Football Manager 2007

[Summers]

Bwahaha. Blacktown City.

Aussie football teams rule.

[Plubby]

So..how good is this game? I bought it on Friday night for half-price and haven't actually played it once due to EHM coming with it...

[Summers]

You can manage Cockburn City.

It's clearly awesome.

[Plubby]

Yay!

[9 to 5]

You can also manage not one, but two Blackburn Rovers'!

[Anothername]

Shot at 2007-07-21

Thierry Henry is being nursed back to health in the Reserve squad, he's 31. Abedayor is also injured for the next 2 months. I have tons of promising youngsters including: Johan Djourou, Alexandre Song, Francisco Merida, Rui Fonte, Aaron Ñiguez, Carlos Vela, Nicklas Bendtner, and Arturo Lupoli. They're all on loan out.

[Lord Nibbler]

So yeah... finished 2nd in my 2nd season as Arsenal behind overachievers Aston Villa (we demolished them 4-0, but we were inconsistent away and kept drawing while they kept winning ) I did win the UEFA cup and the League cup again though.

Started my 3rd season with a 1-0 win against Birmingham, and a 2-0 win against Bolton and a 2-0 victory over Inter in the Super Cup.

We got taken over towards the end of the season and although the new board had planned to install a new manager, they decided to keep me around because of my accomplishments or some shit like that. I got a hefty transfer kitty of £55M and a week before the transfer window closes. Anyone got any suggestions?

Transfers so far:

In

Pedro Leon £3.4M (Murcia) - Cani wasn't performing as well as I wanted him to so hopefully he'll shape up with some competition from fellow Spaniard.

Leighton Baines £10M (Wigan) - Again trying to beef up my defense this season, hopefully he'll do good.

Out

Jens Lehmann (free) - Didn't want to sign a new contract so he could retire with us... odd.

Gael Clichy £3.9M (Milan) He didn't perform well last season

5 youngsters who I didn't need.

I have £45M left and like I said: a week before the window closes... suggestions anyone?

[Pesci]

Started a new game as Liverpool. I decided I wanted to try and actually be good at the tactical side of things, and it's just easier for me to do well when I'm playing as the team I'm most familiar with. Oh, and this time I've set up my own training as well, much easier than it looked. I was doing well until I lost to Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League qualifying round. 3-1. Why is it that whenever I tell my team not to get complacent, they let three or four in out of spite? <_

Edited July 22, 2007 by Pesci Queen

[Matt]

({) Same happens to me.

And make sure you set up your coaches on your training schemes, with Liverpool you probably want 4* and 5* in each category - so you could really do with a coach assigned solely to each specific area, it was something I didn't do at first, but it helps if you do.

Edited July 23, 2007 by - Matt -

[new_era]

I've always made my own training, make a seperate one for goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders and strikers. The guys in my U18's also have a bumped up schudule(sp?). I keep the reserves as they are as i loan most of them out anyways. I think it always helps to do this.

Gonna go start my first post for my Ipswich diary i posted in the Cube like 2 weeks ago

[The Third Dukes]

Started a new game as Liverpool. I decided I wanted to try and actually be good at the tactical side of things, and it's just easier for me to do well when I'm playing as the team I'm most familiar with. Oh, and this time I've set up my own training as well, much easier than it looked. I was doing well until I lost to Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League qualifying round. 3-1. Why is it that whenever I tell my team not to get complacent, they let three or four in out of spite?

[Matt]

Or say relax and enjoy the rest of the game when you're 3-0 up at half time against a side 4 leagues below you.

[ONO]

Started a new game as Liverpool. I decided I wanted to try and actually be good at the tactical side of things, and it's just easier for me to do well when I'm playing as the team I'm most familiar with. Oh, and this time I've set up my own training as well, much easier than it looked. I was doing well until I lost to Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League qualifying round. 3-1. Why is it that whenever I tell my team not to get complacent, they let three or four in out of spite?

Along those lines, never EVER tell your team "you only need one goal" when it's 0-0 at the half. You will lose 2-1. Guaranteed.

