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Thread: Football Manager 2022

  1. #801
    Senior Member Adramelch's Avatar
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    Potential title decider (although it's super early in the season still) so of course FM decides to be FM:


  2. #802
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    Marseille 2047/48 Season Update:

    Transfers In:



    £8.25m. I'm not a huge fan of him but my scouts love him and he was from Lyon so I couldn't refuse.



    Only £1m and I think it's a bargain, especially as my scouts rate him so highly.



    My big signing at £38m. It's probably a little on the high side but I think he's going to be massive.

    Transfers Out:



    Surprised that I got as much as I did for Kemajou as he's a pace merchant who offers not much else.

    League:






    So close to a perfect season. Records for most wins in a row, total wins, points and goals scored though.

    Cup:



    Europe:



    We struggled in the groups, especially against Southampton and then we lost in the Quarter-Finals for the third year in a row. Our problem throughout every game was not putting away our chances.

    Squad Stats:




    We're good enough to win the Champions League (and hopefully the Club World Cup) but we seem to be a bit gun shy in those big games. Pretty infuriating.

    On to the Euros with Italy next, if I don't win my challenge gets extended by at least four years which would be a bit of a shitter.

  3. #803
    Senior Member Lofty's Avatar
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    Moussa Dembele the new St James' Park darling after netting a debut hat trick against Arsenal

  4. #804
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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  5. #805
    Senior Member Jimmy Floyd's Avatar
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    Raphael Rump sounds like someone from Allo Allo.

  6. #806
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    Italy at Euro 2048:

    Group Stage:



    We destroyed Serbia and were 3-0 up at HT but it could have been more. In the second half we eased up and they got one back but they had no chance. Against France it was fairly even, their goal came from a dodgy penalty and we needed two in the final 3 minutes to take the victory. Against Sweden I sent the second eleven out and they should have won.

    Second Round:



    Turkey never stood a chance and they were lucky we didn't hit double figures.

    Quarter Final:



    Another easy victory against an easy opponent.

    Semi Final:



    This is the easiest route I've ever had to a final. We dominated from the first minute and Top Ireland were not going to get another surprise victory.

    Final:



    I was scared shitless when they opened the scoring as I just kept thinking that we were going to lose against the first decent team (France doesn't count as it was in the groups) we had come across. Thankfully my RM popped up with a goal not long after, however, he pulled his groin. I decided to take him off just as my RB, who was making his second start, scored with his wrong foot from outside the box.

    In the second half we took charge and Zucco (who was only in the squad as he's one of my players at Marseille) scored his fifth and sixth goals of the tournament.

    Squad:



    Boncaglia came into the tournament as our starting ST next to Giunchi but Zucco took that spot off him after the first game (although I did go back to Boncaglia against Top Ireland but he didn't do much) and he was brilliant. Rizzo was someone I wanted to sign so many times at points in this save but Man City bought him before I was at a club that could afford him and he wouldn't budge. He was a star at LB and he popped up with 4 massive goals. It's a shame he wasn't fit enough to start the final.

    Just the Club World Cup remains on the list...

  7. #807
    Isn't he banned? Baz's Avatar
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    Club World Cup is bizarro. Felt like it arrived straight after the season finished, then my assistant somehow crammed in three friendlies in a week and then the league started. Nice break.
    I'm a twit

  8. #808
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    Lads, provide me with a screenshot of Dušan Vlahović profile after 2025. Thanks in advance.

  9. #809
    Senior Member Jimmy Floyd's Avatar
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    Soz, I hadn't loaded the game up since your request. Here he is in 2030:



    Moved to Chelsea in 2022 and has been there since, despite playing a weirdly small amount of football for them. 148 games / 70 goals in 8 years. He was behind Lukaku until 2026 or so.

  10. #810
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    I would have thought his profile would have been better than that, but he is backup and hasn't played as many games being behind Lukaku.

  11. #811
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    Im hoping that a Peter Crouch-type regen appears in my save as i want to be part of LongBall FC in a 352.

