-A-

I've never managed to get van der Vaart to play well for me. In fact, I've never got anyone to play well in the AMC position in FM08

Fuck me, Snow is ridiculously hard on guitar. Definitely the hardest riff I've seen on Rock Band and another one that's harder on Rock Band than IRL.

If you're wanting a more current update, the only ones I know of are FMWeegie and FMEurope (the latter of which isn't out yet, I don't think.) Try googling those.

Isn't Morbius the property of whoever has the rights to Blade? EDIT: Already mentioned in this thread. How embarrassing.

I miss the NBA games, I need to drag out my N64.

Plus, Podolski's lived in Germany since he was 2, why shouldn't he play for them?

'Germany are on their way to winning unless something dramatic happens.' 1-0 up after half an hour, already won the tournament pretty much.

It was the same with Nuno Valente. During an international competition the commentators are obviously surrounded by foreign colleagues and the heady cosmopolitan atmosphere leads to some care for pronunciations. As soon as the tournament ends they slip back into Premiership mode and stop bothering.

I remember getting a free transfer database for FM06 or 07 that had all the players uncontracted at the start of the game. The AI's hilariously unable to deal with this situation, with some Premiership teams signing 15 first team squad strikers and others no goalkeeper at all.

Yeah, I did the same with West Ham, releasing all the players and sticking an extra £75M in the bank. It's surprisingly hard to build a 24 man squad and a few youths for the reserve team with that amount of money.

Those are sci-fi films that want to create an atmosphere of a cold, technological future. Green would be associated with an organic, natural feel and red with intense emotion.

Allegedly UEFA was trying to have their place taken by the highest ranked non-qualifier in Europe ... AC Milan. That makes a mockery of their insistence that only 4 (and preferably 3) teams from a country could be in the Champions League. I'd imagine whoever came third in the Bulgarian league (Levski I think I read) will be pretty pissed off if that happens.

There are other reasons as well, insurance for example. Companies/owners can decide to only take on over-18s and possibly pay smaller insurance premiums. I'm not sure whether that would outweigh differences in minimum wage levels, but there are more things to take into account than ease of selling rated games.

He did say a while ago he wouldn't like to work with Ten Cate again... but that quote's been translated and passed from word of mouth so much that i wouldn't take it too seriously He would be the best fit for Chelsea its just... Chelsea over Barce? I'm pretty sure I remember reading ages ago that Rijkaard and Ten Cate didn't get along, so it's entirely possible that that's true. Ten Cate hasn't been in the job long enough to suggest that he'd have cloes allies or irreplacable knowledge of the club, so if the shortlisted candidates didn't express particular affinity to him he wouldn't have to be kept on until the appointment.

Well, this game is in the position where the final songs on the guitar aren't necssarily the final songs on the other instruments. I get the impression that the overall list of songs had to be heavily determined by the compromise of creating a good difficulty curve on all instruments with the same songs. There are only going to be a handful of songs on any rhythm game and in Rock Band, they have to be split between the final tiers of multiple instruments. If you compare the guitar career in Rock Band with the GH games, there are no themes between the tiers, it's merely a progression from easiest to hardest songs. That's why it doesn't really bother me that the final tier doesn't contain necessarily the greatest songs, merely the songs that are hardest to play (hence the longer/multiple solos.) In this situation I think the faithfulness that Rock Band has to the original guitar parts is a bit of a downfall. With a GH3-type policy, they could beef up the guitar parts of songs to fit with some kind of perception of where they should be in the career mode. Rock Band's note charts give the impression that they were created without agenda and then, when all songs were finished, put into order of difficulty. That's probably a bit simplistic, but it certainly seems to veer more in that direction that GH3, where the final songs were selected purely because of how easily they would lend themselves to hard notecharts.

Oh god, I love the drums on this. Just got 98% on Here It Goes, Expert and jumped out of my seat, hands in the air. When I first had a shot on vocals I had the hairs up on the back of my head when the crowd sang Learn to Fly with me. SO GOOD.

Yeah, if you're playing with someone else and just bash away out of rhythm it's likely to put them off Nope, other players hear the standard fills from the drumtrack, rather than your improvisations. Same with the guitar effects. Not when they're standing next to you.

