Moose

I'm so rubbish at Rocket League.  I got it when it came out and did ok, then didn't play it for a number of months.  I've come back to it now and its so hard!  I don't understand how people fly about the pitch like they do and my timing of hits are all off.  

https://sisportscentre.com/

This has kinda become my 'bible' for all things football manager.  Give it a good read and you'll understand player roles and mentalities a lot better.  

13 hours ago, Soda van Jerk said:

I promised the majority of my young Gothenburg side that we'd be in the Champions League next season, or I'd let them leave. I won the Europa League. "I've done it!" I thought.

Nah. Swedish league starts March to October. Because the end of the season league season overlaps the European competitions starting, qualification is one year behind for a lot of the northern European leagues. I won the 15/16 Europa League, but the weird schedule means I qualify for the 17/18 Champions League, not the subsequent 16/17 Champions League.

Everyone is pissed. Broken promises. I'm going to get wrapped up in a carpet and thrown into the Baltic Sea.

 

PSV are offering me a job. I think I'll swim to Holland.

That is BONKERS.  I want to look into some of the smaller leagues (other than the Scottish).  My only experience so far is with Netherlands and France, which aren't exactly diddy leagues.  

You want them the other way around against inside forwards too (right footer on the left; left footer on the right).  

Rafa goes unbeaten for the rest of the season, keeping Newcastle up but then gets offered the Bayern Munich job.  Ashley then appoints Paul Jewel.  Called it.  

I basically use the RTE to bankrupt Rangers every time they look like the might come up.  It pleases me.

I always choose a youth player at random and give them a potential ability of ~180 at the beginning of the season too, which is sort of cheating, I suppose.  

I started playing GTAV online on my PS4 and I'm just kinda wandering around getting killed by other possés.  Wtf am I meant to do?  How do I join a crew, or something?  How do crews even work?  Do I have to speak to people, coz I don't want to do that.  

25 minutes ago, Mac Atom said:

Any ideas on what's happened to II Music? Shop is empty and there's no word on the website or Facebook page apart from a few people asking the same question....

If they're completely gone I'll be gutted!  They are/were such a great shop with amazing staff and seemed to be ticking over OK in their new, smaller premises. 

They've moved to Crown Street under a new name, which I can't remember or seem to google search.  Opens fairly soon, I think.  

Kevin de Bruyne is an absolute joy to watch.  His first touch is miraculous!  Just as good as Ozil IMO.  

Let's take a moment to reflect on something: Adam Lallana cost Liverpool £25mm.  

Utter toilet football, especially after watching the Ross County v Aberdeen game.  

1 hour ago, Adam Easy Wishes said:

When that happens to me (normally because of said 'squad overhaul'), I do this:

1. Go back to absolute basics with formations. Remove all team instructions, stick to standard strategy and a 'fluid' team shape. Stick two central midfielders on a 'defend' duty. Then react with team instructions to how the game is going. Note that on 'standard' strategy, I will only ever have two players on an 'attack' mentality.

2. Despite them perhaps being better players, don't load my team with all of the new players. If possible, strip back and play at least eight players that were with the club last season and over the course of substitutions/about 10-15 games bring the new signings in gradually.

Testify!

Finished my 3^rd season at Blackburn with a 0-3 trouncing from Man City.  Had I got a point from it, I would have finished 4^th - above Liverpool – but as I lost it, Man City leapfrogged my into 4th^th and I finished 6^th.  A fine line indeed.  I was all nice, for once, like ‘unlucky lads, it just wasn’t our day’ and it wasn’t. 

The Venky’s have just sold out to a very rich consortium who gave me a new contract and a £100mm transfer budget.  I didn’t really know what to do with it but as a number of my key players are coming to me and moaning that I won’t let them leave to bigger clubs, I’ve spent a bit (Jordan Rhodes was giving me grief for asking AC Milan for £40mm for him.  I says to him, £40mm or GTFO).   So I brought in a few players to replace my squad players (Kevin Strootman, Aaron Cresswell, Saido Berahino,  Ricardo Kishna, Lucas fae Monaco) which gives me a stupid squad.  My first big buy was Fabian Delph, a key player in my second season, who’ll barely get a look in now.   

My Blackburn squad, going into its 4^th season, includes: Asmir Begovic, Keiran Trippier, Sami Khedira, Stevan Jovetic, Kevin Strootman, Fabian Delph, Eric Durm, Dani Alves, Gary Cahill and – of course – Ben Marshall.  I don’t know how I’ve done it, but I’ll probably now win the Prem, with these guys and my other – lesser known - stars. 

It gets a bit boring when you are given stupid money, tbh. 

I’ve had a huge turnaround in my 3^rd season with Blackburn.  Just missed relegation from the prem in my second season, coming 17^th (albeit 8 points clear of the relegation zone).  This season, so far, I’ve already won the shitty cup and look poised to finish in the top 4!  I almost can’t believe how well we’ve done and its mostly down to constant tinkering.  So far, this season, I’ve played 4-2-3-1, 4-1-4-1, 5-2-3, 2-3-2-1-2 and flat 4-3-3.  A lot of them are based around two similar mentalities, on to focus on hitting teams on the counter and another looking to win the ball back, higher up the pitch, and control possession.  Players were moved around a formation accordingly to counter specific threats.  The board have started showering me in money and I’ve taken in some big names, like Sami Khedira, Stevan Jovetic, Fabian Delph and Dani Alves (at Blackburn Rovers, remember…).  Jordan Rhodes is immense and Lewis Cook (£8.5m from Leeds) has been pivotal. 

