Zaz

Seems you have to do a one stop strategy to win the damn thing

Can't complain though, two seconds and sitting on top of the championship.

Think you can only join mid-season in public games, though I could be wrong. Dan, try going join mid season game and enter our game ID (#35084) as we still have quite a few positions vacant, so it could work.

Also, my team mate finished his practice but ended up crashing on the second last lap, and I haven't seen him since >_> He qualified in 16th, which I suppose is okay for Red Bull. Edit: Actually, he seems to have come and edited his pit strategy, as he used to have one of his laps clashing with mine. But he hasn't done warm-up yet.

And Hajj has gone MIA

As Spurs, I just beat Arsenal twice in a week at the Emirates. First was 1-0 in the league and second was 3-1 in the FA Cup. If this happened in real life the entire Tottenham team would probably be inducted into the Spurs Hall of Fame >_>

Edit: But yeah, they really need to fix that 'Keeper boots it forward to striker who scores' crap, especially when it happens against you

I did say my offense was firing on all cylinders, my defense was solid for the first 9 games leading the league in least goals conceded. But now it has been a little rougher, though if you can pick up Jeremy Mathieu from Toulouse FC you're guaranteed a 7.5 for a left defender almost every game.

I totally missed the word 'offense'. Maybe I found it 'offensive' that you used that instead of attack >_>

Except defence? >_>

Who's Shivraj Sillett?

That'd me be, Zaz.

Ah, ok, just noticed you joined the public game. Wish you'd gotten in quick enough to be my partner, as it looks like my teammate signed up and then just buggered off

Damn, sucks to hear if that's the case. Checking when your partner signed up, seems I still would've been too late to join you either way. Sorry.

Out of curiosity, and this is also a question to those who have played this before, what sort of penalties are given to teams that have inactive driver(s), one driver only in the team and such (unless it's just being in a disadvantage in the Constuctor's Championship)?

He's come on and done some practice now, but he still hasn't responded in the team talk >_>

Who's Shivraj Sillett?

That'd me be, Zaz.

Ah, ok, just noticed you joined the public game. Wish you'd gotten in quick enough to be my partner, as it looks like my teammate signed up and then just buggered off

Who's Shivraj Sillet?

If anyone's interested, I joined the public academy game on the main page, which needs a few more drivers. The difference between cars in academy games isn't as big and it only runs when there are 22 drivers. I'll still be doing this one as well, of course. Gotta beat Hajj >_>

Hajj!

Looks like that one pit strategy worked a treat. 1-2 for Toyota!

Over confidence here.

I think by the end of the season we're just going to be sending our cars out to kamikaze into yours

Why do you think I took on Hajj as my partner? >_>

So I post the quickest time by almost a second in sessions 1 and 2 and a bad one in 3 made me go to 9th? Fuck whoever devised this stupid qualifying format.

Have fun chasing THAT warm-up time boys.

Times don't carry over from each session. If we had 20 drivers, after the first session, the slowest five get cut, after the second, the next five slowest get cut off and in the third the quickest ten go at it.

And a good time, Slogger. I'm into the low 1:24's after half my laps, hopefully I'll get into the 1:23's by the end.

Game has begun and qualifying results have been posted, and it does provide some good reading for those who aren't in one of the big teams!

Qualifying and races will happen at 4PM GMT every day, so the race for Melbourne will occur at 4 tomorrow afternoon.

Good luck lads.

And Hajj! Constructors championship here we come!

I'm in as Toyota. Is there any disadvantages to joining another team that's already been created? Do you have less say in stuff? I was going to join Red Bull but wasn't totally sure about this.

Haha, two years in a row England have received an extra spot in the UEFA Cup for topping the Fair Play table and two years in a row I've received that spot due to being the top of the English Fair Play table. Seems the only way I can get into the UEFA Cup nowadays

I can't see Burnley doing us over two legs. If it was a one off game and we had an off night then maybe....

Still they've beaten Fulham (West London), Chelsea (their West London rivals) and Arsenal (North London). Let's hope they don't beat Arsenal's North London rivals as well...

We just need to put up a few goals at WHL. I'm confident of us making the final and retaining the cup would be nice.

It may be our only way into Europe, so Redknapp will probably be putting out full strength teams for each game. So I can't really see us losing to Burnley over two legs (well, if we're serious about it we shouldn't).

I haven't been having any of the problems that you guys seem to be having with tactics etc.

What is it exactly that's going wrong for you guys?

Last minute goals from Brad Friedel.

Don't know why I bother with this anymore, it's absolutely ridiculous.

Okay, so as promised, here's my team and stuff. Transfers:

In

Paulo Ferreira - 1.4m (hardly played, but 1.4m for him as back-up is awesome)

Alex (left winger from Internacional - not the other two ) - 7.75m - bit steep seeing as he's hardly played either, he's probably good enough to start, but he won't unless somebody gets injured, so yeah

Miguel Veloso - 12m (he's been as good as you'd expect)

Kevin Davies - 4.4m (yeah... I looked at his stats and decided he'd be good back-up for Pav... but he's fucking awful)

Rafael Carioca - 3m (hasn't played much but he's developing surely enough, so he might start to challenge Huddlestone or Veloso soon)

[January] David Luiz - 9.75m (ideally he'll grow while being secondary to King and Corluka after I sold Woodgate, apparently he's better than King but he keeps getting booked so I'm nervous)