We seem to have a fundamental disagreement about Grant's level of involvement in getting to the CL final. You answer every suggestion that he doesn't have managerial skill with 'Chelsea got to the CL Final' when I stated that I thought Grant had nothing to do with that success. The players on the pitch won the games that got Chelsea to the final, I don't see any signs of Grant's influence on their play so it had very little to do with him. Yes, Ferguson used his experience to adjust to the changes in European football. Grant played the same players in the same system as his predecessor. Ferguson couldn't rest on his laurels in 1999, being the most successful team in Europe isn't enough to bring continued success that clubs like Chelsea and Man U demand. That's why Grant's 'If it ain't broken, don't fix it' approach this year proves nothing. If he wasn't considered a long-term manager at the start of his tenure, and he wasn't, maintaining the status quo wouldn't be enough to convince Abrahmovic he was the man to bring years of trophies. He was with Israel until 2006, giving him a year's experience in English football before getting the Chelsea manager's job. Even if he'd been managing a Premier League team for a year he wouldn't be considered experienced enough to take on that job. The fact that some people didn't know who he was is the perfect sign of his lack of experience at the level required by Chelsea. They did, as a result of the breakdown in relationship between Abrahmovic and Mourinho that saw Jose fired 6 games into the season. Why is that hard to believe? Do you really think Mourinho wanted Ben Haim and Sidwell? If Abrahmovic didn't want to spend another £20-£30 million last summer to buy players Jose wanted because he knew a new manager would be coming in that would require backing of his own - that's why he didn't spend significant money on players he didn't know would be wanted by the next manager. Except that's not how it works. Abrahmovic sanctioned the signing of Malouda because he wanted to. The manager doesn't get to choose how he spends his money, he provides a list of players he wants and the rest is out of his hands. Are you seriously suggesting that Mourinho had millions to spend and chose to sign Pizarro, Ben Haim and Sidwell above anyone else in the world? I meant they might as well not have signed them as they didn't bring anything to the team, I think they would have got exactly the same level of performance had they used players from the reserve/youth team. I said Grant had to use them because he did - they weren't 'his' players, so he was forced to use sub-standard players brought in by the previous manager. As you say, they weren't Grant's players. If he didn't want to play them he could've started these mythical Chelsea youths, but he didn't. Maybe if he'd had the confidence to make a decision like that instead of using the tactics and players of his predecessor he'd have earnt more respect as a manager. Depends on who else was in the running for the job. If it's anything like after Houllier left, where the frontrunners were Curbishley, O'Neill, Allardyce etc. then I'd choose Grant everytime, having seen what he's done with Chelsea. You're not comparing like with like. Chelsea are faced with a choice of managers along the lines of: Scolari, Hiddink, Mancini, Rijkaard etc. and thus choose to sack Avram Grant. Were Benitez to leave, Liverpool could realistically approach at least the first two as well as a host of others. Grant better than O'Neill? I'm flabbergasted. I must've missed that collapse this year since we haven't dropped even a single league place for a single minute since before Christmas. I'd happily take a manager that took a team that narrowly survived relegation, lost its best player and kept them in the top half of the table for an entire season despite spending very little money and being stricken with injuries far in excess of any other Premiership club. Particularly if compared to a manager who got a job at one of the biggest clubs in the world because he was friends with the owner and proceeded to do as little as possible to ride his predecessor's coat-tails to success.

Yeah, if you're playing with someone else and just bash away out of rhythm it's likely to put them off

