Well Well Well

It wasn't very long ago that I was saying on here that I thought we needed our own ME separate to FM10 because it was the same engine but a different car. Well, with the latest ME updates to FML we have now officially diverged from FM10 and have our own version!

Some of the changes which stand out to me are:

- Adjusted way that expected result is calculated for FML matches, due to slightly different reputation scales

Really ? none of us have ever noticed how difficult it is to beat lower reputation teams, never come in the past ;)

- Reduced effect of headers won/lost on player match ratings

Uh-oh, I think I need a new DC

- Try to make full backs take more responsibility for strikers when playing against narrow 433 formations

Uh-oh, I think I need a new formation

- Small tweak to match ratings to reduce effect of high numbers of runs past opponents

My strike force :(

I suspect the new ME is going to create some serious problems for me, which is a shame as I have just managed to get my team playing some good football.

Today is the last day of run #1 of the EFA, it wont finish until tonight but I figure i'll do an update now as it's no doubt going to end in epic failure. I'm pretty happy with everything at the moment and shockingly i'm pissed off with absolutely nothing in or out of FML right now.



I think the only games I haven't won have been when my crazy DC has been suspended. My backup generally costs me a goal a game despite not being especially bad. I've managed to avoid leaving any games to my AI this time round my latest fad is some serious micro management of player instructions in matches changing things on the fly depending what the players are doing in the match.

I'm pretty sure i've got away form cracked - my results are EXACTLY the same home as they are away. The only person I know to be following my away tactic is also top of his league.

With just a handful of games left, what could possibly go wrong?



You may remember I was concerned about my goal return being too low last week, Mr Lavezzi has resolved this problem! In the league I have scored 60 goals in 23 games and my attack looks pretty scary.



My team philosophy and style is based on this team and i've come pretty close in some games. At least watch this past 1:19. Arrogance, belligerence and class is my team statement.



Moving on to finances...


So here we can see a problem I appear to have ! There's another 2 runs of prize money to go in there yet which should put me back in the green. I don't really have many saleable assets and a number of my players are at the age no one will buy them. To finance my last deal I turned auto extend off on every single player in my squad, so that projection is assuming I don't renew any contracts next season :D

So my only option is to keep winning. On and on.

Supersonic

I've been thinking, shocking I know. Looking at the wages that good players are going for these days, it's going to be literally impossible to create a super team of world class players.

Now I know pre reset we had some teams that were probably a little too strong, purely because there was so little competition for players they could sign whoever they liked at a reasonable price.

But i'm just not seeing how it's going to be possible to create a good team now. A decent striker like Bojan already commands a £5m transfer fee, a player like Pato commands a £100k wage. These are not isolated incidents, these are now MV wages/transfer fees for these kind of players and they are bound to increase over at least the next season or so.

So say I want to sign a few top class players, exactly how much money is that going to cost me ? Well for a start they are going to be on £100k+ a day each, or £2.8m a season! That's not even including any signing on or transfer fees I would need to pay either.

I don't really like this, I don't want to be striving for mediocrity, I want to be trying to create the best team that has ever graced a football pitch, but I don't think it's actually going to be possible.

I guess we are going to end up with a large number of teams which are essentially fairly even in terms in player ability and it's going to come down to who can exploit the ME the best or who gets the most luck.

It's not really helped by the fact there's too many FAs meaning more teams are able to compete for higher prize money either - there never should have been any duplicate FAs, this totally ruined the FA structure for me.

I'm thinking this is as good as it gets, i'm not sure I can significantly improve my squad without spending around £10-15m in fees/wages - so what's the point ? I may as well just plug on with what i've got and see how things go.

Anyway, I had some geniune rage tonight.



GWC, 1st round, level 3 team, all youth team, of course they scored with every shot they had on target while my players turned into massive idiots. I think it may be time to start withdrawing from all cup competitions again as it's just a complete waste of time playing them, it's just roll the dice and see what happens.

Oops!... I did it again

There has been a distinct lack of rage of late, I think the warm weather has made me slightly more placid than usual. My focus has been directed elsewhere this week but I wont go into the story about the lawnmower and the chisel, alas I don't think it's fixable now.

Round #3 of qualifying has started pretty well and my friendly form has been top notch. I really have the team working as I want and I won my first 4 games of the season comfortably, so much so I managed to not even concede a goal. I decided to set myself a realistic target of winning the league without conceding a goal all season at this point, alas I gave up on this idea shortly afterwards.

Anyway, things are going well ? The team is pretty much unbeatable except when i'm super keepered. But as usual i'm not happy, Loic Remy, my record signing at £2.8m was not providing the contribution I was hoping for. Sure, i'm averaging 2-3 goals a game in qualifying, but his performance is not acceptable for my team! I've pretty much had it in for him since he played his first game for me I think.

Logged on today and find someone trying to sell Lavezzi for £1.5m when his MV is £1.9m with a rather steep wage of £65k. I decide he is my man, he will fix my team, this is what I need to sort things out!

Problem was I was projected £-365k at this point. 30 minutes later I managed to pull £3.4m out of my ass which somehow allowed me to bid for the player in instalments. I say somehow, because when I tried to amend the bid it actually vetoed my original offer, so not sure what was going on there.

45 minutes or so of negotiating and a new striker is with me ! The bank manager is looking for me again as i'm now projected -£573k and my wages at £140k. Needless to say, anything but winning the league this season will be a complete and utter disaster.

