FIFA 11 Career Mode Thread PS3/360

He actually did ok TBH, unfortunately! I won 2-1 but found it tough to get clean shots away as the Leeds players pressed me constantly throughout the match.
 
I see. Yeah I find it tough to find space to have long-range shots usually as well anyway, even when I do, somehow it gets blocked... that's where it really pays to have a couple nifty agile good dribblers who can quickly turn bodies and get shots away. Of course they usually aren't the greatest long-range shooters though....

I take it he actually made a few decent saves though then... ? and that is weird. A team should have at least 2 GK's! usually 3 at min.

Anyway, I got 3 league matches and a Russian cup semi-final against Dinamo Moscow left before I finish my first FIFA11 Career Mode season.
Having lots of fun with it and do actually see some patterns in the player attribute gain/loss now... need more time to test it out.

Had my best player/captain out for about 42 days as well but it happened around X-mas meaning I had January transfer window to bolster my squad somewhat and find him a decent replacement.
 
Last edited:
No he didn't make any saves that you'd think of as good "proper" GK saves, a couple of shots straight at him that bounced off him, one save low down to a 35 yard daisy cutter that was going wide anyway but unfortunately other than my 2 goals I didn't put anything on target that wasn't straight at him.
 
southernbelle said:
Has anyone had an issue trying to sell star players? I have a few CMs going to kick around the engine- one of those is Arsenal where I actually have Csec listed. No takers... no offers what so ever. Then I listed Arshavin... same thing...
Click to expand...
Can't seem to get rid of Arshavin either
 
I can't sell Berbatov, Fletcher, Scholes, almost anyone except young players who won't make the grade.

I've just finished my first CM season, and the game's really beginning to annoy me now. I finished second, behind Chelsea (as Man Utd on World Class). Not the hardest challenge, I know, but it's still a bit silly that I finished the entire season undefeated. I came second by two points, largely due to the fact that I drew 15 league games. Crazy. I think I came close to losing in about one of those draws, the other 14 were a case of me having 70-80% of the ball, camped in the AI's half, passing around, hitting a brick wall of defenders, win the ball back instantly, hit a brick wall, keeper then makes a save etc etc. So so predictable.

I drew most games away from home, and it's really good that the game is made harder when you play away from home. However, instead of really putting you under pressure like home teams do, I just found the AI was much more 'artificial' in the way it stopped me scoring - unforgiving tackles, 10 man defences and a biased ref towards the AI. The only way the AI can attack, even with the better teams like Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs etc is to score on the break from a long cross-field pass straight onto the foot of a winger, who crosses early and then the CF heads in unmarked.

Basically the season didn't play out realistically at all. I only conceded 15 goals all season. I counted how many times I got 'done' by the AI's cheap 'headed goal from a quick cross and my defenders completely frozen still' routine and every one of my last 12 goals conceded was from a header. I didn't concede a goal from an actual shot from the AI for nearly 7 months. Utterly ridiculous.

I've thought about editing the game like some of you have, but frankly I shelled out my cash to EA and I don't feel like spending my weekend doing what they should have done in the first place. So maybe it's back to trying PES.

What's really finished my annoyance is that, into the second transfer window, you still can't buy Jack Wilshere, instead you can only ever offer to loan him from Arsenal. It must be a bug. It's very annoying as I held out until the summer hoping that status would change.

Yes, I am playing with Man Utd, but still, the game should at least try to score a goal that isn't a header from a deep cross, corner, or free kick. Though the game may offer more of a challenge in the Champions League in season 2, I somehow think I'm going to see more of those headed goals before the season is finished.....
 
Last edited:
Isn't that because Jack Wilshere is 'listed' for loan by Arsenal?

I don't know if his is a special case, but for other players listed for loan, you can only offer to loan them and not buy them.

Anyway, just finished my 1st CM season as well. Managed to break into Top 6 with a team that was a relegation contender ahead of Lokomotiv Moscow.