Are you serious? His big spending was a contributing factor in Lazio nearly going tits up and some of the players he has spent money on this year haven't nearly produced anything close to their price-tag. I won't say it's entirely his fault (chairmen and boards have to take blame too), but he hasn't been that great with money. Unless it's for himself. Then he's been fucking brilliant. Lazio's financial troubles had nothing whatsoever to do with the manager, Sven simply selected the players he wanted and the chairman was responsible for how much he chose to spend. I can't see how his spending at City this year can really be questioned either - he was obliged to bring in a host of players and some were bound not to stick. The failures like Bianchi will earn most of their pricetag back and I can't see that many other notable failures. Bojinov was hyped and immediately got injured, Castillo joined in January so hasn't had time to adjust ... who else has Sven signed? Nobody high profile enough to be called a flop I don't think (they signed an expensive Mexican striker but I think he's a youngster.) Surely the success of players like Elano, Petrov and Corluka and the overall good performance of the team more than outweighs a few under-achieving buys? You certainly can't compare their spending, I was arguing that Grant hasn't showed any managerial acumen during his time in the job, be it making good signings or showing good tactical knowledge. When Grant took over after Mourinho, how many people thought it was a good appointment, that he would be a long-term manager for Chelsea? Virtually no-one, because he has no experience of European football nor particularly strong links to the club. During the season that passed I can't see how anything's changed that image of him. Chelsea's success have not been because of good management but because of an expensively-assembled squad of players, a particularly determined ethos and a tactical system that's highly successful. None of these were created by Avram Grant, he was merely at the helm of a club that already had all the ingredients for success. Because that's the system that Mourinho's players best fit into. Their strengths were built around the 4-5-1/4-3-3 system and, again, it would have been stupid (if not impossible) to completely overhaul this in January. Had he been given the summer window as well then these criticisms would have carried more weight. Yes, it's obvious to anyone that it's very difficult to strengthen a Champions League team in January and it's obvious to anyone that the players perform best in the system Mourinho created. That's why I don't see Chelsea's success as any particular testament to Grant's abilities, he's still a manager with no experience in European football and no established place in the club. Why is this someone that deserves another season and potentially tens of millions of pounds? He was a caretaker manager, that's it. Do you mean that Mourinho arsed up performance-wise at the start of the season? They were level on points with Manchester United when he was sacked, so clearly those 5/6 games weren't enough to affect their title chances, nor do I believe that there weren't other points in the season where as many points were dropped. Mourinho wasn't to blame for the quality of signings either - those are the best players you can sign when you have to shop for free transfers and can't promise first team football. They were bought solely for the reason of covering the African Cup of Nations, which Ben Haim and Pizarro both did. How can you say they might as well not have signed them in one breath and then say 'Grant had to use them' the next? Nobody better could have been signed for free and they were needed. Grant was criminally unsuited to the job when he was hired and did nothing particularly skilled to show he was able to maintain a title-challenging club. Ask yourself this - if Benitez had been sacked during the shenanigans earlier in the season, would you have wanted Grant as your manager? If Rafa walked away this summer, would you want Grant hired, is he good enough for Liverpool? The idea's ludicrous, I'd certainly prefer to have Curbishley at West Ham than someone with no experience.

I really don't think this is a poor decision at all and I'm surprised there's been such an outcry against it. This is not the same situation as Man City sacking Sven for several reasons: 1) Sven built the Man City team that performed very well this season. He brought in the players and drilled in a style of play. Avram Grant has had to do nothing with the squad he inherited and done nothing to alter the tactics or mentality of the team in general. I'm not saying that's a negative against Avram Grant, but it's one department where he hasn't proved anything - he hasn't shown as much influence on his team as Sven. 2) Man City are not going to be able to get in a manager with a better reputation than Sven. In fact, given the inexplicable sacking of Sven and the general hullabaloo around the club, it's likely that this'll turn into a Hearts situation where each ludicrous sacking reduces the level of replacement that can be brought in. Chelsea can realistically hire almost any manager in the world, including many better than Grant. 3) Avram Grant has no managerial experience outside Israel and very little experience of English football. Maybe he could have been a long-term replacement for Jose had he lasted longer, but when he was thrown into the job after 18 months in England he could only ever play the role of nightwatchman, getting the club through the season on auto-pilot. Sven has extensive experience all over Europe and has pretty good knowledge of English football. He's prepared for some of the problems that will occur whereas Grant would have been learning by doing. 4) Sven's shown that he's capable of spending money relatively well (never an easy job to be recognised for) and can therefore be trusted to build a club. Avram Grant has no history of being able to spend money well and at Chelsea, a manager that makes poor signings can cost Roman hundreds of millions. 5) Avram Grant's complete lack of any success or reputation in the sport means that high-profile players are less likely to sign for Chelsea than if an established manager had been in charge. The manager affects the perceived ambition of the club, and Avram Grant spells 'treading water.' Look at this summer and Spurs - having a manager like Juande Ramos in charge, securing European football and victories over Chelsea and Arsenal is enough to have the club buying Modric, one of Europe's most lauded talents, and being more realistically linked with players like Eto'o. 6) Avram Grant is never going to be a manager that grabs the attention and Chelsea have thrived on a certain dynamic - of flamboyant management and quiet determination from the players. Mourinho is an icon at Chelsea and affects the fans' and players' idea of what a manager should be. Avram Grant doesn't fit that image and being quiet and unassuming inherently puts more focus on the players (excepting the constant questioning of when he'd be sacked.) I think it's far too simplistic to say 'Avram Grant finished second in the PL and CL' because the club achieved that. Grant is not the only person responsible for the success of Chelsea's team - the players, coaches, physios and all the rest play a part. Once the game starts, the manager has precious little influence on the game as has been shown by sports scientists time and time again. Grant showed no particular tactical nous nor did he make any inspired substitutions. I'm not only talking about the 'Anelka on the left' issue because all managers are castigated for playing anything other that their team's perceived 'First XI' - whether it be for tactical reasons or to do with fitness/resting a player. It's that Grant has stuck rigidly to Mourinho's tactics and thus hasn't done anything to change his image as inexperienced at this level. In many ways this situation's similar to Steve McLaren managing England. Sven was a centre-of-attention manager (without being ostentatious) and was a landmark appointment for the FA, just as Mourinho was significant for Chelsea as Abrahmovic's first manager. Sven with England and Jose at Chelsea both did extremely well and both cost their employers a lot of money. McLaren and Grant were both hired on the cheap to maintain the status quo and did exactly that in both cases, only with slightly less charisma. In McLaren's case the style of the English national team was so turgid his lack of any leadership led to horrendous consequences for the team. In Avram Grant's case, the style of Chelsea is so incredibly disciplined and driven his lack of any leadership led to moderate success for the team. Yes, Grant was one penalty away from winning the Champions League, but Jose was one phantom goal away from the final. Football exists on the margins and those are two examples of how results are sometimes entirely out of the manager's control. Jose couldn't stop Luis Garcia and Grant couldn't make Terry score, success is not exclusively a product of a manager's skill.

