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(drunkenly) Since we'll be moving up into a professional league, we'll need to spend money on teambuilding or something right? Right! So what was it yeh said yeh needed again? Change my votes on questions 1 and 5 from B to C. The Board loves a winner.
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Jan 2, 2014 23:51
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DJ Ramshackle posted:Congrats on promotion! Any chance of a look at how the other English leagues ended up at the end of the season? Appendix: The Year in Football/Futbol/Fußball/Calcio/Soccer, 2014-2015 League Two:  One reason why I feel good about not getting kicked out of the Football League next year is that only two teams get relegated in League Two. League One:  Yeovil, Gillingham, Accrington and Bradford will be joining us in League Two next year. Championship:  Bolton had ten points deducted for going bankrupt. Sorry Bolton fan who reads this! Leeds is finally back in the Premier League, though. Premier League:  That's just a weird table. The top 3 look normal, but wtf happened to Tottenham and Arsenal? And Everton has been really good in the last few years, but better than City? And Wigan better than Man City? Also, only 64 points needed for a Champion's league spot, that's the lowest since 2005. In Spain Real Madrid won the league while Barca finished in third behind Granada. Really?! It's Granada's third year in La Liga! Less than a decade ago they were so low in Spanish Football you wouldn't even be able to play as them! In Germany Bayern Munich won (of course) over Dortmund and Schalke. In Italy Juventus won Serie A by just two points over Fiorentina, and Roma finished fourth while those fascists Lazio finished seventh. Atletico won the Champion's League on penalties over Bayern Munich, which is surprising given that Atletico was pretty mediocre otherwise in La Liga. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Mar 8, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2014 00:17
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Jesus, what the hell happened in North London? I guess Arsenal must have lost Wenger? I can't think of any other reason for them to be in 10th.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:39
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CBBBC - though with a note that the overall budget must be managed carefully.
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Jan 3, 2014 00:53
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rizzen posted:Jesus, what the hell happened in North London? I guess Arsenal must have lost Wenger? I can't think of any other reason for them to be in 10th. Wegner got sacked after the most recent season. They replaced him with AVB. Arsenal finished 3rd in 2014, so I don't know what happened. Tottenham finished 5th in 2014 and won the Europa League so their fall is also startling. They sacked AVB earlier in the season, he certainly landed on his feet by taking the Arsenal job. eta: Don't feel too bad for Arsenal, though. They have 160,000,000 in the bank. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 00:54
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habeasdorkus posted:Championship:  That sounds scarily loving accurate given recent news...
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Jan 3, 2014 01:10
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BBBBB is my vote. It's good and balanced. We need balance.
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Jan 3, 2014 01:15
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1. (Firmly) C. In light of the recent promotion, additional spending on coaching is necessary to compete at the next level. 2. (Passionately) B. Our pitch must be better than that of Tackleford's! 3. (Firmly) B. See my answer to #1, but increase "coaching" with "youth". 4. (Idlely) B. Sure, doesn't cost that much. 5. (Firmly) C. Additional spending will be needed at the next level but let's keep it reasonable.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:18
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Yeah, since we're going up, I'll change my vote from BBBBB to CBBBC!
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Jan 3, 2014 02:27
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Yes, I too will change my vote to CBBBC.
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Jan 3, 2014 02:45
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It does seem ridiculous to set limits by area, unless I see a need to intervene as the board, if we have 100k a week to spend and the manager is telling me that more coaches or more salary or whatever is the best use of that money, I should either roll with it or fire the manager.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:34
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:It does seem ridiculous to set limits by area, unless I see a need to intervene as the board, if we have 100k a week to spend and the manager is telling me that more coaches or more salary or whatever is the best use of that money, I should either roll with it or fire the manager. It does make sense, actually. The manager isn't in charge of the finances at any team, and boards that screw up can destroy their club. I wouldn't purposefully hurt the team, but I'm not on the hook for the team's liabilities if everything goes pear shaped. And if I really needed more money I'd ask for it.
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Jan 3, 2014 03:51
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habeasdorkus posted:It does make sense, actually. The manager isn't in charge of the finances at any team, and boards that screw up can destroy their club. I wouldn't purposefully hurt the team, but I'm not on the hook for the team's liabilities if everything goes pear shaped. And if I really needed more money I'd ask for it. Oh, the board should control the total budget no doubt, but the allocation of the pie between football operational areas seems like a decision for the manager.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:22
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BBBBBest team.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:26
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:Oh, the board should control the total budget no doubt, but the allocation of the pie between football operational areas seems like a decision for the manager. Until you get a director of football, that is. Then we get control of allocations again.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:29
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JT Jag posted:This is fair, actually. As the manager you should do what you choose with your budget. I actually have full control over the wage/transfer budget. I can move money from the wage budget to the transfer budget and vice versa. So if I wanted to, with 43k/115k I can change that to 36k/500k or 46k/0. The coaches are a separate pool of money from the players, though.
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Jan 3, 2014 04:55
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Nice job!
