Samba

Ridgewell

Richards (Micah)

Ducasse

Formica

Roelofsen

RSC/Sturridge

Berbatov

Pavlyuchenko

Just entered January and we're 2nd, three points behind City. Doing much better than I'd expected actually, as the team isn't really that strong. I've bought cheap and sold at big profit (admittedly mostly thanks to Fellaini) which I'm sure Venky's are delighted with.

An injury to a couple of strikers and I'm screwed though, as I play with three of em. I've only really got Di Santo as backup, and he ain't that good.

Formica is an absolute beast Berbs is a great player and RSC is having a good season too despite his age, gets knocked quite easily but hasn't been out for any long periods. Daniel Sturridge is awful and will try and get rid in the summer. He came in on a free so anything other than wages is a profit I suppose.

I've also got Xabi Prieto but because he only plays MR and I have no wingers in my team he doesn't get a game trying to retrain him to centre mid but might just sell him.

[RoverMad86]

Never used the 48 month installment trick. I dont like owing clubs money, I like to pay for my deals upfront and only accept upfront deals.

I pretty much need my "Financial control" stat to be as high as possible.

[DE.]

Stunned to say I actually won the title with Rovers 3 games left, only had to win one of the first two to win the title but lost 2-1 to Arsenal away and 3-1 to Villa at home... got a sinking feeling. Last match was 5th placed Chelsea away, Utd had 14th placed Wolves away... pulled off a 1-0 win

It was pretty tight at the end!

Hardly a team of superstars either ...

Ronney scored 43 league goals good thing for me Utd's defence wasn't as good as their attack.

[bluebruce]

Never used the 48 month installment trick. I dont like owing clubs money, I like to pay for my deals upfront and only accept upfront deals.

I pretty much need my "Financial control" stat to be as high as possible.

Well, whilst I pretty much always only accept up front cash (unless it's someone I just want to shift rather than need the money from), the 48 month thing really does work much better. Yes there is a risk to it, but truthfully, if you're spending it wisely, you're going to be qualifying for the Champions League every year, and that will pay off the initial outlay on big stars. I'm going to be careful about using it from this summer on though.

But you can make it pay for itself very easily. It's invaluable for picking up excellent youth investments that you really want but don't want to affect your budget for your current team by signing. Those youth prospects can usually be sold for double or more (after gaining a lot of money from loan deals) before you've even paid all their fee yourself. With sell-ons tacked on. It really is a money machine, you should give it a try. Besides, even if you misfire with it briefly, your board will give you a big loan with a slow repayment and fix your finances.

[cmb211087]

Sold Hazard to Inter for 30m, I say I sold, I had no choice in the matter!!

Sissoko won't go to Madrid despite them offering me 24m and him handing a transfer request in.

Bought welbeck for 15m after he scored 30 goals for me last season, getting us to 3rd and an fa cup win.

Piatti and my Belgian defender likely to leave next, as both have requested transfers as my club ain't big enough. Will see me with a lot of money though if my big four earners leave, especially when I have just bought kids off the reports of my head scout who has been fantastic at getting me cheap wonderkids, they cover all the places ai am likely to lose players so it's all good, though the champs league may be hard.

[bluebruce]

Meh, if your players issue transfer requests, just reject them. They'll get over it soon enough Unless the patches changed that significantly, but I've found this always works on every FM I've played. IMO it's not worth letting a star go just because they're pouting, not if they're good enough to be in your first XI and you can't easily find a replacement of superior quality. Just drop them for a while and clubs will stop looking, they'll stop thinking they're amazing, and they'll generally figure out that their career will vanish if they don't get back to their best. If it goes on too long you can try having a word with them.

[cmb211087]

But the way I am seeing this is I have ready made replacements on around about 60k less a week, and will make a ton of money which I can use to majorly expand. We shall see though. Winning the fa cup and getting automatic entry to the champs legit group stages via 3rd place has left me wondering how to go about my next move. Champs league money will do nicely though.

