FIFA 09 Manager Mode Thread

End of Season update:

League: Liga Adelante
Team: Rayo Vallecano
Objective: Finish in the top half
Position: 8th
Goal Difference: -2
 
Just started my second season with Rayo Vallecano and it has been a below average start wiining 3 and losing 3 and have been knocked out of the Copa Del Rey in the first round to Gimnastic!
 
Last edited:
Just come to the mid-way point in my season, and I am flying high in 3rd position. I am going to look to strengthen my squad in the transfer window with some quality on the right wing desparately needed1
 
I have started a league on manual and professional is far to easy

I have played 13 games, only conceded 1 goal and am top of the league, and i just beat Liverpool away with Derby who had hardly any stamina

World Class will be shite though on manual methinks because they will be popping the ball all over the place when i cant
 
I've put the difficulty up to Legendary now and after saying "you must be mental playing it on Legendary" to everyone who's said it before, I'm finding it the best difficulty level now. After a period of adjustment you get used to it and I'm winning 60%-70% of the matches.

Well actually - I'd just won six in a row against teams equal to or greater than my star level, then I came up against two teams who were one star less than me and got murdered 3-0 twice. They really need to look at the underdog logic, if it's the same this year then Manager Mode is going to be a nightmare for me (unless they've tweaked all the difficulty settings, which I've been told they have).

The thing is though, on Legendary, you can't really have the passing on manual because then I find every single game is 0-0, apart from the ones where the opposition manage to score. I have everything set to manual bar the passing which is on semi.

I was enjoying it until I realised I was winning too many games, and now it's got to the point where I'm playing other games instead (e.g. the Championship Manager demo) which is really unfortunate. I can't wait until they get an online Manager Mode in there so that you don't have to play the AI to enjoy a mode with depth.
 
Last edited:
Well just finished my first season with AC Milan and it ended uo being an unprecedented succes. Won the league by 19 points with a total of 98! AND I won the CL again giving me back to back succes as manager.

The semi and final were very tough matches. Won the away leg against Inter 1-0 and in the return I managed to take the lead thanks to a penalty. They equalised in injurytime in the first half to get it to 1-1. Was getting nervous now as if they scored I would have to score another two, which wasnt looking likely. In the end I managed to keep it at 1-1 and book my place in the final against another Italian giant, Juventus.

The final ended up being one of my most exciting matches ever. It started off great as within 5min. they went down to 10 men after having the last man sent off for a poorly timed and unnessecary challenge. However my players were tired going into the match and it showed, second to every ball and running around with lead in their shoes, I was just about managing to be the equal of the 10 men Juventus side. First half ended 0-0 with Juventus having the better chances.

Second half continued and on 70min. Sissoko managed to get on a through pass before my defender and calmly slotted the ball away. Now I was getting really nervous so I subbed both my wingers and a striker. Alas it didn't look like it was enough with me pressing hard I was still not managing to create a chance. Then in the 92min. of injurytime it happend, my "fresh" striker, on the edge of the box saw my other strikers run and past it calmy into his run. My other striker took one touch with the goalie coming out and with a calm finish managed to put the ball into the side netting to equalise and make the score 1-1. And that was practically the last kick of the half as I had rescued it from the death to force ET.

So ET started and the 10men finally felt fatigue enabling the 11 of Milan to take advantage. Well possesion-wise atleast. Still the chances weren't being created with Juventus dangerous on the counter. But with 5min. remaining my striker again popped up with a pass, this time sending my leftwinger into the box who calmly slotted it in the near corner to seal the win and a back-to-back CL win for the manager.

With my MM goal being to win the CL I decided the single season in Milan was enough, I had rebuilt an ageing team into the new European champions and had my heart set on a return to my beloved Liverpool. After half a decade away it was time to come back and try to once again win the CL for a record 7th time with them. However I fucked up.........
Choosing the new league and team I didn't realise it was all in one menu so I selected the premierleague and hit X to scroll through the teams but to my surprise I had now signed with Arsenal! Sh*t! "Thankfully" after sim-ing my first match the game hanged at the 99% scheduling/transfers menu. So I started the game again and re-simmed. And again it crashed at the same point.