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Jan 3, 2014 05:06
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Just a really wee thing, but when you put up the board decisions ahead of the updates you accidently gave away that we'd won promotion before any of the match reports- I was hoping for a bit of a nail-biter! Congrats on promotion, looking forwards to beating Tackleford every season til we're both in the Premier. Voting: 1. C (prophetically) We need to get the lads ready to face tougher opponents, so hiring more coaches is a must 2. B (academically) The university can bump up beer prices at the student union to pay for it 3. A (grumpily) We're spending enough in other areas already ya greedy bastard! 4. B (down-with-the-kidsly) Tell you what bruv, we'll use the bling we savez on youff facilities to improve training, innit? 5. C (mathmatically) We should trust the accountants. I hear we use the same ones as Bolton.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:02
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I've been reading this for the last two days, having ignored it previously because FM threads tend to crash around update three. You're doing a great job so far. Let's say ALL B's habeasdorkus posted:In home and away ties the team with the aggregate score between the two matches wins. If the aggregate score is tied after 90 minutes there's a 30 minute extra time period, which is not sudden death. If things are still tied then the team that's scored more goals away from their home pitch wins, this is the away goals rule. And if things are tied even after that there's the dreaded penalty kick shootout, which is the worst way ever devised of determining a winner. As far as I can tell it's the other way around: First you compare total goals in both matches, and the first tiebreaker is the number of away goals. Only if both matches had exactly the same result you play the extra time.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:20
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Fat Samurai posted:As far as I can tell it's the other way around: First you compare total goals in both matches, and the first tiebreaker is the number of away goals. Only if both matches had exactly the same result you play the extra time. Yeah, you're correct. My bad. Niric posted:Just a really wee thing, but when you put up the board decisions ahead of the updates you accidently gave away that we'd won promotion before any of the match reports- I was hoping for a bit of a nail-biter! Congrats on promotion, looking forwards to beating Tackleford every season til we're both in the Premier. Whoops, thought I had edited that out.
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Jan 3, 2014 14:47
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I see no reason not to vote C, B, B, B, C. Clearly, spending is the answer, as our promotion has shown.
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Jan 3, 2014 16:31
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C, B, B, B, C (Aggressively) By all means, sign the super-players of the future and convert them into priceless assets.
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Jan 3, 2014 18:25
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[Phones Wrexham assistant to the board] (Slurring)Hello yes with our new gained promotion think it's time we started getting a better class of coaching. Also, change that dreadful pitch since the league is going to expect some class with it's new members, can't have us look lovely. Same about some youth facilities, we're at a stage where this should be done for long-term success given the promotion. But there's no need yet in bringing in younger talent due to us not having as much scouts needed for this, maybe next offseason this can be looked at again. Given how the club has looked, maybe a bit more allocated towards bringing in better talent. Pass this message along to Brown and the board members, I'm busy at the pub with this dart match. [Hangs up.] [Falls down off stool.] Votes B, B, B, A, B
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Jan 3, 2014 20:58
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Hope I made it in time. 1.B 2.B 3.B 4.B and 5.B.
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Jan 3, 2014 22:42
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ALL B
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Jan 3, 2014 22:53
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Voting is now closed. Question 1) Staff A's have 2. B's have 13. C's have 12. As there is no majority a compromise will be made. The budget for staff will be increased by £1,240 pounds a month. Question 2) Pitch A's have 2. B's have 25. The B's have it, the pitch shall be relaid. Question 3) Youth Facilities A's have 4. B's have 23. The B's have it, work will begin on the Tom Cannon Memorial Barn. Question 4) Youth Academy Level A's have 3. B's have 24. The B's have it, we will begin the process of upgrading to a class 3 youth academy. Question 5) Wage and Transfer Budget. A's have 2. B's have 13. C's have 9. D's have 3. As there is no majority, a compromise will be made. The wage budget shall be set at £42,500 a week and £117,000 shall be made available for transfers. This adjourns the 2015 summer board meeting of the Wrexham Fan Trust. eta: After enough votes were in and I was able to project that votes 2-4 would pass, I projected the wage/transfer result and the coaches result. Overshot the expected wage budget by £1k/wk, undershot the expected coaching budget by about £200/wk, and was £2000 shy on the transfer budget. So when you see slightly different numbers in the screenshots, that's why. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Jan 3, 2014 |
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Jan 3, 2014 23:15
