Official Football Manager 2005 Topic

[TMM]

Well, I'm gonna start a 'Lower LEague Manager' game in a minute, and Frank has selected that I go with Redditch in the English Conference North...who I've never ever heard of.

Anyone wanna place bets on how long this game lasts? I've only ever gone 3 years, and I've done that twice. But I've started about 15 games which have gone (the longest) to December or (the shortest) about a week in.

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good luck I got them relegated, course I played by LLM rules which makes it impossible what with scouting within your borders and and all that shit. Somehow despite finishing dead last, I got tabbed by League Two Yeovil to replace their manager, then I spent 3 seasons there barely staying alive in League Two...so yea LLM is hard but good luck.

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Well, to answer my question about "how long til I get bored of this game" question...the answer was 2 matches in, which equals to about 10 minutes.

Started a new game as England; want to see how the club teams do and build up a reputation doing something entertaining to me (lower league clubs can be really boring) and then go into club management down the line.

[Guest Pirate Chasin' Booty]

I didn't save my previous game after quiting Spurs, so I've decided to just load it back up and carry on, although I'm still finding it very hard to win any games.

Heres my team (bolded names are my signings):

GK: Robinson

DR: Petri Pasanen

DL: Ziegler

DC: King

DC: Alejandro Lembo

MR: Wesley Sneijder

ML: Stewart Downing

MC: Michael Brown

MC: Teemu Tainio

FC: Robbie Keane/Christian Vieri (He's 33 and was at Chelsea, cost me like 13p)

FC: Freddy Kanoute/Fernando (Some Spaniard from Real Betis)

Seriously need to bulster my defence, central midfield and strike force, although after 3 years of unhappiness, Torres is coming in the summer.

Edited April 14, 2005 by muddatrucker

[Liam]

Does anyone have the LLM rules? I went to go to the Football Manager forum, but my e-mail is banned there, so I couldn't sign up...(no idea why...)

[TMM]

The Rules, Guidelines, and Spirit of LLM – Playing the Game and using the Forum

The playing of the game falls into two categories:

1) Choosing the Team.

2) Playing the game.

Choosing the Team’s easy enough. Look for any Nation with more than one Division. Look at the Clubs in the Lowest Division. Choose one of these Clubs.

By definition, Lower League management can only involve Teams with more than one Division, but it’s been a sort of unwritten rule in the LLM community that playing a Club from a Nation with only one Division will be tolerated in the LLM Forum.

Certain Teams are best stayed away from because of unusually high reputations or financial state. These included Peterborough in CM3, Rushden and Diamonds, Fiorentina Viola, and the like. They’re not generally played by regular LLaMas, but may be looked upon as a good introduction to the LLM way, given that they give a slightly easier ride than the real LLM Teams, like Leigh RMI.

A good way to choose a Club is to utilise the LLM Random Team Generator, link located at the top of the LLM Forum Index Page.

G.A's Three Rules of playing LLM.

1) Choose a team. Play the same team until you've won everything you can, regardless how long it takes, or until you're sacked. Then start a new game.

2) Choose a team. Play until your reputation attracts the interest of ever increasingly bigger teams; change Clubs as and when you're offered jobs until you're in charge at Real Madrid, Juventus, Man Utd or a World Cup winning Manager with San Marino.

3) Choose a team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for another team. Do crap. Get sacked. Wait for….ad infinitum.

Playing the game.

First thing to remember is…LLM is a way of playing the game, it’s not just playing with a Team from the Lower Leagues.

It is just a game, though. It’s counter-productive to get bogged down by rules, although there are a few guidelines which should be heeded in order to play the game in the LLM Spirit.

There’s a rule, though, which is best described as “set in stone”.

Play the game as SI programmed it. That is, install the CM Game, apply the latest official SI Patch, Choose a Team and play the game. That means do NOT use editors or third party updates (i.e. Updates on squads, competitions, etc, made up by persons other than SI).

The reason for this is that playing LLM is about playing the game as realistically as possible. This means trusting the data provided by SI is as good as you can get. Third Party Updates are done by persons who may be tempted to give an advantage/disadvantage to favourite/hated Clubs or Players – note MAY. It doesn’t benefit SI to provide faulty data, so steer clear of other updates.

Editors (The Spawn of Satan) are banned for two reasons. They can corrupt your game and they allow you to cheat, whether it’s producing super-players or swapping Teams from one Division or Nation to another.

Guidelines:

Scout Where You Can Tour, or SWYCT.

