Football Manager 2014

[Hobo]

Started a game as Vancouver Whitecaps. It's going OK thus far but man, Nigel Reo-Coker.... He gets sent off every bloody game. So Newcastle have come in with a $3million bid so I'm going to take it.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Fair while since my last update: things got shit at Everton, the new signings wouldn't gel, a poor run of form convinced me I had to get out, so I quit at the start of October. They hired Jorge Jesus as a replacement and wound up finishing tenth, so I think I made the right choice leaving.

On my side of things, I got offered the AC Milan job in December, so jumped at it. They were 17th in the league, having come 15th the previous season. Something had gone horribly wrong at the club.

Made an overhaul of signings; Balotelli and El Sharaawy demanded to leave, so I obliged. El Sharawaay to Shaktar for 30m, Balotelli to Chelsea for 28m + van Ginkel to refresh the midfield. Reinvesting the money, I got Ever Banega, Stefan Ruffier, Sami Khedira, Dusan Tadic, Michy Batshuayi in; and wound up rescuing us up to 9th position. Bit of a miracle considering my expectation from the board was to avoid relegation.

A quiet summer saw reinforcements made, with Dedryck Boyata bolstering the centre of defence, Lucas Digne, Pablo Armero and Atsuto Uchida restocking my scarce full backs. Got some Finnish goalkeeper in as a new back up, but he won't play many games. Up to January in this season now, comfortably first in the league thanks to Dusan Tadic being an assist machine and Jordan Rhodes (Was here when I got here, apparently he was the answer to finishing 15th...) scoring for fun. Lost the Italian Cup Quarter Final to Juventus though

January hasn't seen a lot transfer-wise. Chelsea bid 10m for van Ginkel again, so he went back home. Basically got the 38m I'd asked for Balotelli and got van Ginkel on loan for a year, so no complaints.

Back in England, Everton have regalvanised themselves and sit second, after a good run of Man City form saw them surge past them into first. Chelsea have been sitting pretty above relegation most of the season, but have scraped up to tenth. Jose's contract is apparently in danger of not being renewed when it expires this summer, and I quite fancy a return to England with a Serie A title in tow...

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Moved up to March now. Got offered the Newcastle job, but the pay was less than I made at Milan, they wanted a 35% Relegation Wage Drop and they were 18th, 5 points adrift. No chance. They've since hired Frank De Boer.

Getting linked with more and more positions, Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid, PSG, Chelsea and Man United all have managers who's contract expires at the end of the season, and I'm amongst the contenders for all of them. Could be interesting. Frank De Boer was a contender for a couple of those, but with him out of the equation, my chances may have just gone up.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Won Serie A

Got Manager of the Year

Got Manager's Manager of the Year

Jordan Rhodes got Golden Boot

Dusan Tadic got Most Assists

Rhodes, Tadic and Boyata were the best three players in the league

Got the Chelsea job

[Whisper]

I'm so desperate to get a career going like yours... but my interest wanes during my first season as I've played through it so many times!

Had a great game going with Hoffenheim and managed to accidentally save over it .

Think I'm gonna start a journeyman game and see if I can keep it going. My hope is that I get so into a game that I don't buy have to buy 2015.

[Baddar]

Time is my worst enemy. I can put 5-6 hours into starting a game up, feeling really into it, then by the time I can get a similar amount of time to play again, my interest drops.

Although I will definitely be continuing my United game on the Vita over the next few weeks. I don't think I've ever got properly settled in a game that wasn't managing United. It'd be different if I was playing a net game though, I think.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Jesus Christ this Chelsea squad needs shaping up.

Goalkeepers: Courtois, Cech, and Delac in reserve. Probably the one area I don't need bolstering, but Cech wants to leave

Fullbacks: Only one worth using is Dave the rest aren't worth shit and will probably be sold.

Centrebacks: The best option I have is Otamendi, as the replacements they've signed for Terry are Savic and Dante, both wank. Dante's just been ditched to Twente. Gary Cahill just got released, David Luiz has been at the heart of Juventus' defence for the past two seasons, and the Chelsea board sold Zouma to Madrid the day before I signed

Centre Mids: I basically just have Lars Bender. Mikel somehow still has a job here, and Lampard hasn't retired yet, but they're both shadows of their former selves. Suppose I can get Chalobah up to pace and drop van Ginkel in for some extra game time.