  12. #812
    Senior Member ScousePig's Avatar
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    At the risk of being booed, branded and hounded out forever, are we allowed to post FM21 stories in here? I don't generally buy the new releases until the new year when bugs have been ironed out and the ME has settled down a bit, and with a recent personal isolation period being tackled and the Christmas holidays upon us, I decided to give myself one more run out on an FM21 game that, in general, I would say I've thoroughly enjoyed.

    For a bit of context, my main save is usually a career starting in non-league with a view to working my way up (which I imagine is quite common). I don't usually have too many preconceptions, and I'm happy to see how things pan out. This time around I begun at Barnet, before moving to Huddersfield, Brentford, Bournemouth, Wolfsburg, Brighton and currently Wolves. I'm in the year 2039 and have just won the Premier League title for the first time. I've probably averaged around three seasons at each club, and only really Wolfsburg could be looked upon as being a bit of a failure. I also tend to run a parallel 'test save' with a top club where I can do some tactic testing and just have a bit of fun.

    For my final save I decided to begin unemployed, but with a good reputation as a top former footballer. I holidayed through the first (Covid) season and started up in May '21 to find Premier League jobs such as the Wolves and Leeds posts vacant, as well as Stoke and West Brom in the Championship. I was given interviews and offered the two Championship jobs more or less simultaneously, and decided to take on the West Brom job - someone who I don't think I've managed before (or at least for a long time), and ironically my career save's big rivals.

    Approach/recruitment

    As I mentioned upthread a few days ago, I approach the game in a specific way (apologies in advance if I'm teaching anyone to suck eggs). I look for players first and foremost with pace, acceleration, agility, dribbling, balance and vision. Next in the list of importance are mental attributes focusing on the intelligence of players, namely anticipation, decisions, positioning and off the ball, and finally I look for players with good passing and jumping (for centre backs).

    Below are my transfers in the first summer. Hopefully this works as I'm useless at uploading images.

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    Next, I use quite specific parameters when recruiting players - namely young players with good personalities, who have good acceleration and pace and will develop other areas as they get older.

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    My key attribute DNA looks something like this.

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    Squad screen

    I've also attached what my squad screen looks at, and it's the same when looking at opposition squad screens. It lets me straight away see who my key players are and the dangers of the opposition.

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    Tactics

    I'm a fully-fledged, fully paid up member of the strikerless fan-boy club. The main reason being that it actually works. I'm also very much in the 4-3-3 camp when it comes to team shape. I've tried numerous versions of False Nine and Deep-lying forwards trying to link up the rest of my team, but they're never anywhere near as effective as using a Shadow Striker, who basically does everything you'd want from a False Nine plus much more.

    I do a lot of reading on tactics and tactical theory these days, and a bit on data and statistics. It's far and away my main source of reading material. I'd recommend anything from Michael Cox, Jonathan Wilson, Lee Scott and Michael Calvin (not necessarily tactics) and I also subscribe to The Athletic and Total Football Analysis. I honestly think that without this aspect, my interest in football would have waned a fair bit.

    I have a number of different shapes but these versions of the 4-3-3 are my favourites.

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    There are three styles (cautious, positive and very attacking) and around ten shapes in total which I find effective. In all of them my player instructions where possible are set to take more risks, dribble more, move into channels, tackle harder, shoot less often. It's a very aggressive and intense way of playing football, and it seems clearly the most effective. The downside is that unless you are a top team, you may end up with sub-50% possession. For anyone wondering, I've created them myself but I do look on the tactic creating website for ideas and then try to work them to the benefit of my team and my own preferences. I don't think there are any tactics which are the same as mine on those tactic testing sites (however there are similar ones for obvious reasons).

    Training

    Pre-season it's important to do intense physical sessions, especially on quickness. Other than that the most effective schedules for preparing players for games and keeping them together is attacking movement, defensive shape and team bonding. There's nothing overly complicated about this.

    Anyway, this is the table after 14 games.

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    The schedule.

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    The squad (as posted earlier).

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    I don't envisage any issues this season.

  13. #813
    Senior Member Adramelch's Avatar
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    Yeah, there's quite a few people that's been posting from older versions, it's more than fine @ScousePig.