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Volume Three: Consolidation Prologue: Team makeover party! May 31, 2015-June 30, 2015 Finally, I get to remake the team in my image. While the core of the first team will remain the same, with roughly 16 holdovers from the prior season, we're going to be shedding a lot of dead weight and bringing in several new faces to compete for time at several positions.  First, though, the commands of the board are made reality.  I bet the kids will be excited to have heated changing rooms when the Cannon Memorial Barn is completed in December! The price is actually £330,000 when you look at the facilities line item on the expense page. That extra £20,000 is just the contractor trying to bilk you.  Now we won't get heckled for our field condition until next January.  I tried to set up a friendly with Tackleford as the game said they'd pay us 40k to play at their place, but the request was rejected. In hindsight it's because the League Two season starts August 1st, and they wouldn't commit to playing the day before. But I'd prefer to think it was just to spite me. Tackleford!     Three new coaches! Now our rear end Man isn't trying to train five categories all by himself! Compare the following:  versus:  Our end goal is to have another fitness coach, another goalkeeper coach, and two more coaches to reduce the current staff's workload to one training category. But this is already a huge step up from having an rear end Man who's job was to evaluate talent train every player in every part of the game.  Now that we're in the Football League we're subject to Financial Fair Play regulations. This is an effort by UEFA to keep the megabastard clubs from buying up every smidgen of talent and creating an unbreakable cartel, and prevent clubs like Bolton (current debt £163,800,000), Portsmouth (debt of £135,000,000 before going from FA Cup winners in 2008 and the Premier League in 2010 to bankruptcy, twice, and being purchased by a fan trust in League Two), and Rangers of Glasgow (£134,000,000 in debt, including £74,000,000 in taxes owed, knocked from perennial contention for a Champion's League spot to the bottom tier of Scottish pro soccer in 2012) from racking up huge debt and eventually imploding. It's very new, and FM14 is the first version to simulate it. We won't have to worry about this for a long time, the short version is that if we go over the wage cap of 60k/wk we'll be penalized with transfer embargoes (no new players from other teams), being docked points in the league, and disqualification for European competitions. I love this game.  Training camps are set up by the board. I don't know how to trigger them, so I can't give you the option of voting to offer one. Instead I'm going to pretend it's a late Christmas present. Training camps are excellent for rapidly improving team cohesion, squad harmony, and tactical preparedness. The only downside is that they cost more money than just practicing at the club facilities and that you're limited to the geographical area for friendlies during the camp. It's also well timed, by July 4th most of our team should be assembled.  If Tackleford wants to pay me for an overrated malcontent who I benched when promotion was on the line last season, I'm more than happy to take their money.  I have a Director of Football solely to automate the selling of unneeded players. He's an intelligent fax machine with no real powers.  Meat market's open again.  And that means all the transfers we made previously for young talent are brought into the team. Only Harrison is going to be on the first team for now, so while the overall number of new players is high the actual effect on team chemistry is not.  The best part about this is if they use him as a starter they'll be benching Parsons and Ellis, both of whom are better than Nsangou and have greater potential. Plus, £70,000 is a nice bit of business for us, we're now in the black on transfers since I arrived last autumn.  Players will sometimes return from break still worn down from the previous season. This is more likely if they're playing a lot of international games on top of their club commitments, and also if they're fairly young and not yet fully inured to the rigors of the season.  Player tiredness (or Jadedness, as the game calls it) factors into my preference for long pre-seasons, I can let Simpson take an additional three week vacation without risking his fitness for the start of the season.  I decide not to bump up expectations for the year, no reason to make the players nervous. They seem enthused for the fight to stay afloat at a higher level.  Can't wait!   Aww yiss, profitability.  He never got into a game for the team once I took over.  The good thing about having the same players season over season is that they remain pretty familiar with the team's tactics. This level of preparedness will drop when we add more first team players, but we'll still be able to spend most of the season focusing on game specific strategies than general tactics during training.  Our first signing is a replacement for Damian King. He'll officially join the team at the end of his contract on June 30th. You may also notice that we're deducting £9k from the transfer budget despite Poole signing on a free. That's because Poole has an agent who negotiated his deal for him, and agent fees are taken from the transfer budget. I hate agents. Matthew Poole Centerback  Poole is a good fit for our “covering” centerback. Covering centerbacks team up with a “stopper” partner, and are tasked with cleaning up any messes the stopper creates when going to close down attacking players. They need good quickness to get there quickly, and strong aerial skills to win headers in the box.  None of the players we can afford will replace Liam Franks, the guy who carried us on our back to promotion, but Toms will be part of the cast of characters who will try. Toms' contract also has a minimum fee release clause, if anyone offers us £180,000 for him we have to let him go. That's only there because I forgot to uncheck it in negotiations. Minimum release clauses at the level requested by the players can only hurt you, if they get triggered it's because the player is a bargain and if they don't it means they're not living up to the price. If the player or agent insists on one, make sure the transfer fee you'd get is exorbitant. Wilson Toms Right Winger  Good flair, pace, and acceleration, meh everything else. About what you should expect from a lower league winger. He can get better, but at the age of 24 I'm not expecting drastic changes. At least his mental attributes will likely improve.  Our Justin Bailey replacement. Bailey demanded 1.2k a week, which was simply too much for a player that was already close to peaking and not likely to repeat last year's performance in League Two. Aidan Cooper Central Midfielder  Cooper can play three positions naturally, center midfield, attacking midfield, and attacking left winger, which makes him much more versatile than Bailey, although he's not as useful when playing old NES games.  The two are pretty closely matched, now that I look at it. Although Bailey is much better defensively and physically my scouts and staff tell me that Cooper is more likely to be the better player in a couple years.  Neill Senior is going to be so mad at me. I get rid of Nsangou and then bring in more competition for his job. Danny Higgs Goalkeeper  Higgs is the opposite of Nsangou in many, many ways. He's much more a standard shot stopper than someone who likes to try and play unusually, and their eccentricity scores couldn't be more different. I prefer a boring, dependable rock in front of the net, so that's fine by me.  