The 5th match had me worried when I was 2-0 down, but fortunately my team appear to listen to me these days and we won 3-2.

P5 W5 D0 L0 F14 A2

What could go wrong !

Be Safe

As per usual, I seem to have gone a bit mad on the old transfers without actually buying any top class talent. £96k wage for an unlock ? No thanks! Here's my end of season transfers:


£2.8m

£316k (wage auction)

£1m

£40k

£52k

£400k

Total spending comes to an impressive £4.6m.

I'm pretty pleased with my signings, my bank manager however, appears not to be:

English manager Lee Jones's exceptional T-Bag Town have been warned by their bank to reduce their overdraft balance of £707,201 to within the current allowed limit of £100,000, to prevent their financial state from deteriorating.

Thing is, by the time I let some contracts expire (people are too silly to actually want to buy any of my ace players i'm releasing) i'll only be paying around £95k wages. This includes a full youth team and enough backup players to cover even the worst of injury crisis. I'm in the top tier of qualifying again, and if my friendly form is anything to go buy i'm likely to be challenging for the title again. So actually, i'm playing it safe!

I spent £1m on a 29 year old with 18 NF so he's going to be the nuts for at least 3 seasons. But he's only on £5k wage ! That's £140k per season folks, £1.14m. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than spending £50k+ on a younger player who actually isn't as good.

It's nice having a striker on the bench who had almost a 1 in 2 record last season! Remy, who is my biggest transfer, appears to be complete arse, but I reckon I can get my money back if he doesn't turn it on soon.

With nothing else better to do this weekend, I think I shall claim my rightful spot at the top of the rankings ;)

Away From Here

The trouble with FML, or perhaps the skill with FML is being able to work out if something you have done has lead to good results, whether it's coincidence, good luck or actually a beneficial change made by yourself.

I go through little fads and superstitions where I do the same kind of tactical changes each match, completely convinced this is what is causing me to win games without really knowing if this is the case.

Anyway, I still think I have somewhat cracked away results so i'm going to explain how and see if it works for you ! I've just won 7 games in a row away from home with ease and the FA results were generally favourable over the last few runs.

First off I have finally got round to setting a captain after 2 years as per oh my captain

When picking a captain I think you want a trade off between influence and average rating. There's no point picking a player with high influence if he plays bad every game. I also don't like picking strikers as they tend to rate badly if they don't score. I therefore try and pick a player with decent influence who plays consistently well - I prefer a midfielder as they are generally less prone to erratic ratings. Since setting my captain I don't think I have lost a game - coincidence ? Unsure.

**assumptions**
This applies to 433, I have no idea if it works with other formations. It also requires players that are fit, good stamina, and have pace/acceleration. As per my recipe for success blog a few weeks ago
**assumptions**

Moving on, the first thing you need to do is sort your opposition player instructions. You should be doing this EVERY game be it home or away. I wasn't going to mention this, but i'm convinced this works or then again it could be one of my fads. I used to spend some time checking the dangermen of the opposition before each match and setting instructions appropriately. But this is too time consuming so I have simplified this and apply generic instructions instead.

Wait for the opposition manager to submit their team, do not kick off yet. Set opposition instructions to show all of their offensive players onto their weaker foot. So if they play 433 then set it on all the forwards, if they are playing 442 then set it on the forwards and the wingers. Just use your common sense here. If you are absolutely convinced you are going to lose, then consider hard tackling someone who is a major threat - but be careful with this. Simple!

So you should be doing that every game anyway, but definitely for away games. Now when you go into an away game you need to adjust your mindset. You are not trying to win this game, you are going into the match trying not to lose it. In reality, doing this will lead to more wins.

If you have tried playing a defensive tactic on FML you will probably be aware that it's suicide and doesn't generally work very well so we need to play defensive, without playing defensive. You know those annoying matches when you're the better team and they suddenly score out of nowhere? Well this is what you are going to do.

It's fairly simple, you need to stifle play, break everything up, stop them being able to play. As they are the home team, and your not playing attacking this generally leads to more counter attacking opportunities.

I always start with 'standard' strategy and would not recommend playing anything else in away games.

So you need to break up the play - Before the match kicks off, set hassle opponents, play narrower and pump ball into the box. This will generally stop most teams play and restrict chances - it doesn't matter if your not creating anything at this stage.

You need to actually watch the game properly to identify how to change things, but you can kinda do this by looking at match stats if you are lazy. By about the 20th minute if you are creating chances and your players are finding space then change pump ball into box to run at defence. This generally results in one of your strikers getting on the end of a loose ball or running through the entire team and scoring with your first attack. Hopefully the pace will shine through and your players will be able to break from midfield.

If you are still getting outplayed at this point then drop your MC into DM (again, assuming your playing a flat 433) My MC is 'red' in DMC but he does just fine there.

As the match goes on if you are still drawing then all is good, remember you are not trying to win the game. Stick with pump the ball into box if your not finding any space - it doesn't matter if you have good jumping players or not for this to work. However, if you do find that too many balls are being aimed for the head and your not winning the battle then you probably want to take this off. You can try pass to feet if you like, but I just normally leave it on default.

I'd also suggest having your centre mids on long shots sometimes - This way you always have a chance of getting that BS out of nowhere long shot. Don't go OTT though, maybe 1 or 2 of them if they are decent in the attribute, the last thing you want is dozens of shots flying over the bar from 40 yards.

