Football Manager 2009

[Farmer Reil]

So, playing in the lower Norwegian leagues, it seems everyone wants to be a striker. Seriously, the majority of my team are either 'MC, ST' or 'DC, ST'. Even my reserve goalkeeper is 'accomplished' up front, although he's only referred to as a GK on the team screen. In fact, my reserve 'keeper stands more chance of getting a game up front than he does in goal (relative to the rest of the squad)! In fact, my out-and-out strikers are actually crap compared to my multi-positional ones. My best player is both my best DC and my best ST, but he has to play in defence because otherwise my defence is embarrassing... Then there's Svein Hjertvik, who can play at 'competent' or above absolutely anywhere except wingback or in goal, on both sides of the pitch. If ever there was a player CREATED for the subs bench...

Edited February 26, 2009 by Farmer Reil

[IAceI]

Now that I'm making a bit of money I suppose I can pick up Football Manager 2009 sometime. Until then though, FM08 will keep me ticking and I have an incline I know what game will be my first on 09, so I'm going to get prepared and return to my old stomping ground from FM05 to Sao Paulo and see what I can muster up.

EDIT: On closer inspection, this team is fucking gash. And I can't find it within myself to go as another Brazilian team.

Try River Plate (Y)

Way ahead of you. Had already started a game with them last night.

[-A-]

So, playing in the lower Norwegian leagues, it seems everyone wants to be a striker. Seriously, the majority of my team are either 'MC, ST' or 'DC, ST'. Even my reserve goalkeeper is 'accomplished' up front, although he's only referred to as a GK on the team screen. In fact, my reserve 'keeper stands more chance of getting a game up front than he does in goal (relative to the rest of the squad)! In fact, my out-and-out strikers are actually crap compared to my multi-positional ones. My best player is both my best DC and my best ST, but he has to play in defence because otherwise my defence is embarrassing... Then there's Svein Hjertvik, who can play at 'competent' or above absolutely anywhere except wingback or in goal, on both sides of the pitch. If ever there was a player CREATED for the subs bench...

I'm not sure if this applies to your specific example, but there's actually a pretty horrific 'bug' (really just an error of design) that seriously favours multi-positional players. It's most obvious in a player with two positions whose associated stats are totally different (so, the DC/ST over the MC/ST in your team.) It's basically because of the way the game calculates stats related to the Current Ability figure. If you're a striker, then stats like Finishing, Off The Ball and Strength are weighted so that they take up a much bigger chunk of the CA stat. That's so that players with 150CA in different positions can be roughly the same effectiveness. It also means that if you train a player in non-essential stats this takes up less of their ability so they can become better all-round players at the expense of their main stats.

The extreme problem with this set-up is when you train a player into something like a DL/DR/ST because the stats for full backs and strikers are totally different. If you train a player (or have a player naturally) with these positions and then put him on a pure striker's training scheme, they will become a better player than a plain old ST with exactly the same CA but no other positions. That's because the game has adjusted the CA cost of the striker stats so that they're quite a bit less, so if the player has low figures for the DL/R stats, a lot less CA will be taken up by the same striker stats.

I've probably explained that really badly, but that's basically why players like Srna have stats far better than their CA should allow. If you want to see this in practice, train a youth striker to DR/L (but keep them on the same training regime) and see what happens.

Edited February 26, 2009 by -A-

[Matt]

lol at this game's rating system.

90th minute Paul Telfer costs my side a goal by giving the ball away to an Oldham player just outside the area and then failing to tackle Lee Hughes before he shot, and it's apparently Paul Huntington's fault for not intercepting the pass to Hughes that he was nowhere near.

The fact that I had to play Telfer and Huntington is ridiculous, why is there no option to postpone your game when you have more than 3 players on international duty like there is in real life... It's dumb I have to play with half a team because my players are good/come from obscure countries in the first place, Telfer has cost me 4 points (all in the last minute/stoppage time) in 2 appearances and both times he's only played because Michalik and Rui Marques were two of 6/7 players playing for their countries.

Still winning the league, but I can't help but feel I'd be 6 points in front rather than 2.

[stokeriño]

and it's apparently Paul Huntington's fault for not intercepting the pass to Hughes that he was nowhere near.

Was he supposed to be marking him? Because that would explain something.

[Farmer Reil]

So, playing in the lower Norwegian leagues, it seems everyone wants to be a striker. Seriously, the majority of my team are either 'MC, ST' or 'DC, ST'. Even my reserve goalkeeper is 'accomplished' up front, although he's only referred to as a GK on the team screen. In fact, my reserve 'keeper stands more chance of getting a game up front than he does in goal (relative to the rest of the squad)! In fact, my out-and-out strikers are actually crap compared to my multi-positional ones. My best player is both my best DC and my best ST, but he has to play in defence because otherwise my defence is embarrassing... Then there's Svein Hjertvik, who can play at 'competent' or above absolutely anywhere except wingback or in goal, on both sides of the pitch. If ever there was a player CREATED for the subs bench...

