Football Manager 2009

[TheArsenal]

I have just taken Luton Town to the Premiership in straight seasons.

Started with them so had to deal with the 30 point deficit, but the key signings of Robbie Fowler from Blackburn and Juho Makela from Hearts (both free) saw me win the league by one point. My total transfer spendings on 11 players in the first season was £93,000. Money earned from selling 2 players was £725,000 - another 20 were released.

The second season saw the signing of a bunch of Scottish teenagers all on frees, and Vaclav Kadlec on a free from Sparta Prague (amongst others). These players really developed well, so well that I ran away with the league, winning by 23 points. Total transfer spendings on 16 players was £45,000. Didn't sell anybody this year, released one player.

Third season and the board wants me to enjoy the experience of the Championship, which is a nice way of telling me they expect relegation. So I shock them completey by winning the league by 8 points. Managed to bring in 13 players for £89,000 - the best buys of which were left winger Michael McIndoe on a free, and striker Andrius Velicka on a free from Rangers. Velica actually didn't score any goals until the middle of January, and I was in the process of selling him (a bid had been accepted) but then cancelled the deal after he scored his first two goals for the club in one game - and he went on to be my top scorer for the season. I managed to sell 8 players for £1,400,000 - a further 9 were released.

I am now in the summer before the Premiership begins and I'm hoping to bring in a few quality signings so I can aim for a mid-table finish in the league. The club has had no money for the last three years so there's been no investment in training or youth facilities, and I've been selling players in an attempt to keep the club out of debt. So the club decides to increase the ground capacity (for the first time) by 2,500 seats. So I'll have about a 13,000 capacity. This has put the club about £6,000,000 in debt.

My transfer budget - which stands at about £19,000,000 (last year my budget was £90,000) for promising a top half finish has basically come from the TV revenue. It doesn't really complement my wage budget of £135,000 a week. The club actually announced that they expect future revenue from our increased capacity to cover the debt.

And they cancelled my link affiliation with Arsenal and told me we were too big to be a feeder club. Two weeks later the chairman, without me requesting, has announced we will now be a feeder club to Juventus.

Interesting summer ahead....

[FireDoughnut]

Lahm?

[Fudge]

I need a fantastic right back who is younger than John O'Shea. Chelsea wont sell me Bosingwa, I'm not paying over the odds for Ramos or Alves, so does anyone have any ideas?

Davide Santon.

[Matt]

So after not losing since August, it looks like I'm going to lose 3 out of 4 games - granted 2 have been against Huddersfield and Sunderland who are in leagues above me but still I haven't looked impressive for ages, even when I win by a couple of goals the other side are all over me, the tactics on this game are really fiddly and annoying.

[KoA]

I need a fantastic right back who is younger than John O'Shea. Chelsea wont sell me Bosingwa, I'm not paying over the odds for Ramos or Alves, so does anyone have any ideas?

Davide Santon.

I've just signed him. I had looked at him, I was looking for experience though, but I guess O'Shea can step in when needed.

Also in the process of signing Igor Akinfeev from CSKA Moscow to be the sucessor to Edwin van der Sar when he hangs up his gloves. Has he been good for everyone who's signed him? He's meant to be one of the best goalkeepers on the game, apparently.

[EddieG]

Yeah, great replacement for Cech in my game.

[Sick N Twisted]

Instead of Akinfeev, go for Asenjo if he hasn't moved yet, he'll be cheaper too.

[KoA]

Chriiist, I don't know which to buy now. THINK I shall stick with Akinfeev. :/

[Sick N Twisted]

I had Akinfeev on FM08, and he was awesome, I do prefer Asenjo now though.

I'd also put Lloris ahead of Akinfeev, don't know why.

[Fudge]

Asenjo gets better than Akinfeev over time, for me anyway.

Plus on most of my games those greedy Russian twats wont let him go on the cheap so you'll be paying over double for what you'd pay for Asenjo. I got him for 6.5m recently after my 16m bid for Akinfeev was rejected and I gave up.

By the time Van Der Sar is shit Asenjo should be amazing.

Edited June 3, 2009 by Fudge

[KoA]

Right; I'm going to go for Asenjo, then. He's unhappy at his club and wants to move, so might get him on the cheap. He also speaks English too which eliminates language barrier problems.

EDIT: Muhahaha, 8.25M release clause FTW.