Now if you are playing a weaker team and you find you are generally dominating then you can try switching to control strategy late on in the game - never before the 70th minute, but continue to play narrow etc - it's counter intuitive I know.

You should have fit players so you can usually get away with hassle opponents from start to finish. Even if you are losing out head for head in the condition stakes it doesn't really seem to make a massive difference. If you are winning then take this off for the last 10 minutes to save condition and to try and protect your players from injury. If one of your players takes a knock and loses condition and you don't want to sub him them go into individual player instructions and take closing down off for this player.

Some of your players are likely to to have fitness issues, especially with knocks taken into account so don't be afraid to use substitutes. Just throw some more pace on after around the 65th minute in midfield and attack.

Assuming your are playing 433 as mine is set up then you should consider rotating your strikers during the match if one is playing poor. In my 433 the FCC is the goal scorer so if he is averaging <6 then I swap him with one of the others who are averaging better meaning he is less likely to fluff his chance. I suppose this is a general tactical point rather than an away tactic mind.

If your still getting well beat in the match, then there's nothing you can do about it, it's one of those games. If there is something you can do, please let me know.

That's about it I think! Let me know if it works or if it's just one of my pointless rituals i'm doing every game for no reason.

Ironic

So the ME complaints rumble ever onwards with some changes and fixes going into beta testing right now.

The main complaints are basically regarding the 4-3-3, the jumping issue and the apparently ability they have to compete at senior level (although there's no specific change going in regarding this one)

But show of hands time, if those three issues were fixed/changed right now, who would have a problem ? We are all moaning about it in the knowledge that any fixes are likely to screw our teams up.

To be fair the jumping issue is likely to only affect one of my defenders and I guess it's going to make him very poor, so i'll likely need to spend on a better defender. I've drafted some youths in, mainly as backup, so if that were changed i'd have problems there too.

But the biggest problem will be if 4-3-3 suddenly becomes an ineffective formation to use. Most of the better teams are currently playing this formation, they have no wingers and a large collection of forwards on their books. It's unlikely that 4-3-3 will become totally useless but it will be interesting to see how much it's effectiveness is actually reduced by.

Not saying that we shouldn't improve the ME, but it's just kind of ironic we are all moaning about it knowing it's likely to cause us problems!

Roll With It

Been trying to follow my plan to keep it tight finances wise and generally been disregarding the transfer market other than the odd bargain here and there. I bid £975k for a MC earlier, Inacio Piatti, he negotiated me to £1.4m so I thought, keep it tight and withdrew the bid. Around 20 minutes later he sells him for a staggering £2.3m !

So i'm keeping it tight, all is well, then half hour later I set the joint 6th highest GW transfer on a player who I know isn't actually that great. What's wrong with me ? £2.8m spent on one player who's far from a game winner !

I figure there's not much choice if I want to compete next season. One of my biggest failings on FML has been a lack of dynamism in moving players in/out and getting stuck with players I can't sell. So I guess if I can't beat them, I may as well just roll with it and see what happens.

I'm doing alright though, won the season 1 qualification league outright, finished 4th, 1st and 2nd in the EFA runs so i'm definitely going to be towards the top of the deck in reputation terms so I may as well treat myself. Senior team is ranked 22nd and my youth team has silently moved into the top 15 without any fuss. The youth team are pretty much all high potentials according to my admittedly rather inaccurate JP2 readings so hoping to bring a few of those through.

I have some tough decisions to make too, I can't decide if I should keep some of my duffers who perform so well or just release them (can't sell them) to cut wages down a tad more. I have a 30 year old MC, AF £26k, £2.5k wage averaging 7.00+ (no jumping hacks!)who has a 1 in 4 assist ratio. But he's getting loads of reds, I can't decide what to do. I have several other players in this kind of situation too, more contemplation required.

I've been thinking as well, why is it my AI is so awful and loses most matches ? Why is it that when I play teams playing the same formation as me, home or away, i'm nearly always the best team even if they have better players than me. I actually play a more defensive version of my tactics away from home and I very rarely issue any extra attacking instructions and only use "standard" strategy. So it's not a case of overloading them or anything like that.

My AI has a 36% win ratio whereas I have a 58% win ratio in official games, or 70% in unofficial games. I must conclude this is tactic related but I have a basic match plan to replicate my most common changes. So I conclude the difference relates to the individual player instructions I deploy every game. Not sure I want to give this one away if this is actually the case as I know very few, if any, managers are doing this like I do!

Keep the Faith

Okay, i'm going to write up my end of season review, live, as it happens. I'm just gonna type this as it goes and not edit it, so it could turn out to be really bad.

It's 10.30pm and I have 6 games left to go and the table looks like this:



Game on.

First match is at home to position #20. My main DC is suspended and my backup DC got injured after coming on as a sub in the 88th minute of the previous game to replace him.

Result 1 - Total domination, 3-1 victory and PP has me joint first place !

10:47pm
Second match is away to position 14th, my DC is back but one of my MCs is suspended now and my other one is injured. Should be able to cover this though.

Not started well, 1-0 down to an insane long shot after 1 minute.
15 minutes in and it's going worse, disallowed goal for them and i'm getting absolutely battered. As per usual with away games my team isn't bothering to play.

30 minutes in and i'm 2-0 down, he's had about 15 shots already. Go go go away form.