I expect Higgs to give up fewer dumb goals than Nsangou did, while also making fewer great plays. He and Senior will fight for the starting job.  Another winger, this one can also play attacking midfielder in our new tactical scheme. Tony Price Right Wing  Check out that flair and creativity! When we park him in the center of our 4-2-3-1 as a trequartista he should be able to make things happen. He needs to improve his teamwork and off the ball, though, if he's going to reach his promise.   Speaking of the 4-2-3-1, this replaces our old base 4-4-2. It's a very aggressive tactic, and is vulnerable to quick opponents flying past our high line when they get possession. But the goal is to keep the ball and suffocate the other side. The players we've brought in should be good for that purpose. I'll use this when we're at home against clubs that are in the bottom third of the league. Using it against a promotion favorite or a higher division club in a cup match would be an entertaining way to commit suicide.   You don't have to sign up for reserve leagues, but then you have to either trust your U21 and U18 coaches to schedule appropriate friendlies for those teams or you have to do it yourself. Easier to just join the league. Often the board will force you to join the U18 league.  Don't you see the title of this volume? I'm going to be happy if we finish mid-table, anything more than that is unexpected. I'd be concerned if we somehow got promoted to League One, the bottom four teams in League One get relegated back to League Two, and yo-yoing between leagues is a quick way to really gently caress up your club.  You mean they'd consider joining us now? I guess I'll take a gander.  Now that we're in League Two we're subject to the homegrown players rule. It's lenient at this level, we just need six players trained in England before their 21st birthday in our registered team. At higher levels we're required to have a certain number of players that have been at our club since they were in our youth program.  We got £5,000 in TV rights money last year. This is much better. But it's also something like 1/100th what Premier League clubs get. TV money is what drives the big time, and we've finally got ourselves a tiny slice of that pie.  Yearly and Promotion clauses in contracts stack. Good to know.  Tackleford has been spending big all off-season. It seems like they've been in on half the players I've considered signing, and they're offering way more money than I am. Their new owner is rich, too, so the spending doesn't even have to stop.    Your 2015-2016 Wrexham schedule! Games of note are Tackleford on November 24th and March 28th. In both cases the schedulers gave us no time between our prior games and the Tackleford fixtures. Someone should audit their bank accounts, I'd bet there's money from the new Tackleford owner in there. You'll also notice the Johnstone's Paint Trophy match scheduled, we're moving on from the FA Trophy competition to one contested by the teams in Leagues One and Two, as well as the League Cup.  I'm so excited for camp!  I hope we hold our team meetings here!  Aww, way to bum me out, Mexico. The US in this game seems decidedly less good than the real life version.  And we end this update with our release of a ton of players, only four or five of whom you'd recognize. I accidentally let one of my scouts go, too, and forgot to hire a new rear end Man and physio before Turley and Burke took their leave of the team. At least I know what I have to do at the start of the next update. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 07:14 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 03:43
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Where did you learn so much about tactics? I'm terrible at that aspect of the game 
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Jan 4, 2014 06:50
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mfcrocker posted:Where did you learn so much about tactics? I'm terrible at that aspect of the game I'm terrible at Football manager in general, is there a possible way of making a handy hints and tips guide that I can go through so I don't completely suck, or link one you have possibly used? 
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Jan 4, 2014 10:09
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Cool, we're playing my favorite variation on the 4-5-1. It can transition really well between defense and offense, and it allows us to keep control of the midfield without sacrificing much in terms of offensive abilities, especially now that we grabbed a pretty good AM. Here's to a good season in League 2.
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Jan 4, 2014 15:25
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mfcrocker posted:Where did you learn so much about tactics? I'm terrible at that aspect of the game Samael posted:I'm terrible at Football manager in general, is there a possible way of making a handy hints and tips guide that I can go through so I don't completely suck, or link one you have possibly used? FM does a good job in simulating that side of the game, even if it doesn't allow the really avant-garde stuff. This site is pretty good to get you started: http://www.guidetofootballmanager.com/ At the level we are currently playing, tactics IMHO doesn't make a lot of difference. Playing either a perfectly British tactic (the 4-4-2) or a fancier 3-5-2 is more a matter of what you have available than coming up with an unbeatable plan. That said, FM2014 is the first that puts away sliders (which allowed you to sperg endlessly about putting two clicks into "more defensive" to reach tactical perfection) entirely. That pretty much ends the era of infamous "unbeatable" tactics that were prevalent since '09 and makes the game much more intuitive, as telling your players to shoot only in the box and play shorter passes is way more straightforward than selecting every single player and configuring his individual settings to play like that. At the higher levels tactics do make much more of a difference, for example: we go against an offensive 4-5-1 (with no defensive midfielders) in which the opposition's star is the AMC, and we have a 4-4-2. That AMC will probably tear us apart because he will be sitting right at the "hole" that our tactic doesn't cover, and he is the best player of the other team to boot. To increase our chances, we can set up a standard 4-5-1 with one DMC that will be covering the gap between the midfield line and the defense, in which the opposition's AMC will have a much harder time to play. And so on. Also this LP made me start my own first game with a League 2 side: York. 4-4-2, rigid, counter at away and control at home, getting stuck in and straight passing. Now I need a big 2m Scotsman to flick the ball in the front and glorious British football shall ensue.
