Football Manager 2011

[Summers]

Of course, my first game as Liverpool manager has to be West Ham. Fate.

[Gazz]

Managing to finish 5th as Celtic is quite an achievement.

[METALMAN]

I'm going to try and get a touchline ban because my assistant manager is good. Much better than me.

[Ben E.]

I'm sure I've already posted this, but even a search couldn't find it. Ah well...

So my laptop died and I had to start again with the new patch installed. I've motored through the Championship, winning it again with Forest. I went unbeaten until I won the title, then lost the last three games in a row! I'm sure the game just did this to me for comedic effect.

I'm also now in awe of Stok's ability to get anything at all out of Rob Earnshaw, he only managed 5 goals in 23 appearances for me and even they came during the spell from January to Late February where I didn't win a game by less than a 3 goal margin. Luckily Ahmed Soukouna and Dexter Blackstock did the business.

My board has also sold star performer Radoslaw Majewski for 5 million. After being annoyed for a while I bought Young Boys 'keeper Marco Wölfli on recommendation from a friend for 4.3 million. As soon as I clicked confirm, I regretted it, hopefully I won't when he turns out to be awesome.

[Summers]

I'm in 2015. Just checked out Marco Wolfli. He's 32, worth 1.2m. Conceded a minimum of 54 goals each season (and a max of 65). Spent every season at Young Boys, until now and is at Bochum. On a free. In short.. I wouldn't have spent that much on him at all..

[Guest mr. potato head]

I hate January. Why can't other clubs fuck off and leave my players alone?

Send them my way. Nobody wants players who aren't good enough for Lincoln City's first-team squad apparently.

[ADG]

So I'm told I need a new left back as for some reason the two I've got aren't good enough, so I go to the player search and there's a seventeen year old generated left back called Sergio valued at £4.5m. I choose to scout him and the next day PSV offer £9.5m for him to Sporting Gijon. I don't have a clue how good he is but I match their offer and sign him. Lo and behold he's awesome

[Thrilla]

Nowhere near tall enough to get in my Blackburn team.

[Summers]

Who doesn't change height and weight to feet and stone though, really? >_>

[TCO]

I'd never trust a right footed left back either, just seems wrong.

[ADG]

Who doesn't change height and weight to feet and stone though, really? >_>

You can do that?? That'd make it all so much easier.

Also he's 17, plenty of time to learn how to use his other foot. And it isn't "right only", just right is his preferred foot so training won't be that hard.

[Thrilla]

Yeah, in the game options. You can change all the measurements, currency, et cetera.

I also love the way he has a decent heading stat but can't jump at all.

[ADG]

Well don't I feel a colossal eejit.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

So he's a heading genius IF no-one gets there in front of him and the ball drops to his standing 5 and a half feet.

[Plubby]

Does everyone use their native currency in-game?

I use pounds over Australian Dollars because I have a hard time reconciling it in my head. IE: I know i'd pay "no more than six million pounds" for a player, but I wouldn't have a clue who is an "eleven million Australian dollars" player and who isn't.

[TCO]

If I play in England I use GBP but anywhere else I just use the Euro. Just easier for me to work out now beacuse the papers over here mostly convert all transfers to Euro anyway so the exchange of the any major currency isn't that difficult now.

[MDK]

I keep it as the quid and I also change the salary to yearly, so I know how much I am giving these greedy bastards a year. Andy Scott asked for 200,000 a year to be my assistant manager. I'm on a quarter of that! Fuck Andy Scott.

[METALMAN]

I'm worth it though!

[stokeriño]

I'm also now in awe of Stok's ability to get anything at all out of Rob Earnshaw, he only managed 5 goals in 23 appearances for me and even they came during the spell from January to Late February where I didn't win a game by less than a 3 goal margin. Luckily Ahmed Soukouna and Dexter Blackstock did the business.

I spent my first season having absolutely no clue who my first-choice strikers were out of Blackstock/Findley/Tyson/Earnshaw (I knew Adebola wasn't!) and rotated them all into the ground. I would decide that Tyson was amazing for about 2 months and then that he was shit and that Blackstock was the man, and so on. This...really did no one any favours in terms of scoring very many.

Since I got to the Premier League (losing Tyson and gaining Owen), I ended up with an Earnshaw/Owen first-choice pairing in the standard 4-4-2 tactical set-up; Earnshaw being the advanced forward and Owen being the Deep Lying Forward (support). It was okay but not amazing - Earnshaw got 17 goals all season (14 in the league).

However, this season he now has Salomon Kalou in support rather than Owen and he is banging them in. It's only the first week of January and he has 24 goals - 15 in the league, putting him on equal footing with Hernandez at the top of the PL scoring chart.

My conclusion: it's all about his support. [singing]"THAT'S WHY WE LOVE SALOMON KALOU!"[/singing]

[Katsuya]

Gave up on FM11, it was just way too much to get through a handful of matches. So I'm back on 01/02, although my West Ham save is now well in to the 10/11 season. I'm in 4th after a really, really bad start to the season where I didn't win for five matches and then managed a couple of small wins and a few draws...until I hammered Man United 5-0 because Roy Carroll got sent off.

Still, 13 matches in to the season and Arsenal have all 39 points, they've scored 30 goals and conceded 8. Desperately trying to get their goalkeeper, who I'm guessing is a regen of someone. Managed to get them to agree to sell him, agreed the contract and then the board decided that it was an unrealistic transfer. Suffice to say I wasn't best pleased.

Also, laughing quite a bit at the scene in Spain and Italy. Atletico are leading Rayo and Sporting Gijon by a point at the top of La Liga, while Perguia have a four point gap over Brescia and five points over Torino at the top of Serie A. The really interesting thing is that Atletico Madrid "B" are on course to be promoted from the Second Division in Spain, which...yeah, that'd be a new one.