HT and it's a joke of a match, no way i'm going to win this. I'm getting totally destroyed by a shit DM of all things.

Ends 2-0, typical away game where my team don't bother playing at all and utterly destroyed by a poor team.

10:57 time for a home game to make sure I don't enter bad form, home to 18th should do the trick.

I'm now sitting 2nd on PP.

20 minutes in and i'm getting super keepered already but a far post corner has put me 1-0 up. The difference between the last match is astounding, suddenly my players have remembered they are footballers, they have time, they have space, they know how to pass again. The other keeper is still on an 8.0 but it's 2-0 now, just waiting for the usual comeback to happen now.

60 minutes gone, 0 shots for him, 5 cccs for me and it's 3-0, woo!

and so it ends, 3-0 victory, total domination.

11:08 - away to 17th, best striker suspended. I know i'll be shit anyway, as it's a dreaded away game. The bad news is my last 3 games are all away!

Table update:


Tight. I know i'm not going to win it as the last 3 games are away.

Back to the game... this guy appears to have Hulk in attack. I'm concerned!

Connection currently died..... need to reset router.

11:23, stupid fucking internet breaking. Seem to be back up now, why does shit like this always happen at the most annoying time possible.

8th minute and I take the lead with a penalty! get in there!

HT and it's still 1-0, i've got 2 of his players down to <50% condition, kept Hulk queit and i'm smashing him off the park. It's going to go wrong though... because it's an away game. IT'S TWO NIL!

Here we go, 56th minute, they have had their first shot of the game and it's 2-1. To compound my woe, my striker is now injured and ive had to bring a 15 year old on.

And they have had their 2nd shot of the game and it's 2-2. Sigh. Now the striker i've just brought on to replace the injured one is.... injured. FUCK OFF. I've had 5 cccs ffs. One of his players is on 36%...

THIRD FUCKING SHOT OF THE GAME AND ITS THREEE FUCKING NIL. FUCK YOU RETARDEDED ME. HES GOT EIGHT FUCKING PLAYERS.

YEAH, 6th CCCS of match and it's 3-3. GET IN THERE YOU BEAUTY!




Seriously.... your having a fucking laugh?

11:37 - away to 11th position and 1-0 up after 5 minutes. If I don't win this it's game over.

OH WHAT IS THIS, WHAT IS THIS ??? HAS HE SCORED WITH HIS FIRST FUCKING SHOT AGAIN, HAS HE ??? OF FUCKING COURSE HE HAS.

2-1, get in.

80th minutes gone, still winning... just waiting for it.

Full time, i've won!

11:46 away to 4th... bad times.

Top scorer now injured.



other manager just come online, this may complicate things.

HT and nowts happening, a couple of shots a piece. I tell a lie, he's scored with his first shot on target in 45+2.

57th minute and my equaliser is disallowed.

I never do this, but time for all out attack..

ATTACK THEN FOOLS! OH HE'S THROUGH ON GOAL BUT HAS THE FIRST TOUCH OF A 1 LEGGED DONKEY

ONE FUCKING ONE 87th minute... COME ON.

GK ignored my instructions to come up for the corner, and so it ends..



Hmmm. He's home to a poor team. My fate now rests with the gods of the ME.

Shame I lost the first 4 games of the season due to the stupid AI rights thing :S

00:22, league is lost. Second place confirmed. Bah

Teenage Kicks

I'm not entirely sure I can rant on behalf of an opposition manager, but I know i'd have been straight on here if this had happened to me.

So i'm 1-0 up in the league at the home, and my GK gets sent off - if you watched my video the other week, i'm sure you are aware my GK is a crazy fool. I don't have a reserve GK on the bench so I decide my best course of action is to put a 15 year old striker in goal. Since moaning about youths being too good, I figure, if you can't beat em, join em, so I currently have a 15 year old in my strike force. Shortly afterwards I go 2-0 up. He only just manages to draw 2-2 with me with a last minute equaliser.

Anyone played FM10 ? It's pretty good actually, I really enjoyed it, it's much better than FM09, 3D is good and the ME is fairly sensible. If you know the tricks of FML then you will destroy everyone in sight, but that aside and assuming you do normal things you generally get sensible results. But the line which is normally trotted out is that FML is the same engine.

Great, but it's not the same car is it ? It doesn't work in the same way. Lets talk about engines, what about the VW 1.8T engine, I had one of those in my Golf, it was pretty nice, get it mapped and the BHP is pretty handy. (it was swapped for a Renaultsport which I raged into an Astra/Fence, but that's another story i'm sure you don't want to hear about ;) ) But it's the same engine which is in a Passat and about a dozen other cars including various Audis Does it handle the same ? No. Does it drive in remotely the same way? No. Does it have the same acceleration ? No. Does it have the same gadgets and features ? No. Engines are tuned for the car they are responsible for.

FML throws up so many different scenarios that the ME on FM10 simply doesn't encounter such as all youth teams. I could probably name half a dozen FM10 inputs of the top of my head which simply can't be in FML or must be set to some default setting.

I distinctly remember a conversation I had about 3 weeks before GWs reset with a fellow unnamed rager on beta. I was beating him 8-5 or something completely stupid and we were discussing how people were going to go mad when they realised how bad the ME actually was. I suggested that it would be fine for the first season or so when people had the random initial pools but people would soon realise it's equally as bad even when you start to get better players with results all over the place.

