FIFA 09 Manager Mode Thread

Sounds like an excellent MM there, les alanos, I like the rules you've applied. I do the lowest sponsor, 15% bonus, low ticket prices and realistic signings rules. I also do something very similar with Player Growth and Staff Upgrades.

My third season with Elche has been an improvement of the previous two mid-table seasons, as I have been up there challenging amongst the promotion places for a change. In the first half of the season I even came within a late equaliser of actually displacing Albacete at the summit. Now, with ten games to go, I'm fifth with the opportunity to regain third if I can win my next fixture.

I'm mulling over what I'm going to do at the end of the season, whether to stay with Elche or move on to a new club, and how promotion or otherwise might affect that. It has been fun but I'm starting to get itchy feet, eyeing a step up to somewhere slightly bigger, like a Real Sociedad or similar.
 
Consistency appears to be the problem with my team at the moment. New signings such as Dean Furman and Shaleum Logan have been too inconsistent leading them to come in and out of the team. Stalwart Gary Breen has been an ever present, playing well in all 19 games so far. Youngster Luke Medley is failing to shine as he did last season, though three substitute appearances is all he has to show for himself.

17 games into the new season now and the team sit in 15th. Only one win throughout October is the cause of this mainly, however a 3-0 away win against Colchester, followed by a win in the First Round of the Johnstone's Paint Trophy on penalties against Bury is just what the doctor ordered. This first season in League Two is ultimately about survival, but progress still has to be made. Any underachieveing players could go in January.
 
nerf said:
Sounds like an excellent MM there, les alanos, I like the rules you've applied. I do the lowest sponsor, 15% bonus, low ticket prices and realistic signings rules. I also do something very similar with Player Growth and Staff Upgrades.

My third season with Elche has been an improvement of the previous two mid-table seasons, as I have been up there challenging amongst the promotion places for a change. In the first half of the season I even came within a late equaliser of actually displacing Albacete at the summit. Now, with ten games to go, I'm fifth with the opportunity to regain third if I can win my next fixture.

I'm mulling over what I'm going to do at the end of the season, whether to stay with Elche or move on to a new club, and how promotion or otherwise might affect that. It has been fun but I'm starting to get itchy feet, eyeing a step up to somewhere slightly bigger, like a Real Sociedad or similar.
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If you're happy with the players you have, then stay. A season in the top flight has got to be taken if you manage to get there. I ultimately see myself as the Bradford manager somewhere down the line, but for the time being all my attentions ar focused on Barnet.

What kind of squad have you got then? Youngsters? Experienced heads from the division above? I've tried mainly to have a young team that is capable of making the step up. A lot of them are struggling and putting in very average performances, so maybe some strengthening needs to be done at the end of the season. Losing Paul Furlong was bad, he came back to haunt me by scoring the winner from the spot for Brighton. Other than that, the only players over 30 are Gary Breen (35), Lee Harrison (38) and Matt Lockwood (33), with only Breen and Lockwood regulars in the team.
 
It's kinda crazy what lengths we MM fans have to go to to ensure that MM in Fifa is both challenging and interesting, I also set myself certain rules as well, regarding transfers mine are 2x loan players in and 2x free transfers in which must be sold the following season, this is to replicate a skint club having to rely on the loan system :)

Hopefully with Fifa10 MM will be better designed to keep up challenged and interested, hopefully there will also be some settings/sliders we can adjust as to our preference.
 
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Placebo said:
It's kinda crazy what lengths we MM fans have to go to to ensure that MM in Fifa is both challenging and interesting, I also set myself certain rules as well, regarding transfers mine are 2x loan players in and 2x free transfers in which must be sold the following season, this is to replicate a skint club having to rely on the loan system :)
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Sounds difficult. I wish the loan system was a lot better to be honest. One month, three month, six month and season long loans wouldn't be much to ask for would it? Plus to be only allowed two loan when playing as a struggling club is quite harsh. I love the Manager Mode so I'm not going to knock it too much, but certainly some changes have to be made. I've never played with any of the top teams, my only other Manager Mode was with Bradford and because I didn't set any rules, I flew straight to the Premiership, winning the league in every season. It was too easy to sign players and the temptation is hard to fight. Plus the scouting names are terrible, I've scouted for one and a half seasons now and not one player has come up that I could sign with a normal name. Darlington had a guy playing for them at the back called Kieron Garcia Monteiro from England, unbelieveable. All that needs to be done is have names set to each nationality and then randomly generate them from there.