This is a guideline that was devised as a method of determining where you should be able to send your Scouts when managing a Lower League Club. Financial constraints would make it highly unlikely that a Manager could send a Scout from England to Africa, South America or other faraway places, so the best way to decide where you could send them was to look at where the game would allow you to tour, in the United Kingdom Leagues this would be any of the Home Countries and Ireland, and only send your Scouts there.

It was later decided that it would probably be fair to scout your borders (SYB), i.e. send scouts from a German Club to surrounding Nations like Denmark, Austria, France, Poland, etc. when not managing in the UK.

The Search Screen.

Some LLaMa’s use the search screen to shortlist players in their area and then send off their scouts to find out how good a player he really is. Other more zealous LLaMas avoid this screen entirely letting their scout do the job for which he was hired ie: finding players. Signing “known” players is a big no no. Known players are ones that are known to you through outside influences, or have been signed and performed well for you in previous games of CM. Regardless of what you tendency is with the Search Screen, no player should ever be signed unless he is first given the once over by one of your scouts.

The Transfer Screen.

Stricter LLaMas would never attempt to sign players purely based on the fact they appear as freed in the screen that lists all transfers Worldwide as such a list does not exist in real life. It’s possible to find out such information in the Press, online, etc., but a real life manager doesn’t have access to a transfer screen.

Less scrupulous LLaMas use the screen by identifying freed players and sending their scouts to watch them, signing them or otherwise based on the scouts’ recommendations.

The “Find” button.

Not used by LLaMas. In order to use the “Find” button you have to know who you’re searching for. This can only be done by having prior knowledge of the player, either by having past experience of him in a previous game or by listening to a recommendation by a player tipper.

Signing Staff

LLaMas usually only sign Staff that speak the language of the players they’ll be involved with. In Britain it’d be guys who spoke English. In Germany, German, and so on. The exception to this is scouts. Scouts don’t have day to day contact with players on a verbal communication level and can rely on their observation skills to identify worthwhile signings. It’s sometimes extremely difficult to sign a scout and you have to sign a foreign guy, so it’s looked upon as a “needs must” situation when signing scouts.

Signing Players.

All players should be first scouted before signing for an LL Club. Send your scouts out to Regions or Nations using the SWYCT or SYB (Scout Your Borders) guidelines, and decide which of the recommendations you’ll sign. Once the financial situation of your Club is better, and the Club’s reputation is such as you’d be able to attract foreign players, send your scouts further afield, keeping it as realistic as possible.

The exceptions are loans, in which it’s fine to use the player/staff search using minimum filters (e.g. for loan, free). Some feel that players that you loan in should be first discovered by your scouts. This is a personal preference used by some LLaMas. Again let your conscience be your guide

If you have no scouts it’s ok to use the player/staff search screen to identify players and to invite them for a trial period to ascertain whether they suit your squad.

Tactics.

Best to start off using a default tactic and altering formations or giving individual or team instructions to players based on the strengths or weaknesses of your squad, and NOT to use other people’s tactics or formations. The idea of LLM is finding out the errors of your ways though trial and error. Pinching other people’s ideas is not the way of the LLaMa.

What English Clubs count as LLM?

By definition, a Lower League Club must come from the Lowest Division available in any given Nation, as mentioned above.

In England, and any other Nation with "Feeder Leagues", e.g. Portugal or Italy, then the lowest available League is the "Feeder League", in England The Conference, but if the spec of your PC doesn't allow the "Feeder Leagues" to be loaded, then the Lowest available League becomes Division 3.

In Summary:

Conference North and Spoth - Lower League

Conference - Lower League-ish

League 2 - Lower League, but with reservations.

League 1 - Really pushing it.

Championship - You're having a laugh.

Some notes on Scouting Abroad and Identifying/Signing non-Scouted targets.

Several Nations have historic links with other Countries and as a result have a considerable number of foreign players with Teams that perhaps wouldn't normally be there, e.g. Brazilians in Portugal, Senegalese and North African Nationals in France or Middle Africans in Holland.

The way LLaMas "get round" this problem is usually to employ one Scout of the Nationality of the Country the players come from, e.g. Brazilian Scout in Brazil for a Portuguese Club, and he only Scouts in Brazil, again "normally" once a season but this can vary.

It can be argued that if you play against another Team twice in a season (four times in Scotland) that you would gain enough knowledge of players in that Team through those meetings or watching how the players do in the League against other Clubs to make a bid for them without relying on a Scout report.

SWYCT was originally formulated for playing with Conference Teams in CM3, but it doesn't lend itself easily to 03/04. However, it's still a good and fair guideline but use commonsense to gauge "reality".