So what's happening now ? I don't even have to moan about the ME because everyone else is ! In a rather sell out fashion i'm actually rather reluctant to actually say what I think about this because i'm aware that too many people seem to read my crap these days.

But people are complaining about issues which were raised by myself and others over 6 months ago and they were dismissed. Giving feedback on the ME seems to be like talking to a brick wall, a perfect brick wall ;) The FM10 crew and testers seem to be treated as the the special ones whereas us FML people are treated as crazy people who don't know what we are talking about. The very reason I restarted this blog was because the ME in beta was pissing me off and I couldn't get anywhere on the forums, so I decided to just rant instead.

In reality, a competitive environment like FML is always going to highlight any potential weaknesses and problems over FM10 playing against the CPU.

We need our own ME tbh, or the one we used to have pre reset ;)

Don't Stop Me Now

I see Jak seems to having a little moan about bad form of late:

He's got this pretty much spot on I think, the patterns are pretty much as he describes. I haven't had chance to rant about this post reset because I have made specific pain staking efforts to manage my form in such a way that I do not enter bad form. Alas, that's all gone down the pan due to me being offline for about 36 hours and losing a shit load of AI games at the start of the 3rd run of the EFA - the worse possible time it could happen. Before the third run started I was planning to post about how this is usually the point everything goes wrong.

I'm still getting results here and there but i'm definitely in what Jak describes as stage 2. Every game is a shit storm of disallowed goals, sending offs, injured players, knocks, freak events, last minute goals, super keeperings etc. Games suddenly become a combination of the worse series of events you can possibly imagine, then you go home after the game to find the opposition reserve team has fucked your sister.... and stolen the microwave, then taken a shit on your doorstep.. a massive shit.. which smells.. bad.

I think I might actually get out of this one though as I still think I might have cracked away form. It could just be coincidence, but away results while entering bad form are unusual.. we shall see.

What Jak probably isn't aware of is "stage 7" where your team enters really appalling form where it's virtually impossible to win any game against any team no matter what you or the opposition does. The only solution seems to be to sell and replace most of your team. I've experienced this twice, it's not good, believe me.

On a positive note I received a nice 4.5 star graduate from my academy today who has 16 in jumping, 16 pace and can play DR or DM. Awesomeness ! Only had 4 grads in a month from my 1.5* academy, 2x4 star, 1x3.5 star and 1x4.5 star. I've sold the others for a pittance because they didn't fit my formation or I didn't need them. I wonder why my academy isn't broken ;)

Back In Black

I'm not really having a good week.

First off, i'm currently on jury service which is actually a strangely similar experience to playing FML. Basically you sit around doing literally nothing all day, in a room with some other people who are also doing nothing where there's a couple of annoying people who chat bollocks most of the time, but other than that there's not much going on. So you just sit there, just waiting for something to actually happen, then it gets to lunch time and you you wait to see if you might get sent home. Then you come back the next day and do the same again hoping today will be the day something will happen.

The problem is, you can't actually ever leave this room just in case you get called onto a jury (challenged to a match) and in the event you do actually leave the room and go outside (log off) you can almost guarantee something will happen. Then when you finally get into the action, you find it's some long ridiculous drawn out process and something which should have been finished in a morning has lasted 3 fucking days (and I don't get tomorrow off now damnit!)

To compound my woe, I appear to have food poisoning, so between spending my time in court and the toilet, I haven't had much time for FML the last two days.

The 3rd run of the EFA started 2 days ago at 19.15. So I log on today after a few days off and see i've got 8 AI games or so due to land tonight. Now I know that I wont have AI in any of these because i've not been on. So I start throwing out challenges and of course most people just IGNORE them as usual (fuck sake, just DECLINE IT) I challenged one guy around 4 times today, left the challenge in for 15 minutes or so, AI due tonight. He ignores it and sure enough, he wins the AI rights because I didn't challenge him within the correct window of opportunity or rubbish. Has he challenged me ? No, he's made a deliberate effort to actually not play me.

*update - log on this morning and i've lost every single AI game. A whole fucking months worth of work is going to be effectively ruined because of this joke of an AI rights system. I'll almost certainly be in bad form now, i'd never ever let the team lose more than 2 in a row, i'd imagine i'm gonna end up near bottom of league now. And as per usual AI games i've got a load of fucking injuries. very very very very angry*

Now I missed the first 2 days of the last run also and despite being online after this quite a lot, I essentially lost AI to 90% of my games which is what I expect to happen again this time.

The league games I got in have started well enough though, still undefeated and got a nice 5-0 victory. I'm pulling out of all friendly competitions now and going casual now for reasons i'll no doubt rant about another time (basically, the XFA is shit, and we don't need more quickplays etc) but the main reason is because of this stupid major/minor form you have. True enough, after my 5-0 win I roll up at rank 400th, won 2 games in the last 20 or so and he pastes me off the pitch and he's 2-0 up within 5 minutes.

Anyway i'm back in credit for the first time since the GW launched! Sold some of my youth players on, only modest profits really but it's put me back in the black. Players are still too expensive and I feel like i'm getting left behind. No doubt by the time Messi and the like come up people will still have loads more money from selling on youth players for silly sums.

I tried selling a 28 year old MC, average of 7.50+ last season, 7.07 this season, playing great, MV £850k for £500k yet no one would even bid. Decided just to keep him until he's old and i'll release him, worth more to me than a tiny sum of cash.

