Football Manager 2011

[stokeriño]

I just beat Inter Milan 3-2 at the San Siro. I have no idea how.

Now I just have to avoid any (more) nasty injuries in my FA Cup 5th round match and I'll be pumped for the home leg in a week.

Who are my FA Cup opponents anyway?

...Dirty Leeds.

Fuck.

[Summers]

Just to add before I go to bed... Wigan job is still hard as fuck. Beginning of Feb... we're fighting but we're shit!

[stokeriño]

Leeds fractured the ribs of one of my players. Luckily he was only my second-choice left-back.

[King Ellis]

On my 07 game, I like potentially screwing my team for the sake of being a frugal manager. League 1 team offers 2m for my top scorer that I only signed on a free last season, I talk them up to 4m and they're happy to pay? Bye!

Though i'm annoyed my DM wants a transfer just because I sold a winger that he thought was massively important but I don't agree with. The guy has 12 crossing!

[stokeriño]

I've come to the conclusion that Inter Milan suck copious amounts of cock, on the basis that I went 2-0 up against them at home, had a man sent off, and still won the match 4-1 (7-3 on aggregate). But then somehow Leonardo is their manager, so I suspect he's simply trying to sabotage them from the inside.

[therockbox]

Just finished my second season at Doncaster. Took over at the start of 2011/2012 when they'd been relegated to League 1, managed to go straight back up though. Leicester ran away with the league so we battled it out for 2nd place with Swindon, and eventually we got it thanks to a run of something like 7 wins on the bounce right at the end of the season.

Was expected to come straight back down from the Championship, and didn't really have an awful lot of money to spend on wages. Had a bit of a transfer budget thanks to the board selling Billy Sharp right at the end of my first summer, but in the end I never needed to spend that thanks to a couple of decent loan signings. Plus I'd somehow managed to get Jiri Kladrubsky to join me in January 2012, and he was covering all across the back four and central midfield as well, which freed up a bit of money as I could get rid of some of a couple of backup players.

Before the Championship season started I signed Kim Yong-Dae (South Korean keeper, has about 50 caps for them) for £1m from Seoul, and managed to get Simon Cox in as well on a free after his contract at West Brom expired. Southampton, who had just been promoted to the Premier League, also wanted him, but I made him a Key Player and made him our highest player as well, although thankfully that didn't mess up my budget too much. I signed Jonathan Ayite (Togolese striker) for £350k to partner him, as I guessed the two strikers I'd used a lot in League 1 - James Hayter and Marco Paixao - would struggle in the Championship. Turned out I was right, Hayter was shocking whenever he played whilst Paixao just couldn't score to save his life. Both took until around March/April before they scored their first goals of the season. Also brought in Adam Matthews (Cardiff, right back) and Craig Eastmond (Arsenal, midfielder) in on loan.

Despite being put down as relegation certainties in January we were in the playoff positions, although there were about 4 points seperating everybody from 2nd to 7th. Originally I didn't want to sign anybody in the January window because I was stretching my wage budget as it was, but my defence was starting to leak goals so I picked up Matthew Upson on a free - he'd been released by West Ham in the summer - and as soon as he came in we became much more solid at the back.

Tried to make a late charge for 2nd but Peterborough (!) got it in the end, and we finished fourth. Got Wigan in the playoff semi-finals, drew 0-0 in the first leg at home but won 1-0 after extra time in the second, setting up a game with Blackpool in the final. Earlier in the season I lost to them 4-0 away, but beat the 5-1 at home, so I didn't really know what to expect going into the game, but in the end I didn't really have to worry...

So Doncaster, with our £125,000 per week wage budget, are going to the Premier League.

We're going to get bummed.

[Berober]

Decided to have a nice game at Villa (FM10). Started off well, Gabby was literally scoring for the sake of it. I counted about 20 goals in 28 appearances or something, managed a late push thanks to my signing of Adriano (funded by the boards generosity in giving me an extra £9mil to spend) and finished in 3rd.

Got a lovely budget for 2010/11, and used it on the defense and youth, signing about 5 regens rated highly and bought Victor from Gremio for £10mil and Darijo Srna for £17mil. I was a bit unsure on spending that much on Srna but he hasn't disappointed and I am currently about 10 points ahead at the top at mid-January. I'm facing Bordeaux, so that will be nice to see Cuellar again (sold him for around £7.5mil, wasn't gonna reject that one).

Highlight was managing to hold on to Ashley Young. I auto-rejected a £15.25mil bid fro Man City, and then had to turn down a transfer request, but I managed to sort it out with a new contract and is about a fifth of a point ahead of everyone in the Premier League Averages.

[Summers]

We finished 17th! Goooo Wigan! I relegated Birmingham City with 2 games left too which was awesome. Offered Kirkland out for 2m just to spite the bastard. He had a terrible season. He palmed every saved shot away, normally to the other striker.

[Guest mr. potato head]

Bad move, Summ. Kirkland will be even more insufferable with $2 million to his name.

[Thrilla]

Played a month and a half with my Bradford boys last night, got past AFC Wimbledon in the replay and then got spanked by Chelsea 4-0 in the next round. Got a full house at the Valley Parade though which meant we turned a profit for the first month since I took over. We could make a late surge for the playoffs at this rate, currently hovering around 12th, our next five games see us take on four of the top five and the team that is rock bottom, this will pretty much make or break the season for us.