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Jan 4, 2014 15:59
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Samael posted:I'm terrible at Football manager in general, is there a possible way of making a handy hints and tips guide that I can go through so I don't completely suck, or link one you have possibly used? I second Transmetropolitan's recommendation. When I first started playing I spent a lot of time at guidetofootballmanager.com. It's a great and easy to use resource for information about what different things in the game do. I still occasionally go there if I need to look up something in particular. My moderate amount of tactical acumen was largely gained through trial and error over the last few years. I do appreciate that they've done away with the sliders, what does one click above the middle mean compared to two on the tackling slider anyways? It makes things more understandable. Also, the game does a good job explaining via mouseovers what the various tactical roles do (the difference between a plain attacking midfielder and a trequartista for example) and what the different tactical orders do (route one vs. more direct passing). Telling your team to "Shoot on sight" or "Work the ball into the box" is way more easy to understand than the old sliders. I'm not by any means a great tactical manager, and I'm straight up bad at specific instructions against opposition players (I generally try to find a really high tactical knowledge coach who's prefered playing style meshes with mine and tell him to set the instructions rather than do it myself, the Jogi Löw to my Jurgen Klinnsman). The biggest thing is just becoming familiar with the positions on the field and using tactics your players are suited for. For example, with the new 4-2-3-1 I'm unlikely to use our offensive wingbacks because the formation is so frontloaded (4 attacking players, 2 deeper midfielders, 4 defenders) that I want our left and right backs to play more cautiously in order to help the two centerbacks keep the opposition from racing past us down the pitch when possession changes after one of our attacks break down. Likewise, I would never set that 4-2-3-1 to a defensive mentality, instead I'd switch midgame to our 4-5-1 and drop our Ball Winning Midfielder into the Defensive Midfield spot and bring the Trequartista down to the Central Midfield spot and make him an Advanced Playmaker instead. That would give us much better defensive depth, make the Trequartista actually play some defense (Trequartistas are entirely offensive, their job is to sit upfield and create opportunities in open space for the wingers and strikers), and generally move us from playing our back line nearly halfway up the field to a more reasonable 1/3rd of the way up the field when we have possession. A general rule about defense is that it's not super easy to score no matter how good you are against a team that's parking the bus. If 10 of your players are sitting in your own penalty area, there just isn't much room for the other side to get good shots off. When you see game stats where one side has 60%+ possession and only a few shots on goal, and long range shots at that, you can tell that the other side is parking the bus. And now, I present Shinji Kagawa of Manchester United vs. 33 and then 55 children. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ha-mjZoIUE Transmetropolitan posted:Also this LP made me start my own first game with a League 2 side: York. 4-4-2, rigid, counter at away and control at home, getting stuck in and straight passing. Now I need a big 2m Scotsman to flick the ball in the front and glorious British football shall ensue. Is your name Tony Pulis, by any chance? I should actually play more defensively, but as an American I'm disappointed if we don't score at least two goals a game. I don't get that many clean sheets, but the games are exciting! habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 17:16
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As someone who loves football but has never played any of the various management sims, I am really digging this LP so thank you, I can't wait to see the Saga of gently caress Tackleford continue into another season. Quick question: I know these things have been around for years over here (almost 30 years since the first game to bear the name, isn't it?) but what/are there equivalent games for American sports, do they go into similarly insane amounts of detail and such or is the genre mainly a European thing?
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Jan 4, 2014 20:50
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Sentinel Red posted:As someone who loves football but has never played any of the various management sims, I am really digging this LP so thank you, I can't wait to see the Saga of gently caress Tackleford continue into another season. There's the Mogul games for baseball and football: http://www.sportsmogul.com You can try Football Mogul 2012 for free by just signing up to their mailing list with a junk e-mail provider and see if it's your bag. I haven't tried these games, but I saw an LP of it here (which seems to have been abandoned) and it looked fairly in-depth. EDIT: Also, for something more mainstream, there's Head Coach '09 from EA Sports for football. It also seems to have at least some degree of detail put into it. TheMcD fucked around with this message at 20:59 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 20:56
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Chapter the First: The gang goes to summer camp. July 1, 2015-August 1, 2015 We'll have a new physio and rear end Man in a day or two, but first I'm proud to announce a new sponsorship:  £2,500 a year? Who's sponsoring this? Some kid's lemonade stand?  The free transfers I mentioned in the last update come on board, in time to join the training camp squad.  We could double our wage bill and not even breach the FFP cap.  Didn't we just do this last year? I'm not going to negotiate with anyone yet, as I need to see how they perform in our new league. Simpson is likely to get a new contract, though. We'll look at this again in December, before any foreign teams could poach our players by signing them to a pre-contract.  The 2015 model rear end Man. Now with slightly better training skills and even better at judging talent.  Sheffield Wednesday, bitter rivals of Sheffield United, are currently in the Championship. Wrexham's run in the league cup is likely to be very short and the opposite of sweet.  I'm hoping that we get to at least March before the field condition is back to terrible, but I'm setting the over/under for it being a muddy field at Christmas. Person who's closest to the date of the field condition becoming "Terrible" gets to change one thing in the game via the editor.  After a long day's practice and drills we can sit around the campfire and tell ghost stories and braid each other's hair and stay up after curfew and sneak over to the Swansea training camp on a panty raid!  The only obvious soft points in the team are at keeper and right back. An additional defensive midfielder option would be nice, though. Our tactics don't utilize the ML/R and WBL/R positions, so our weakness there is merely academic. The problem is that while we have OK depth and most of our starting 11 are above average to good we don't have any superb players that will be able to win us matches on their own. I haven't been able to find anyone matching that description, at least at the price we're able to pay.  We've got nearly 10k remaining in the wage budget, so if we can find players to fill those roles we have the money to sign them.  As I don't expect to find anyone useful at the trial day I tell my scouts to just compile reports on the most promising players rather than sit through the game myself.  