The Kids Aren't Alright

I have high hopes for this lad I found on the free agent list recently. He's gained 3-4 in some attributes already and he's looking pretty good ! Technically he actually looks better than my second best senior defender.

Youth attributes seem crazy high at the moment, especially for such young players. I reckon my youth team could do a job against a lot of senior sides, i'm just too scared to risk it right now! As i've been a bit fed up lately I haven't really bought or sold anyone so I think it's time to do a clear out for the 3rd run of the EFA which will no doubt end in disaster! Barely had any injuries at all so far so quite a few can go.

Speaking of DCs we know that jumping is the attribute to watch for to make them average well. I have had a gander over the anomalies in the data, the players with high jumping but a poor average rating to see what they have in common. The results are pretty much what you would expect in that they all have low pace/acceleration and especially agility!

I've been looking over the striker data again trying to work out how to sign the perfect striker. I won't do any more graphs as the data analysis thing is Andreas' bag but I am rather confused by it at all.

There's a couple of issues with trying to make any sense of the data too. If you look at DCs they are pretty much going to be unaffected by tactics in terms of how they perform as it's a fairly standard position and most teams play 4 at the back. But when you look at strikers there's all sorts of variables, how many are playing up front ? What formation ? Support or attacking ? I find in my own formation with the way I have it set up that only 1 of my players tends to score many goals. So it depends who is playing where on what they are going to score.

So, what attributes effect a strikers average rating ? Actually, pretty much none of them ! We all know that jumping does but none of the attributes really have a significant link to a players average rating.

So what does effect it ? Rather obviously, it's goals scored.

So what attributes effect goals scored ? Pretty much all of them ! Any attribute you would associate with being a good striker, including technical ones, like finishing, have a significant increase on the average number of goals per game scored.

The reason i'm confused is, based on this, I can't work out how some of my strikers have been able to score so many goals considering I have long advocated physicals over technicals but the data simply doesn't support this to be true.

So if you are looking for a striker what do you need to look for ? First off, i'd suggest ignoring average rating. While this may seem odd, it's only linked to goals scored, and goals scored is linked to how and where the player is played. Clearly a player with a high average rating will also be good, but likely more expensive. I wouldn't be put off by a player that has a poor scoring record if the attributes look good. The only attributes which don't really seem to do much are bravery, determination, influence and team work.

There doesn't seem to be any secret to the perfect striker, good players will score more, simple as that. It's almost every single attribute that has an effect on it, they higher they are the more they score.

I suspect it's likely linked to CA and hidden attributes in a significant way (obviously, attributes are linked to CA but you know what I mean). If I had some names from a RS GW I think I could do a vlookup on a FM10 DB extract to compare to CA.

ME 1 - T-Bag 0

Too Quick to Type

They're quick to talk when they can't be seen, hid behind computer screens
It's bitch bitch type type, delete, re-write, we're shite, that's right, according to them.

I'm sure there's one thing that we can all agree on, and that's that I should probably shut up occasionally. So with that in mind, I decided i'd write a new post.

Back on old FML I created my own version of 460 before it became big time and it was far superior to the popular version on the forums. I decided to share this with my mates and promptly spent the next 4 months sitting 2nd in the GW and 2nd in the league behind one of them. I figured at this point I should probably stop telling people these kind of things.

So spin on a year and some guy is beating me 4-0 or something and he tells me he's been following my tactical advice. Damnit! I've had several other mails telling me similar things and they all seem to be doing better than me. With that in mind, i'm considering not revealing my latest tactical thoughts ! I think I might have even cracked away issues to some extent. I thought no one listened to my ramblings!

Anyway, despite my monster fixture pile up last night I managed to win run #2 of the EFA top tier qualifying. P44 W27 D9 L8

How much did that cost me in players? Lets have a look:


£250k - record signing


£27k


£29k


£33k


£1

Total cost of my first choice 11 is £830k. Considering I won the first season qualifier too, it does beg the question of how my current balance is -£834k. My total wages are £74k and that includes a full youth team. Podolski signed for £57k wages this morning, i'm not entirely sure how I am supposed to significantly improve my team so it looks like i'm sticking with the duffers for the foreseeable future.

Jump Around

Andreas over It's A Numbers Game at kindly sent me some of his data last week. I have decided to create some graphs to show the relationship between attributes and average ratings.

The following is for the DC position only and is based on data of 1173 players, I believe from GW Sanchez.

Jumping vs Average Rating



Strength vs Average Rating



Tackling vs Average Rating



Marking vs Average Rating



Positioning vs Average Rating


Concentration vs Average Rating


I've checked most of the attributes and the only ones which seem to actually have much of an effect on a DCs average rating are jumping and strength. I may have missed one or two as I didn't check them all, but I checked all the obvious ones.

As you can see, key defensive attributes like tackling and marking have no effect whatsoever on average rating. I stuck a couple of metals in there and again you can see that they don't do anything either. They also don't have any effect at all on the number of goals you concede per game.

So lets have a look at how attributes effect goals conceded. This is based on the average number of goals conceded per game.







WOW ! We have found a non-physical attribute which does something ! Concentration !! Interestingly you see here that while high jumping leads to high average ratings it does not lead to less goals conceded. The only things I can find which really seem to impact this much is stamina and concentration (there may be others, not checked them all)

No surprise that again tackling and marking have absolutely no effect whatsoever. As I have been banging on about for a long term, physical attributes don't do anything ! (This isn't quite true for other positions as I have found out though)High tackling actually appears slightly detrimental, although this is likely that because there's fewer players at the higher end of the scale who happen to be bad in other areas.