I'm not sure if this applies to your specific example, but there's actually a pretty horrific 'bug' (really just an error of design) that seriously favours multi-positional players. It's most obvious in a player with two positions whose associated stats are totally different (so, the DC/ST over the MC/ST in your team.) It's basically because of the way the game calculates stats related to the Current Ability figure. If you're a striker, then stats like Finishing, Off The Ball and Strength are weighted so that they take up a much bigger chunk of the CA stat. That's so that players with 150CA in different positions can be roughly the same effectiveness. It also means that if you train a player in non-essential stats this takes up less of their ability so they can become better all-round players at the expense of their main stats.

The extreme problem with this set-up is when you train a player into something like a DL/DR/ST because the stats for full backs and strikers are totally different. If you train a player (or have a player naturally) with these positions and then put him on a pure striker's training scheme, they will become a better player than a plain old ST with exactly the same CA but no other positions. That's because the game has adjusted the CA cost of the striker stats so that they're quite a bit less, so if the player has low figures for the DL/R stats, a lot less CA will be taken up by the same striker stats.

I've probably explained that really badly, but that's basically why players like Srna have stats far better than their CA should allow. If you want to see this in practice, train a youth striker to DR/L (but keep them on the same training regime) and see what happens.

Interesting stuff... I doubt it'll affect too much though, as these guys don't really know what ability is

When picking your team, which do you pay more attention to: their raw stats, or what your coaching staff thinks of them? I've got a midfielder who my coaches rate as 5*, and whenever I ask for a coach report for anyone else it comes back as "x is <relative ability> our best central midfielder, Player Y...", yet Player Y himself is a bit crap when you look at his stats. Passing 9, Marking 1, Dribbling 6, Off The Ball 5, Positioning 3, Concentration 2... he has decent teamwork and workrate, and physically he's average, but his actual skills as a midfielder seem to be lacking. Even for the Norwegian 3rd divison I have players with better passing and dribbling than that, yet my coaches are all jizzing over him.

So... would you pick the player that the game thinks is best, or the player that the stats show is clearly better?

http://s29.photobucket.com/albums/c297/Hea...rent=krakmo.jpg

Here's the comparison screen. Valsson, the guy I've previously considered to be better, on the left. Krakmo, the guy the coaches really like, on the right. The place they're competing for is the creative, passing midfielder in a 5-man midfield, if it helps (I have a DMC in front of my back 3, then a 'traditional' four man midfield with two wingers, an AMC playing in the left-most MC position with an arrow, then this guy next to him), so he needs to be a good passer of the ball, and quite creative. So the only single point I can think of where Krakmo is better, is that he has 3 more Creativity (but 4 less Decisions).

Who would you pick?

Another annoying quirk with the 'coach report' system: There are three ways to find out who the coaches think is best. One is to request a coach report for a player, and he'll tell you that player's worth to the team relative to who he reckons the best player in that position is (i.e., "Bard Tommy Karstensen is the best right midfielder in the squad, but Tore Rylandsholm is nowhere near that standard"), you can set the squad screen view to 'Assistant Reports' and order by Reccomendation, or you can get a Team Report. Usually these three tend to agree with each other for most positions, but for my central defence, all three are different. Annoying.

Edited February 27, 2009 by Farmer Reil

[-A-]

For the position you're talking about, Passing 15:9 is pretty much the end of the discussion. The coaches have very little way of distinguishing different types of player in the same position, which is particularly noticeable in central midfield and striker. For instance, I play with a 5-3-2 with 3 players in the MC position. One is basically a DM (but not in that position) one makes forward runs and one is a box-to-box midfielder. The coaches don't recognise this at all, they just compare all the players' stats to a stock MC template. So, depending on the squad I have they'll sometimes have 3 pretty attacking players in there with no DM-type or 3 defensive midfielders and no-one with any creativity.

I guess that if you briefly switched to a tactic with an AMC they'd recommend Valsson immediately. Saying that, Krakmo looks shit in every department so it might just be because you have crap coaches.

[Matt]

and it's apparently Paul Huntington's fault for not intercepting the pass to Hughes that he was nowhere near.

Was he supposed to be marking him? Because that would explain something.

No, well... he was marking someone else at the same time so I'm guessing not, it looked like Jonny Douglas (IIRC) was marking Hughes but even so it'd have been hard for Douggy to get the ball without completely leaving the man. It was completely Telfer's fault, he played the shittiest pass ever and didn't tackle Hughes when he had a decent enough chance to.