The teams that finished above me were the giants whom including Loko had budgets that make me look like a 3rd division team. Rubin, Dinamo Moscow, Spartak, Zenit, and CSKA. But I managed to beat Terez Grozny and Lokomotiv into that 6th spot to cap a wonderful season. The best in club's history with Alazhi Makhachalak.

I also was in semi-finals of Russian cup where a Kevin Kuranyi extra-time winner dashed our dreams of reaching the final.

The game has advanced to 'Season 2' now and I find out I'm in Europa league! Which is great news but I'm not entirely sure how..?? I thought you had to finish 5th in Russia to get last Europa league place, or was it because of semi-finals in Russian cup and two finalists were already in Europa league?!

Anyway excited about that as now with Europa league duties along with Russian cup and league matches, there should be little more reason to not play strongest starting 11 and rest players and that combined with a few injuries should make things interesting.

Also nice to see transfer budget DOES carry over to next season! I now have $18M transfer budget and $66k more wage budget, problem is very few players still want to come to an over-achieving small Russian side which is very realistic of course. I'll have to see what I can do but players in top leagues aren't coming my way yet I have a lot of money to spend.

And I DO need to bolster up the squad as I only have 20 players now and only 5 are above 70 and none higher than 72.

All in all, quite excited though to get new season going.
 
@LTFC: I feel your pain - I'm only playing PES until EA release some fixes - but you might want to reconsider adjusting CTs, as it only takes a few minutes and it could make a difference for you. It certainly doesn't take an entire weekend.

All you need to do is create a few CTs and assign them randomly throughout the leagues. Or experiment with one to see if it even makes much of a difference for you. Disregarding the defensive tactics, because you didn't mention pressure as something that bothers you, if you changed the shooting and heading tactics you might like the game more. Shooting I would go a min of 75, some people say min 90. For headers, since you think the CPU is exploiting them, maybe drop headers to max 40? I would also put passing pretty high too.

Also, if you're playing with Man Utd on WC, as long as you're decent you shouldn't be losing games considering how poor the offensive AI is in FIFA this year. I'm surprised you didn't move it up to Legendary if you didn't like going undefeated? I hate playing Legendary with default CTs because of the insane pressure tactics but if you make some adjustments the CPU on Legendary might suit you better.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pissed as hell at EA for two straight years of crappy MM/CM, the AI is really poor, and the pressure/aggression remains an issue despite our continued complaints over the last couple years. Still, I'd give messing with the CTs a shot because it honestly doesn't take that long and it made a big difference for me. Maybe the way to go is play around with CTs intermittently until EA patches the game, so when things do (if they do) get fixed you'll be ready to go.

Come to think of it I might do that myself some. I still haven't quite nailed the aggression setting for the CPU - 30 seems a little too low to me - so if anyone has thoughts, let me know.
 
mfmaxpower said:
Come to think of it I might do that myself some. I still haven't quite nailed the aggression setting for the CPU - 30 seems a little too low to me - so if anyone has thoughts, let me know.
Click to expand...

max, for me, I found a lower aggression but higher pressure works pretty well. with low aggression and low pressure, you may be able to hold on to the ball for a long time and string off a number of passes, but the AI will sit so deep in there defending 1/3 and will rarely be out of position. It really makes creating chances (for me) harder then the normal ultra pressure ultra aggression AI. I've messed around with aggression between 20-40 and pressure between 55-65. It's not always consistent but it does play a much more organic game (with full manual passing/shooting).
 
bry4ntwoods said:
max, for me, I found a lower aggression but higher pressure works pretty well. with low aggression and low pressure, you may be able to hold on to the ball for a long time and string off a number of passes, but the AI will sit so deep in there defending 1/3 and will rarely be out of position. It really makes creating chances (for me) harder then the normal ultra pressure ultra aggression AI. I've messed around with aggression between 20-40 and pressure between 55-65. It's not always consistent but it does play a much more organic game (with full manual passing/shooting).
Click to expand...

I'll give that a go, though I'm inclined to think the opposite may be better for me. Even with extremely low pressure the CPU still tends to confront you in your own half. Some of the guys in the realistic custom tactics thread on the official forums are saying they've found pressure for some teams to be realistic as low as 5. I've heard of concerns like you mentioned from others too that defenses may sit too deep though.