Edited June 3, 2009 by KoA

[ClaRK! Kent]

Does anybody use any of the myriad editors for FM, and could they recommend me a decent one? FM-Base, which is well good for logos and kits and stuff, has maybe 3 or 4 editors and all of them are punctuated by various "run-time error blah can you help?" or "doesn't work" comments. So yeah, recommendations.

[TheArsenal]

I have just taken Luton Town to the Premiership in straight seasons.

Interesting summer ahead....

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.

[Kanegetshighbysmellinhisarmpits]

I have just taken Luton Town to the Premiership in straight seasons.

Interesting summer ahead....

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.

[TheArsenal]

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.

Since the last post I also signed Darron Gibson from Man United on a free.

The first season my record was: P 46 - W 33 - D 12 - L 1.

I won most of those thanks to Robbie Fowler's goals. He was amazing that first year, and then was terrible after that and never played for me again. Hardest challenge has been keeping inside the wage budget. The first season (League 2) it was something stupid like 35K a week, then it was about 60k or 70k a week when I was in League 1, in the Championship it was 93k a week, and now I managed to get 135k a week. It's really difficult to negotiate any contracts knowing you have no money to pay decent wages. Other than that, I just keep a look out for free players, or low-priced transfer listed players that I can get for free. I was lucky with Ben Foster that Chelsea never played him and his contract was ending - and he only wanted 7k a week, but I offered him 9k a week.

The problem with going up in straight seasons is my club reputation still isn't as high as virtually any other club, so players are turning me down. Stephen Ireland was rotting in the Man City reserves but he wouldn't sign for me and went to Villa instead. Gutted.

Played my first three games of the season....

Luton 1 - 1 Chelsea. Pretty surprised by this. I wanted one point from my first three games, so this was good. I even took the lead.

Man Utd 2 - 0 Luton. Pretty much what I expected. Damn Ronaldo.

Luton 2 - 1 Liverpool. Oh yeah!! I took the lead, they equalised with a very controversial goal, 5 mins later, I get the lead and defend for my life. Booyah!!

Bring on the rest!!!

[Hobo]

Matzat look away now

I just thumped Werder Bremen 4-1 in the DFB Pokal. They took the lead and then Kevin Monnet-Paquet equalised. Got to extra time and a 16 year old Czech called Ondrej Toman scored twice before Nene scored towards the end of ET.

[therockbox]

Couple of questions for those with the 9.0.3 patch:

Anyone else getting a silly amount of injuries? It seems like I'm getting at least one minor knock in every game, as well as players going down to 60-70% fitness because of a bad tackle.

Goalkeepers being even more erratic than normal? On a couple of occasions I've had a long ball kicked towards my goal by the opposition keeper, their strikers aren't chasing it, and it seems to be going through for a goal kick. Suddenly my keeper will dive for it and make a save like it's on target. Luckily it hasn't resulted in conceding yet, but it seems to be getting closer every time this happens.

[METALMAN]

Why the fuck am I playing in the Champions League final on a SATURDAY?

Oh and I hate Tony Mowbray. After beating him in the FA Cup final I say he's a good manager and shouldn't be sacked. Then in reply to that he says I am incompetent.

Edited June 5, 2009 by metalman

[Fudge]

Why the fuck am I playing in the Champions League final on a SATURDAY?

Oh and I hate Tony Mowbray. After beating him in the FA Cup final I say he's a good manager and shouldn't be sacked. Then in reply to that he says I am incompetent.

Because Champions League Final's are always on a Saturday. Duh.

[KoA]

Why the fuck am I playing in the Champions League final on a SATURDAY?

Oh and I hate Tony Mowbray. After beating him in the FA Cup final I say he's a good manager and shouldn't be sacked. Then in reply to that he says I am incompetent.

Because Champions League Final's are always on a Saturday. Duh.

Uhhh, no they aren't. Unless that was sarcasm, if it is I feel very stupid.

Couple of questions for those with the 9.0.3 patch:

Anyone else getting a silly amount of injuries? It seems like I'm getting at least one minor knock in every game, as well as players going down to 60-70% fitness because of a bad tackle.

Goalkeepers being even more erratic than normal? On a couple of occasions I've had a long ball kicked towards my goal by the opposition keeper, their strikers aren't chasing it, and it seems to be going through for a goal kick. Suddenly my keeper will dive for it and make a save like it's on target. Luckily it hasn't resulted in conceding yet, but it seems to be getting closer every time this happens.

Yeah, I'm getting both those things a LOT. It's taking the piss in all honesty. And it's always Ronaldo, Berbatov, Tevez or Rooney who gets the worst injuries. All of the fantastic four.