Football Manager 2020

[Jimmy]

3 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Hello

Any tips? It's something I dip in and out of. 

[METALMAN]

15 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Hello

we all know you don't play FM for fun

[stokeriño]

I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate that FdB, manager of a Newcastle team 10 points clear at the top of the Championship at Christmas, might be feeling the pressure somewhat.

[METALMAN]

He’s just a Kevin Keegan tribute act

[Bobfoc]

He might just be bitter about the licence fee.

[Lineker]

 

[METALMAN]

Oh good! The block I set up on Steam expires on 1 April!

[Adam]

Get in. I have put 6 hours into it so far and am still on the first day, so this extension helps no end.

[Jimmy]

Second season really picked up! 

Was struggling for form and consistency, found myself just outside the play offs in December. Had changed the way the mighty Farsley Celtic played football, dominating possession, but not creating too many chances. Made a strong addition in centre mid and then things really picked up. 

Ended up, in March, 6 points off York at the top of the table, we played them at home...and opportunity to close the gap to 3...and lost 1-0 after dominating. We made a good fight of it, but it basically played out like this. We ended up finishing 2nd on 94 points, I think? 

Managed to squeeze through the Semis on Pens and breezed the final 3-0 to go up! So the mighty Farsley Celtic are in the National League for the first time in their history. 

To sweeten it, somehow managed to win the FA Trophy as well! Peak performance was against Barnet (2nd in the National League), winning 4-1 away. Otherwise, none of the other big National League teams seemed to make it very far. Beat Chester on penalties in the final. 

Not a bad second season - promotion and an FA Trophy! 

Now to prepare for life in the National League. Unless someone fancies tempting me with a bigger job. 

[Adam]

Not to dampen your fantastic achievement but Farsley Celtic did spend one season in the National League in 2007-08,  shortly before going bust in 2010. So I guess it's the first time for the reincarnated side!

Update on my progress, I've now played two pre-season games and am enjoying it so far, although there's so much to it I'm not sure how quickly I'll move through the seasons! Having a transfer budget of £0 helps to simplify things a bit mind.

[Jimmy]

9 minutes ago, Adam said:

Not to dampen your fantastic achievement but Farsley Celtic did spend one season in the National League in 2007-08,  shortly before going bust in 2010. So I guess it's the first time for the reincarnated side!

Update on my progress, I've now played two pre-season games and am enjoying it so far, although there's so much to it I'm not sure how quickly I'll move through the seasons! Having a transfer budget of £0 helps to simplify things a bit mind.

ah god damn it

[Naitch]

Got through my first season with Chelsea last night. It was the winter update, so I only had the transfer ban until December and effectively removed it as an issue by setting the game to no transfers in the first window. The season started off with ups and downs, although I picked up a few injuries to add to the existing long-term ones CHO, RLC, and MVG all had. Ended up having to start Batshuayi for the first few games of the season because Tammy Abraham was one of the casualties. He did a decent job but it was Pedro who really carried the team until Abraham was fit again by October. His performances really started dropping off as the season progressed, however, basically starting when CHO was match fit and only declining further from there. Abraham was still top goalscorer of the season, with 16 goals, despite only being first-choice forward from October till February, enough to make him want his wages doubled for just an extra year added onto his already long contract. I managed to talk him down but my new Director of Football later gave one to him anyway. I did manage to talk Jorginho and Zouma down from contract discussions just by telling them how important I thought they were, however. Rudiger has also piped up about his contract recently and doesn't seem as inclined to drop the subject, so he may be on his way out during the summer.

Lost the Super Cup against Liverpool and scraped through the League Cup third round against Middlesbrough but the league was going well until December. I went from competing with Everton for 2nd place to both Manchester teams leapfrogging us and a three team scramble for 4th place with Wolves joining in. Leicester, Arsenal, and Spurs played really poorly and were roughly in that order. My end of season highlight was actually a 5-0 win against Tottenham, who sacked Mourinho and replaced him with Rafael Benitez before Xmas. Watford, Newcastle, and Aston Villa were the relegated but that didn't stop Newcastle from beating us 2-0 on the final day of the season. We could've grabbed 2nd if we'd won and Man City had lost to West Ham, but I wasn't expecting that to happened and they ended up winning anyway.

In January I brought in Alphonso Davies and Vinicius Junior for £17m each, plus Erling Haaland from Dortmund for £65m. Giroud, Willian, and Zappacosta left for Dynamo Kiev, Man Utd, and Guangzhou, respectively, whilst Emerson went on loan to Spurs and ended up playing really well for them. Man City knocked us out in the League Cup semis and we got trounced 4-0 on aggregate by Barcelona in the Champions League round of 16, but made up for it by finishing 3rd in the league, behind Liverpool and Man City, as well as a comfortable 2-0 win over Liverpool to win the FA Cup. We ended up with the least goals conceded in the league (20) and the 2nd best goal difference behind Liverpool. I also got hefty bonuses from both Madrid teams because Real won La Liga and Atletico won the Champions League, thanks to the Eden Hazard and Diego Costa deals.