Finally, I've been trying to sell this guy for a year.  You're not making a good case for remaining team captain if you can't even get on the playing field, old man.  Crud. We're now down to three centerbacks on the first team. We should be OK, both players will be back by the second week of the season, but I'm going to check to see if any of our youth players are suitable as an emergency backup. At The New Saints, July 11, 2015 Friendly  It's a good thing I scheduled TNS during what turned out to be our training camp. During training camps you can only schedule friendlies with nearby teams, and TNS is the biggest team in Wales. Well, more like the 4th or 5th biggest, but they're the biggest side that plays in the Welsh league. I'm trying out our new 4-2-3-1 formation, but will probably shift back to a 4-5-1 as the game progresses and I sub players in. We pile on a ton of pressure, but as expected are susceptible to the counter. Just looking at the stats you'd expect that we had won by a wide margin, but TNS finishes incisively, we don't finish at all, and despite bossing the match we lose. I go through and give individual talks to players, and all is going well until I tell Don-Duncan that his performance wasn't up to snuff.  I'm not sure why this happened, but prior to this everyone had reacted positively, but when I treated Don-Duncan the same as I had every other player who played as poorly as he did I lost the whole locker room. Odd, and annoying. Not the best introduction to my pep talks for the new guys, either. TNS 2-0 Wrexham  Norwich's players will actually deign to join us now that we're in the Football League, this is the first of the two I'm loaning. Also, you may have noted I've renamed the supporter spokesperson. I'm taking suggestions on what his final name should be. Paul Azille-Moore Right Winger  He's not particularly good in any area, but he'll suffice for cover on the wings. He's got a very high ceiling, a leading Championship player is roughly an average Premier League player so if he develops with us I'll probably try to extend his loan.  Our second loaner. Graeme Underwood Right Back  I'm very happy to have picked Underwood up, as my efforts to find a defensive minded fullback on the free agent and transfer markets have been stymied by our lack of stature and bigger clubs swooping in to grab them up. It doesn't help that fullback is one of the hardest positions to play in modern soccer. These days a fullback's responsibilities mix the attacking skills of a winger and the defensive obligations of a centerback, and then adding work rate and stamina requirements to run up and down the field all game long. Finding a good one is hard. Finding a great one is nigh impossible. Underwood will rotate with Wright, who probably doesn't have the defensive chops to be a full time right back in League football.  No more playing with funky field shapes, we're in boring organized pro-soccer now.  As I was saying about fullbacks, it's hard to find one that can do everything. Matthew Ashton Left Back  Ashton will be our defensive option at left back, as neither Don-Duncan nor Daniel are close to as good at that aspect of the game. I don't expect him to be with us more than a couple of years, his peak ability should make him capable of being left back for a good league one side. He'll be working on his acceleration, as he'll be going up against speedy wingers and currently doesn't speed up quickly enough to lock them down when they make runs past him.  And on the last night we made smores and swore each other to secrecy about the vagrant we accidentally killed.  Found a spare central defender. Gary Petit Centerback  And boy howdy did I ever get lucky on this one. He's only 17, so when he's not needed for cover he can train with the U18 side for the next two years, and he's already good enough to be a backup at League Two level. Now we have six viable centerbacks at all levels of the squad, and that should be more than enough depth.  I was going to loan out Nic Bull, seeing as no one appeared to be interested in him. When I offered him up Hereford asked to take him off our hands permanently. I eagerly accepted, and assuming contract negotiations between Bull, Murray, and their new teams are successful we no longer have any players at the club I'm actively seeking to get rid of.  Anthony Walsh is going to either Worcester or Kidderminster for the year, he's aged out of the U18 squad and he's not good enough to get playing time on the senior squad. So rather than have him sit lonely and forgotten in the U21 squad I've found him a place where he can get first team action and that will pay his salary besides.  I've reconsidered my release of Justin Bailey in light of his favorable comparison to Aiden Cooper. When I found out that his price had dropped precipitously during the two weeks he was unemployed, I was happy to bring him back into the club. He ended up getting a £100/wk raise from his last contract, and will never understand all the inside jokes the other players share from training camp. Poor guy. The silver lining is that he's not afflicted by the curse of the vagrant we killed.  I can't offer high win bonuses? What the poo poo? Our wage budget is only £35,000/wk right now, and we're a net seller on transfers this year with the Nsangou sale. Stupid Financial Fair Play.   Glad I chose to aim for a consolidation year. I think we can do better than what the bookies predict, but my sterling winning percentage as a manager is going to get tarnished. Meanwhile... Tackleford...   League Two teams have spent 2,880,000 pounds on transfers this offseason. Tackleford comprises 92% of that total. And that doesn't even count the purchases before the year officially rolled over, like Nsangou. I've created a monster.  Hey, this field isn't perfect! What's the big idea here, landlords? I don't want to get my poo poo kicked in for a paycheck on anything less than a pristine field. vs. Arsenal, July 17, 2015 Friendly  There were some positives in this match. We didn't give up a chance until the 29th minute despite 10 shots from Arsenal, and we didn't let them score until the 39th minute on their second chance of the game. We held them from getting a second goal until the 53rd minute, and then quickly struck back on a great breakaway by Clarke to make it 2-1 in the 58th minute. Unfortunately, after that our second stringers couldn't stop Arsenal from scoring at will, and they got tired of playing with their food.  The kids at least realize we did well just to keep the score at 2-1 through an hour of play, and even with 20 minutes left the score was only 3-1. That final deluge was very disappointing considering how well we played for most of the game. Wrexham 1-8 Arsenal  This is my last planned signing. Unless I see someone too good to ignore I'm done for the transfer window. Once Bull and Murray transfer we'll have wages of £34,500 a week, £8,300 under budget, and £44,000 left for transfers. Considering we were spending just over £35,000/wk last season, I'm pretty happy with the shopping I've done. Ashti Kadhim Defensive Midfielder  Kadhim will be a backup, along with McGuinness, for Simpson and the more defensive midfield roles. His stats are all around fairly strong, but he's got no determination, which means that he'll be prone to giving up when things get hard, whether it's on the pitch or the practice ground. Oh, also, he's a current international for Iraq, which I didn't realize until his national team coach called him up for international friendlies at the end of July.  This kid has at most the potential to be a mediocre Skill Regional player, and refused an opportunity to get first team playing time in the Welsh league. Enjoy your brief career in my youth system, and then wistfully talking about the days when you could have played professional first team soccer when you're older.  