I'll edit in/post the rest in a minute.

EDIT: Actually, that's pretty much it...

LL Random Team Generator (aka FRANK)

Edited April 14, 2005 by The_Monkey_Molester

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

here is the team i created, The Erdington Eagles!

I started in the confrance North with £100M and worked my way up

I'm Currently in 2012 and have won everything (at least one trophey every season)

GK: Kenneth Stenild (AaB)

DR: Anthony Vanden Borre (Anderlecht)

DL: J'Loyed Samuel (Aston Villa) - He Lives on the same road as me!

DC: Michael Dawson (Nott's Forest)

DC: Nathen Mulligan (M'Boro)

AMR: Joaquin (Real Betis)

AML: Riccardo Montivio (Atalanta)

DM: Lucas Biglia (Argentinos)

DM: Bjarni Thor Viddarsson (Everton)

AMC: Christiano Ronaldo (Man Utd)

ST: James Vaughn (Everton)

S1: Paul Robinson (Spurs)

S2: Bastian Sweinsteiger (Bayern Munchen)

S3: Lukas Podolski (1 FC Kolon)

S4: Thomas Hitzlsperger (Aston Villa)

S5: Kevin Hofland (Wolfsberg)

[Liam]

Thanks man, I think I'm going to do one of these.

Carsharlton, here we come!

Edited April 14, 2005 by rvdwannabe

[MDK]

here is the team i created, The Erdington Eagles!

I started in the confrance North with £100M and worked my way up

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That must have been quite the challenge.

[botchedpiledriver]

I bet he editted himself in too, with full stats.

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

I bet he editted himself in too, with full stats.

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[therockbox]

With £100 million, I'd be worried if you didn't.

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

I have just started a new game with Sutton Coldfeild Town in the Northen Confrance but i cant't get anyone to come to me, this wouldnt be to bad if i had some reserves or youth players, i dont even have any central Midfeilders, Help?

[therockbox]

Have you tried getting anyone on loan? When I played as Basingstoke I managed to get a few young players from Premiership club (like Portsmouth) on loan.

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

no i'v been trying to loan youngsters and reserves from the local bigboys, Villa, WBA and The Shit

[Liam]

I've decided I'm going to start a game with Dagenham and Redbridge, my local team, and actually stick with it this time. Premiership, here we come.

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

I've decided I'm going to start a game with Dagenham and Redbridge, my local team, and actually stick with it this time. Premiership, here we come.

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[Liam]

I've decided I'm going to start a game with Dagenham and Redbridge, my local team, and actually stick with it this time. Premiership, here we come.

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D & R are in Leauge Two arn't they?, i'm sure i'v played as them before but got bored of it.

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No, we are in the Conference. We had two seasons where we came second, once by goal difference, and the next time, we were second, but only one team went up. The next season, they introudced a second promotion spot....bastards.

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

I have played six games as sutton and only taken a poin, i have no money, no body wants to join me and i'm rock bottom of the Northen confrence, Help

Just wondering what happens if you get relegated from the bottom playable leauge, does it let you continue as manager in a lower leauge or do you automaticly get sacked?

[Guest Red Devil]

I'm in my 6th season with Palace and I'm not sure what's going wrong. For the past two season's I've used the same 3-5-2 tactic tweaking it for any new players signed. That moved me from avoiding relegation to finishing 3rd last season. Now i signed some more players and sold some of the weaker ones and on paper I have a better team. I'm doing virtually the same thing with a little modification and I can't seem to win a match. I've had a horrible start to the season drawing 3 out of 4 games and losing the other. The worst thing is I've played all the shitter teams in the division so I'm not sure what's going wrong.

Anyway, a question. Last year there were two players who fired me to the Cup Treble of the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup. They were Michael Owen and Fernando Cavenaghi. Owen scored 48 goals out of 44 appearences and Cavenaghi scored 37 goals out of 40 appearences. That's been my most lethal partnership EVER. What's been yours?

[Hunter Hearst Hetfield]

Anyway, a question. Last year there were two players who fired me to the Cup Treble of the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup. They were Michael Owen and Fernando Cavenaghi. Owen scored 48 goals out of 44 appearences and Cavenaghi scored 37 goals out of 40 appearences. That's been my most lethal partnership EVER. What's been yours?

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[Jonny D]

No, we are in the Conference. We had two seasons where we came second, once by goal difference, and the next time, we were second, but only one team went up. The next season, they introudced a second promotion spot....bastards.