Football Manager 2013

[Khain]

Enzo Andia playing in the Premier League? That seems soooooo wrong

[stokeriño]

Enzo Andia playing in the Premier League? That seems soooooo wrong

That's okay, they got relegated the following week.

[stokeriño]

HAH!

Did not expect that at all. Especially since 6 out our 11 starters were new signings (Andy Carroll, Ashley Young, Lewis McGugan, Jordan Mutch, Adam Smith, Michael Morrison) making their competitive debuts.

[stokeriño]

Other people should be talking about their FM games before this because my personal thread.

Entering the 2017/18 season, I have the following priorities:

#1 Improve on last season's league performance (14th, 42 points, W10 D12 L16)

#2 Try and win the Capital One Cup, if I get decent draws

In amongst this is also the Europa League, which clutters my fixture list and will probably leave my squad shattered by November. Can't really expect to get out of our group ahead of Schalke 04 and Celtic either (the other team is Lech Poznan). Hopefully I'll still be able to have some fun though.

I'm uncertain about the league. There was a tonne of turnover in the squad over the summer, mainly because my DoF decided to let a load of contracts expire.

This is the squad I'll be tackling (at least the first of) the season with:

1. Fraser Forster (GK)

2. Rob Elliot (GK)

-. Kieran Bertschin (GK) - U21

3. John Stones (DRC)

4. Adam Smith (DRL)

5. James Perch (DR,DM)

6. Alan Sheehan (DL)

7. Arinse Uade (DLC)

8. Michael Morrison (DC)

9. Alex Bruce (DC)

10. Haydn Hollis (DC)

11. Aaron Martin (DC) - captain, POTY for *three* seasons straight!

12. Jake Livermore (DM,MC)

13. Jordon Mutch (DM,MC)

14. Gary Fisher (DM,MC)

15. Jeff Hughes (MLC)

16. Larnell Cole (M/AMRC)

17. Stewart Downing (M/AMRL)

18. Aaron Doran (M/AMRL)

19. Lewis McGugan (M/AMC)

20. Connor Wickham (AMRL/ST)

21. Ashley Young (AMRLC/ST)

22. Jamie Murphy (AMLC/ST)

23. Andy Carroll (ST)

24. Islam Feruz (ST)

Current 'first eleven' (4-2-3-1):

Forster

Perch - Martin - Morrison - Smith

Livermore - Mutch

Young - McGugan - Murphy

Carroll

...Hmm. :/

[Gazz]

Well, the new chairman of Newcastle is a complete dick.

Everything I ask for is answered with 'Nope'.

[stokeriño]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

[Gazz]

Fat Mike wasn't too bad, upgraded the training facilities and junior coaching budgets. Decent budgets.

This dude is just a tit though, we've got £45m in the bank, top of the league and in the last eight of the CL.

Can I upgrade the youth facilities? Can I bollocks.

Can I have a better loan feeder team than Gateshead? Nope.

[TCO]

Playing my Spurs game again and in a battle for 4th place with Newcastle and Arsenal, with three games to go I'm on 68pts, Newcastle are on 68 and Arsenal are 3 pts back.

Exciting stuff but I just beat Porto in the Champions League semi-final and find I'm out I'll be playing Arsenal, thus making the league irrelevant and condemning Newcastle to the Europa League. WInner take-all North London Derby in Lisbon to decide the Champions League and the final spot for next season, doesn't get much bigger than that!

[Lineker]

Win or else.

[TCO]

Christ, I need a lie down after that. But anyway, I've done a Mourinho, Euopa League and Champions League in successive years!

Arsenal ended up 6th in the league, 3 points behind Newcastle in 5th and 6 behind me in 4th.

It was an interesting season anyway because I signed Lewandowski for £21mil at the start of the season and he was woeful, scoring 2 goals in 17 league games. Juventus inexplicably bid £30mil for him in January so I flogged him and brought in Lacina Traore for 15 who immediately trolled Lewandowski by scoring a hattrick on his debut. He went on to do his best Papiss Cisse impression for the 2nd half of the season, shame he wasn't eligible for Europe, he deserved a Champions League medal

[stokeriño]

The problem with spending three or four years out in the sticks (read: Ireland and/or League 1) is that I no longer have any real comprehension as to which teams are good any more. I was expecting Villa to be rather poor, for example, when in fact they appear to have bought half the Man City squad (Kolarov, Zabaleta, Rodwell, Garcia, etc.). Similarly I thought Schalke would romp to victory over us, but we scraped a 1-0 away win and they also lost to Celtic.

Things I have noticed thus far:

* QPR won the Europa League last season. Like, WTFBBQ

* Stoke have somehow managed to shell out a net £105m transfer spend over the past four seasons and are now fairly ridiculous. Well, by their standards anyway.

* With that said, during the same period Spurs spent a whopping net £300m. Man City spent £260m... Man United were close behind with £250m...Liverpool £216m... Arsenal £145m... Chelsea a mere £58m

* Man City won five Premier League titles in a row (2012-2016), then suddenly in 2017 they finished 37 points off the pace. Mancini is still there.

* Speaking of City, they now play in the Al Mubarak Arena. CLASSY. (The only other new top-flight stadium is Spurs' Hoddle Arena)

[Thrilla]

I hear there is no disabled access at Hoddle Arena...

[Szumi]

Do most of you guys use the standard team instructions that come with a formation? What do you tweak the most? And for you tempo guys, do you find your team working better going slower or faster in pace?

And the shouts - have shouts set for the start of every match, or incorporate them as the match goes on?

Just always been curious.

[Summers]

Lost 3 - 1 to Chelsea in the first leg of the first knock out round in the CL. Wasn't expecting much in the second leg..but a 2 - 0 win at Celtic Park and we're through!

[TCO]

I never use shouts, ever and have never had problems having success. I tweak some team istructions but mostly do each individual position according to the players I have. I tend to favour having one striker as an advanced forward regardless of formation and play a big, strong and quick striker up there like Adebayor, Damiao or Traore who ae key to any sort of success. As far as tempo goes I always play a quick tempo with positioning being rigid, apart from at least one player who's allowed to drift, Ben Arfa being perfect in that role.

That's usually the essence of any tactic I use. Disciplined positioning with a creative attacking midfielder supporting a big strong striker.

[TCO]

So I beat Arsenal in the Champions League final, making sure they're not in Europe this season. Then in the summer, I do this....

I'm pretty sure virtual Arsene Wenger has finally lost what's left of his sanity as soon as this move went through ^_^

[stokeriño]

I think the only shouts I ever (very rarely) end up using these days are either "Hassle opponents" (when I fear their passing prowess) or "Retain possession" (when I fear throwing a lead away in the last ten minutes).

Otherwise my only tactical tweaking comes in the form of player roles and the overall approach (generally either Control, Standard or Counter...since Attacking seems to do fuck all on this game ).

[Plubby]

I always set one of Retain Possession or Get Ball Forward to start :\

[stokeriño]

Seems a bit OTT to me. I mean instructions such as those make sense in a kind of "we just need to HOLD ON" or "desperately try to score" fashion, used for certain periods of the game... But if you apply them as default you may as well remind your players every time they step out onto the pitch "Yes, the goal is in that direction, and no, letting the opposition have the ball is not generally preferred".

[Plubby]

That's what I had in mind

EDIT: If I had it my way, i'd tell them both, once every ten minutes