Football Manager 2012

[soundian]

and I don't I bloody know they get poached all the time! I've always admired Queen's Park for sticking to their guns, just secured a play off spot in my first season in charge with 6 games to spare!

Is there not still a rule in place that means they can't be poached until April 30th?

[delboy]

maybe but had a couple poached in the transfer window!

[soundian]

In 1910, the club had made an official complaint against rivals, Clyde, who had made an approach to one of their players, Willie McAndrew. The league ruled that Queen's Park had the right to retain their players until April 30 each year. That ruling is still in force today.

To be fair though, the right to retain a player isn't the same as the player having to stay. They could decide to let the player leave.

[delboy]

promotion at the first attempt via the play offs! Derek McFrankland has arrived in Scottish football!

[soundian]

promotion at the first attempt via the play offs! Derek McFrankland has arrived in Scottish football!

That's a challenge that we can all try. How far can you take Queen's Park!

Sounds like a great leveller where the tactics and training will come to the fore. The higher you can get them before topping out, the better manager you are. No arguments.

[Lemonade]

Just finished season 7 with Arsenal. Got off to my traditional godawful start and was sitting outside the top 6 for the first quarter of the season. Unfortunately in playing for 7 years I forgot that my players age, and now a lot of my star players are knocking on a bit and getting slower and less good. Robin Van Persie, Eduardo, Rafael Van Der Vaart, James Milner, Gary Cahill, Leighton Baines, Gokhan Inler et al are wrong side of 30, and I wasted my entire transfer budget on a Brazilian left back who spent most of the season on the treatment table. In fact things were looking so bleak that after finishing as runners-up last season, my prediction for this season was 7th and the board only asked me to get to the UEFA Cup.

After trudging through the mid season with desolate performance after desolate performance, I found myself in 5th with 11 games to go, miles off the pace, Liverpool were about 12 ahead of me, then Man U and Man City were about 8 ahead, and then Chelsea then myself arguing over the last Champions League spot, which is as good as I thought I was going to get as I was playing shite and out of both cups. Then, we took a trip to Burnley and somehow absolutely cuffed them 8-0, this seemed to give us a shot in confidence as we suddenly found some form and went on a 10 game unbeaten streak, 9 wins 1 draw (the draw was away to Man U) and went into the last game of the season 1 point behind Liverpool, and level on points with Chelsea who were third on goal difference. Brilliantly my last game of the season was away to Liverpool. Winner takes all, and if it's a draw, Chelsea take it. 3 minutes into the match, some Scouse cunt clatters Fabregas in the box, and his countryman Pedro Leon, who's actually shit and hasn't scored all season, batters home the penalty. 87 minutes of stout defending and getting absolutely pummeled later, the helicopter is on it's way to Liverpool with the league trophy with Arsenal's name engraved on it. Take that Pim Verbeek, whoever the fuck you are.

While all this was going on, despite being shite all season, we also managed to sneak into the final of the Champions League by virtue of getting the jammiest draw in every round. Having overcome the might of Fenerbace, AZ Alkmaar, Celtic, Spartak Moscow, Dortmund and Lyon, we booked a place in the final against Juventus at the Millenium Stadium. I'd never won this trophy with Arsenal, or even reached the final, every fucking season we get drawn against Real Madrid and every fucking time they knock me out in the QFs, so I really wanted this fucker. After a very tight first half with no real chances, we get into the 65th minute, and kablam! Cesc Fabregas scores an absolutely shit toe poke from a corner and we hang on to take that famous trophy back to the Emirates as well. Fans say things like:

Which brings me way more joy than it really should. In saying that, I won the Champions League with a team that contains Fraser Fyvie so I probably deserve it. Little do these prawn-sandwich munching cunts know however, that now that I've won all the trophies there is to win with Arsenal I'm in the mood for a new challenge. It's all very well winning the League and the Champions League with Arsenal - I think it's time to drop down to the toilet leagues, take some shower of shit by the scruff of the neck and turn them into a fucking football team, like Goldie Hawn in Wildcats, but with a different type of football.

Total record in seven years:

3 League titles, 2 FA cups, 1 league cup, 1 Champions League, 1 UEFA cup, 1 UEFA super-cup. Played 354, won 250, draw 70, lost 74. Manager of the year 3 times. Massive dick. Fucked loads of birds around North London.

[delboy]

That's a challenge that we can all try. How far can you take Queen's Park!