Murray rejected his contract offer, probably over the paycut he'd have to take. I'm going to dump him and Bull into the U21 reserves now, hopefully it will chivvy them along in signing contracts elsewhere.  Well, that paid off quickly. Bull signs with the Bulls. There's something funny about that, but I can't quite figure out what.  There's a player who knows where his best interests lie. Kick some rear end in the Skrill Premier, Walshy. vs. Chester, July 21, 2015 Friendly  Wrexham and Chester have a longstanding rivalry due to their locations twelve miles apart on opposite sides of the Wales/England border. The Cross Border Derby (pronounced "dar-bey" for our North American readers) has been contested 148 times since the first meeting in 1888, with Wrexham winning 67, drawing 31, and losing 50. We don't see them very often now as Chester was relegated to the Skrill North the year before we took over Wrexham, and thus no longer play league matches against them. According to one website of questionable authority, a particular chant at these games is “gently caress off Chester. We won at Wembley, we won at Wembley, we won at Wembley.” Chester parks the team bus in front of their net and utilize a Greek style of frustrating, negative play. We can't crack them open in the first half, so I loosen up our tactics to focus less on controlling the game and more on open play and it results in many more shots and eventually a goal off of a corner kick. The subs finish rotating in by the 70th minute, and we seal the game when Chester is called for a penalty against Hopkins shortly thereafter. Bailey finishes the scoring with a screaming free kick hit from 25 yards out, and all of our scoring came from dead ball situations. gently caress off Chester, indeed. Wrexham 3-0 Chester  I'm going to see how much it'd cost to get him to agree to a mutual termination of his contract. I've been trying to rid this team of this lackadaisical, gormless, addlepated twerp since I got here, and he just won't leave. Maybe they fired the old coach for giving him this contract?  Oh for fucks sake. Can I fire him, please? It'd cost just as much money as keeping him all season, except in a lump sum. It's £82k, so I guess I really shouldn't and hope instead that at some point someone wants him over the course of the season. But if we get to the end of January and I'm still not rid of this meddlesome winger I'm going to ask for reals.  That's actually one of the better World Cup qualifying pools Wales could have been drawn into. They might finish 3rd. They still won't make the World Cup, though. vs. Llansantffraid, July 26, 2015 Friendly  This is our final tune-up of the pre-season. To be honest, I picked Llansantffraid as an opponent because it has a humorous sounding name. And we ain't afraid of no Llansantffraid. An easy win should help boost morale right before the season starts. The game goes as well as I could have hoped for, we score two in the first and two more in the second, while Llansantfraid is too terrified to venture out of their own half but for taking one shot late in the game. A good final friendly before our return to League Two. Wrexham 4-0 Llansantffraid  That was an unpleasant task. It's time to pick the team captains for the year, and Tierney just won't get enough playing time to make an effective captain. He's has done everything I've asked of him without question, and done it well. It's like the end of Ol' Yeller, if Ol' Yeller were an aging centerback who you were asking to relinquish a position for the good of the team. So, not at all like Ol' Yeller.  The captain's band is given to Stuart Simpson, our midfield anchor. Just as good a leader as Tierney and a straight up determinator, he's likely to be on our team for several years more. Tierney will be our vice captain, as a gesture of gratitude for his leal service.   Wait, so who's hurt, Ioan or Eoin? I can never tell them apart.  Neill Senior is so going to hate me. Nasser Al-Beloushi Goalkeeper   I said I was done buying unless I found someone extraordinary. Al-Beloushi is extraordinary. The Kuwaiti keeper is immediately the best at his position in League Two, and one of the very best players in the league, period. He already speaks English fluently, so there won't even be communication issues. I'm going to have to sell Senior, there's no reason to have three first team goalkeepers, but this immediately improves the team in one of our weakest areas. I wonder if he and Kadhim will get along?  This brings up one of the more infuriating things about being a LLM if you don't understand the rules. Work permits. Because Al-Beloushi is a non-European Union citizen he needs a work permit to play in England. If he doesn't get a work permit, he can't play for us. To get a work permit a player needs to play in 75% of his country's non-friendly international matches (World Cup qualifiers, continental championships, etc.) over the last two years or be an elite young talent. Their home country must also have a FIFA ranking of 70 or better. The team making the signing must be in the Football League, meaning that we could not have picked up Al-Beloushi without having been promoted. So he gets his work permit thanks to the first criteria, and because he was already at Nottingham Forest last year it doesn't seem to matter that Kuwait is only ranked 83rd in the world. There's other ways to get around the work permit requirements, but as they won't be available to us for several years I'll save that for later.  Not only is Simpson willing to help Al-Beloushi settle in, his morale actually goes up from my asking. Good job on picking a new captain, me.  I should have asked for more money, given how quickly four teams jumped at the chance to sign Senior.  Who are these sponsors? Local haberdasheries? Money is money, but I'll be looking forward to renegotiating this in four years for more than a pittance.  Newport County approached me with an offer for Tierney just as I was looking at three very good centerbacks and pondering whether I could fit them into the already large senior team. It makes me sad to see him go, but he wouldn't get much playing time here and since I removed him from the captaincy several days ago the staff keeps finding him crying in the training room's hot tub. Also, our oldest player is now just 29. Don't trust anyone over 30, except for the manager.  The appointment of Simpson as captain is greeted happily in the clubhouse, with one exception.  McGuinness is at 18/17 in Leadership/Determination, so he's right that he's a good choice for captain. If he weren't a backup I'd have considered him. He gets the vice-captaincy that Tierney just vacated.   McGavin is one of the three potential replacements for Tierney. The first of the three, George Evans, was signed by Tackleford for nearly three times as much as we were offering. Their weekly wages are somewhere north of £100,000 now, so we'll get to see how Financial Fair Play works ingame. I'm pretty sure we'll get McGavin, but if we don't I've already made a contract offer to our third choice.  We're at the edge of our first season in the Football League since 2007. Onwards, Wrexham, and burn all those who oppose us to the ground! Or, y'know, at least avoid relegation.  Also, for those of you who just click to the most recent unread posts, I've been updating the OP with ETAs for future chapters with progress percentages. They can vary wildly over time, but so far it's been entirely towards new updates coming before the original schedule rather than being delayed. habeasdorkus fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jan 4, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 22:14
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Calling the 10th of December as my date for the return of the lovely pitch. It's Britain, after all - weather is going to have a field day.