[TCO]

Looking through my Newcastle squad I noticed something. Everybody in my first team squad has Landon Donovan under the favoured personnel. That's not an exaggeration either, it's literally everybody. Is this normal or is Donovan the nicest guy of all time? What makes it better is that Donovan has nobody under his favoured personnel

[Gazz]

What's not to love?

[TCO]

The guy scored 31 Prmeier League goals and helped me finish 7th. I know I fucking love him too!

[Summers]

Much changed Wigan team in my second season. A lot of players were picked off by other clubs, so I had to pretty much build a new side. My preferred starting 11 is now..

Allan McGregor

Nedum Onuoha - Roger Johnson - Anton Ferdinand - Maynor Figueroa

Charles N'Zogbia - Nigel Reo-Coker - David Vaughan - Matthew Etherington

Huge Rodallega - Mauro Boselli

Subs from: Matthew Gilks, Gary Caldwell, Hendry Thomas, Ben Watson, Niall McGinn, Federico Macheda, Emmerson Boyze, Fitz Hall, David Carney, Chris Herd, Paul-Jose M'Poku, Zavon Hines & Leigh Griffiths.

So as you can see many players left.. I happily sent Kirkland on his way. I was fed up of his erratic goalkeeping. James McArthur followed him to Burnley for a combined 4.5m. Victor Moses went to Fulham for 4m. Piscu and Steven Caldwell both moved on frees. Ronnie Stam left for 2.4m to Italy. Conor Sammon went to relegated Wolves for 2m. I decided to cash in on di Santo when I realized Boselli was staying and Macheda was in on loan so he left for 3m. Diame went to Moscow for 6.75m. That was a hard choice, as I rate him highly. But when I saw NRC available for 2m I knew I had a ready made replacement. NRC is now captain and is leading the team well. The big shock came when McCarthy moved to Villa. I hoped he'd fight Vaughan for the spot in the middle when Villa enquired about him. I said 10m, expecting a "lol, no". They offered 10m. We said yes.

McCarthy and McArthur both have great future potential but it's hard to wait for it at a lower level when clubs are willing to part cash. Bringing in the players I did cost money and the club doesn't have much - so we achieved it through sales.

5 games into this season, we've won 3 and drawn 2. No loss yet is nice. We beat Spurs 1 - 0 which was the real 'wow' victory. To keep a clean sheet was a marvel for my side last year but my vastly improved defence held firm. We just knocked Man United out of the League Cup too, which was a shock.

[METALMAN]

I just signed Zdravko Kuzmanovic and Miguel Veloso for £10,000,000 apiece. I totally forgot about silly squad registration rules at the time. this means they will not play at all in their first season.

[Matt]

Anyone looking for a challenge, try and keep Dinamo St Petersburg in the Russian First Division. They have no players older than 15 and even they're not registered, so you have to play with regens until the transfer window opens (which is about 4 games in). But to make things worse, the Russian leagues have already started and you begin 18 games into a 38 game season on 1pt, 18pts behind 15th place (5 teams get relegated).

Damn it, why was this the only club that would offer me a contract.

Edit: Saying that, I've just beaten a midtable team 2-0 with the regens, I've signed a bunch of players who are joining in the next few days but fuck it, I might just keep these regens

[Clawson]

What is about average for player ratings? Cause it seems no matter what I do unless somebody scores a goal they're rated between 6.6 and 6.8. So I end the season with guys averaging about a 6.7 even though I end up playing above expectations.

[Guest Neon Noodle]

I believe 6.7 (and thus, I assume, 6.66666666etc.) is considered average.

[Evafreak]

Never had this happen to me but having made all my subs my goalkeeper somehow injures himself with 15 minutes to go so I stuck a striker in goals thankfully it was a cup game against a lower division team and they never got a single shot on target in that time

Actually now that I read the result I had 3 players injured fucking Dunfermline I bet they switched to that artificial pitch before playing us

Edited May 26, 2011 by Evafreak

[The Future]

With money tight I mainly focused on promoting some good youth players and mixing in them with the first team, I was surprised at how the season went as Rooney and Hernandez tore everything apart...both of them almost reaching the 40 goal mark as we won the FA Cup,Carling Cup,Premiership and Champions League.

The line-up that accomplished this:

GK: Rene Adler

DL: Jose Enrique

DC: Dmitri Verkhostov

DC: Phil Jones

DR: Pal Petersen

MR: Nani

ML: Gareth Bale

DMC: Darren Fletcher

AMC: Barry Visser

ST: Wayne Rooney

ST: Javier Hernandez

Subs: David Brown(young American goalie),Ryan Tunniclife,Ravel Morrison,Ross Parker(academy product),Anderson,Macheda,Benat Gomez(Spanish regen, very good striker who'll replace Rooney when Rooney leaves the club).

It's not the strongest bench so I was shocked that I managed to win everything, I had Verkhostov when I was managing Villa a few seasons ago(before they sacked me ) and he was the perfect Vidic replacement, Petersen is a young player Norwegian that I promoted from the youth team, he's going to be a star for sure The previous managers who fucked the team up royally also let go of Tunniclife and Morrison but I bought them back since they were cheap and they have done a solid job.