Sounds like a great leveller where the tactics and training will come to the fore. The higher you can get them before topping out, the better manager you are. No arguments.

As usual I nicked a tactic, a Barcelona one for a laugh, has done the trick but yeah I am looking forward to seeing how far I can take the amateurs!!!

[Flights]

Massive dick. Fucked loads of birds around North London.

Best line.

Who you eyeing up for your next job Lucky?

If things keep going the way they are Newport will be in the Premiership next season which will likely result in me get humped by teams that can afford more than 3.9k a week for a player and an almighty fall from grace for Big Phil. I can't seem to allow the board to let me spend more on wages or increase the limit per player. They are probably hoarding all the cash for leeks and sheep the dirty bastards. I'm sitting 1st in the championship and my star striker is sitting on £750 a week. Properly mental. I'm expecting somebody to approach him in the summer transfer window and add a zero to the end of his wage packet. Shite. My transfer budget is 1.2 million, and that's it. The board are going to run this team into the ground! We are like the Aberdeen of Wales. They spent a fuck ton of money doing the stadium up as they felt we didn't have seats for fans. The average turn out before the upgrades. 8000. Turn out after the refurb? 8000. I could have bought a decent goalie with that. That's another thing. I signed this goalie called Mellor. My scout turned up wiping this lads jizz of his face saying we need to sign him, 'He'll be a star player!' he said. What a load of shite. The Torres of goalkeeping. Properly poop. He now sits on the bench watching the 33 year old Nigerian he was supposed to replace stop shots like a boss. Carl Ikeme is the Jim Leighton of Africa. He'll be at the Newport youth academy smoking cigars and diving about like a killer whale well into his 70's I reckon.

Ikeme has stated he plans to retire at the end of the season. Probably so he has more time to pose in his pants and I'm going to be stuck with Mellor as my first keeper as my 3rd keeper is a child. Mellor better find form or I'm going to knee him in the heart and elbow him in the head at the same time!

Overall I'm enjoying the championship this season. Prospect of getting into the EPL is exciting but also terrifying at the same time. If the board open up the safe and give me some of that sweet football money, I'll be laughing!

Mon the exiles!!!!!!

[Scootray]

I think if you make into the EPL, you'll get a fair bit of cash to play with.

[Lemonade]

Best line.

Who you eyeing up for your next job Lucky?

There's nothing available at the moment but there's a few managers who are listed as "precarious". I've declared interest in Watford who are managed by John Barnes and therefore unsurprisingly languishing just above the relegation zone in the Championship.

I've got a European Championships to win with Scotland before I can start thinking about my future though.

[Flights]

I may have made a huge mistake. I got offered a job at Kilmarnock, said fuck it and accepted it! Update with glossy photos soon.

They aren't doing to bad though. Sitting middle of the table with a fuck load of cash. One major issue with them is the average age, which is sitting at 37! and a lack of decent defenders. Signed my long term Newport defender Dumbuya as he is a workhorse and admires me apparently. I'm getting busy splashing that transfer cash and shipping out the oldies. The board are unsure of my approach though. They've said a few of my signings strike them as bad business! Cheeky fuckers, I know a good striker when I see one! The other defender I signed, Robbie Fox has a decent set of stats and a name that sounds like an English porn star. Beefed up the midfield with some fella name Hans. He's not Swedish though, he's from the land of cocaine, Columbia.

Fuck why did I leave Newport. They've failed to make it into the Premier though which is shocking considering I was a good 6 points clear in March. New guy clearly isn't as good as me! Get it sooked!

Best album ever!

[Lemonade]

After a disappointing European Championships as Scotland boss (went out in the QFs to Denmark) I went back to the day job at Arsenal and found I just couldn't be bothered any more. I started sticking my name in for every job that was going and eventually I got a memo from the Arsenal board pretty much saying "stop applying for other jobs while you still work for us". Infuriated, I yelled "Fascists!" then went and took a dump on Stan Kroenke's desk, stuck an "I quit" flag in it, and that was the end of my association with Arsenal.

I spent a month relaxing at home, spending time with the family while I pondered my next move, when a job opened up at 1860 Munich in the German second division. I had to have a long discussion with my wife and my kids (well, the two eldest ones anyway, the other two are too young to really know what's going on) and they said I should go for it. I was a bit "hmmmmmmm" about it, the job sounded appealing but I didn't want to uproot the family, they're settled in London, two of them are at school and it's a big move for all of us, but eventually the pull of sausages and oompah bands was too much to resist and I decided to take the job.