[bluebruce]

Champs League money will suit you very nicely indeed. Think it's worth about £26 million or more, getting as far as you already have. Something like 5-6 million in prize money (arrives when you get knocked out I think) and about £21.5 million in TV money at the end of the season. Don't quote me on those though, just off the top of my head.

Back to the players...well, sell them if you've got replacements who are AT LEAST as good and on less money. If they're inferior at all though, you're wasting your time aren't you?

Just got a great message after my youth team spanked Hereford 9-3 on aggregate in the League Cup Semi (amazing how Hereford got there, they're League Two but beat three Prem teams and two Championship I think).

"Gay spotted at Ewood Park"

[cmb211087]

I sold Piatti, Sissoko and my Belgian defender, got over 60m in total plus 30m for hazard so looking healthy finance wise.

Got the group of death in champs though, Barca, Marseille and A.N Other who I can't remember but are a big name. barca beat me 3-1 at their place.

As for replacements, got Coates in to replaces the Belgian, bought for 3m and doing a fantastic job in defense. Got N'kolou?? On a free to replace sissoko and a few regens who are very highly rated (one scored a hat trick on his debut against Bolton). Pretty strong team and cut around 280k a week plus bonuses off the wage bill. Second in the league in October, still in all cups and expanding re stadium, youth, training etc. Going to do a venkys, go cheap sell high haha

[dazmaz]

Just fimished my 3rd season, ended up missing out on 4th by goal difference to spurs. Won europa league though.

I was on fire until january when venkeys decided to sell hazard for 29.5m to chelsea.. More or less revamped the team now with alot of very good youngsters, have a 16 year old regen thats good enough for first team as rotation.

Got a very helathy 45m transfer budget though

[bluebruce]

Champs League money will suit you very nicely indeed. Think it's worth about £26 million or more, getting as far as you already have. Something like 5-6 million in prize money (arrives when you get knocked out I think) and about £21.5 million in TV money at the end of the season. Don't quote me on those though, just off the top of my head.

Need to correct myself there. Having been knocked out of the first knockout round of the Champs League somewhat embarassingly 4-0 on aggregate (by Real Madrid though), I see that the prize money at that point is 2.6 million.

[dazmaz]

Whored fm today, got Ganso in to replace hazard.. thus far been largely disappointing, 2 6 week injurys and a 3 week one has basically kept him sidelined however Jese (a kid on a free) has been playing very well, as has griezmann. Phil ones is on 17 goals in 41 apps (seems fm still has the corner glitch)

Pedersen is still going strong, well from the bench, he has started just seven games thus far but made 29 apps from the bench.

[RoverMad86]

I can not seem to get into a FM career at the minute. Keep starting games and doing Pre-Season before deciding I don't want to be X. So start all over again.

Anyone got a suggestion to keep me interested untill the new one comes out?

[Tim Southampton Rover]

Saints - League 1?

[RoverMad86]

Would do a Saints one, but I have a download that is the up-to-date world, as it is.

So Saints are Championship. It was updated on 15/July/2011

[dazmaz]

Finance challange is a hard one to do. Basically you have to get your club set up so it makes money each month

No spending the transfer budget (apart from money received from player sales)

Good for teams with very poor finance

Another is the freebe challange. You are only allowed to sign players on a free trasfer.

My current save is the only one I have gone past 3 seasons with. Im doing the finance challange with Rovers, doing quite good to. Okay I cheated a little at the start with the 48month trasfer but now thats balanced out with outgoing transfers over 48month and we are now worth a cool 100m and had a stadium expansion

[Tim Southampton Rover]

I'm in my 4th season with Rovers and the club just sorted out another loan to finance the club.......a bit too close to reality!

What would people like to see in FM2012?

I'd love it if we had different stadium designs based on real life grounds i.e. Ewood Park, Old Trafford etc.

Also wouldn't mind a new tactics board which allows you to place players wherever you want on the pitch rather than in pre-set positions i.e. CM, AMC

[dazmaz]

I hope they fix the transfer system, the contracts works pretty well now (minus some outragous demands) but I still find im being under cut by other clubs on transfers.