So, what have we learnt here today ? Nothing new as it happens.

- Tackling & Marking = useless
- High average ratings = Jumping & Strength
- Less goals conceded = Stamina & Concentration.

Just a quick note on form again.

Beta team has won 2 in 20, I am to be fair the worse team by a long shot. Guess who the two wins were against ? 1st and 2nd of course ! 1st is probably one of the best teams I have seen on FML - a full team of RS with Kaka and the likes. He smashed me 8-1 away. I won 3-0 at home.... I also beat 2nd 4-1. The boot is on the other foot this time. I signed Lavezzi to keep me up with 2 games left to play, alas when I signed on the game had already been started against me. One game to go, looking bad :(

Insomnia

Hmm.

PP has me top of league, my AI never wins, no sleep for me tonight ?

I could moan about how this has happened but i'm still in a reasonably good mood after Leeds promotion yesterday

Keep Pushin' On

One of my post reset rules was that I must wait 24 hours before any rage related sales or crazy antics. This makes quitting harder work than it used to be.

I've decided to just keep pressing on for now and see how things go and just try not to get too stressed. It's not as though i'm doing bad or anything, pretty much been top 30 rankings for a long while. Predicted Points actually has me top of the league at the moment and i've only lost 4 games so far this run. But those 4 games that I lost were epic bullshit and some of the draws too. I can think of one game all season where I have lost in a normal way to a team which played better than me.

Anyway I came up with this conspiracy several months back and I still think it might be true - They have made the ME enormously random on purpose. It's been changed without us knowing to stop teams winning too much. It makes perfect sense and it's complete genius.

Teams like me log on every day trying to find that perfect formula to create an all conquering winning team, we win 20 games in a row then BANG can't win for shit. Get mad, come back later and BOOM winning everything again. So you THINK your so close to getting it right, you keep messing, tweaking, changing, trying to get it to work..... except it's not possible.

It was actually exactly a year ago that I set my old GW record for games undefeated - standing at an impressive 90 games (ended only by a broken 2 legged cup game) this was a totally geniune record of league games and matches against the top teams. The current record on my GW today stands at 36. So while we carry on trying and failing to find the perfect formula the smaller teams get their kicks by randomly pasting good teams every so often so even they think they are doing something right.

I've also got a pretty good youth team, pretty much all high potentials on low wages which I picked up from the free list so I could perhaps make a bit of cash on those in a while or some should be good enough to make first team football.

I'm going to try not buying any players (not got anyone all season, still playing with guff) and perhaps try and ninja Messi or someone.

Speaking of form the beta team are having an interesting time of it of late. I restarted a couple of seasons back and picked a team of youngish, decentish potential players and i've done barely anything with them buying only about 3 players.

First 2 runs in the Championship I finished mid table before BOOM promoted after a good run of form in run 3. Came out all guns blazing in the Premiership and finished 6th in the first run (again, not bought or sold any players) next run i'm 10th. The third run is finishing up right now and i'm bottom of the league, getting an absolute hammering conceding 21 goals and scoring 1 in my last 7 games including an 8-1 defeat. I can almost guarantee i'll be relegated again from the Championship next season as i'm not going to buy anyone and my form is wrecked.

I Miss You

Remember when attributes reflected what you watched your players doing on the pitch ?

Remember when attributes other than jumping, pace, acceleration made players good ?

Remember when technical attributes had a reason to actually be there?

Remember when tactics worked ? Remember when tactical changes made a difference to what happened on the pitch ?

Remember when it was possible for the best team to dominate a game without equal chances all round ?

Remember when all youth teams played like youth teams ?

Remember when 15 year olds didn't score 50 yard long shot winners ?

Remember when the long shot attribute had some bearing on how likely a player was to score a long shot ?

Remember when morale used to change in game which had at least some basis in reality so if you were winning your players got complacent instead of just "furious!" or "angry"

Remember when every single goal didn't come from an horrific error/corner/longshot/45º angle ?

Remember when players with good attributes used to score beautiful goals instead of carbon copies?

Remember when you could win games away from home ?

Remember when you watched football games instead of a collection of unrelated highlights ?

Remember when your team didn't take 14 knocks per match ?

Remember when the only problems with the ME was that the only games you lost was when the opposition GK got MOTM and you got 1swed ?

Remember when results made sense ?

Good times.

Long gone but never forgotten.

We miss you x

The Decision

Thought i'd play a few games while deciding what to do.

Drew 1-1 with an all youth team.

Winning 1-0 against an all youth team, 93rd minute they equalise.

Playing bottom of league, i've had 68% possession, 23 shots on goal, they score with an unreal longshot and win 1-0 from an injured player with their second shot of the game. Away from home of course.

Playing another all youth team winning 2-0 after multiple cccs and total domination, then suddenly the 15 year olds come at me like their lives depend on it, wave after wave before winning a penalty in the 93rd minute.

Playing in the cup, away from home, against a team which only has 15 players in their squad, 2 of whom are injured. They are down to 10 men, game goes to ET, they are down to 9 men, they have had 1 shot the entire game. Guess who got MOTM, guess who lost ?