"Of course Mark and I are delighted to be given the opportunity to work here. Munich is a wonderful city. I know a lot about German football, I know Bayern Munich, and I know Dortmund, and Leverkusen, and I know players like Oliver Khan and Oliver Bierhoff and that big Polish guy. People have questioned the wisdom of us moving from the team who just won the Champions League to a team struggling in the German second division but I still see this as one of the biggest jobs in football. I hate the term"sleeping giant" but this is what I see this club as, a sleeping giant of German football who've had a bit of a bad time of it recently and need a bit of a kick-start. Everybody here knows that this club shouldn't be where it is, but the fact of the matter is we are where we are, and Mark and I have been tasked with bringing the club back to where it belongs. It's not going to be an overnight job, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of hard work. There's a famous building near here you probably know called the Frauenkirche. It wasn't built in a day, it started out with a lot of planning, then putting some solid foundations in place, and then building it from the ground up, piece by piece, layer by layer, slowly, slowly until it was complete, a solid, reliable structure, and that's similar to what I'm hoping to do here. This is a wonderful club with a wonderful tradition and I'm delighted to have the chance to take on the challenge, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the chairman for giving me the chance to do so. "

[Flights]

The striker I signed for Killie who the board moaned like fuck about. 7 goals in 4 games! Get it sooked board!!!

[delboy]

Had a bit of FM fun this morning, an experiment to see just what it takes to get sacked. So I took the Man U job and put my fave team down as city, then proceeded to set up my formation playing the whole team as far up front as possible... the results were this...

Man City (Community Shield) L 9-2

Bolton (a) L 8-1

Arsenal (h) L 7-0

Everton (a) L 12-0

Chelsea (h) D 2-2

Leverkausen (h) L 14-1

Still not been so for a bit of fun I decided to play a couple of matches with players from the under 18's squad only apart from Valancia who I'd been rowing with and stuck him in the under 18's out of spite, I also decided to start putting an outfield player in goal...

Aston Villa (a) L 25-0

West Brom (h) L 28-1 (League Cup Third Round)

Still not sacked after that! Went back to the first team squad...

Newcastle (h) D 1-1

Lille (a) L 13-0

Stoke (a) L 12-0

Finally was given the push!!! I also fined the players for poor performances at every given opportunity and fell out with just about all the big name prima donnas. I gave ridiculous contracts to players and was a million over wage budget. And I signed a 35 year old from some New Zealand team for my whole transfer budget... 24 million ha ha.

I do need to get out more but it brightened up a dull Sunday!

[Lemonade]

After a disappointing European Championships as Scotland boss (went out in the QFs to Denmark) I went back to the day job at Arsenal and found I just couldn't be bothered any more. I started sticking my name in for every job that was going and eventually I got a memo from the Arsenal board pretty much saying "stop applying for other jobs while you still work for us". Infuriated, I yelled "Fascists!" then went and took a dump on Stan Kroenke's desk, stuck an "I quit" flag in it, and that was the end of my association with Arsenal.

I spent a month relaxing at home, spending time with the family while I pondered my next move, when a job opened up at 1860 Munich in the German second division. I had to have a long discussion with my wife and my kids (well, the two eldest ones anyway, the other two are too young to really know what's going on) and they said I should go for it. I was a bit "hmmmmmmm" about it, the job sounded appealing but I didn't want to uproot the family, they're settled in London, two of them are at school and it's a big move for all of us, but eventually the pull of sausages and oompah bands was too much to resist and I decided to take the job.

"Of course Mark and I are delighted to be given the opportunity to work here. Munich is a wonderful city. I know a lot about German football, I know Bayern Munich, and I know Dortmund, and Leverkusen, and I know players like Oliver Khan and Oliver Bierhoff and that big Polish guy. People have questioned the wisdom of us moving from the team who just won the Champions League to a team struggling in the German second division but I still see this as one of the biggest jobs in football. I hate the term"sleeping giant" but this is what I see this club as, a sleeping giant of German football who've had a bit of a bad time of it recently and need a bit of a kick-start. Everybody here knows that this club shouldn't be where it is, but the fact of the matter is we are where we are, and Mark and I have been tasked with bringing the club back to where it belongs. It's not going to be an overnight job, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of hard work. There's a famous building near here you probably know called the Frauenkirche. It wasn't built in a day, it started out with a lot of planning, then putting some solid foundations in place, and then building it from the ground up, piece by piece, layer by layer, slowly, slowly until it was complete, a solid, reliable structure, and that's similar to what I'm hoping to do here. This is a wonderful club with a wonderful tradition and I'm delighted to have the chance to take on the challenge, and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the chairman for giving me the chance to do so. "

Shortly after writing this my assistant Mark Bowen refused the terms of his contract to come on board as my assistant. As did my entire backroom staff, the fucking cunts, even though they all quit Arsenal the day I did. My new assistant is one-time Man U winger Quiton Fortune. Luis Boa Morte is my new Youth coach.