Attacking Mids: Oscar, van Ginkel and the emerging Jeremie Boga give me enough cover there.

Left Wing: Eden Hazard and Son Heung-Min. Son's attracting some attention though, so may cash-in and use Bertrand Traore as cover.

Right Wing: Fuck all. Best is Mohamed Salah, who pales in comparison to most of the squad.

Strikers: Lukaku and Balotelli. More than enough.

Other wastes of space still clogging up the wage bill: Andre Ayew (about to leave to Napoli for 8.75m), Willian, Branislav Ivanovic, Pedro. All making 60k+ a week and doing nothing. Hopefully losing Willian as part of a deal for Umtiti to bolster the defence.

So, on the shopping list: Centrebacks, Full Backs (either side, because Dave can do both), Right Wingers, new Goalkeeper if Cech leaves. Shouldn't be too hard...

And where's Fernando Torres, you ask? Kicking back in the UAE with Al-Jazira, where he has 6 goals in 6 games. He's found his calling!

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Gah, not being in the Champions League is killer in the transfer market. Can't sign any of the players I want! Managed to get some transfer business completed though:

Darijo Srna (1.8m) - Old, but still quality. Cover at right back, but easily good enough for first choice.

Lazar Markovic (13.75m) - Extra option on right wing, thinking him and Salah are gonna rotate since I couldn't get anyone better.

Pierre Emile-Hojbjerg (22m) - Absolute steal. 22 years old with incredible stats. Fills my centre midfield issue.

Rodrigo Ojeda (15m) - 19 years old, already as good as Savic at CB, and has massive potential.

David Moreno (35m?!) - 22 year old American left back, who I told my Director of Football to sort whilst I signed Ojeda and Emile-Hojbjerg. Paid way over the odds, but he's insanely good and he'll be my first choice left back for years to come.

Last two are regens/created by the game, never heard of Hojbjerg but he's probably my favourite buy out of the lot.

In terms of selling:

Stipe Perica (3.1m) - Was never ever gonna play for me.

Son Heung-Min (20m) - Real Madrid came in waving the cheque book, so I bid him farewell.

Wallace (6m) - Had plenty of right back cover, so was surplus.

Pedro (4.5m) - Was never gonna play, had better options.

Mario Balotelli (20m) - I can't decide if this guy really loves Champions League football or just really hates me. Handed in another transfer request and decided to go back to Milan.

Mario Pasalic (4m) - No idea who he is, not good enough for the team.

John Obi Mikel (4.5m) - Feel a little bad about this one, sold him the day before his testimonial (I didn't know he was having one)

And the usual Chelsea way of four bajillion loans for the youngsters.

[Whisper]

So I started a journeyman game with about 40 leagues loaded - half a star game speed! Though I never pay attention to that.

Set the start date as January 2014 and started unemployed. Was hoping to start outside of Europe but Portuguese teams seemed to be the only ones hiring. So I took a job in the Portuguese Third tier, managing Tourizense.

They were sitting 7th out of 8 at the beginning of the relegation phase, with just 4 points (teams start with 50% of points accumulated in the first phase of the season.)

My team is absolutely terrible... I only have around 15 players to choose from, and I can't even bring in free transfers until July! So I've had to offer contracts to a bunch of grey players...

I need to finish 5th to guarentee survival. 7th and 8th go down, and 6th has to go into a playoff. But in true FM fashion, the board don't want survival - they want a mid table finish!

So despite winning 3 of my first 5 and moving up to 6th (6 points off 5th with 9 games left), my job is 'insecure' and the board are concerned that we are 'only' on course to avoid relegation. Whatever though, I'm only on a 6 month contract, gonna save them from relegation and then see what my options are.

Fun though. My only concern is that, with so many leagues loaded, the game might start to run horrendously slow after a few seasons. Anyone with any experience of this? The game rates my computer performance at 5 stars so hopefully it will be ok. I suppose, once I end up in a top league, I can remove some of the lesser nations.

Edited July 9, 2014 by Whisper in the Wind

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

The highest number of nations I've ever loaded at a time was 8, and my computer ran it fine. Never tried higher, don't know how you'd cope with 40.

[King Ellis]

I've been playing some 01/02 as Hull with the deadly Tó Madeira banging them in for fun to get me to Div 1 so far. Thomas would be rolling in his grave at my usage of Tó alongside such named guys as Alexander Farnerud and Abgar Barsom.