    Season 2034/35 Update

    Second season at Leipzig and, given that we were relatively close last season, I think we should look to go for a proper title challenge this time. That said, given the gulf in class, I won't be too disappointed if we don't make it, as long as we're close. To achieve that, three high profile signings were made:



    Very impressive central defender and magnitudes of order better than anybody we had at the position. He didn't come cheap at all, at 88m, but he's a world class player so I think the fee was warranted.



    Second central defender and an even more expensive one at 96m. He's German and young though so again, I think it's money well spent. He joined on January after my many bids eventually made him put in a transfer request.



    Not very happy with his finishing, but great mental and physical attributes that I hope will make up for it. Cost relatively little at 59m, so hopefully he will prove to be a bargain.



    We did it in the end. It took a win at home over Bayern to put us in first place with 3 games to go, but we somehow managed to squander our lead in the very next game, losing at Hannover. Thankfully Bayern still had to go to Leverkusen, and a goalless draw there meant that the title was firmly in our hands and we took advantage. Bayern might feel a bit hard done by, losing the title with 84 points but I think we were the better team over the course of the season, including the games between us, both won by us.



    Very undeserved win by Dortmund I'll tell you that much. They ended up losing the final to Bayern.



    Heartbreaking honestly. We got royally fucked by the draws, with the hardest group by a countrymile (from 1st seed), that we absolutely blasted, and then we got the hardest team available in the knockout round. We were by some margin the better team yet lost 3-1 on aggregate. Nothing more to say really.



    Sergio was a beast once again. A lot fewer goals than last season but it was an injury in mid season that really broke his rhythm, or else I think he'd have easily finished with 50+ goals. Ramos was solid, but not better than Queiroz (who scored 14 and created 6 in much fewer games), so that's gonna be a headache next season. I think Queiroz probably deserves to be starting so we'll see. Our main issue was the central midfielders. We lost a solid one to PSG, signed one for 50m to replace him and he was horrible so I just sold him for 40m 6 months later. There's a great German one that plays for Leverkusen, I tried to sign him two times, the transfer was all but done, only for him to sign a new deal with them both times. Ahumada was also fairly problematic this season, but good goalkeepers are hard to come by so I am not sure we'll manage to find someone better.

    And now that all that is over get ready for a rant:

    Toggle Spoiler
    Last edited by Adramelch; 19-12-2021 at 01:53 PM.

  14. #814
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    I've gone 28 games undefeated in the league while getting knocked out of all the cups. The 30th game, to wrap up the title and I lose at home to 2nd bottom in the league

  15. #815
    Senior Member ScousePig's Avatar
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    30 games in and things are looking fairly rosy still.



    We've drawn a few too many games over December and January, but I've had to do a little bit of rotation and we also lost three first choice defenders to the AFCON.



    Looking at the squad screen you can see that Mavididi has 20 goals, and the wide players Diangana and Wallace have 14 and 10 goals respectively, and 13 assists apiece. Which is obviously great, although the idea of the wide 4-3-3 is to ensure the full backs are occupied by the wingers, opening up space in the channels for the central midfielders and even sometimes the inverted wing backs. My central midfielders have been okay but nothing more, however Mowatt is on a good scoring streak at the moment. A couple of times I've played the more narrow formation if one of my wide players has needed a rest, which is good as it allows Mavidid and Grant to play together with an attacking midfielder in between them, but we lose our natural width and end up overloading the centre.



    Our one defeat (which you can't actually see there) came at the hands of Stoke, and you can see where our couple of patches of draws have crept in. If we beat Aston Villa in the cup replay we'll be at home to Liverpool, which would be fun.

  16. #816
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    They aren't related...


  17. #817
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    I prefer Ahmed Al-Enezi.

  18. #818
    Senior Member Gray Fox's Avatar
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    He's definitely better than Ahmed Al-Enezi.

  19. #819
    Senior Member Spikey M's Avatar
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    They all look the same to me.

  20. #820
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    Ive never had any scorching Asain/Middle Eastern regen in none of my saves.

  21. #821
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    South Korea tends to spit out a few worldies every now and then.