[Lemonade]

Off to a decent start with my 1860 Munich team. In the 7 years the game has been running, they've never finished above 13th in the Second Division, so my remit was pretty much to gain a respectable league position. The squad I inherited was an absolute shambles, and I only got 1.5m of a transfer budget so rebuilding is tricky. I managed to fill the holes in the squad with experienced old heads on free transfers who can hopefully help me stabilise. I blew most of my transfer budget on a young French striker who rattled them in in his first few games, but is now crying because he misses his mummy and asked for a transfer after only 8 games, the fucking nonce. He's going nowhere. Because most of my squad are cloggers I've opted for organisation and tight defending rather than sexy football, rigid as fuck, stick to position, absolutely no creative freedom. This is reflected in my results - 8 games in, 3 x 1-0 victores, 4 x 1-1 draws and 1 x 0-0 draw. Absolutely dire to watch no doubt, but I don't give a fuck, I'm sitting third in the table and undefeated so if the fans don't like it they can eat my schnitzel. I don't take shit in this job. First day in the job I immediately shit-canned the entire coaching staff and my assistant manager. Only then did I realise that I was 2 days away from the opening league game of the season, I had no idea which players were any good and I had no assistant or coaches to help me out, so I hurriedly signed Quinton Fortune as my assistant to tide me over until I could head-hunt some coaches. Unfortunately Fortune has turned out to be an absolute liability, he disagrees with every piece of advice my coaches give, and constantly tells me my shit players are world-beaters and vice versa. I took some applications for Assistant manager and got some heavy-hitters applying, but the board won't let me sack Fortune because of the compensation involved so I'm stuck with the useless cunt and mostly just have to try and ignore him.

My hope for this season is to finish maybe 5th or 6th, get some prize money and use it to sign a few decent players for next season and push for promotion then. Strange as it sounds I don't want to go up this season. I'd be absolute cannon fodder if I went up to the Bundesliga with this bunch of plebs. Up Die Löwen!

[Flights]

Glorious reporting Lucky. I'll try and get a report on how my first season with Killie is going tomorrow. Fortune strikes me as being completely clueless so I'm not suprised by how he's turned out in his AM role

[Lemonade]

Out of curiosity, what happens if you get relegated into a league you don't have running as a playable league? Do you get automatically sacked?

[Flights]

I would imagine you would just get asked to load the leauge up. Pure speculation of course. You'll have to ask Milner

[The Milner]

Out of curiosity, what happens if you get relegated into a league you don't have running as a playable league? Do you get automatically sacked?

Yeah you will be sacked.

[soundian]

Can you not add in the lower league before you get sacked. Delboy tells me you can add leagues in FM12.

Mind you, you're screwed if it isn't a playable league.

[The Milner]

You can, but it adds the league after the end of the current season, so you would be relegated before the league was added, i think anyway, its not something that has come up on the forums i dont think.

[Soda Jerk]

Is there a way of using the editor to play as a team below the lowest playable tier? The teams exist in the game, for the likes of the FA Cup preliminary rounds. Can you put one of those part time clubs into the Blue Square conferences to play as them?

[Lemonade]

Is there a way of using the editor to play as a team below the lowest playable tier? The teams exist in the game, for the likes of the FA Cup preliminary rounds. Can you put one of those part time clubs into the Blue Square conferences to play as them?

Yeah you can just swap them into the league before you start the game. I've moved Highland League teams into Division 3 before and cast some league teams into the wilderness so I could play as Fraserburgh.

[The Milner]

Is there a way of using the editor to play as a team below the lowest playable tier? The teams exist in the game, for the likes of the FA Cup preliminary rounds. Can you put one of those part time clubs into the Blue Square conferences to play as them?

You can download a datapack that has every league in england down to amateur clubs i can find the link if your interested?