Football Manager 2011

[TCO]

Just about to start my 3rd season at Newcastle after losing the community shield 5-3 to Arsenal. Only had 13mil to spend so brought in a Guido Marilungo, a lash of future stars raiding youth teams and Brazil as well as Solomon Kalou and Wes Brown on a free and Khouma Babacar on loan from Man Utd. Just beat newly promoted Leicester led by an ageing Michael Owen, 3-0 with Marilungo getting a cracker , so good so far. Hopefully this team is good enough to qualify for the Chamions League again as well as getting though the group stages this year. Krul will probably start when he's fit though.

I'm probably more excited about my youth team though, I have 3 quality Brazillian talents, a Swedish lad who looks pure quality as well as two poached and one of my own wonderkid regens. Surely they'll walk the league!

[Cymbols]

So update on Wigan transfers... last season Boselli left for 10m to Blues. I then brought in Frazier Campbell, Michael Mancienne and Jamie O'Hara. We finished 9th again, which was okay. Two 9 place finishes made me and the board happy.

This pre-season Hitzlsperger and Jenas were released at the end of their contracts. Both had been steady but not great. And with O'Hara and Sandro I had better, younger, options in midfield. Fitz Hall also left, he was pure back up and had done a job for us a couple of times. Much obliged. David Carney left for 350k, we made a small profit on him and all he did was play 6 times and sit on the bench. I shipped McGregor off for 500k to relegated Blues (Boselli moved to Blackburn for 6.5m after they went down, lol Blues). That left me without a first choice goal keeper, but more on that in a minute.

Players joining my Wigan Revolution.. Marc Albrighton for 3.3m from Villa. Ben Foster from Blues for 2.9m - and thus hopefully giving me a number one keeper for many, many years. Craig Dawson for 1.7m, good centreback cover. Fabian Delph for the same amount (his late goal gave us an opening day win over Blackburn too). Josh McEachran on loan as cover and the final signing was Takayuki Morimoto for 5m. He'll make us more than that in merchandise in Japan... and hopefully he can bang in some goals.

That puts my starting line up as

Foster

Kyle Walker - Roger Johnson - Anton Ferdinand - Oscar Wednt

Nigel Reo-Coker

Sandro - Jamie OHara

Marc Albrighton - Charles NZogbia
Hugo Rodallega

or if I go 442, then a midfield of

Albrighton - Sandro or O'Hara - NRC - N'Zog

and a front two of Rodallega and Morimoto or Campbell.

What season is that?

[Summers]

13/14. Why?

Just somehow beat Chelsea 1 - 0, brilliant O'Hara goal. My record against them is quite impressive. Then we beat Spurs 3 - 2. Rodallega hat trick - last goal being in the 90th. I love Hugo, he's fucking awesome.

[Jimmy]

Edit: Summers answered

[MDK]

God damn, I started a new game as Blackpool and it started off quite well. I signed a few free old guys like Finnan and Sylvinho, James Tomkins from West Ham and Christian Benitez from some club in Mexico. Not doing too badly to begin with, but only 5 games into the season FOUR of my top players have season ending injuries. Fuck.

Has anyone tried the 3-6-1 formation? I'm using it against teams I reckon I can get a result against and it works quite well if you have two decent wingbacks.

[Cymbols]

13/14. Why?

Just somehow beat Chelsea 1 - 0, brilliant O'Hara goal. My record against them is quite impressive. Then we beat Spurs 3 - 2. Rodallega hat trick - last goal being in the 90th. I love Hugo, he's fucking awesome.

I was just wondering coz it's a great team and it looks nothing like my Wigan

[Summers]

Just beat Liverpool 3 - 0. What the fuck is going on? The game before I lost to Newcastle. Nothing if not inconsistent at Wigan. However we've got some good results this season already. Draw with United, wins over Chelsea and Liverpool.

[Summers]

13/14. Why?

Just somehow beat Chelsea 1 - 0, brilliant O'Hara goal. My record against them is quite impressive. Then we beat Spurs 3 - 2. Rodallega hat trick - last goal being in the 90th. I love Hugo, he's fucking awesome.

I was just wondering coz it's a great team and it looks nothing like my Wigan

What's your Wigan starting 11? What season you in?

[Thrilla]

Goalkeeper has been a problem area for my Bradford boys in the opening season with nothing really to choose between Lenny Pidgeley and the young lad on loan from Liverpool, Dean Bouzanis. Both are error prone and Bouzanis appears to have a problem holding on to anything struck from distance but with ten games to go we've picked up a veteran goalkeeper for free who knows how to keep the ball out of the net...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-8dOjeVC80

... The late charge for the playoffs is on!