I read this blog a lot over Christmas: https://sisportscentre.com/tag/fm16-fm16/page/4/ .  It helped me to understand the match engine a lot better and how to utilise it in order to reach what I want.  Keeping it simple at the start of each game and changing things to counter/take advantage of specific strengths/weakness in the opponent. 

I’m still getting totally ruined at set pieces , however. 

It was actually fairly effective in getting draws or 1-0 victories over bigger teams, but I was oddly getting humped by the teams around me.  I tried changing the bbm to a cm-d and replacing the anchor man with another striker, but it didn't really work out.  

The general ethos was to make it as basic as possible, total anti football, but I'm really struggling to come up with interesting and effective tactics in this game.  I've barely touched team instructions as the negatives of any change seem to outweigh the positives.  It worked fine in the Championship, but I can't find anything that works in the prem.  

...mind you, it was maybe more to do with my central midfield of jason lowe and danny guthrie...

On 12/26/2015 at 0:20 PM, Soda van Jerk said:

I found that I was tinkering all the time when I wanted to use a possession-dominating tactic with Bayern, but it seems that counter-attacking is crazy overpowered. I have a hard-tackling, ultra-direct counter attack going on with Real Oviedo which is destroying everyone, and I don't really change anything game by game. I am bottom of the league in terms of possession, pass completion and total passes. Top of the league where it counts. 20 points ahead of the pack and just about clinched promotion, and reached the final of the Copa Del Rey, still to play.

Possession is rubbish. We win the ball back, give it to a winger, and he either lays it off to an overlapping full back, cuts in and smashes it at goal, or loops it in to the bigbastard centre forward. Front to back in 2 or 3 long passes.

Can I have a look at your tactic.  I kept my head above water with Blackburn by utilising fast as fuck players in a very simple counter attacking 4-1-4-1, but it was far from devastating.  Signed some quality players so I want to try something more adventurous.  My tactic was counter attacking, structured, as so:

df-s

wm-s cm-s bbm-s wm-s

a-d

fb-s cd-d cd-d fb-s

gk-d

Has anyone played much of the new game?  It's hard, you can't rest on any one tactics and have to tinker a lot more to get the wins, which I kinda like.  Playing a game with Blackburn: £130mm debt and a transfer embargo.  Actually ended up winning the Championship in my first season, whcih I've never done before in any fm.  Currently sitting 18th in the prem after 34 games though, so my future aint looking so bright...

FM alternative universe: this season, in my game, Leicester finished bottom and Chelsea won the title.  

I might go as Villa in the new FM.  Make them likeable again.  They are a pretty massive club, in terms of following and history, but they have been dogshit ever since O'Neill left. 

That goal was a pure bastard.  Coley was a great player to watch in his day and had top bantz with the lads.  

I did the Aviemore half marathon a couple of weeks ago.  I'm not really as runner, I just keep fit playing football and other sports, so just gave it my best shot.  Finished in 1.43 which is probably around what I was hoping for.  Makes me want to get back into 10ks and get my time down; I just worry I'm not the right sort of build for it, or something.  I seem far more injury prone from running than playing footy or tennis, which is pretty odd.  

Really enjoyed the sense of occasion and camaraderie at the event, plus its a bloody beautiful track.  

He is bad. I think the Newcastle squad is decent too. Solid midtable quality. How he is below Sunderland, the worst side on planet earth currently, is unthinkable.

 

How does he keep getting jobs? Does his CV just say "I was Fergie's assistant that one time" and that gets him the nod?

 

Should have snagged Vieira. Newcastle might still have been bottom of the league, but it would have been more entertaining, with his "everybody get in their half!" all out attack that he had City's reserves playing.

TBF, his record in Netherlands and Germany is pretty special.  Its just so strange that his good spell at Twente and Wolfsburg is surrounded by so much terribleness.  

https://twitter.com/IvicaStrok10

 

Jonny Gabriel, who you may know from the Football Manager film, and the book "Football Manager Stole My Life" has created a Twitter account for his FM regen striker, Ivica Strok. It might just be one of the greatest corners of the internet.

 

Allegedly, there will be an autobiography. Mental. I want it.

 

Jonny has also written an article about Strok for Vice. It is good

 

This is possibly just beyond being enjoyable for me.  Just a bit too bonkers. I have had similar experiences, however.  

So Glen Johnson will wear the number 8 this season, at Stoke.  

There are some unorthadox squad numbers I can handle, as long as they're in keeping with a national tradition somewhere.  A Brazilian CB wearing 3, fine; an Argentinian RB wearing 4, fine; I'm happy for a CM to wear anything from 4 - 11 (apart from 9). William Gallas wore 10 though and he must burn in fire for this.

Check this out: https://squadnumbers.wordpress.com

A goalkeeper who wears the number 2!  Absolutely abhorrent behaviour.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emiliano_Viviano

This guy will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.