Deflated, dejected and loving every minute
Right up until Football Manager 2008 I didn’t use the scouts as much as I could instead I used Genie Scout. For training I downloaded Tugs training and for tactics I downloaded a tactic and fashioned it into something half decent for whatever team I was managing.
That’s all changed in the games I’ve played on Football Manager 2009, out has gone Genie in favour of trusting my scouts, out went Tugs training in favour of building my own framework and I’ve built myself a half decent 4-4-2 formation that works well in the German 3rd division.
It dawned on me that with all this help I wasn’t actually winning games I was cheating my way through the game. I wasn’t managing what I had, I was checking the Current abilities of my squad and that of any potential signings to improve my squad, with the training any success wasn’t my own it was done by someone else and the same can be said of the tactics.
For my current game I chose SV Sandhausen of the German Third Division mainly because they were tipped for relegation. Starting a game with a team expecting promotion or aiming for the top half of the table immediately puts pressure on you, picking the team that is expected to finish bottom means you can’t do any worse than is expected of you.
Not only is there no expectation it also gives you the opportunity to learn without worrying about losing, so what if we lose 3 games in a row – the Chairman most certainly doesn’t!
I started building a framework based on the type of players that I had within my squad so all the wingers had the same schedule, all the experienced midfielders had the same schedule etc. etc. Although it works in most cases it doesn’t work in all cases. If I learnt one thing from Football Manager 2009 it is that training schedules/frameworks aimed at a group of players are a thing of the past. The best effects can be found from training your players individually, I’ll trademark it as the ‘Ultimate Ledley King Training schedule’ I think! Training players as a group assumes that all the players assigned to a schedule are equal in terms of progression, believe me they’re not!
With tactics the key is to set Individual instructions as much as possible with team instructions as a fall back. But I’ve been caught out by trying to be too clever and leaving gaping holes trying to play to all my players’ strengths (or at this level, lack of them). I found out that the cleverer you try to get with tactics results in only outsmarting yourself.
Scouting has been much more fun this year, I’m now judging my players on the number of stars they have rather than how big their Current and Potential abilities are. Without buying vast amounts of players I’ve been blooding my 16 year olds from the youth team to negate the players in poor form rather than looking for a quick buy or trawling through the free transfers. Getting a big club as my parent club and them deciding who they are going to send me on loan was an eye opener, you’d think they’d send their highly rated youngsters out on loan to you but beware I got caught out by them sending me a couple of duds!
One thing I’ve been repeatedly guilty of in the past is being too competitive. If I go on a run of five or six games without winning I’ll usually either resign or start a new game mainly because I think I’ve failed. Recently I’ve just ended a thirteen game winless streak and boy did it feel great. Not once did I think about quitting this time, I knew the run had to end at some point and it was just about keeping my players spirits up and keep driving for a result. Playing with a team in this position is great because instead of playing 38 games and winning the league, every game is like a cup final. I’m expected to lose most of the matches anyway so as long as my team go out there and make a fist of it then everyone is happy.
All I need to do now is find a way of making a lower league team profitable when there are no Middle Eastern businessmen on the horizon!!
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Good little read on the train that was. I think that the new game will make this sort of play more viable as I said in dumbing down article the new tactic engine will help bring better tactic making to the masses.
Although in my saints team the aim isn’t to win every match. It is about building a decent squad on limited amounts of money and surviving trying to take a team that isn’t expected to stay off relegation.
Although this being a bit different me sticking myself in the prem I think 2010 I will adopt the worse team in a particular country
Very good read that Q
I’ve recently found out that playing with a team full of shite players expected to be just that isn’t as bad as it sounds. Yes, you lose a lot more games than you win and you have £0 to spend on your transfer targets but it takes a lot more effort and tactical ‘engineering’ to make your team work and when it pays off the sense of achievement is unrivaled. Making a killer tactic with Chelsea is no longer an ‘awesome’ feet of management for me and rightfully so.
Q = a secret LLaMa?
Nice read. Good luck avoiding the long winless streaks
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