[January] Martin Fenin - 1.1m loan (because Bent was shit and Campbell wasn't great - Fenin basically saved me - something like 6 goals in 14. Not bad at all. Won't get him full-time though because I don't need yet another young player)

[2nd summer] Rodrigo Palacio (and loads of youngsters but typing them out will anihilate this post. Anyway, I need him to play off of Pav, hopefully he won't be shit)

Out

Ricardo Rocha - 1.5m to Birmingham

Didier Zokora - 3.8m to Bolton

[January] Woodgate - 10m to Villa (didn't really wanna sell him but he was the worst performing out of himself, King and Corluka, so I wasn't gonna say no to 10m)

[January] Jamie O'Hara - 5m to Everton - buy-back clause of 7.5m in case he becomes immense - wanted to keep him but he never got played so I thought this could be a good idea

[January] Aaron Lennon - 5m to Bolton - biggest mismatch ever? Anyway, buy-back clause of 7.5m again in case he becomes immense - needed to choose between him and dos Santos and dos Santos got there most recently so felt better selling Lennon

[2nd summer] Assou-Ekotto - 4m to Everton - tried to get rid of him repeatedly throughout the first season - nobody wanted him

[2nd summer] Michael Dawson - 7.25m to Sunderland - yeah, don't get it either

[2nd summer] Darren Bent - 10m to Chelsea - good riddance

Got Sturridge and Macauley Chrisantus on frees too, but neither of them fancy a loan move, which is annoying. Starting line-up:

GK: Gomes (he's so awesome on this game)

DR: Alan Hutton (solid)

DL: Gareth Bale (awesome)

DC: Corluka (awesome)

DC: King (wasn't happy that I stripped him of his captaincy... he's only here until Luiz gets better)

MR: Bentley (good... but I need to get more assists out of him and Modric)

ML: Modric (good... 7 PL goals... but not nearly enough assists... oh yeah, new captain)

MC: Huddlestone (played well occassionally, didn't make any massive mistakes, I'm just playing him so he becomes good eventually)

MC: Veloso (vice captain... he's good enough)

FC: Pavlyuchenko (something like 22 goals last season... most of them headers... but he dried up a few times and that fucked me over)

FC: Palacio (he better fucking score)

Hopefully that team's good enough for Europe, since that's what I promised my board. We'll see.

What year are you in?

My team for 10/11 is:

GK: Gomes

DR: Hutton

DL: Bale

DC: Corluka

DC: Jagielka © (signed him in Jan 09, so he's been with us for 2 years now)

DM: Leonardo Ponzio

MR: Bentley

ML: Downing

AMC: Kranjcar

AMC: Matias Fernandez

ST: Pavlyuchenko

And back ups of Jamie Ashdown, Gunter, King (now vice captain, but he's injured for 8 months after tearing knee ligaments >_>), Gojko Kacar (23 year old Serbian international DM/DC), Matt Kidd (18 year old regen right mid who I bought from MK Dons for 275k, REALLY good, 7 star potential), O'Hara, Steven Fletcher, Artem Milevskyi (probably be main striker if Pav goes out of form and/or he fully adapts to English soccer), Zokora, Huddlestone, Erik Edman (), Lee Cattermole, dos Santos, Jaime Gavilan and Jack Rodwell (19 year old 6 star potential DC/DM from Everton, future captain probably).

I tend not to show strikers onto their weaker foot, just because I reckon that could lead to them dribbling around my centre back >_>

Wingers I always do though, if they have it as 'Right Only' or 'Left Only'.

Bale has just come on for Spurs, making his 18th appearance for us and apparantly we haven't won a single game that he's played in. Crazy stuff.

League games. He's played in winning cup games for us before.

Oh this is just silly. Two late goals in injury time PAST the allotted time have cost me now. First against Blackburn in the league, Santa Cruz scores in the 5th minute of a 3 minute injury time to make the score 2-1, and just now against Villa in the FA Cup, I'm up 2-1 away from home until the 5th minute of a 3 minute injury time (again), BRAD FRIEDEL, who had come up for the corner scores from THIRTY YARDS out after a clearance. This game really hates me, I swear.

Edit: Add to this Everton scoring in the 89th minute to beat me at 1-0 at Goodison Park and I'm starting to wonder why I bother

It's clairely pointing to some date where something will happen. The last one was 12 or December or something, yeah?

Maybe it'll be the day the board stops going down for extended periods?

Cheers metalman. If I can't find it for 'cheaper' elsewhere I suppose I'll have to fork over the dosh.

I managed to find it first time I "looked in the shop"

Bah, I'll have to wait until the end of the month when my car gets fixed as it takes too long to walk to the shops

I stormed out of a press conference for the first time. Was probably cos I'm on a 5 match losing streak, the latest being to Charlton in the League Cup

Nothing is working to fix this either

Edit1: haha, sent my assistant manager along to the next question and he ended up storming out of that one too. Awesome.

Edit2: Something finally may have worked. Did some subtle changes to the team tactics and also had both central mids making lots of forward runs, to support my lone striker (also have AML, AMR and DM). Beat Crystal Palace 4-0 away with 3 goals coming from the CMs (2 to Huddlestone off the bench, one to Ferguson) making a run into the box. Also may have something to do with the fact Palace are rubbish and prior to our match had only scored 1 and conceded 26 in 12. Amazingly, they have a win and a draw out of that >_>