[DavidMarrio]

I can proudly say I have his autograph from when he was good at Wigan haha.

Half way through the season and the table looks like this:

1st: Man.Utd 47pts

2nd: Arsenal 41pts

3rd: Chelsea 40pts

4th: Tottenham 39pts

5th: Liverpool 38pts

6th: West Ham 34pts

I've won 11, drew 5 and lost 3 (Tottenham, Chelsea, Newcastle) So it's pretty close at this stage in the season.

Currently i'm signing Connor Wickham at the end of the season for 3.3mil which will mean that i'll be trying to offload N'Gog haha, Kyriagkos has fallen out with me as has Poulsen cause I don't play them (Well I can't cause Sammy Lee decided to not register them when I went on holiday cause there was an international break at the end of August) So i'm getting 1.2mil for Kyrigakos which I'm quite happy with considering his contract runs out end of the season, it'll just be a bitch trying to get rid of Poulsen

Topped my group in the Europa League with 14 points (4 wins, 2 draws) with Montpellier coming 2nd. Got Braga in the next round and if I beat them I'll face Zenit or Stuttgart.

In the Carling Cup semi's against Stoke, while Chelsea play Villa. In the FA Cup i've got Scunthorpe.

[Berober]

Champions League Quarter Final second leg, Villa (me) (0) vs Chelsea (1). I play a 4-2-1-2-1 With two DMC's and an MC. I have to withstand Drogba hitting the post twice, but Ashley Cole gets sent off and I managed to nick two goals before my own guy, M. Diarra goes, now to face Barca in the Semi's with the prospect of an all-spain Final otherwise (Madrid Derby is the other tie)

Yeah...

[Gazz]

Can somebody explain why winning 2 trophies and finishing runner-up in the Premier League causes my team to DROP 42 places in the European Coefficents below mediocre Championship teams Middlesborough (14th) and Ipswich (17th)?

Yes I can, it only takes into account performances in European competitions over the last 5 years.

[Hobo]

Just thinking, has anyone seen the effects of the dynamic leagues feature? Because I don't think it's had much of an effect in my game whatsoever. Everything seems to be pretty much as was. At least nothing I've noticed.

[Gazz]

I think it's something you wouldn't really notice the effects off as it takes time. I've seen people who have the Russian Premier Division as the third best league in the rankings behind the Prem and La Liga as more Russian teams do well in the European competitions.

[DavidMarrio]

Just thinking, has anyone seen the effects of the dynamic leagues feature? Because I don't think it's had much of an effect in my game whatsoever. Everything seems to be pretty much as was. At least nothing I've noticed.

It'd probably take awhile a good few seasons to notice. You do see some changes such as I had Serie A drop down and the Bundesliga became the 3rd best league in terms of reputation so more people started moving to Germany. But I haven't seen drastic changes yet as I haven't had a really long game yet

[Hobo]

I've been playing the same save since I got the game. It's 2018 and now as I check the competitions, it does seem Scotland and Norway have improved a bit. Nothing major though. I think Serie A may have surpassed La Liga though.

Then I went to check the Premier League managers just to see. Robbie Keane is at Newcastle. Jean Alain Boumsong manages Sunderland, Ledley King has just taken over the Spurs job from Gary Neville. Most of these came up through being youth coaches at various clubs.

None of these beat the times in this game when Rio Ferdinand managed Dortmund, Wes Brown managed Padova and most mindboggling of all... Kevin Kilbane managed AC Milan.

[DavidMarrio]

Haha yeh I like seeing the players managing random teams. I remember the partnership of Steven Gerrard and Gary Neville as his assistant manager at Villa and thinking WTF?!?!!

Searching for good bosmans to get in next season, mainly just focusing on youth players who can improve, found a few mainly looking at Santon and Thiago from Barca (who doesn't wanna join )

[Berober]

Managed to get a 1-1 draw away from home, so decided to just employ a turtle-like formation, going 1-5-4-1 SW-D-DM-S. Held on for a 0-0, 2 shots to 21. Now to see which Madrid it is in the Final.

And thanks to a draw from L'Pool, one win and I'm League Champ!

[DavidMarrio]

Managed to get a 1-1 draw away from home, so decided to just employ a turtle-like formation, going 1-5-4-1 SW-D-DM-S. Held on for a 0-0, 2 shots to 21. Now to see which Madrid it is in the Final.

And thanks to a draw from L'Pool, one win and I'm League Champ!

Parasite football at it's best haha

[Lineker]

They must have been shellshocked.