Kanegetshighbysmellinhisarmpits

Quoted so people can read what I said before...... Well it was an interesting summer.... Transfers in: Barry Robson (Free from Rangers) Mikeal Silvestre (Free from Arsenal) Ben Foster (Free from Chelsea) Paul Codrea (Free from Genoa) Nicky Hunt (Free from Bolton) Maxi Lopez (Free from FC Moscow) Mark van Bommel (Free from Bayern Munich) Jack Hobbs (Free from Liverpool) Simon McAuley (£90,000 from Motherwell) Charlie Mulgrew (£425,000 from Rangers) So 10 players in for just over £500,000, which I was happy with, especially van Bommel and Ben Foster. I wanted to add a couple more but this is already pushing my wage budget to the extreme - I may tinker with my budgets come January.... Transfers out: Lauren (£350,000 to Doncaster) Sun Jihai (£250,000 to Watford) Jordan Robertson (£1,000,000 to Cardiff) George Pilkington (£1,500,000 to Watford) Gary Naysmith (£775,000 to Plymouth) Ryan Stevenson (£550,000 to Cardiff) Diego Leon (£2,000,000 to Nottingham Forest) So 7 players sold for around £6,500,000 million. Not bad really. There were a couple of other players I wanted to sell, but clubs either didn't meet the valuation, or the player shunned the move. I also released a few more players. So now here I am on the first day of the season. Looking over my first three fixtures I can see I've got...... Chelsea at home, Man United away, Liverpool at home. George Pilkington? Christ, did you have some lewd photos of the Watford manager that you blackmailed him with to get £1.5mill? And muchos respect on getting Luton all the way up in consecutive seasons, that's some achievement, especially considering you managed to win the league in the first season...you must have won practically all your games to win the league. Hope you stay up, your team doesn't seem too bad (considering who you've brought in at least) so you'll at least have a fighting chance of surviving.

You should play him over the rest of your (*looking back at your end of season 2 post on the last page*) rather insanely awesome team as a kind of stereotypical, crazy Dad 'You're going to be the greatest footballer in the world so that I can be the greatest footballer in the world's Dad' kinda way. Either that or just release him to show him tough love.

Possebon is an absolute god in the Championship, I loaned him for QPR once and he scored 20 goals, most of them long range piledrivers!

I'm currently in the midst of a Man City game, and I'm realistically having trouble purchasing the world's best players. For example, Liverpool came 7th in the first season, and as I came 4th and was challenging for the title for most of the season, I had a go at purchasing Gerrard and Torres; the prices I got quoted were deals worth £96million and £118million respectively. I didn't buy either of them, but it got me wondering...what is the most you have spent on a player? Mine would have to be £83million on Lionel Messi on FM08 - I was Arsenal in about 2013, and as per usual on that game they were absolutely loaded, worth over a £billion, an annual transfer budget of £150million (which was obviously capped because they never let me go any higher), and as I needed a left winger, and Messi was in his prime...deal kinda made sense, although I did have to take a brief rest after clicking 'confirm transfer', as I'm very much a wheeler-dealer by nature, so spending any kind of fortune on one man is very, very foreign to me.

Welcome to the glass ceiling. The big two keeping you down!

I love bargain shopping on this game. I've just spent around 200k on about 12 players, all under 20, and all heading for my (already crowded) reserve team (I've developed a tendency to build huge reserve squads, as my first team squads at a team like Forest are usually quite small). 10 of these 12 players came from Scandanavia, and are all extremely promising. I've found that Scandanavia has always been a promising place, on all the Football Manager games, for talented youth players, along with South America. I think it's one of the better features of the game that you can send your scouts to find such gems for next to nothing.

This was the impression I was getting as well. Maybe a feature or two sprinkled in, but other than that largely just a data update.

I play a diamond formation (i.e. dmc, mr, ml, amc in midfield), lumping long balls up to a tall, lanky bloke up front, with a smaller, nippier ally.