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Jan 4, 2014 22:31
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Sentinel Red posted:Quick question: I know these things have been around for years over here (almost 30 years since the first game to bear the name, isn't it?) but what/are there equivalent games for American sports, do they go into similarly insane amounts of detail and such or is the genre mainly a European thing? There's a few, and they're why I wasn't completely balked by the complexity of FM when I first started. I can't think of one that does this for basketball, which makes some sense as basketball has the smallest rosters and other than needing an accounting degree to understand the salary cap doesn't have a whole lot of GMing to do. I don't know of football game that focuses solely on the management aspects of the sport like FM, though the Madden Franchise Mode and NCAA Football both have very deep management modes. There's hordes of people who only play those modes, either taking their own podunk alma mater and turning it into the greatest college football dynasty ever through good coaching and recruiting or in Madden getting together with 31 other people online in a league where every person is the GM for a team and they play and make deals with each other. With hockey you have Eastside Hockey Manager, which was published by the same guys who do Football Manager. By all accounts it was fantastic, I have several friends who swear by it, and despite the last version being released in 2007 the mod community keeps the rosters up to date. There's also Out of the Park Hockey, but it's gotten horrible reviews. Finally, baseball has three options. Baseball Mogul, Out of the Park Baseball, and Diamond Mind. Baseball Mogul has a less in depth management style where you can easily sim through a season in a couple hours. Out of the Park is more complex, and has many of the same aspects of running a team that FM does. Diamond Mind is the most complex, at least to my understanding. I know a lot of stats geeks (I post regularly on a sabermetric oriented website) who love it for how granular the ingame player interactions are, and for how well it simulates an actual baseball game. None of the above have the same sort of interaction in the game between you, the manager, and your players, the media, the fans, other teams, your ownership, etc. It's part of what sets FM apart, above and beyond being a really great simulator of soccer. For example, I don't think any of those games will ever fire you for not living up to the whims of your capricious owner. As for Tackleford, with their new owner I think they might actually end up in the Championship or even the Premier League during the course of this LP, so we should be able to continue hating them forever.
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Jan 4, 2014 22:31
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17th December for the pitch.
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Jan 4, 2014 22:36
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TheMcD posted:Calling the 10th of December as my date for the return of the lovely pitch. It's Britain, after all - weather is going to have a field day. I was in Scotland and London last summer for about two weeks. Bought a raincoat specifically for the trip. Went there and it was glorious and sunny for pretty much the entire trip. Even when it drizzled in London for a day it wasn't heavy enough to need the raincoat. We told all the Scottish people that we met that they were all lying about how bad the weather was so that no one would come and hog the beautiful countryside.
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Jan 4, 2014 22:45
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habeasdorkus posted:I was in Scotland and London last summer for about two weeks. Bought a raincoat specifically for the trip. Went there and it was glorious and sunny for pretty much the entire trip. Even when it drizzled in London for a day it wasn't heavy enough to need the raincoat. We told all the Scottish people that we met that they were all lying about how bad the weather was so that no one would come and hog the beautiful countryside. I went hiking in Wales last easter holidays. North Wales even, so not too far from our current location. The combination of Wales and early spring had us very, very prepared for a sodden week, but we didn't see a single cloud al week. Of course, it was also loving freezing*, apparently Wales had the worst winter in 50 years last march rather than in actual winter, a horrible wind was continually blowing in Siberian air from the east, and the snow was still everywhere. (Well, once you got to a height of 400 meters or so. Which amounts to it being everywhere.) Apparently several people died in the week we were over there due to trying to go where they really shouldn't without specialised equipment and/or without knowing what they were doing. It was... an experience. Which leads me to believe the pitch will be perfectly fine till March 10th. Then it will snow a couple of meters and be unplayable till early april, and destroyed afterwards. * Sorry about the profanity. But sometimes you really need profanity to express your feelings and it's humanly impossible to convey just how cold it was without using profanity. Edit: Unscrewed-up my timeline. Prediction now in line with story. Amhazair fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jan 5, 2014 |
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Jan 4, 2014 23:43
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