Currently trying to decide whether I want to run with Jamal Blackman as my backup keeper for the 20/21 season, since Caballero's gone, bring in a different veteran as backup, or even try for Donnarumma since he wants to leave AC Milan. Pedro and MVG are gone too but I'm comfortable with the amount of depth I have in their positions. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, Rudiger is unlikely to stick around if he continues kicking off about his contract. He was probably 4th choice centre back in the season just gone so I won't miss him if he does leave. Alonso is also likely to get the boot as Davies and Emerson can rotate as starters once the latter returns from Spurs, with Azpi providing cover. PSG are after Jorginho, Arsenal want Zouma, and Man Utd seem interested in Barkley, which I'll only be keen on if they make good offers, like £80m+, ~£50m, and £~35m, respectively, and I can get a good future prospects to replace them in the squad. My DoF failed to negotiate transfers/contracts for Sandro Tonali and Federico Chiesa so I might have to stop him from ruining transfer prospects moving forwards. It's really weird understanding the inflated economy compared to FM12; I'm used to £30m transfer fees and £120k weekly wages being the absolute high end of the market. On this game it feels like that's the cost of a decent rotation/backup player.

[stokeriño]

wtf did I just witness

[stokeriño]

Just recording this for posterity, because inevitably Newcastle will get a point or two against Villa or Sheff Wed and it'll all be moot...but FdB must be crawling up the walls at this moment.

Edit: Aston Villa 1 - 1 Newcastle (86th minute equaliser for United!)...so still technically possibly if we find a way to overturn a 10 GD deficit.  

Edit2: Reading 3 - 1 Hull City

spookyfingers.gif

Edit3: Oh well, nevermind.

[Adam]

I've finally waded through pre-season and all the orientation and am enjoying it. Last minute equaliser on the opening day and three straight wins thereafter. Perhaps the game knows I'm debating buying it when it ceases to be free on Wednesday.

Is there still an easy way to fix the fake names/badges? If I shell out for it I'd like the proper PL kits and whatnot.

[Baddar]

If it's the same as it's been for the last 10 years or so, it'll be a case of downloading a file and placing it in the correct folder, then reloading the skin from the settings. 

[Gazz]

I found a Newcastle tycoon takeover save to fuck about with during the free trial. Some Chinese lad pumped £226m into the club so I sacked all the staff and replaced them, sold £75m worth of players that wanted to leave or were dead wood, and then spunked £319m on a new team, so my first eleven looks like

GK: Angus Gunn

DR: David Calabria

DL: Alex Grimaldo

DC: Merih Demiral

DC: Unai Nunez

MC: Rodrigo Bencantur

MC: Donny van de Beek

AMR: David Neres

AMC: Jack Grealish

AML: ASM

ST: Eduoard

And I've got Justin Kluivert and Piotr Zielinski on the bench.

Going OK so far... Real Madrid decided to celebrate Benzema's testimonial by not selecting him and going 3-0 down in the opening eight minutes.

[Gazz]

I can't believe the 'overlapping player collects a pass and dribbles to the goal line, stops, looks across the penalty area at his team mate unmarked on the edge of the six yard box, makes eye contact with him, hesitates, waits, gives him a thumbs up, dithers, stalls, pauses, thinks about putting in a cross, ponders the metaphysical conundrums of the universe, checks his lottery results, waves to his grandma in the crowd, checks that his team mate is still waiting for a pass, then plays a pass against the nearest defenders shins for a corner' bug is still in the game, it's been in the match engine for years.

I feel like they don't update a lot of stuff either year to year, I'm already bored of playing against teams playing 4-2-3-1. There's a reason the #10 role is pretty much dead in modern elite football.

[FLiam]

The match engine this year is truly awful. I don't feel as though tactics even matter anymore, it seems too random. 

"Low crosses", and all I see is high crosses to the far post. "Much shorter passing", why do I keep seeing long balls to the forwards?

I think they broke it when they brought in the new tactics model, it doesn't mirror what's happening on the pitch enough.

I see people say that despite the match engine being the worst it's been in years, the game is the best. I don't get how that's possible as at the end of the day, the match engine is the game. Everything else around it seems pointless if it has no real impact in how games play out. AI squad building is still terrible too. 

Edited April 2, 2020 by Liam Mk2

[Gazz]

It's really poor, it doesn't even look like football at times.

They should have known they had issues when last year, it was apparent that the most overpowered formation was 442. I played about 10 or 11 games on that save before I got bored last night, I think every game had a goal from a deep free kick put into the edge of the six yard box at the back post and tapped in unchallenged and every team I played against dropped off to the half way line before engaging a press. This is the Premier League, where every team bar one (Newcastle) presses high. I had 65% possession against Burnley and 23 shots, winning 3-0 despite Eduoard, my lone striker having six touches all game.