The stadium thing would be great, however imo it would be better if they could be downloaded as you want them.

Pre installed facepacks for every player would be nice too.

Tactics works fine imo too, you can put a player in a position and use the advanced settings to taylor that players instructions. One thing I would like is not having to change my tactic every few months to stop other teams all of a sudden start spanking my team.

One other big must is the stat allocation for regens, many times iv found a highly rated regen only for his stats to go to the wrong places eg a striker ending up with 14 tackling and marking and only 10 in composure, thus preventing him from being effective anywere on the pitch. Also the rate a player develops needs to be raised a bit as playing a young player should rapidly increase his stats rather then the 4 or 5 a season I have seen with some.

Pa needs raising/revamping too because too many players are hugely under rated beacuse of the way the pa/ca system works and less well known players have to be nerfed so they fit into a certain league as good as messi

Oh and lastly the stars need sorting when scouting. Just because I got a 5 star striker doesnt mean the next world class striker I go far is suddenly 3 stars, he is still a 5 star striker, regardless of others in my team.

[bluebruce]

One other big must is the stat allocation for regens, many times iv found a highly rated regen only for his stats to go to the wrong places eg a striker ending up with 14 tackling and marking and only 10 in composure, thus preventing him from being effective anywere on the pitch. Also the rate a player develops needs to be raised a bit as playing a young player should rapidly increase his stats rather then the 4 or 5 a season I have seen with some.

Pa needs raising/revamping too because too many players are hugely under rated beacuse of the way the pa/ca system works and less well known players have to be nerfed so they fit into a certain league as good as messi

Oh and lastly the stars need sorting when scouting. Just because I got a 5 star striker doesnt mean the next world class striker I go far is suddenly 3 stars, he is still a 5 star striker, regardless of others in my team.

Agree the stat allocation for regens is often very weird. But keep in mind you can retrain them (and if you start young enough they'll become a natural). What I find far more frustrating is the difficulty experienced in training an attribute up. Many times I've had a player, young too, with a great raft of stats but say, passing 7. I put them on a schedule that focuses heavily on passing, and have them specifically train passing too. Then a few months later there can be no progress and sometimes they've even got worse at it! Even happens if they're getting first team football with me. Meanwhile, other stats which are already high increase further. Winds me up...I dunno if a patch dealt with this.

Regarding the rate players increase in general though, I dunno...I've found this version quite good for that in a sense. Whilst I'd love all my 3.5 star prospects to realise that potential, the truth in the real world is sometimes it just doesn't happen. When a player looks like he's not gonna reach his potential, I try to sell him whilst he's still highly coveted. There are ways around it though...obviously playing him in your first team (recently, I've seen a player barely improve for months, then I played him in the two League Cup semis against Hereford and a few days later, almost all his stats had shot up by one). Try getting your players tutored by players with a high professionalism stat...this is tricky because unless it says professional for their personality it's pretty much invisible. But search online, there is a guide for what a player's personality tells you about their character stats, and some of them give away a decent or poor professionalism. Players that are more professional increase their stats quicker, and ones with low professionalism do so slower. IMO, professionalism should be a viewable trait if it's gonna be this important. Tutoring alters a player's personality in line with their tutor's, and seems to make a big improvement to determination (if the tutor's is higher...if his is lower, the student will get less determined). It also occasionally passes on preferred moves. So, consider if you want those three things passing onto the youngster...most of my decent first teamers who are 24 are tutoring. Annoyingly though, tutoring doesn't seem to improve anything else that I can tell, and I think this should be changed. People have done research that suggests you can't improve technical aspects through tutoring, and I don't think that reflects reality.

Another thing I think is that, for the train a specific attribute option, you SHOULD be able to train tackling, and various other stats that you can't.

I don't agree that the pa/ca system should be revamped in the main...yes, sometimes you look at a stated ca and just laugh, because they're blatantly better or worse than that. But that's a GOOD thing. You shouldn't just be gathering players on the basis of their stars, there should be some room for human intuition. Also keep in mind that those ratings probably include a) luck and hidden attributes that do matter a lot, like consistency, injury proneness and performing in big games.