Regarding aggression however, I've found 30 to be too low - while defenders will pressure you they won't attempt a tackle, sometimes backing off you until you're in the CPU's penalty box. At times it's reminded me of the sideline dribbling bug in PES.

Next chance I get I think I'll try aggression 40-60 and pressure 30-50. I'll also give yours a go as well.
 
Just lost the playoff final to Nottingham Forest with a handball penalty in the 103rd minute! How cruel :( So no Premier League football for my 3rd season, but considering the board expectation was to avoid the relegation zone I did well overall :)
 
Naah they're happy with me, already started the next season, new objective is to stay around the middle, so presumably if I'm in the top I'll get fired for not meeting my objective ;)

Only got 900k and 3k PW extra for finishing third and losing the playoff final (for which I got an extra 50k for my achievements in the "promotion cup" as they call it :CONFUSE:).
 
I may have to alter the CT's, I just moved the game up to Legendary and every shot the AI has seems to go in. I just lost to Leeds in the League Cup on penalties, having had 17 shots on target to Leed's 3. The game finished 3-3.

Next, I go to penalties. Leeds hit 17 consecutive successful penalties until I missed. I'm convinced the AI was simply reading my pad movements. I managed to predict exactly where the ball would go depending on whether I moved my GK or not. If I kept him still, the AI would every time hit the ball in the left hand corner. If I moved my GK to the left hand corner, it'd hit it straight. 17 times in a row, with me varying how many times in a row I'd dive or not, the AI would do the opposite. Every single time.

As for Wilshere, I have no idea what's going on. He must be listed for loan, meaning you can't make a cash bid to buy him permanently, which is so annoying because Arsenal it seems never remove his loan listing, and so it's impossible to try and sign him. Realistic.....:(
 
It just did it again. This game is utter trash. On World Class difficulty I don't lose in 38 league matches. Switch it up to Legendary and, like the game I mentioned above, the next game I play is Liverpool at home. After battering them for 30 minutes I yet again go a goal down from a cross and a frickin' header. 0-1. I then work really hard and by 65 minutes am leading 2-1.

After yet more of a battering where the Liverpool keeper pulls off frankly some impossible saves (like the last game I played), Liverpool just counter attack and score another 3 goals to win 4-2. 4 shots at my goal, 4 goals. On Legendary your keeper may as well not exist, every goal was a 1v1 and they just finish it every time. Yet the AI GK plucks top corner bound shots with effortless ease, and reacts like a superhero from point blank range. I have an 85 rated goalkeeper and he NEVER makes a save.

What annoys me is that despite the games being harder on Legendary, it's not in the way I wanted. I wanted the AI to be able to start keeping possession, to make decent goalscoring chances.

The ONLY tactic it uses, whether as Leeds or Liverpool, is to make their GK superhuman, sit back just like on the weaker difficulty settings, let you have 70% of the ball for 90 minutes, then destroy you on the counter attack. Every shot seems to go in. It plays EXACTLY like World Class and lower, you just get punished rather ridiculously by the AI in front of goal (and that stupid shitting 'zidane roulette' turn, whether it's Torres or McCormack of Leeds) and makes their keeper almost unbeatable.

So in two games, I've lost both, had a total of 29 shots on target, scoring 5 goals. The AI has had 7 shots on target, scoring 7 goals. Something's slightly amiss with the AI here. It cheats. Full stop.
 
Unless you're playing all manual on everything and destroying world class I would strongly advise you to make the game "harder" for yourself by adjusting the control settings rather than moving up to Legendary which is always going to cheat to win.
 
Placebo said:
Unless you're playing all manual on everything and destroying world class I would strongly advise you to make the game "harder" for yourself by adjusting the control settings rather than moving up to Legendary which is always going to cheat to win.
Click to expand...

Good point, but even if I tried that, the AI on World Class just won't try and attack apart from that stupid AI routine of the long ball to the wings, a cross, then a free header. Other than that, it doesn't try and attack, which is why I didn't lose all season on WC and yet still drew about 15 league matches.