[Whisper]

The highest number of nations I've ever loaded at a time was 8, and my computer ran it fine. Never tried higher, don't know how you'd cope with 40.

40 leagues. Its about 12 nations.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Ahh, not quite so bad then. Still a hell of a lot.

[Cymbols]

It shouldn't run too slow, with the exception of transfer deadline days and such.

[Whisper]

So I was just browsing for some information on the game speed / computer performance ratings and came across this gem. Not sure if it's been mentioned here before or not.

For those people, like me, who play on computers (or laptops) with average to poor graphics cards. Go into Preferences -> Interface and change "Rendering mode" from "CPU Assisted" to "Software". It has improved my load speed considerably, and it wasn't particularly slow before that.

Edited July 9, 2014 by Whisper in the Wind

[Whisper]

Not many managers get relegated with a 56% win percentage. Sadly, I just did

We won 9 from 14 in the relegation phase, moving from 4 points when I took over, to 31. To put that into perspective, in the first phase of the season they won 1 game.

If everyone had started on 0 points in the relegation phase, we'd have finished 2nd. But we only managed 6th, pipped into 5th after an away defeat on the final day, meaning we had to play in the relegation playoff. We drew Caldas, whose team is much, much better than ours, and lost the home leg 2-0. Had to attack in the away leg and lost 5-1 after going down to 10 men.

Disappointing in the end, but couldn't drag much more out of a bunch of 15/16 year olds. I've now resigned, looking forward to having a full season somewhere.

Edited July 9, 2014 by Whisper in the Wind

[Hobo]

My Director of Football has signed Paul Konchesky and Jermaine Jenas... apparently.

Fair enough.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Decided to have a look through some of the other leagues, awards and transfers to look how my game world is evolving. Couple of interesting ones.

Top Five European Leagues

Charlie Austin and Iago Aspas have a Premier League Golden Boot to their names (the fuck happened whilst I was away?)

Man United won it the season I came fifth, and Man City have taken the title the two season I was with Milan.

La Liga has continued to be dominated by the same three teams.

Bayern Munich have continued to buy out all competition by signing Draxler, Reus and Hummels, and have won every Bundesliga so far.

Serie A was dominated by Juventus until I came along and saved Milan from the brink

Ligue 1 has been the PSG show, except when Monaco stole it on the last day of the 14/15 season.

Awards and Transfers

Lionel Messi has continued to get Golden Ball every year, and now has eight in a row having won it every year since 2009.

Most expensive transfer so far was Luis Suarez to Real Madrid for £52m in 2014. Safe to say Barca are getting mugged in real life then

A fair few have gone for high 30s, James Rodriguez joined Man City for 38m in the next highest deal.

Internationals

Argentina beat Germany in the 2014 World Cup Final (spooky...)

Euro 2016 was won by Germany, beating Belgium.

African Cup of Nations was won by Mali (?!) in 2015 and Ghana in 2017.

Gold Cup has been been won by Honduras (...) in 2015 and USA in 2017.

Asian Cup went to Saudi Arabia (seriously, what the hell in going on with these cup winners?) in 2015.

Copa America went to Brazil in 2015 and Chile in 2016, and now they aren't holding one until 2019. The one before Brazil was in 2011, so I have no idea how they decide when to hold this things.

As one would expect New Zealand won the 2016 Oceania Cup.

European Tournaments

Champions League: Man United, Man United, PSG, Bayern Munich

Europa League: Stuttgart, Benfica, Everton, Everton (My boys! )

World Rankings

The current top ten: Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Holland, Chile, Ghana, Brazil, Italy, England.

San Marino are still tied last with Macau.

Only two players have retired and left the game completely; Ashley Cole and Dani Alves. Tons of managers have, but they always do.

Arsenal are far and away the richest club in the world. Chelsea are currently 6th, and Everton are 12th! I've done wonderful things for that club.

There are only three managers left who currently have a World Class reputation: Carlo Ancelotti, Jose Mourinho, and myself

Bayern Munich have the best club reputation, which would be expected with a Champions League win.

[Gazz]

I feel like I should point out that I'm in 2020 and Wales are sixth in the FIFA rankings.

[Roster Depth Sicko No. 2]

Wales are 6th in 2020? Fuck, we got good.