So I decided it was time to put FIFA09 in the cupboard, end with the high of winning the CL again, and have a month off before starting a new MM in FIFA10. :D
 
I have started a league on manual and professional is far to easy

I have played 13 games, only conceded 1 goal and am top of the league, and i just beat Liverpool away with Derby who had hardly any stamina

World Class will be shite though on manual methinks because they will be popping the ball all over the place when i cant
Play it by the simulation rules on professional and it's a completely different game :)).
 
I have conceded 1 goal in about 14 games on Professional

They only have 3-4 shots a game at me and i get about 6-8 with 2 or 3 on target
 
Played some of the best 6.5 hours of FIFA 09 ever last night, had everything including too many woodwork shots...;)

Leeds powered to the top of the table with a run of ten games unbeaten after going out of the League cup.

We were coming back and making space allover the pitch, we hit the winter transfer window and for the first time in eight seasons made no signing attempts and even sold a player, our squad seemed to respond to keeping the team settled and we hit four wins on the bounce including a tough FA cup match on penalties...:BSCARF:

Looking forward to 10 but still loving (sometimes more than others ;))) 09 MM...
 
I'm still enjoying my 09 MM too, really got my teeth into a challenge at the moment.

I brought an end to a seven year stint in Spain (3 with Elche, 1 with Celta and 3 with Gimnastic). I'd taken over Gimnastic as a mid-table Segunda Division side and left them in good shape as a mid-table top flight team, although without the team's main goalscorer who also chose to move on to bigger things. I'd previously had my eye on a step up to a more prestigious Spanish club, perhaps a Real Sociedad or an Athletic Bilbao, but instead decided to expand my managerial experience abroad for a change of scenery.

Rather than the Basque region I ended up on the Danube, landing a plum opportunity with :GSCARF: Sportklub Rapid Wien :GSCARF: in the Austrian Bundesliga. From sunny Catalunya to the overcast skies of Vienna, exchanging an environment of survival and slow progress to a more pressurised one of expectation. Rapid are one of the most successful and popular clubs in Austria and silverware is mandatory.

Which is not to say that I inherited the most talented team, I seem to have arrived with Rapid on a low ebb lagging behind the likes of heavily-backed Red Bull Salzburg and eternal rivals FK Austria Wien. The challenge only grew further when I got out on the pitch and discovered that teams across the Bundesliga press very aggressively and launch dangerous crosses into your penalty area at every opportunity, both more so than in Spain (vastly so compared to the Segunda Division).

Which raises a cautionary point about choosing your league in relation to difficulty setting... To be concise, don't underestimate the ability of opposing teams' default Custom Tactics to alter your entire gameplay experience. If you're taking on the Legendary+Manual challenge, playing in (for example) the Spanish second tier feels very different to (for example) the Austrian top flight. The relative levels of talent are quite similar but strategy varies greatly. In leagues where teams press less aggressively, obviously you'll get more time on the ball. In leagues where teams attack more directly (fast/long with high crossing) you'll face more numerous aerial challenges in your own penalty area, which, personally speaking, is the route via which I seem to concede most easily on Legendary (it's so difficult to defend those accurate crosses).

So my introduction to Austria was a bit of a culture shock after the aesthetic 'tiki-taka' of Espana. Things with Rapid did not start well at all, my job security plummeted into the red and this was looking like being a very short Viennese whirl :COAT:. At one point I wondered if I should call it a day, starting to believe I was on a hiding to nothing. :SHAKE:

Back to the drawing board.

:THINK: :!

Like I mentioned, two things were giving me headaches - the frantic lack of time on the ball, and the frequency of crosses into my box. To relieve the former I tweaked my own Custom Tactics, deciding that my opponents couldn't press as effectively if I'm able to widen the field and switch the ball from one flank to the other with minimal passes; basically this meant increasing Width, increasing Crossing, and moving to Long Passing. I made a concious effort to spread the play often and also involved my goalkeeper more, who is a great outlet if you're being pressed in your own half.

The issue with defending crosses I realised I could not solve with tactical settings, only with control on the pitch. I've now adopted an approach of always showing opponents inside, denying the pass out to the winger at every opportunity. I'd rather take my chances on an average Austrian taking a pop from 25 yards than letting him feed the winger for a dangerous ball in. Secondly, I set my fullbacks up to remain goal-side 100% of the time. This way they are always in position to jockey the winger and - this is the important bit - block the cross at source. As obvious as it will sound, becoming very good at positioning your fullback's body to block a cross, making it your focus, prevents so many goalscoring opportunities. It'll be interesting to see how this is affected in FIFA 2010 with the new stretch blocks.

Very satisfactorily, I turned around what felt at the time like an impossible situation. Clean sheets followed and converted directly to points, and although every single match since has been must-win, and therefore very tense :PRAY: and :CENSOR: stressfull in the way only Legendary+Manual can be, it became such an addictive challenge. Every scraped 1-0 win felt great.

With 7 games remaining I've clawed my way up to third, hot on the heels of Salzburg and Austria Wien, who we're scheduled to face in a derby on the final day of the season :SHOCK:. Job security is back up above 50% now, but I know that third is still not good enough. One major disappointment was elimination on penalties to Salzburg in the ÖFB-Stiegl-Cup quarter-final, a chance for silverware let slip.

That wasn't supposed to turn into an essay. Safe to say that after being glued to one club in Pro Evo's Master League for so long, I'm really enjoying a more nomadic approach to management. I also realise now that one of the things I like most about FIFA 09 is that, unlike Pro Evo where creating a testing challenge became difficult/impossible :TD:, in Legendary+Manual I have something to really get my teeth into. :SAL:
 
Second :). It all came down to a final day derby away at cross-city rivals Austria Wien. We had to win to move above them from third; they had the possibility of still being champions if they beat us and Salzburg lost.

I ramped the Crowd audio up for a derby atmosphere and on a memorable day Rapid managed to pull out a 3-0 win, Hoffer adding the third in injury time to really rub it in. That sent Austria Wien into the Europa League and us into the Champions League. Salzburg won their game comfortably anyway, as it turned out.

Next season - if I manage to get it played before FIFA 2010 arrives - will have to bring silverware.
 
Man I don't know what it is but 09 just kept getting better to me. Another 5 hour MM blast and some fantastic football, a great 6-0 thrashing of Bolton at home after managing just 1 goal in the first half of a game Leeds dominated, the second goal a wonder turn and low drive by Kenwyne Jones, opened the flood gates.

We then had an FA tie and made 9 changes, this led to a disjointed affair as you can imagine but a solid 1-0.

We then had a midweek Euro tie and the dreaded 2 games on the same day glitch so we had to play Middlesbrough away as our second Saturday game, again a tired and makeshift team did well but conceded a 93' goal to draw 1-1.
On to the Euro tie against Sparta Prague, the first leg at their place and we were happy as we had avoided the big guns though we were in for a shock.

Sparta came out flying and hit the post with their first shot, the ball rebounded out and in the mêlée that followed the ball was in the back of the net, a second soon followed after a penalty was given as a defender cleared the ball and the striker went over the top of him; much outrage followed and pads hit the floor.

2 Down and a man down we held on as they pressed and had three more good chances, then with 10 to go we threw a tired Martins on and after a great ball to the edge of the box and a wonder mid air back heel flick, the likes I have never seen in the game; Martins was through and smashed his drive off the underside of the bar which bounced back up into the roof of the net 2-1 and an away goal that proved to be the key on the return to Elland road.

Leeds were now in the last 8 in Europe and Top of the Prem' by 2 points and a game in hand, thanks to some of the best and most enjoyable football I've played on any game from SWOS to WE8...

As we will not play again until Friday, it is with a heavy heart I consign 09 to the old game box along with all everything from Kick Off, Sensi,SWOS and about 25 various WE incarnations and mods... :CRY:



:PIRATE:
 
Last edited:
Just had a 13-12 penalty shootout :LOL:

I'm playing as 2.Bundesliga outfit TuS Koblenz, handed a daunting away tie at top-flight Hamburg in the cup. Set it up at night under the Nordbank Arena floodlights and prepared myself for an onslaught. Didn't help when one of my centre-backs was dismissed for a desperate lunge in the second half, but somehow muddled through to extra-time with a clean sheet despite them striking the woodwork. Hamburg had 36 shots :LOL:

It remained 0-0 and so commenced the marathon shootout. Both sides missed one of the normal five, but remained perfect in sudden death (including both goalkeepers) until my 'keeper managed to guess the right way on a Jarolim penalty. My left-back stepped up to tuck away the winner :DANCE:
 
Back
Top Bottom