Football Manager 2011

[Katsuya]

On course to signing Crespo for Grimsby Town

[Ben E.]

I called a press conference. I prepared a fireworks display in his honour. Nottingham Mayor was in attendance to give him the key to the city. Forest's new £5.5 million signing:

Edited May 14, 2011 by Ben E.

[stokeriño]

When the laptop overheats and shuts down when I'm 2-0 up against West Ham with 70 minutes gone...like hell am I accepting a draw when I come to replay it.

[stokeriño]

Oh, and in my game apparently Aston Villa are "cash-strapped" and Lerner is trying to get out.

This could be funny. At least they're not getting relegated again...yet.

[Liam]

Decided to do a Journeyman game, starting unemployed. First two jobs offered were Saturn and Dinamo St Petersburg (Saturn GS 0 GA 52 in 11 games, DSP GS 2 GA 50 in a similar timeframe), so turned them down. Now, not had a sniff of a job for a couple of months. Gay.

[stokeriño]

Going to be an interesting final day of the season...

Currently in 5th, 1 point behind Chelsea in 4th. Forest are at home to Aston Villa (12th), while Chelsea host Blackburn (13th).

If I surpass Chelsea's result in any way, I'm in the Champions League. If Forest drew and Chelsea lost, I'm also guaranteed to go through as Forest currently have +29 GD and Chelsea have +30. So if Chelsea lost by 2 goals or more their GD would drop below mine. If they lost by 1 goal, we'd both be on +29 but Forest have far, FAR superior goals scored.

Seriously! Forest have scored 71 For, 42 Against. Chelsea have 49 For, 19 Against.

But yeah. Most likely Chelsea will just win anyway and make all of this moot. Still, it's tense.

[Meacon Keaton]

Is this any good on the iPhone or iPod? I wanted to try it but there is no trial.

[TCO]

I got last years version on my Ipod. It's quite good, fiddly at first but you get used to the small buttons after a while. It's not nearly as indepth as the PC version but its good for what it is.

Edited May 14, 2011 by The Cool One

[Meacon Keaton]

I figured for ten bucks it wouldn't be exactly like it, but I didn't want to get it for it to be stripped to bare bones. Cheers.

[Dynamite]

I had last years on my Ipod Touch and was really impressed with it. The level of detail for the players is very impressive. The tactical element of it is pretty basic though (you can basically just choose the formation and thats about it).

[Plubby]

I fell into a bit of a trough, but setting player roles for each game - even if it's slight tweaks made a huge difference. It's very basic, but I find it rewards the time you put into it very well.

[stokeriño]

Just did something quite out of character for me, and made a big signing prior to the end of the season.

Since Michael Owen's out of contract in the summer (due to the aforementioned silly wage expectations) and I can't rely on Rob Earnshaw forever, I splashed £7.5m on 21 year old Nassim Ben Khalifa, a Tunisian-born Swiss striker from Wolfsburg. His stats are basically identical to those of Kalou's, only he's obviously still young and also has slightly better key stats like Finishing and Decisions, so he ought to be pretty good.

Now as long as I'm able to keep Arsenal/Tottenham/Sevilla's prying hands off Kalou in the summer, all will be well...

[Katsuya]

9 games in to the season...Grimsby Town are leading the Premiership

[stokeriño]

Sigh...

Nottingham Forest 3 - 0 Aston Villa

(Earnshaw, Cohen, Anderson)

Chelsea 4 - 1 Blackburn Rovers

(Torres 2, Essien, Luiz | Cisse)

:/

Oh well. No Champions League for me next season. Still got an FA Cup Final to come though...against Everton. I'm confident!

[TCO]

Started a game with Man City for some fun. Had a 60mil bid fro Fabregas rejected and then asked the board for assistance. THe next day I get a message.

"Arsenal have accpeted the £90mil bid from Man City for Cesc Fabregas"

What an awesome board!

[Whisper]

Won the title and League Cup in my first season with United... ended up going out of the Champions League to Inter in the quarters. Pretty pleased with that season as I find the first season is always the toughest on FM games. The board gave me 40 million to spend in the summer, so I've brought in Gareth Bale for £37m and a shit load of German regens who were like 200k each. Got a huge squad now as I can't bring myself to sell players... think I'm just gonna offload the ones who get pissed off at not playing regularly.

Kind of regretting blowing my whole budget on bale.. I mean, I needed a winger, Nani and Valencia don't seem to fit my formation too well and my best wingers last season were Giggs, Rafael and Fabio. But I really need a keeper as Van Der Sar has retired. Schalke want 30 million for Neuer and Madrid want 20m for de Gea, so at the minute I'm just gonna give Kucszak and Lindegaard a chance to fight over the spot and hopefully one of them will have a good season (or first half of it until the board gives me more cash in January).

My current best side is;

GK: Thomas Kucszsak

LCB: Patrice Evra

CB: Nemanja Vidic

RCB: Rio Ferdinand

RM: Rafael da Silva

LM: Gareth Bale

CM: Owen Hargreaves

CM: Darren Fletcher

AM: Guiseppe Rossi

CF: Wayne Rooney

CF: Javier Hernandez

Subs

Anders Lindegaard

Hedwiges Maduro

Anderson

Michael Carrick

Nani

Milan Badelj

Dimitar Berbatov

That's with the likes of Giggs, Valencia, Smalling, Gibson (who has become awesome), Park, Macheda (again, awesome) and Welbeck (young player of the year last season at Sunderland) not even making the squad. Selection headaches (N)

[Jimmy]

I've upset my board in my Mansfield game by applying for every job that becomes available and declaring interest in all kinds of job. I've only got four league's going in my game, but it's the first time I don't feel any dedication to a club and I want to start making my way up the ranks. But all my applications have been rejected. If I can get Mansfield promoted (we're in a play off spot at the moment in January) maybe some teams will wanna have me.

[stokeriño]

Shouting at them works, apparently.

Also, lol Everton throwing away another 2-0 lead against me.

[stokeriño]

Has anyone tried to overhaul their squad for the single purpose of playing a different formation before? I decided I'd like to start playing 4-3-3 instead of 4-4-2, for various reasons including easier selection for the subs bench, being able to cater to my very best players and so on.

The main difficulties with this is that need at least 6 strikers and 6 central midfielders to make it work. It also means my 3 winger (MRL) players become effectively useless...unless they can suddenly learn to play MC, which I imagine is near impossible. Two of these 3 wingers are arguably some of my more talented players in Paul Anderson and Donel McDermott.

Also, my reserves are effectively non-existent at this stage (there are precisely 3 of them!) because whenever their contracts have come up for renewal I've looked at their report, seen a half-star rating in both ability and potential and "this player is nowhere near being good enough for the Forest team" and so just let them go. This could become awkward when I run out of players home-grown at the club. All of my youth intake are equally shit, of course.

I suppose I should go out and buy a bunch of 17 year olds, but I have no idea where to start with that. I can go and find the wunderkinds but they'll cost £7m a pop, whereas I basically need a bunch of average-but-not-terrible players who I can get on the cheap.

Could be a tricky year. :/

[Benji]

Why does FM not have an option where you can be unsackable for those games where you just want to manage the team you support, or where you want to go on a journey to the top with one specific club?