Regarding the stars changing, I found it very annoying when I bought Kevin for 10 million, a lot at the time, and all my scouts said 4.5 stars potential...then he showed up, and all the coaches said 3.5 star. I ran a test where I didn't sign him and sure enough, my scouts would have been saying 3.5 star too a week later. But I don't think it's based on your signing other players, I think it's club rep...it was a confusing one though since nothing in particular had changed. Think now he's claimed to be 3 star potential, and if he hadn't recently started playing well he'd be off in the summer, as next year he won't qualify as U-21. I'm gonna have to have a thorough think in the summer, the squad is already full. I want a new high class left back, high class left winger, and I've got a couple of senior players who won't qualify as U-21.

[KyleBRFC]

Hi im new here well ive been registered for a bit but never posted but ive just seen this thread and its my kind of thread!

Currently in the 4th season with rovers.

Won the league last season, went down to the last game could have won it the game before but got beat 2-0 off west ham after going 20 games without losing, then scraped a win against leed who i HAD to beat and we scared in the 80th minute... very lucky, got knocked out in the semis last season of the champions league this is the 2012/13 season.

The 2011/2012 season we got to the europa league final and got beat 2-0 by zenit also finished 4th by a point beat arsenal on the last day to steal 4th off everton.

In the 2010/2011 season we managed to finish 7th and win both the league and FA cup first one was 2-0 down to ciuty made a couple of changes and managed to win 3-2 and the FA cup was 0-0 and won on penaltys both games aswell were against City who im still yet to be beaten by in my whole save.

This is my team hope to win champions league this year.

--------------------------------De Gea

Rafinha----------------jones--------------------sakho-----------------Dodo

--------------------------------Fellani

Tosic-----------------------------------------------------------------Elia

--------------------------------Lucas(not liverpool one)

------------------------Lukaku---------------Hulk

Subs/Reserve:

Robinson

Corluka

Baines

Hoilett

Ninis

Sturridge

Mbia

Emanuelson

Bunn

Onouha

Castro

Dos Santos

Benitez

Jerome Boateng

N'Zonzi

Castaignos

Gideon Boateng

Piatti

Olsson

Hargreaves

Benitez

If i must sa myself thats a very strong squad noticed aswell in here someone mention Sturridge to be awful if you set him as a Deep Lying Forward Or Advanced Forward with a big guy as a partner hes bagged quite a few last season was my first choice striker also a great buy for 1.5 million id Christian Benitez in my first season scored 22 goals in 40 appearances, not played him much tho as i have lukaku and hulk now who are both on fire! so yeah thats my summary and hope to update you all in the near future.

[dazmaz]

The lucas you have is the sane as mine I think, can play all the attcking positions.

Tutoring does change stats, determination as you said, but if personalitys dont clash you can get a massive mental stat boost. Also the semior gains influence if he is successful in tutoring.

I read somewhere that stat allocation is pre determined, not sure how much research is in that.

Starangely enough I have 2 star players in my first 18, purely down to having the right stats in the right places for his position, eg Olsson is now only 2 stars but is, well was my main winger, sadly for him I now have wiss and turan who play there, need to sell hoilett too as he wants to move on.

Jese is still my greatest ever signing, played 11 scored 10 and he was on a free (will post screenshots tomorrow)

[KyleBRFC]

Yeah thats the one, hes really good, bags quite a lot of goals.

Just got my CL group

Group D:

Barcelona

Shaktar

Blackburn

Hibernian

Pretty difficult, just hope i get through it ha.

[dazmaz]

Jese Hasnt been as good this season, had a few injurys but still a very good capture for free, and still young

[dazmaz]

I think I have gone mad and my eyes are playing tricks because I think Barca have just offered me £75,724,000 for yaya Sanogo

I didnt accept and negotiated it to £85m but they decided that was too much so now he wants a new contract at 120k pw