Complete and utter fucking joke of a game. I think I could shit a better ME out of my arse, all I would need to do would be to swallow a dice first.

The problem is I really want to play the game, but it's just pointless as the ME is so awful. If we went back to the old ME the game would be pretty much near perfect. Sure it had some flaws but it wasn't so bad and results made sense.

Think I will sell my team tomorrow and go all youth, should have done enough to make top tier of round 3 qualifiers so i'll be pretty rich. Either that or i'll just give up all together, i'm leaning towards the latter.

I'm So Tired

Think this is it.

Normally I get mad and want to quit but it's different this time, now i'm just bored.

I'm sure everyone knows the main reason, being the ME is fucking shit. Secondly all my AI lands at 10pm meaning I have about 30 games to play when I want to go to bed and if I don't play them I lose them all. Thirdly my GW sucks.

Might go all youth or something, i'll probably end up winning league if I play 15 year olds like.

Dunno, i'll sleep on it, but really can't be arsed any more.

You Know I'm No Good

After the remainder of the auto resolves went through I ended up rather disappointing finishing 4th in the first run of the EFA. I can't see the table now but I think there was only about 5 points separating 1st from 4th. So trying to analyse what went wrong, I look at my results to see where it was lost. Was it because I lost to better teams ? Nope, was it because I had a bad run of form ? Nope, was it before I had no injury cover ? Nope. It was simply because of poor results against the worse teams in the division down at the bottom of the table. Just a couple of wins in those games I absolutely dominated where I lost to some freak event would have won me the league. Yet oddly, I beat most of the top teams without too much hassle.

But looking at my squad, I probably actually have one of the worse teams in the division. If you had said to me I would finish top 6 before the season started I would have been delighted. So I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed ? But it's just the way it happens. If I had lost games I deserved to lose, if the better teams had beat me I wouldn't be bothered. But it never goes down like that!

So now I find myself in the same situation I always seem to be in. All of my players appear to be terrible, no one wants to buy them, yet as usual i'm still doing better than most.

I accidentally sold 2 of my DCs (don't ask, I do stuff like this a lot) the other day, so my second choice DC is pretty awful. According to FM10 database he has 100CA 119PA yet he is averaging 7.05, never does anything wrong and chips in with some goals.






So check out these, badly formatted, pictures. The bottom one is the AF of my team and the others are of other teams in my qualifying. Oddly the one with the highest average finished 15th. Mine is by far the worse yet it seems to make no difference at all.

This always happens to me, I refuse to pay silly prices so I end up with no players but somehow in loads of debt. I've been banging on about this for ages, but you don't need good players, you just need the right players. The DC I mentioned earlier has 18 jumping, thus he averages and plays well. My 2nd top scorer who is a striker has an AF of 35k yet he has the pace and acceleration. My DR is averaging 7.10 yet he's actually a winger and has 8 tackling with an AF of 16k?! Again he has the key attributes, being able to tackle or mark not being either of those ;)

I've been looking for a new DC for ages without any luck but i've just picked one up this morning for £25k and i'm certain this is going to be an awesome signing and he's actually got decent potential!

People must go mad when they are playing me, looking at how much they have spent and how awful my players are yet watching my guys play like they are champions of the world. Pretty much been in top 25 of rankings most of the time too.

I've not even done anything with tactics in all honesty. I just made one in the tactics creator then turned off long shots. I only ever use about 3-4 shouts which I have mentioned previously.

So to conclude, i'm either a genius or the ME is broken.

Side

Okay this is actually driving me insane now. I hadn't even noticed this until someone mentioned it to me the other day.

But just about every frigging goal comes from the side/edge of the area on a 45º angle.

It's doing my head in massively, about 75% of goals are identical.

ME fails once again.

Oh and, I drew with a team playing 4-1-5 earlier.

That is all.

Shoot to Thrill

Football is pretty boring you know, most matches are actually quite dull with not much happening in them. When I had a season ticket I used to get so bored some games I would almost stop concentrating on what's happening and start day dreaming or wondering if there was going to be any balti pies left at half time.

Just having a quick look over the Premiership stats from the weekend (just from the paper) the average shots a home team had was 11 and 8 for the away team. Looking over my recent FML games the average shots a home team has is 18 and 14 for the away team. Not enough data to prove anything at all, but as I have been moaning about lately, FML is just non stop kamikaze football. I play "standard" strategy and i'm not sure I follow the logic that every manager players super attacking. It's just annoying, I want boring games without idiotic things happening!

I finished my first qualifying run, 44 games in 5 days. Crazy stuff, not sure who set this thing up, why my division has 23 teams in or why it's lasting 5 days. Still a few fixtures elsewhere to go through but I should have 3rd hopefully.

Meanwhile the transfer market is entering silly season once again, my deflation prediction is looking a bit off the mark, or at least early.

I'm all for creative adverts when selling, but for gods sake I wish the buyers would exercise some common sense.

Pictures speak better than words for this one:







-6 = 90-120PA

Look at his AF ! He's clearly not high potential, he's clearly NEVER going to be a HHN, the fact all his atts are above 10 is a DISADVANTAGE, he's not going to get much better!!! His PA is all used up.

There's shit like this all over the place at the moment.

Sigh

Video Killed the Radio Star

Greetings, I thought I would have a go at recording a video of my day on FML.

Might want to use the direct link as the embedding seems to have gone a bit funny.
Video link