    The rest of Asia, not so much.

  22. #822
    Senior Member Adramelch's Avatar
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    I do also get the occasional chinese player, but not quite at world class level. I've found that most of them come through ranks of European clubs rather than Asian ones though.

  23. #823
    Senior Member Spikey M's Avatar
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    The chances are that those "worldies" would be League 2 standard at best elsewhere, they're just exciting prospects by the standard of whatever dump John Arne is managing.

  24. #824
    Senior Member Jimmy Floyd's Avatar
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    Yeah, star ratings are per the standard of your current squad.

  25. #825
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spikey M View Post
    The chances are that those "worldies" would be League 2 standard at best elsewhere, they're just exciting prospects by the standard of whatever dump John Arne is managing.
    On "normal" games I've seen a few South Korean world class players, maybe a Japanese once or twice. But yeah, these two guys are dump on the grand scheme of things.

  26. #826
    Isn't he banned? Baz's Avatar
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    England just lost the 2022 World Cup final on penalties and it deemed 'untouchable.'

    Does he tend to quit? I want the England job.
    I'm a twit

  27. #827
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    So since this newest patch came out I have fallen to pieces. My tactics just all seem to have stopped working at once. Doesn't seem to matter what I do.

  28. #828
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    I've got a decent looking Cambodian lad:



    Which is the first time I've ever seen someone decent from the nation. A few Japanese lads have obviously been pretty good too, with this guy being one of the best keepers on the save:



    Produced by Koln and decided to become a full German.

  29. #829
    Senior Member Manc's Avatar
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    Tremendous name.

  30. #830
    I used to be funny.
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    It raised a smile.

  31. #831
    Isn't he banned? Baz's Avatar
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    What does everyones matchday "tablet" look like?

    I've got this:
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    I'm a twit

  32. #832
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  33. #833
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    The crowds have magically disappeared from my save.

  34. #834
    Senior Member Lofty's Avatar
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    Halfway through first season as Newcastle, Moussa Dembele 17 goals in 19 appearances

  35. #835
    Senior Member SincereTheRebel's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by SincereTheRebel View Post
    The crowds have magically disappeared from my save.
    Graphics quality was set to low...

  36. #836
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    Zucco

  37. #837
    Senior Member Serj's Avatar
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    First season in the top flight with Torino is over.



    We were cruising to a comfortable mid-table spot at the beginning of March, but then out of nowhere went on a run of 9 losses out of 10 games. Made the finish a bit nervy.

    Some of the younger players I nabbed from South America are developing quite nicely. At the moment they're still a bit inconsistent, but some of them have already replaced more expierenced players in the regular starting line-up, these two being the top performers:

    Toggle Spoiler


    I still need a regular goalscorer. My best striker has 8 league goals because some of the crosses being launched at him bounce into goal, most of his stats other than jumping mean I mainly want to keep him as back-up, though.



    I had bought two other players who I'd thought would comfortably replace him in the starting line-up, both of them disappointing so far. They're 20 and 21 however, so they might still come good.

    The most annoying part of the season was definitely the winter transfer window. Being a newly promoted team, most of the offers coming in were from higher reputation teams, and I basically had a mutiny on my hands when I rejected the offers for my key players. After various individual conversations and team meetings in which I told them all to get on with it they one by one dropped their 'concerns' over the following months. Tedious doesn't cover it. I might hand over all communication with the players to my assistant, if that's possible.

  38. #838
    Senior Member ScousePig's Avatar
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    About as straightforward of a promotion campaign as you could imagine. There weren't really any blips and our one defeat was fairly early that we didn't ever have to think about going for an unbeaten league season. Southampton managed 98 points after we beat them 6-0 on the opening day, and Palace with their 94 points won the play-offs.



    I've put the squad in average rating order. It's good to have a mix of positions scoring highly, but the central midfielders were the lowest performing overall which I hope to address. You expect it with the defensive midfielder because he has a bit of a thankless task, but the attacking central midfielders should contribute significantly. In fairness to Mowatt, he did end up with 12 goals and 8 assists.