Not only can I not really get the hub to work (it still has a tendency to drop connection with the instruments plugged in) but I can't get the microphone to work at all. Even when I plug the mic into the second controller port and the guitar in the first one, the mic isn's recognised and it says 'attach controller.' It doesn't work through the USB hub either, even when the guitar and drum decide to function. Does the mic have to be configured or plugged into something specifically? I've tried using the adaptor clips with my normal headset, and that doesn't work either. WHAT'S GOING ON?

It depends how good your scouts are. I'm more likely to ignore a good report from a scout than a bad one, too. There are plenty of players my scouts seem to sing the praises of that have hardly any of their position's key stats above 15. The players that my scouts pan very rarely tend to be good, particularly because I always have a couple of scouts with high Judging Player Potential.

I think as games get more and more complicated and widespread that there will be a lot more elements that don't sit well with people. Multiplayer-only games and Achievements might not be attractive to plenty of gamers, but they're inevitable in an industry that's now appealing to a far larger number of people. There are thousands of games being designed that I'll never have an interest in playing, but there are more than enough that I can keep myself entertained. The game installations and firmware updates really aren't that bad, we just have to get used to them. I remember when I first got a 360 that the wireless controllers and sign-in system seemed ridiculously clumsy, but they're now second nature. This doesn't make sense. Break the sentence down - 'there's a certain aesthetic to recent games' meaning that they possess a certain style 'that's lacking in a lot of recent titles.' Unless you're trying to say that there's a dominant aesthetic to recent games that 'a lot' of recent titles don't possess, then the sentence doesn't make sense. You're saying that recent games have a certain style that recent games are lacking. I assume that you meant 'I find there's a certain aesthetic to recent games that's lacking.' No, albeit has a different meaning to 'although' even though the latter can sometimes be substituted in its place. A better definition is 'although it is' - albeit is purely comparative so you can't use it as you did in your last sentence.

Been playing almost non-stop for 24 hours now Have to say that I like this guitar far more than the last one, the strum bar is actually convenient for strumming up and down rather than only for down strumming. The buttons are far lighter than the beastly GH3 ones, even though I haven't got to grips with the solo frets yet. When you're playing local Quickplay and rank the songs by difficulty, is it an aggregate difficulty for all the instruments you're using or only for the leader's instrument? Got humped yesterday by trying Go With the Flow on Hard drums, thinking the song itself wasn't too difficult.