Edit: I ignore the team report altogether, it just talks shit. For instane, right now it's telling me to play Kilkenny who is utterly shit every time I play him, instead of Howson who has been immense all season scoring goals and setting up goals left right and centre and has an average rating of 7.2-ish. Meanwhile it's telling me to play Andy Robinson right midfield instead of David Prutton or Shaleum Logan who've been awesome in that position all year (albeit Logan's now playing right back because of Richardson's injury).

It's also doesn't take account of injuries which is incredibly annoying.

Edited February 27, 2009 by Footjob Fever

[Farmer Reil]

Yeah... or it might be that his CA is higher than Valsson's, but Valsson might've started with better stats in the editor or something... I'll carry on using Valsson unless he starts playing badly.

Another question (though I'm brutally aware that I shouldn't be using this particular function at all in the Norwegian 3rd division ), how does Swap Players work? When they swap, do they also swap instructions, or just physical position? For example, my two wingers are equally adept at playing on either wing, and one of them is fast and good a crossing, while the other is relatively slow for a winger and is good at long shots. So if I set them to swap position, that should cause the opposition some trouble, like in real life when Arsenal played with Pires and Ljunberg and they kept swapping.

Do I need to set it for both players, or just one? I'd assume just the one, and setting it for both would just make it happen more?

More importantly though, they're also specifically man marking the opposing wingers (to try and stop my DC's being pulled out of position so often, because one of them I'm sure is a Jan Molby regen with his pace of 2 and natural fitness of 4 ), but obviously I don't want them to swap position and still be man marking the winger on the other side of the pitch!

So yeah.. will that work?

Edit: Also, this is probably purely psychological, but has anyone else noticed that if you have a player with no direct replacement on the bench (say, a DMC in the DMC position but with nobody on the bench who can actually play there (even though you might have a defensively-minded MC)), that player tends to get injured more?

I swear, as soon as I put a DMC on the bench, even though he was shite, my DMC stopped being Darren Anderton. The physio hasn't seen him for weeks. I'm scared to leave home without my reserve 'keeper on the bench now!

Edited February 27, 2009 by Farmer Reil

[Matt]

Yeah... or it might be that his CA is higher than Valsson's, but Valsson might've started with better stats in the editor or something... I'll carry on using Valsson unless he starts playing badly.

Edit: Also, this is probably purely psychological, but has anyone else noticed that if you have a player with no direct replacement on the bench (say, a DMC in the DMC position but with nobody on the bench who can actually play there (even though you might have a defensively-minded MC), that player tends to get injured more?

I swear, as soon as I put a DMC on the bench, even though he was shite, my DMC stopped being Darren Anderton. The physio hasn't seen him for weeks. I'm scared to leave home without my reserve 'keeper on the bench now!

Yeah that happens to me a lot, it's always the most awkward player to replace that gets injured. The one that involves me shuffling half of my team.

[IAceI]

I am now 1 FM09 richer. So, probably doing my usual "try to have a career game off the bat" malarky. To Brazil it is where Sao Paulo beckon!

[stokeriño]

For fuck's sake... My squad and their availiability for my next Champions League match.

Goalkeepers

Petr Cech - INJURED

Carlo Cudicini

Hilário - INJURED

Defenders

José Bosingwa - INJURED

John Terry - INJURED

Alex - INJURED

Branislav Invanovic

Michael Mancienne

Wayne Bridge

Ashley Cole

David Luiz - INELIGIBLE

Juliano Belletti - SUSPENDED

Midfielders

Michael Essien - INJURED

John Obi Mikel

Michael Ballack

Zdravko Kuzmanovic

Joe Cole

Ashley Young - INJURED

Salomon Kalou

Florent Malouda

Frank Lampard

Deco

Strikers

Didier Drogba - INJURED

Nicolas Anelka - INJURED

Michael Owen

Franco di Santo - INJURED

Mario Balotelli - INELIGIBLE

So I have a total of...14 selectable players from my first team at home to Ajax.

This won't end well.

[The Future]

Ajax aren't that good though, play Joe Cole and Owen forward..and you have a very powerful midfield who should put in some through balls Owen will no trouble finishing.

I have made it into the UEFA Cup from the Swedish Third Division!, my reputation as a manager has jumped up and now I am being chased by Wigan and Blackburn as well as FC Mitdjyland a Danish team who are in the Champions League but I am going to stick until I get Hollviken promoted to the Premier Division. Just bought in 4 players from Paraguay who should help me push for the final promotion I need before moving onto new pastures.

Edited March 2, 2009 by The Future

[IAceI]

Things started to turn round for Sao Paulo with me, but then my entire computer just died on me. As in... it just stopped, so I had to turn it off at the switch and lost about 5-6 wins in a row (but still only in 5th due to some poor matches before I started up the game again) and I have a major inability to replay things that I've already played (especially when I've won them) so I gave up and started up a game closer to home.