Anyway, back to the season. The two successive wins have been followed by a 1-1 draw at home to Scunthorpe (which is not too bad a result as they have only lost once this season) and a 2-2 draw away from home against Millwall, playing with ten men from the 13th minute after Jeremy De Magalhaes stupidly got himself sent off.
 
Yeah I've only played MM as Sheffield Wednesday so it's quite easy to make it really challenging by not buying big stars, playing on all manual, keeping coaches at the default 2/3 etc. etc. I'd hate it if I supported some big team though as you'd start with awesome players and your coaches would already be 7/8 or whatever, have to play on legendary or something to make it competitive and then you have the horrible AI issues, especially in the underdog AI logic when playing weaker teams.
 
Placebo said:
Yeah I've only played MM as Sheffield Wednesday so it's quite easy to make it really challenging by not buying big stars, playing on all manual, keeping coaches at the default 2/3 etc. etc. I'd hate it if I supported some big team though as you'd start with awesome players and your coaches would already be 7/8 or whatever, have to play on legendary or something to make it competitive and then you have the horrible AI issues, especially in the underdog AI logic when playing weaker teams.
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I do play on Legendary, what are the issues you are referring to? Just won a huge game at home to Bradford 2-1, then suffered my first defeat in seven against Walsall 1-0, conceding in the last minute.
 
les_alanos said:
If you're happy with the players you have, then stay. A season in the top flight has got to be taken if you manage to get there.
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I like some of them - my first choice centre backs, my goalkeeper, and a bullish African midfielder - but I'm not all that attached to the rest. I am thinking along the lines of if I get promoted, I'll stay an extra year for the challenge of keeping them up. If we miss out (more likely, I think), I'll have a scan round to see if there are any more ambitious clubs currently struggling in the Segunda Division who might want a change of head coach.

les_alanos said:
What kind of squad have you got then? Youngsters? Experienced heads from the division above?
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Quite a balanced mixture; most players in their mid-to-late twenties, but a good spread. Of the few signings I've made, three have been reserves at Getafe and Espanyol looking for first-team football, while the other three have been Spaniards plying their trade abroad and now brought home. Ivan Campo was one of those, now installed as captain although he can't play every week at 36.
 
tnx kevin.........

Was thinking the other day that an online element for trading/selling/buying youth players could be really good. Kind of an intermediate between full online MM and offline MM. You could still keep the leagues and players you have as in the normal single player but instead of sending a scout out you go online and look at youth players and how they are performing. The club would generate 3 or 4 players each season from 17/18 y.o. and you could develope them and then sell them. Or buy up youngsters to create a whole new team. Would be a nice element for those who play lower leagues to earn some extra money.
 
Placebo said:
It's kinda crazy what lengths we MM fans have to go to to ensure that MM in Fifa is both challenging and interesting, I also set myself certain rules as well, regarding transfers mine are 2x loan players in and 2x free transfers in which must be sold the following season, this is to replicate a skint club having to rely on the loan system :)

Hopefully with Fifa10 MM will be better designed to keep up challenged and interested, hopefully there will also be some settings/sliders we can adjust as to our preference.
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That would be great...
 
I'd like them to abandon difficulty settings and use the stats of the players to determine the difficulty of teams. It's a little annoying seeing Man United sell off 4 or 5 of their best players, buy useless crap and still win everything.
 
I think a rating system given the relevant club history etc would work, With an element of chance in there. It is damn annoying never seeing clubs alter or big clubs getting relegated in a couple of seasons...
 
les_alanos said:
I do play on Legendary, what are the issues you are referring to?
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Basically that on world class or legendary stats become meaningless especially when playing underdogs, for example I can be in the championship with Sheffield Wednesday, draw some league 2 team with average overalls of mid 50s and magically they can tackle like Terry, dribble like Cronaldo, shoot like Rooney and pass like Gerrard, completely unrealistic, not to mention the fact they will constantly press for the whole 90 minutes and never get tired, nor will the pace/strength of your players have the correct counter balance.

BTW if you're losing the game and need to win keeping Leon on might not be the answer, low determination, hidden traits and all that ;)
 
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Placebo said:
Basically that on world class or legendary stats become meaningless especially when playing underdogs, for example I can be in the championship with Sheffield Wednesday, draw some league 2 team with average overalls of mid 50s and magically they can tackle like Terry, dribble like Cronaldo, shoot like Rooney and pass like Gerrard, completely unrealistic, not to mention the fact they will constantly press for the whole 90 minutes and never get tired, nor will the pace/strength of your players have the correct counter balance.