    In the last 16 games you can see we only conceded four goals. I could have used a more positive mentality for the away games rather than sticking with cautious, but we'll need that cautious approach a fair bit next season anyway so it's good to have the players playing that way now. I'm quite sure we'd have scored a lot more goals, but we'd probably have lost one or two along the way too.







    The summary, accolades and my top scorer. Unless we upgrade, he should be fine in the Premier League. I am on a bit of a mission at the moment to find young, quick players with good personalities to add to my squad, but I'm not planning on anything major yet in terms of upgrades.

  39. #839
    Senior Member Manc's Avatar
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    11 points clear of the current record. Woof.

  40. #840
    Senior Member ScousePig's Avatar
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    Here are my summer signings. I've signed nine players however only two or three will be regular first teamers. Three were free transfers, four cost between £1.9m and £4m, and there were two more major signings at £18m and £14m. They all generally fit the philosophy of being young, quick and good personalities.



    Onyeka was my main signing at £18m. As I said I was a bit disappointed with the central midfielders last season and he should be an ideal upgrade.



    As far as cost goes, Cornet is my second major signing at £14m. He's in for competition all down the left side, especially left wing as we struggled for natural width last season when Diangana was injured.

    The rest are ordered more or less by position, and were either free transfers or a couple of million. They're either good enough to be squad members or have potential.















    Looking at squad comparisons with the rest of the league, in terms of pace, acceleration and dribbling we can more than hold our own. Agility and balance we're pretty average, but we're struggling in terms of passing and vision which isn't surprising. Our anticipation, decision making, positioning and off the ball movement really needs to be better, but I'm optimistic we can have a decent season.



    Looking at the schedule, we could do with getting Man City, Spurs and Liverpool out of the way.

  41. #841
    Isn't he banned? Baz's Avatar
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    What's your tactic like? Apologies if you've already posted it.
    I'm a twit

  42. #842
    Senior Member ScousePig's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ScousePig View Post
    At the risk of being booed, branded and hounded out forever, are we allowed to post FM21 stories in here? I don't generally buy the new releases until the new year when bugs have been ironed out and the ME has settled down a bit, and with a recent personal isolation period being tackled and the Christmas holidays upon us, I decided to give myself one more run out on an FM21 game that, in general, I would say I've thoroughly enjoyed.

    For a bit of context, my main save is usually a career starting in non-league with a view to working my way up (which I imagine is quite common). I don't usually have too many preconceptions, and I'm happy to see how things pan out. This time around I begun at Barnet, before moving to Huddersfield, Brentford, Bournemouth, Wolfsburg, Brighton and currently Wolves. I'm in the year 2039 and have just won the Premier League title for the first time. I've probably averaged around three seasons at each club, and only really Wolfsburg could be looked upon as being a bit of a failure. I also tend to run a parallel 'test save' with a top club where I can do some tactic testing and just have a bit of fun.

    For my final save I decided to begin unemployed, but with a good reputation as a top former footballer. I holidayed through the first (Covid) season and started up in May '21 to find Premier League jobs such as the Wolves and Leeds posts vacant, as well as Stoke and West Brom in the Championship. I was given interviews and offered the two Championship jobs more or less simultaneously, and decided to take on the West Brom job - someone who I don't think I've managed before (or at least for a long time), and ironically my career save's big rivals.

    Approach/recruitment

    As I mentioned upthread a few days ago, I approach the game in a specific way (apologies in advance if I'm teaching anyone to suck eggs). I look for players first and foremost with pace, acceleration, agility, dribbling, balance and vision. Next in the list of importance are mental attributes focusing on the intelligence of players, namely anticipation, decisions, positioning and off the ball, and finally I look for players with good passing and jumping (for centre backs).

    Below are my transfers in the first summer. Hopefully this works as I'm useless at uploading images.

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    Next, I use quite specific parameters when recruiting players - namely young players with good personalities, who have good acceleration and pace and will develop other areas as they get older.

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    My key attribute DNA looks something like this.

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    Squad screen

    I've also attached what my squad screen looks at, and it's the same when looking at opposition squad screens. It lets me straight away see who my key players are and the dangers of the opposition.