I took over Manchester United, mainly because I never treat myself with a big team on FM and I want to actually have a chance of winning something. Plus I'm liking the idea of bringing through youth players through the seasons to cover for injuries and stuff so it seemed like the logical choice, my main problem is trying to keep Berbatov, Rooney and Tevez all playing regularly and also being able to fit in Ronaldo when he returns from injury. At the same time though Tevez has a year on his contract left, is wanting 90,000 a week which I'm not too keen on offering (more on contracts in a moment) so I'm considering offing him to Villareal who were interested and possibly picking up another striker or two as back up - as I only really have Rooney, Berbatov and Tevez and then there's not really anyone else who can play there.

Also considered trying to sign Hernanes from Sao Paulo but I don't want to spend too much on him so I've working solely on using my position as manager of the biggest team in the world to unsettle him and engineer a move to us. But I don't think that's gonna happen, and I don't have the near £30m to spend to bring Danny in from Zenit like I wanted. So I'm a bit stuck there.

On the contract front. I like being hands on so when reserves and first team players are wanting contracts I like to negotiate, get stuck in myself instead of letting the assistant manager handle it all. He can pick the youth players (as only a select few ever make it through and I imagine most of them will get signed when the time arises). Now Darron Gibson is about 20/21 on £450 a week as a Man Utd reserve player. He has a bit of promise yeah.. but.. he's wanting like £8,000 a week and massive appearance bonuses. Sorry - but who the fuck are you? You aren't being given £2k every time you step on the field as no one could really give a shit, he doesn't seem to want to be talked down and I'm not one for giving out stupid money. Like I could easily keep Tevez, but I don't want to assure him first team football when I'd probably rather have Berbatov and Rooney up top. He's most likely going to be a rotation player, which will max at about £40,000. He wants £90,000 a week so I have to say he'd be at least a first team player, I don't think I can stretch to that and keep him happy so I may have to look to offload him (6 months to do so before Bosman comes into effect I believe?). Then there's Ben Foster, who is behind Van Der Sar and given my hard on for Tomas Kuszczak he's probably behind as well. So £20,000 a week and £12k everytime he plays? Yeah, I'm thinking probably not pal.

It's funny how these want like £15,000 more a week than they currently get. Yet players like Giggs will happily take about a £25,000 a week cut for a one year extension. Assuming tennis is cancelled tonight due to weather (and my arm injury..) I can hopefully get on the game today. Get some of the reserve players I want to keep signed up easily enough and see if I can come to an agreement with the likes of Foster, Gibson or Tevez. Since my season is yet to start that means I have plenty of time in the transfer window and can possibly sell Tevez and use that + the £10m I have to pick up maybe 2 back up strikers so Rooney/Berbatov can play up top.

Any ideas on what I can do to keep this lot happy or any possible players to sign? I'm quite a realistic player so while I could give Tevez the £90,000 he wants. I like to play quite strict and realistic so don't just say "give him the money, who cares" or whatever. I enjoy it more this way ¬_¬

[The Future]

I did the same thing with Tevez when I played as Utd, wait and see if Real Madrid start bidding for him in my game they broke his 35 mil release clause. Also for the rightback position bring in Mikael Chretien from St.Ettiene

Edited March 3, 2009 by The Future

[The Quasi Juice]

After reading IAceI's Man Utd adventures I decided to start a game with Man Utd too. I won the title, FA Cup and sadly lost in the final of the Champions League. I'm now going into the transfer window again for the new season and I got a message saying Man Utd sealed three sponsorships for 5 five years. Two were less than 1m every year and the third one 2m. Is it just me or is this like....nothing? This means I'll get around 3.5m every year, I can maybe buy a decent signing from this, but probably not. Is this a bug or something? Also, I have around 10m and I need a new and good RB, a new GK because Van der Sar is too old and maybe a new MC. Luckily Frazier Campbell is back, who can expect a lot of time on the pitch this season. Gonna be tough >.>

Edited March 3, 2009 by Quasi Fernandez

[FireDoughnut]

Playing 2008... On for the quintuple with Man Utd, go away to Blackpool in the FA Cup and Ronaldo breaks his leg... This is going to be harder than I thought.

[The Future]

I highly recommend Sergio Asenjo for goalkeeper, he's ready to slot in as soon as the second season and stays world class for years to come and he only costs 7.5 Million.

[therockbox]

So, I've simmed up until December, and decided to take over at Hull:

I have no idea what I was thinking.

[FireDoughnut]

Playing 2008... On for the quintuple with Man Utd, go away to Blackpool in the FA Cup and Ronaldo breaks his leg... This is going to be harder than I thought.

Four games later after picking up the Carling Cup, rooney breaks his ankle away to Liverpool.

Both are out for the season.

I'm now 3rd in the league, out of the FA cup at the semi-final and losing on away goals to Real Madrid as I head out to Spain for the away leg; QF stage