BTW if you're losing the game and need to win keeping Leon on might not be the answer, low determination, hidden traits and all that ;)
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Hidde traits? I sound like I'm finding out more about the game with each post. Do continue...

By the way, Clarke was pretty poor to start with, but now he's become my most important striker, taking the mantlepiece from Akinfenwa whose goals have dried up.
 
Well in previous Fifa's some players had traits you could see, such as "injury prone" "target forward" "counter attacker" etc. etc. but in Fifa09 for some reason they decided to hide the traits from view, but they're still there, Leon Clarke has low determination and "pushes forward" which means he should play on the shoulder of the defenders a lot to break into space but also get caught offside from time to time :)

Obviously you would ordinarily not know what trait a player has, but I'm the data editor for Sheffield Wednesday so I gave Leon those traits :)
 
Placebo said:
Well in previous Fifa's some players had traits you could see, such as "injury prone" "target forward" "counter attacker" etc. etc. but in Fifa09 for some reason they decided to hide the traits from view, but they're still there, Leon Clarke has low determination and "pushes forward" which means he should play on the shoulder of the defenders a lot to break into space but also get caught offside from time to time :)

Obviously you would ordinarily not know what trait a player has, but I'm the data editor for Sheffield Wednesday so I gave Leon those traits :)
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I think it's best if you can't see them in a way, makes it more interesting and gives a new signing personality without you knowing it initially. Clarke is a big lump of a player and his finishing at times has been shoddy, but he did score a belter from the edge of the area (the joys of the lower leagues). How did you go about getting the position as the editor for Wednesday?
 
Yeah Clarke has strengths and weaknesses, two main ones being his size and also he has an excellent wrong foot.

Well I'm a Wednesday fan, if I remember correctly I made contact with someone at EA through the forums about a number of Wednesday inaccuracies when Fifa08 was released, for the Fifa08 January update I provided feedback via Email which was then applied for me. Then for Fifa09 pre-release I was made editor of 4 teams:
Sheffield Wednesday, Sheff Utd, Grimsby Town & Accrington Stanley. Then for the January transfer update I did 12 teams (The 2 Sheffield teams and 10 League 1 teams).

For Fifa10 I've agreed to do 12-15 teams, so far I just requested 5 specifically:

Sheff Wednesday (of course)
Sheff United
Derby County (because their fans were unhappy with the January transfer update so I like a challenge)
Charlton Athletic (supported by Tim)
Tranmere Rovers (supported by Chris)

For the rest I told them to assign me teams nobody else loves and got left behind :)

I was asked to take a position supervising one whole English league but decided I wanted to continue purely as an editor for 1 more Fifa, plus my day job is about to get really busy with our game being released in the next couple of months :)

Glad you asked now eh? ;)
 
Finished my third season with Elche CF, over-achieving in a pretty satisfactory 5th (one above Real Sociedad). I decided that the time was right to move on, while my stock was on the rise. Without some significant strengthening a genuine promotion push would be a tough task at Elche.

Meanwhile, Celta Vigo finished the season in the bottom half of the table (just, 12th). For a club that has spent the majority of the last two decades in the top flight, this is not good enough! So I've made the move across from one side of Spain to the other, to the far north-west, to see if I can revive Los Celtiñas.

It's a step-down in terms of league position, but a clear step up in terms of ambition and resources; Celta have a starting balance of €5m (compared to Elche's €800K) and the staff levels are at threes and fours rather than twos and threes. But with that comes greater expectation too...
 
Does anyone else want the career to run more than 15 seasons, or is it just me...
If you start at the very bottom and make it tough on yourself it's not enough time...
Give us more time god damn it....
 
Good idea.

EA needs to make MM less laggy. I can't even be bothered to schedule training matches because it takes me 10 minutes to go from the MM screen, schedule training for a month, and then go back to the main screen.


And I have a NEW computer.
 
Finished my 2nd season at Valencia at the weekend. Ended up league champions by some 15 points (having lost only one match after simulating it) and UEFA Cup winners. Will go for the CL next season and then move on, the youth players are developing nicely so can get rid of some more older players. Only Villa left at 32.
 
Rubbish. Just got to the league cup final against West Ham and none of their players had any energy at all, ended up smashing them 7-0 :ROLL:

Any ways around the CPU lacking energy?
 
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