I just tried another game on Legendary, and lost for the fourth game in a row, despite having 76% of the ball, 15 shots to Everton's 4, and they just packed 10 men in their own area for the whole second half, then did a long punt downfield in the 90th minute, their player just fell over my defender (without me doing ANYTHING in the way of trying tackle the guy) and they won the game with a penalty.

This is just fucking trash it really is. The AI cheats in as many ways as it possibly can.
 
I've had 30 shots against me on goal (15 min halfs) in one game, against Roma in Career mode. As far as I can remember I won 1-0, at the most it was 1-1 or 2-2. Not sure why your experiencing such a high goal/shot ratio, but I know I'm not good enough to have 76% possession even though I could if I wanted to. Try a new gameplan, in order for a possession game to be your actual gameplan you should have nearly mastered the game (except perhaps if you are playing a 3 star team or less). I say this for two reasons, 1 because mistakes are deadly when playing possesion, and 2 because it's very difficult to break down a team when they "park the bus" - unless you'r extremely good. Do you have your defensive line on offside by the way? Last thing you want is to contain when your dominating possession like that. As a manager you need to worry about your defensive strategy just as much as your offensive. I wouldn't like this game very much if I could just show up and start playing like barca without putting in a lot of effort to learn how to play. Refereeing can be quite frustrating I agree.

I actually love the zidane roullete thing, it forces you to play proper defense if you don't want to see it. I haven't seen it much at all since the demo, only twice. If you are going to charge the AI when your 10 yards away from the ball with x while he has been accelerating for much longer than your player then you deserve a Zidan roulette, that's a lovely touch by EA.
 
Last edited:
Since moving up to Legendary I see the roulette move several times a match. It's really annoying for me!

I have started tinkering with my defensive side of things, I've made my defence drop deeper and less aggressively, as before the AI seemed to be able to soak up pressure for 89 minutes then play 2 passes over about 60 yards and be through on goal, or annoyingly just dribble through. This is of course when the AI isn't trying to manufacture a quick move down the wing and score from those f***ing headers that it near constantly does. I have no idea how to defend those on Legendary, it just seems to make the AI be able to outjump you as and when it sees fit. I win 90% of most headers all over the pitch, apart from in both penalty areas where the AI seems to almost exclusively win them.

I can't explain the shots to goals ratio though. My last game I played tonight saw me just switch the game off in annoyance. Bale hit a free kick hard, with curl, and perfectly in the top corner, and the keeper did this bizarre save where he seemed to almost dive at full length and impossibly 'hang' in the air until the ball reached him. It was an impossible save, but he did it. Shortly after he did this stupid double save. The first save, fair do's, it wasn't a brilliant effort, but the rebound fell to Rooney who had the whole goal to aim at. I hit it well - high, hard into the roof of the empty net from a slight angle, and the keeper did some weird salmon dive across what must have been a 15 yard expanse of land and tipped that round the post when he should have still been on the floor. Impossible.

Of course, seconds after that, Everton strolled up the pitch, bam, two passes over 30 yards, the striker through on goal, and he slowly rolled the ball past 85 rated Akinfeev who barely even attempted a save. He just stood there and watched a weak shot roll past him.

When the game decides it's time to lose, it's time to lose.
 
Last edited:
So I thought I'd post an update on my manager mode as I finished my second Season with West Brom.

Things of note:

- Signed Trezeguet as a bargain back up to carew in January for £3m or so. Figured he was 79 overall, had a couple of shields and so could do a job but he was ABSOLUTELY rubbish. Didn't score once and by the end of the season wasn't even making the bench.

- Got knocked out by Roma in the quarter finals of the Europa League, drew 0-0 away and lost 1-0 at home via a penalty.

- Got about three ~ 40 day injuries to Carew, Beckham and Funes Mori towards the end of the season and so really strugged to finish well. Loved this as it just wouldn't happen last year, am finding between these injuries and my rule of subbing off anyone that gets the little minor injury bandage I'm getting enough to feel challanged without becoming frustrated.