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    Tactics

    I'm a fully-fledged, fully paid up member of the strikerless fan-boy club. The main reason being that it actually works. I'm also very much in the 4-3-3 camp when it comes to team shape. I've tried numerous versions of False Nine and Deep-lying forwards trying to link up the rest of my team, but they're never anywhere near as effective as using a Shadow Striker, who basically does everything you'd want from a False Nine plus much more.

    I do a lot of reading on tactics and tactical theory these days, and a bit on data and statistics. It's far and away my main source of reading material. I'd recommend anything from Michael Cox, Jonathan Wilson, Lee Scott and Michael Calvin (not necessarily tactics) and I also subscribe to The Athletic and Total Football Analysis. I honestly think that without this aspect, my interest in football would have waned a fair bit.

    I have a number of different shapes but these versions of the 4-3-3 are my favourites.

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    There are three styles (cautious, positive and very attacking) and around ten shapes in total which I find effective. In all of them my player instructions where possible are set to take more risks, dribble more, move into channels, tackle harder, shoot less often. It's a very aggressive and intense way of playing football, and it seems clearly the most effective. The downside is that unless you are a top team, you may end up with sub-50% possession. For anyone wondering, I've created them myself but I do look on the tactic creating website for ideas and then try to work them to the benefit of my team and my own preferences. I don't think there are any tactics which are the same as mine on those tactic testing sites (however there are similar ones for obvious reasons).

    Training

    Pre-season it's important to do intense physical sessions, especially on quickness. Other than that the most effective schedules for preparing players for games and keeping them together is attacking movement, defensive shape and team bonding. There's nothing overly complicated about this.

    Anyway, this is the table after 14 games.

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    The schedule.

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    The squad (as posted earlier).

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    I don't envisage any issues this season.
    @Baz

  43. #843
    Senior Member Lofty's Avatar
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    Finished my first season at Newcastle, pipped City to 4th resulting in Pep getting sacked, I expect my blowjob from Amanda Staveley in the morning.

    Got to the FA Cup semi final before losing 4-3 to Liverpool. Been given another 200m to spend for the second season, need to get a better keeper in than Dubravka, a decent back up striker, another good midfielder. Really need to win a trophy in the second season, board expect another top 4 finish and reach the knockout stage of the CL. Went a bit Bielsa with my outgoings in January (11 players out ) which saw some bad results despite the excellent overall season.

  44. #844
    Man(c) of the People igor_balis's Avatar
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    @ScousePig Onyekas attributes look like a carbon copy of prime Mulumbu, you just need to find a Claudio Yacob clone and you'll have the double pivot to fire the mighty baggies to upper-mid table like the halcyon days of Steve Clarke.

  45. #845
    Administrator Kikó's Avatar
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    I've booted up FM 19 after buying it and never playing. Straight into Maritimo B after starting unemployed. Bottom of the lowest league in Portugal after the previous manager lost the first 9 games of the season.

    Bit of a weird challenge as they're a feeder team. They have loads of restrictions in who can play with only one over u23 and 12 of the squad needing to be home grown. The last manager must have been a gimp as we are now P8 W3 D2 since.

  46. #846
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    He's so fucking good.

    It's such a shame that this is going to be my final full season on this save (I'm buying 22 and hopping over after the Club World Cup, win or lose) as I'd love to see how he progresses fully.

  47. #847
    mischamischaracterisation Dquincy's Avatar
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    Fernandez Vial : 2023 : Mid-Season Update


    First season in the Chilean top division and we are somehow outperforming our media prediction to finish in the relegation zone.

    This is the situation with 5 games to go. Tighter than a camel's arse in a sandstorm.


  48. #848
    mischamischaracterisation Dquincy's Avatar
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    4 games to go (albeit 3rd and 4th have a game in hand).


  49. #849
    Bookie Sir Andy Mahowry's Avatar
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    I think there might be a bit of a kit clash in this game...

  50. #850
    Senior Member Gray Fox's Avatar
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    Has anyone been playing far enough into the future to see if the dynamic youth rating thing works well?

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