[Pesci]

Yeah, one more goal tends to work for me sometimes. It's pretty much 50/50, or something like that. The matches I hate are second legs of a cup, because it treats them as if they're the half-time of the previous match. It's alright if you're losing or drawing heading into the second leg and you can say something to get their spirits high like "you can win this!" or "do this for the fans!", but if you're winning by one goal going into the second leg, there isn't much you can say. I wouldn't tell them I'm thrilled, because I've always found that praising them that much when they haven't got a great lead can make things worse. So I show encourangement, which doesn't always work either. Then once I get to half time of that match, I'm even more limited. They should start treating second legs like completely separate matches. I'm pretty sure my team-talk had something to do with the loss.

As for my training, I've gone all out. Goalkeepers, centre-backs, full-backs, defensive midfielders, attacking midfielders, box to box midfielders (midfielders who can do both well for the team in other words, another way of putting it is Steven Gerrard), wingers and strikers all have their own categories. If Crouch actually played like a strong target man in the Viduka mould, I'd probably make a separate category for him as well. And yeah Matt, I did the coach thing. I only have one coach for each category (except for attacking), though.

[Anothername]

Yeah, one more goal tends to work for me sometimes. It's pretty much 50/50, or something like that. The matches I hate are second legs of a cup, because it treats them as if they're the half-time of the previous match. It's alright if you're losing or drawing heading into the second leg and you can say something to get their spirits high like "you can win this!" or "do this for the fans!", but if you're winning by one goal going into the second leg, there isn't much you can say. I wouldn't tell them I'm thrilled, because I've always found that praising them that much when they haven't got a great lead can make things worse. So I show encourangement, which doesn't always work either. Then once I get to half time of that match, I'm even more limited. They should start treating second legs like completely separate matches. I'm pretty sure my team-talk had something to do with the loss.

[therockbox]

I'll only tell my side they need one more goal if morale is quite poor, if it's good then I'll tell them not to get complacent. I'll only use relax/result doesn't matter etc. if the players are really unhappy or it's a friendly.

[Sam]

So when is the next big online game going to be?

[stokeriño]

So in my PSP game... I've just got to the end of the 2008/09 season, where I finished 12th in League 1 as Oxford (having won the Conference and League 2 in the seasons prior). The board was delighted as ever, since they always seem to expect us to be relegated, but I was still well over my wage budget - a measly £22k per week, and I was on £33k. Also there were a load of games where the opposition would just ROMP over us. Needless to say, we'd hit our quality barrier and it was time to start building the squad up...if I had any money, which I didn't.

So it's the 16th May and the may be a couple of playoffs and cup finals yet, but otherwise everything is pretty much done. I then get a job offer from Sunderland, who have just finished 20th in the Premiership. I thought "Hmm, top club in the Championship and £4.2m to play with? Sold." And so here I am.

Having not touched the line-up since I took over, here's the Starting XI they got relgated with:

GK: Wayne Henderson

DL: Danny Collins

DR: Kevin Foley

DC: Kenny Cunningham

DC: Stephen Caldwdell

ML: Ross Wallace

MR: David Bell

MC: Graham Kavanagh

MC: Tommy Miller

FC: Stephen Elliot

FC: Jonathan Stead

Sub1: Ben Alnwick (GK)

Sub2: Robbie Elliot (DLC)

Sub3: Clive Clarke (D/DMLC)

Sub4: Liam Lawrence (AMR)

Sub5: Tobias Hysén (AM/FLC)

Now of course I have no knowledge whatsoever about Sunderland or any of their players, so I'm going to have to do some lengthy assessing. If anyone knows anything and has advice on where I should focus my improvements, by all means do so.

Kenny Cunningham's unhappy because he thinks Dwight Yorke is a disruptive influence on the team. Don't worry Kenny, he's retiring in a month!

I will definiately be swiping a 17 year old kid called David Harvey who I brought to Oxford, though. He's a DRC and his stats are almost equal to my central defenders already! Plus, only worth £12k...

What is confusing though - "The Sunderland directors expect the club to stay clear of relegation this season. There is a transfer budget of £4.2m to help you achieve these goals."

There are no games left to play, FOOLS! :@

[Lord Nibbler]

Quick question, is there any way to clear all the scout recommendations? It's annoying when you move to a new club and all the players your old scouts looked at still have their ratings.

[Hobo]

After leaving Roma due to the whole Packo Ayesterain debacle and after spending a personal record 26 days at Rangers before falling out with the board due to my wish to get more money from them. Now I'm back in Italy with AC Milan pretty much the 300 million euro budget is what got me there.