- Ended up finishing 7th (my objective was top half the table) with Carew 3rd leading goal scorer with 20 goals. Miccoli finished the season really well filling in for all the injuries, I think he scored 4 in our last 3 games.

So that was the end of the season, I now waited eagerly to see if the board would match my ambition and help me push for the top 4. By this point I was a 3 Star Manager having earnt about £800,000 in my career.

The W.B.A board offered me a total of £19M and asked for top 6. I had hoped for a little more and was aware that I had put together quite an ageing squad. Feeling uncertain I gave in to temptation and checked out the other contract offers. There was only one:

Finish Top 6 with Liverpool. Transfer budget of £35M, massive wage budget, the chance to work with Torres and Gerrard - It was just to good to refuse, and so feeling a tinge of guilt I picked up the pen and signed, embarking on the next chapter of my managerial career.
 
Good luck Woy!

I found that even after 2 seasons my increase in manager reputation makes a big difference, 2nd season back in the Championship but I just signed Wellbeck on loan as well as a decent young keeper Rafael, both season long loans and signed permanently Mulgrew from Celtic (refused me last season but now happy to sign) and a beast of a CDM Mbodji from Tromso, then 6 squad free transfers who will become next season's transfer warchest when I flog them off, depending on who else I sell from my backup players I may add a pacey winger with a decent shot, we'll see :)
 
Last edited:
jamxo said:
So I thought I'd post an update on my manager mode as I finished my second Season with West Brom.
Click to expand...

So before the end of your second season at West Brom you were able to add Carew, Beckham, and Trezequet, among others, to your squad? Sounds a little too easy imo.
 
mfmaxpower said:
So before the end of your second season at West Brom you were able to add Carew, Beckham, and Trezequet, among others, to your squad? Sounds a little too easy imo.
Click to expand...

Yes but had finished top half, won the F.A Cup, was playing in Europe, paying over the odds for both transfer and wage frees, and promising playing time.

These are all players in the twilight years of their careers so you could imagine similarish moves in real life if they fancied one last shot at the prem (Campell at Newcastle, Hleb at Birmingham, Ljumburg to West Ham)
 
jamxo said:
Yes but had finished top half, won the F.A Cup, was playing in Europe, paying over the odds for both transfer and wage frees, and promising playing time.

These are all players in the twilight years of their careers so you could imagine similarish moves in real life if they fancied one last shot at the prem (Campell at Newcastle, Hleb at Birmingham, Ljumburg to West Ham)
Click to expand...

Trezeguet is washed up, so that makes sense. But Bekham and Carew make no sense. Don't get me wrong, I'd sign them too if I was in the same spot, but realistically speaking they should never be making those types of moves.

Built into the transfer system needs to be some limitations that prohibit top players from going to (lesser) clubs that they'd never go to IRL. Carew, for example, is worthy of no less than a team in the top half of the EPL, while Bekham shouldn't be going to any club with such little prestige.

But you're right though... When it comes to CM some liberties needs to be taken, for the sake of making the mode fun. however all those players going to a mediocre club is a bit much, don't you think?
 
Has anyone had a player demand to be transfer listed yet? I haven't seen this once and I'm getting the feeling it was a faked CM screenshot released by EA.
 
Placebo said:
Don't be such a snob! WBA are having a great season so far...

There was strong talk of Beckham going to West Ham and they've been shite for years...
Click to expand...

Very true! If only it had been just been one of them...

Placebo said:
Has anyone had a player demand to be transfer listed yet? I haven't seen this once and I'm getting the feeling it was a faked CM screenshot released by EA.
Click to expand...

Didn't know this was a possibility! What screenshot?
 
I tried looking for it but can't find it, really early PR screenshot they released it says that Dorrans of West Brom handed in a transfer request in the main menu news items.
 
Yeah, you know that sounds real familiar. Maybe Nick knows but I'm guessing it was scrapped?

I surely haven't heard any mention of players putting in transfer requests. If it was in the game I'd imagine someone would've mentioned it by now because that'd be a cool addition. Nick?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom