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 What is football manager 2022? "Football Manager 2022 is decried by some as a spreadsheet simulator, praised by others as a spreadsheet simulator, but, when you strip out all the bullshit, it is just a spreadsheet simulator." - ItohRespectArmy If nothing else, I love spreadsheets What do you actually do in it, though? You fiddle with a spreadsheet for many hours: you take charge of a group of footballers, manage transfers, set up training sessions, gaslight teenagers, create tactics, shout at the media, wish you could feed people into woodchippers like your owner does (we will come back to him) and pretty much everything that comes with being a football manager short of taking bribes. Who will you be managing? [[img]https://lpix.org/4234878/https___cdn.cnn.com_cnnnext_dam_assets_211018062717-20211018-newcastle-united-fc-sale-gfx[1].jpg[/img] Newcastle are a club with a long and storied history, a 'recent' 13 year history of being extremely  and a very recent takeover by a While in real life this is Extremely Bad, and is another entry in the recent history of really dubious people buying major football clubs (Man City, Chelsa, PSG, etc etc etc, though these guys are small change compared to noted Thatcherite and genocidal lunatic MBS), for the purposes of the game this is loving amazingly fun because the game lets the new ownership absolutely shovel giant sums of cash into the furnaces of the club in return for silverware and prestige, and you the manager get to spend that all on assembling a super team. How much cash are we talking exactly Well, you start with a 200 million pound transfer budget, which is about what half the premier league has to spend combined, and there are some regulations that stop you running the club at a big loss but.... Regulations So in theory, there are Financial Fair Play (FFP) that are supposed to stop the clubs running at massive losses, buying success and getting into huge financial trouble by limiting how much money the club can lose and the owners can invest. However, these regulations are mostly ineffective in real life - for example, you can just get massively over the odds sponsorship from In addition to this very realistic FFP circumvention that takes place in game, the game also has a rubber banding mechanism to stop big clubs (like Newcastle!) from going bust which will just get money injected in via sponsorship deals, this is mostly to stop the AI from completely loving up and torpedoing a big club. The upshot is I don't actually think you can go bust without doing deliberately stupid stuff. But I kind of want to find out. So what's the bottom line on the cash then? In a test run of this, I spend Six hundred and fifty million pounds on transfer fees in the first transfer window, and then in the second season the board gave me another 178 million pounds in case I needed it. Why will this be fun The big issue with Newcastle is that the squad you have is absolutely poo poo. The is maybe.. 3 good players on the entire roster. None of them are really good enough to be the leading men on a repeat Champions league winning squad. And unlike my owner, I cannot just get rid of people, and I have to make the budget stretch to finding 22 new very good players. This is quite hard and there will be some false starts along the way. As we go through I'll also try and show off a bit of FM2022 under the hood and how I play it, and I'll also try and show how the real Newcastle is doing it at places so you can contrast a realistic approach to the videogame. What is the goal for this LP? 1. Win all the silverware it is possible for Newcastle to win (Premier League title, the FA Cup, the Champions League, the somewhat pointless Club World Cup, the extremely pointless Carabao Cup, the almost totally pointless Community Shield, and the actually pointless European Super Cub) within 5 seasons 2. Ideally have a single season where we win everything 3. Spend as much money as humanly possible 4. See if it is actually possible to bankrupt the club by shovelling money into a transfer fees incinerator. I'm going to call it once we've done 5 seasons or we've actually won everything. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 03:18 on Feb 15, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 03:11
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| # ? May 4, 2024 22:13 |
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If you don't affiliate with a Saudi pro team for the sole purpose of threatening your players with banishment
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Feb 15, 2022 03:19
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time to see if you can actually bankrupt the state of saudi arabia
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Feb 15, 2022 03:24
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looking forward to the hoi4 part of this LP
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Feb 15, 2022 03:47
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habeasdorkus posted:If you don't affiliate with a Saudi pro team for the sole purpose of threatening your players with banishment Early mechanics preview: You can only select affiliates once you've been at the club for long enough. In my test play throughs the board is all in on Asia generally, and China specific and the USA for prestige and shirt sales and does not give a single poo poo about anywhere else.
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Feb 15, 2022 05:10
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I'm sure the PRC is willing to do a tyranny swap, so I expect to see our recalcitrant players headed to Xianjing FC.
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Feb 15, 2022 05:18
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 The traditional place to start with any Football manager LP of any sort is the squad screen. However, the Newcastle squad is objectively terrible, so while I will come back to them we are going to start with the place that matters - the budget.  I've highlighted the relevant bits - we've got 250 million in the bank, we have a transfer budget of 200 million, and we're not failing fair play regulations for either the premier league or the UEFA champions league. The details of this will become relevant, but basically: * The Premier League will let you lose 15 million quid a year, and the owners can invest 90 million that counts as 'income' Also, failing FFP has the consequence of losing 5 points which matters but not really. * UEFA for the Champions league (the big whole of europe competition we haven't actually qualified for yet) will let you lose much less at 4.5 million, and only lets the owners invest 21 million. Failing FFP results in you getting banned from the contiential football which is an unmitigated disaster for a plethora of reasons. As you can see, the UEFA regulations are much stricter, but fortunately, dodgy sponsorship deals count as income regardless, so we'll constantly be in a FFP crisis but mysteriously we'll get sponsorship deals at the last minute, and then pass! Every time! I wonder how that will happen. The other relevant bit is under the transfer budget you can see our wage budget - we are allowed to spend 2.1 million pounds a week, we're currently spending 1.5 million a week, and we have a 'committed spend' of 2.5 million pounds a week. This is because I have already made some transfer offers, and the contracts we've offered are counted as 'committed spend' To give you some context, 2.1 million a week isn't actually big money for the premier league - the top clubs are spending over 6 million a week. So we are actually going to have to be smart(ish) about our spending to be competitive at the top. Until I can get the board to give me some more money anyway. With that, lets move onto the ...squad.  These are the players I wouldn't mind to much if I don't manage to sell them, which isn't many, and hopefully most of them will be backups (the players in grey are the made up players the game adds to ensure you always have at least 11 dudes, and they suck. Its like when one of the maintence techs ends up suiting up for an NHL team because all the goalies broke). I'll do a more fulsome profile of these dudes in a future post as some of them are quite interesting and some of them might not be here in a week in which case I won't bother, but let's talk about the fate rest of Newcastle's 25 professional first team footballers.  I've demoted them to the under 23s side. This is for a couple of reason A) While most of them are actually tremendously talented footballers in the grand scheme of things, in real life these guys were stuck in the relegation zone in the premier league until 90 million pounds of reinforcements arrived. They are not good enough for a mid table premier league side, let alone a side that wants to win everything - I need to get rid of them. B) Some of them are RIDICULOUSLY overpaid. Joelinton is a terrible contract and the game actually makes him look worse than he is in real life, Jonjo Shelvey is my personal nemesis, and there are others. A big issue with getting rid of these guys is that a bunch of them will have to take pay cuts, which they (understandably) don't want to do. C) Removing them to the u23 lets me have a much clearer picture of where the senior team is at D) Players who have been demoted to the u23 are much more likely to accept a transfer offer and leave, which I really, really want to do. The downside is that it can damage their value a bit, but we'll see how we go. Some of them will bounce in and out of the first team as I try and sell them but they probably won't appear on the pitch for the senior team ever again. I've also transfer listed all of them, and I've transfer listed everyone else in the u23s, and I've axed most of the u18s as well. The bottom line on these guys is they cost wages and will never appear for the first team, so I want to get rid of them all and unlike the boss I cannot just terminate them. So how do we fix this mess Well, we need to start spending. Big time. Football has 'transfer windows' where you can pay to trade players between teams. We are currently in one and will use that opportunity to the max. We also have an advantage over real Newcastle in that we get our new murderous owners at the start of the preseason and get a full transfer window - they had to wait until after the transfer window shut to take control. How real petrostate teams have gone about this The real petrostate teams (Man City, PSG, and now Newcastle) have all done more or less the same thing - make 1-2 big, high profile signings a season, and then supplement that with a bunch of young, decent filler options to go around them. Newcastle in real life have signed 35 time England international Kieran Trippier and Bruno Guimaraes as the big high profile signings, poached a striker off a relegation rival, then signed a new younger CB and LB to go with them. The theory is that signing tons of new players (particularly mid season, ala Newcastle) detonates team chemistry and tactical understanding, which is counter productive. For futher (good) analysis, try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buM8npcptsc What we are going to do gently caress our team chemistry completely by signing a ton of players and pray that we can have enough team bonding seasons and training sessions before the season starts! I've also fired all the coaching staff but we will come back to that. I've already put a bunch of offers out and the problems have begun!  When I do transfer dealings I start with a sheet like this:  Yes, I really do make a spreadsheet to manage my spreadsheet simulator. I have 11 spaces in the best XI - and I want to have a backup who can provide cover for every position on the squad. I don't want a big squad as I am going to have to overpromise a bunch of players playing time to get them to sign, so I'm looking for exactly 22 players. When recruiting, you basically have 4 options: 1) Sign players whos contracts are expired. These players don't require a transfer fee (commonly known as 'leaving on a free [transfer]') and is the best way for a growing club with not much money to build up. 2) Sign young players and grow them in the club. This requires a bit of cleverness and scouting, and then you have to give the players game time so they can grow. We're going to do a lot of this, but I have to be careful because we need to be winning silverware ASAP, so while I want the kids to grow, they have to be ready to step into the crucible of the premier league right now 3) Sign players whos contracts are soon to be expiring - because they will leave for nothing soon, clubs will sell these players at cut prices, on the basis of 20 million now is better than literally nothing at the end of the season. 4) Buy established players in their prime. This just requires truckloads of cash. we have truckloads of cash, but we need so many players now we don't have the ability to spend this sort of money on 15 players. In future transfer windows though... Additionally, I want to overlay squad registration requirements on * The premier league wants us to have a minimum of 8 English players on the roster * For the champions league (which again, we have yet to qualify for, but hopefully we will this season), you need 8 players who are 'home grown' in England, known as HGN (basically played in England for 3 years before turning 21) and 4 players who are home grown club (HGC), which is players who have spend 3 years playing at our club before they turned 21. Obviously any HGC player is also HGN The other issue The other is is our reputation, or lack thereof. Under the hood the game uses a reputation score to decide how attractive your club is players. Reputation increases by winning games, winning silverware, qualifying for big competitions, playing in big competitions like the champions league, playing in nationally televised matches, and, critically having high reputation players on your squad. The problem is that the reputation mechanic is lagging - while WE know that Newcastle is going to be a kickass club once I've finished spending 650 million quid, the players don't know that, and therefore lots of players won't join our club because they think of Newcastle as a poo poo yoyo club that bounces around the bottom of the premier league table and in the championship. One thing we can do help right now is sign high rep players players too boost the clubs standing in the eyes of other people we'd like to recruit, so this is going to be a factor in the recruitment strategy. The next post will be what I'm doing in the transfer market to try and deliver against this. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 01:13 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 11:39
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Jonjo Shelvy is everyone's nemesis.
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Feb 15, 2022 15:15
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The first few updates are going to be at a crawl in game time, I am doing a lot of stuff to try and get the team together and time is off the essence, because we have 5 weeks to recruit all these players, teach them our tactics and get them to gel as a squad before we have to start winning games in the Premier League. I haven't even talked to the players yet. The firesale begins: In addition to the first team all rans I'm literally trying to sell every u23 and u18 player at the club, because they suck. It won't make a big difference, but it does accomplish two objectives A) getting them off the wages bill and b) freeing up my u23 coaches to work with the senior team. Neither of these will have a big effect, but none of those guys are going to make it with Newcastle so I may as well. I'm trying to sell them all with sell on profit clauses where Newcastle will get a big % of any future transfer profit made off the player if my evaluation of them is wrong. My target is 40% but some players have gone out the door with less. For the senior team players being sold, you can see these are loan agreements.  A 'new' 'feature' in FM2022 is that clubs are much more likely to offer and accept loan agreements like this with a mandatory or optional future fee in them. I don't love it - I want the money upfront, but in the case of Frederic here I doubt I will get a better offer because he's 32 so he's going out the door. Everton has made a similar offer for Jamal Lewis, but I'm going to try and negotiate that to a straight transfer or wait for a better deal because he's 23 and worth a lot more. On the ins.. it's going.  Couple of clubs are trying to hold out for money money to see if they can get a better deal for Lodi (who I don't need if Davis comes, though if he does say yes I might pull the plug on Davis) and Araujo from someone else, and a ton of players have told me to piss off, most hurtfully: Jude Bellingham - this guy is going to be one of the best players in football in a couple of years, he's English so he's very useful from a squad registration perspective and I think he's a very handsome man. I really want him, but he thinks Newcastle sucks. I'm going to try again in a couple of weeks when my new signings are on board and hope he's more receptive Iliax Moriba - This guy just has ridiculously huge upside and would make a very dynamic central midfield duo with Bellingham, so I will go back in for him later. But this does mean we are going to have to move on to plan B in the central midfield which is Dani Olmo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DukiwMAL3GM and Giovanni Reyna https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-pXfj_TfTQ Jude, Reyna and Moriba are all 18 year olds, but they have the quality today to immediately start for us. Dani is a much more polish product at 23 and a creative player, but this is my general recruiting strategy at this point - sign bodies that I know will be decent to start and get better over the 5 year horizon of the save, and then try and fit them all on the pitch later. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 15, 2022 23:45
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Jonjo Shelvey actually rules tyvm
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Feb 16, 2022 00:42
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Jonjo Shelvey actually rules tyvm jonjo shelvey is like if you cloned iniesta but he only got the recessive genes.
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Feb 16, 2022 01:02
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:Jonjo Shelvey actually rules tyvm He's paid SEVENTY GRAND A WEEK SEVENTY loving GRAND and he won't leave!!! Probably because no other club on the planet would be stupid enough to pay Jonjo Shelvey SEVENTY GOD drat THOUSAND POUNDS A WEEK In good news, the transfers are happening, other than a major body blow with my star striker prospect Adeyemi getting refused a work permit, We now have 4 new CBs, 2 RBs, a LB, 4 of our 6 midfielders including noted square jawed english man Declan Rice, a LW and a RW, so if I can get a striker, some more wingers and a Jude Bellingham finally gives in to giant sacks of petro cash we might even have a team. I'm running out of money though - only 60 million left because I had to move some to wages because JONJO SHELVEY WILL NOT gently caress OFF
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Feb 16, 2022 01:21
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Finance Check: 588 million pounds spent With our first match, about to kick off, I figured I'll run through the failings of the transfer window so far, who I have signed, and what the squad looks like for the coming season  I'll do a full tactical explainer later, but the basics you need to know is this diagram shows how our team lines up defensively. Under each player icon, there is a role shown with an abbreviation e.g. BPD, CM, RPM , and a mentality next to that, which can either be At (attacking) Su (Support) De (defend) and Au (Automatic). The combination of role and mentality is how a player will move on attack - for example our Centrebacks are 'Ball Playing Defenders' with a Defensive mentality. They will try and carry the ball forward when in possession, but will remain in a position they can get back towards the goal. Conversely our Inverted Wing Backs are on attack, and in attack they will look to get very far foward - as far as the edge of the opponents box, sacrificing defensive stability to do so. I've got such aggressive wing backs because I have exceptional players in those positions and want to give them license to be aggressive. The squad that is going to start our first match against Watford. It's not our best XI, but you can see all the yellow FT next to players.. showing a lack of fitness, so some of them I don't want to plunge into a full game time just yet. How to read a Player Page As we plunge into these squad profiles, I wanted to give you a guide to how to read a player page - with particular attention to the features that seperate 'information that effects the game engine' from 'information that is trying to tell you something about what is happening in the game engine' Excuse the lovely MS Paint  Red boxes show you things that have a direct mechanical effect on player performances - green boxes show things that are trying to tell you something but have no mechanical effect in and of themselves. The main thing are player attributes. These are the primary driver of player performance in the match engine. However, these are not ALL of a players attributes - there are also hidden attributes which I will show with another player later. Player attributes are displayed on a 1-20 scale, but are tracked on a 1-100 scale to allow for incremental improvement, and they are rounded up or down to create this number. They are split into three categories Technical - How good are you at things related to doing a football Mentals - How smart are the decisions you are making on the pitch Physicals - How good an athlete are you. In my view Physical >>> Technical >>> Mental. I want dudes who are fast with great pace and acceleration, ideally good jumping reach, and can dribble well. Everything else, we can figure out. Positional familiarity is left of the player attributes and says what positions are playing can play. They are displayed on a red/green traffic light system which is represented by a 1-20 scale in the underlying matches ranging from Natural (20) to Makeshift (1). Playing a player out of position is a huge impact on their performance, going from Natural to Accomplished (20 ->15) is the same as knocking 4 points off someone's acceleration. Below that is the first blatant lie. Role suitability is attempting to show you how good a player is at each role... but this has no mechanical effect in game. Its just your assistant managers opinion. Feel free to ignore it (I will!) Right of the player attributes are the coaches summary of your current ability and future ability our of 5 in stars (white stars represent uncertainity, so Bellingham here is a 4-5 star potential player). In the underlying mechanics, this is modelled as 'Current Ability' and 'Potential Ability' both of which are out of 200, though someone with 1s in every attribute would have -100 current ability. 150 is a very good score, 170-180 plus is world class, 195-200 is best player in the world. Preferred foot is.. exactly that. It can be 'either' in the case of ambidextrous players. Below that are Personality and Media Description. These are giving you clues about hidden information that I will come back to, but here all you need to know is a Wonderkid is someone who is guaranteed to have a PA over 150. Goal Keepers: Our two goalies are Dubravka and Freddie Woodman.  Dubravka is.. fine and a replacement that is substantially better would cost a fortune, and we have bigger problems elsewhere.  Woodman is cheapish, HGC and English, thus making him the perfect backup goalie. If only he didn't have to start this game. Right Back (RB): Our right backs are Kieran Tripper and Kevin Mbabu.  Kieran is an aging superstar, who is high reputation, relatively cheap to sign as he wanted to come back to England, and English so he's helpful for squad registration. We'll have to move him on in a couple of years - Right and Left back are the most physically demanding positions in the game due to the amount of distance you have to cover. The typical premier league RB/LB is 24-26, so Trippier is old for the position.  Mbabu is a former Newcastle player we've brought back to the club because he's fast, cheap, and home grown at the club for squad registration purposes. Ironically neither of these dudes are starting today because they are both recovering from training injuries so one of our CBs is covering. Starting Centre Back (CB): We are lining up with 2 centrebacks, and I have a total of 5 at the club. This is probably failing 1 of the transfer window so far - I really don't need so many CBs. Failing 2: All of the centrebacks we have except one wants to be on the right....  Nicholas Sule is our key man defensively. One of the oldest players in the squad at 25, he's very big, very fast, very good at aerial challenges and can lay down a hard tackle when required. He's also got good utility and can play RB if required, and he's fast enough to do that well. We got him cheap because his contract is expiring. Unfortunately he is a naturally right sided CB as is...  Araujo is a very expensive spanish man who I think I shouldn't have signed but we are here now. He is an awesome centreback and will develop a lot, so he's not a 'bad signing' I'm just worried about the opportunity costs. Also right sided. Backing those two up are:  Nikola, a very large Serbian in the same mold as Sule, except not quite as good. Destined to be our 3rd choice CB  Lacelles - the current club captain. He's very difficult to sell because he's such an influential player. I need for him to decide to move on naturally because he;s not playing enough.  Frances here was an impulse buy. At 19, he's really one for the future, but he can play all along the back line so we'll give him a bunch of game time. Left Back (LB): Transfer window failure 3 - I haven't signed a backup left back. Fortunately Mbabu and Frances can mostly play LB so they will probably get a lot of reps here. Fortunately the left back we do have is...  absolutely amazing. Davies is already one of the best players in the world at his position, and at only 20 years old he's only going to get better. One of the big reasons I'm playing with such aggressive corner backs is so Davies can bomb forward and do good things for the club. Defensive Midfielder (DM): Failure 4 - we don't have a backup DM in yet. Joao Moutinho can cover here, and Ive got some good options just need some more cash. Fortunately the guy we do have is amazing  Declan Rice is already the vice captain and will take over as captain when Lacelles moves on. He's just really good all around, can play in the midfield, defensively or at CB, buckets of potential, very high profile player, and is English / HGN. Needs a backup still though. CM: I haven't decided on final roles here, but here is who've we got  We've already taked about him, but he's young, he's amazing (Seriously watch this video of Bellingham at 16: https://twitter.com/danamalt/status/1481077403162185728 hat tip to Itoh) he's English and I love him. Will probably become the Vice Captain when Lacelles moves on.  Willock is one of the OG Newcastle players. Long term he's going to be a backup, but he's young, very fast, reasonably priced and can do a job for us. He's not HGC though, which is a bummer.  Paulinho is the first of our old man signings. He's a bit over the hill, but hes made 56 appearances for Brazil, can play at this level, and can provide a positive locker room influence only exceeded by  Joao Moutinho is another old man signing - but his amazing 'Model Citizen' personality (best possible personality, probably), and great ability on corners/free kicks will keep him hanging around for ages. He is also a long time man for the Portugese national team and all the kids in the dressing room will look up to him... and emulate him and acquire parts of his awesome personality. Now we move into the attacking positions, where I have absolutely binned it as a result of overspending on Bellingham, Davies and Araujo. Left and Right Wingers: We have two similar signings in this category. I'd love one more, and I've got options in mind but here is where we are:  Musiala is young, fast and has stacks of potential. Also, he's a product of the Chelsa academy, so will be home grown nation.  Noni Madueke was recommended by a staff member and is a great signing - young, fast and has stacks of potential. He's also English and will be HGN for us in a few years too. Love it. Both of them can play either wing, so expect to see a fair bit of switching around depending on what roles I am using. Backing them up is an orginal Newcastle player!  Saint-Maximin is very similar to the other two just older and with less potential. He can play both wings and striker so will get a lot of game time. These three can rotate around and will be excellent for us long term. Centre Forward: MY BIGGEST FAILURE  Callum Wilson is a funny player. He has a history of being massively overrated in Football Manager, and this edition is no exception. Why is he my biggest failure? Well, he's one of the Newcastle orginial players... who've has been replaced in real life! I've actually done worse than actual Newcastle here. I've got to sign another striker and soon - that is the number 1 priority. We don't have a backup for him, so Callum will become the backup when we sign someone new. With that, that's the squad. (well, except Fraser and Almirion but I hope to get rid of them soon), and that takes us to our first match. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 03:57
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Finance Check: 606 million pounds spent Played the opening 3 league games of the season, and our Carabao Cup game against Peterborough. We have quite a soft schedule with three bottom half teams: Newly promoted Watford, perennial relegation battlers Burnley, championship team Peterborough and lower mid table Wolves. This is ideal as it gives the team a change to gel, learn to speak English, learn the tactic (which I change constantly) and get in form before we play someone tough.  The scoreline flattered us a bit. Two brilliant passes by Bellingham had us up 2-0 by the 12th minute, then the wheels came off a bit - our defence was awful in this game. Our best goalie is out injured and our backup (Woodman) doesn't speak the same language as the two centrebacks.. who cannot talk to each other either. Also, they'd never played together prior to this match, so some teething problems are probably to be expected. At this point, two things happened A) Callum Wilson, our only real striker got injured B) This prompted me to make some panic buys. First, I accidentally signed the amazing Karim Adeyemi  Except he couldn't get a work permit. So I swore and cancelled the transfer. Except I didn't and I only noticed later when I had Karim hanging around the training pitch which caused me to swear again. He's out on loan for a season and will hopefully get a permit when he comes back.  Thinking I needed another striker still, I then signed Benjamin Sesko, who is very tall and very raw to back up Callum Wilson. He's got stratospheric potential and is reliably excellent so I'm optimistic he will pan out. When Adeyemi comes back I will sell Callum. In the mean time, he's starting. This then brought us to our next game, against Burnley. We should be strong favourites to in this and I was optimistic in the dressing room pre game.  We played like garbage, but clearly MBS's stooges had paid off the normally very reliable Burnely Centreback James Tarkowski. Tarkowski made a mess of a clearance off the goal line to pass it directly to the feet of Madueke for a tap in on an open goal, then 5 minutes later scored an own goal. After that the match was a total fizzer, Burnley have troubles scoring at the best of times and we were totally cold. That said, we got the 3 points regardless so huzzah. Next up was the Carabao Cup game against Peterborough  We bludgeoned them to death. They didn't get a shot away until the 88th minute. Our defenders are starting to gel by this point and Milenkovic is rapidly approaching signing of the season status, he is third in the premier league on average rating(!). One of the goals by Sule was from open play, which was fairly surprising. Finally our hardest challenge yet - mid table Wolves, though we are at home.  We absolutely torched them - our team is so physically big with Sesko/Sule/Araujo/Milenkovic that we just overpowered them in set pieces. The first and third goals both from corners. Sule, Sesko and Milenkovic's foreheads are major goalscoring weapons. That brings us to the transfer window. I've got a few more signings in progress so we'll get to 650 million for the window, but I've failed at moving on a lot of newcastle players, so hopefully we can do more in the summer.
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Feb 16, 2022 12:08
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Looks like you got off to a pretty hot start, signing a Slovenian striker is very on brand for members of our discord. The Adeyemi situation is a classic for brexit, you'll get him next season if he plays regularly in germany.
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Feb 16, 2022 13:30
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Finance Update: 653 million pounds spend We made some signings that were only slightly panicking ItohRespectArmy posted:Looks like you got off to a pretty hot start, signing a Slovenian striker is very on brand for members of our discord. The start has been great, but we're not top of the table (I will come back to this next update). Jeremy Doku was unironically on the shortlist. My scouts loving love him. This update will cover up the runup to the transfer deadline, which included some signings, and a whole bunch of 'we tried' starting with:  Haaland here is maybe the best striker in the world, I put in a huge offer for him (130 million all told). This was accepted... and he won't sign because our club reputation sucks. BUT, you can ask his friends to go talk to him and see if they can get him to join the club, and Jude Bellingham is his mate so we try that and...  Blast. He's almost certainly going to sign for Manchester City and haunt us the next 5 seasons. We then picked up a Brazilian winger on a free loan:   He's currently being paid 110k a week by Real Madrid to play for us, which is an excellent piece of business. I don't care about the optional future fee thing, I tried to negotiate that down far enough that we might actually buy him but they wouldn't budge. Always worth checking loan listed players as deadline day approaches and seeing if any of them can be picked up on a free. Then transfer deadline approaches and the excellent YELLOW SCREEN new feature appears.  You get this cool yellow skin during deadline day. The main thing about deadline day is it makes players and clubs more willing to make moves, which is great because it means I might be able to pick up some players. At this point I'm looking for another central midfielder and a backup left back. So I then immediately start loving things up. First, I try to sign a whole bunch of slightly older guys who want join, particularly my assistant managers (cheers TFLlama) excellent recommendation Ivan Ilic. They all turn me down because of club reputation issues. Then in desperation I sign another kid, 18 year old Reyna Giovanni, who is an excellent young attack minded central midfielder who will be a cornerstone of the US Men's team for years to come on very cheap wages (37k!)  With the central midfield problems solved, I move on to my left back issue. I sign a young left back with excellent potential, and then remember why I was trying to sign an older guy in centre midfield.  Due to loving BREXIT, we can only sign 6 u21 players from abroad a season, so this transfer gets canned by the board and there is nothing I can do about it. RIP. You can bet money I will also forget about this rule literally every season from now on. This does have the extremely funny effect of completely destabilising Renan at his club:  So we will be coming back to get him later. While I'm trying to do something about this, I'm also trying to offload all the remaining Newcastle OG players, which results in me swearing at my computer.  I completely fail at this. Why won't you leave you completely rubbish human beings. He's in the u23s, not registered for the squad, and won't be playing under any circumstances. With that, the transfer window slams shut:  Overall review of the transfer window: 6/10. My biggest issue is I didn't get a striker who is elite right now to start ahead of Callum Wilsom. Adeyemi is that guy, but he's not quite ready. I binned signing Andrea Belotti who also could have been that guy in the we tried phase. Everything else is pretty sorted, we've got two great young wingers, Rodrygo behind them for free, and Fraser/Alimiron are still around to be the 4th/5th choice. In the midfield we've got a really quality young set of starters: Jude Bellingham, Declan Rice, and Giovanni Reyna. Behind them are some quality backups with Joao Moutinho, Paulinho and Joe Willock. The defensive line is absolutely stacked: CB with Sule, Milenkovic and Aujuao, RB Tripper/Mbabu, LB: Davis, and Frances/Mbabu is going to be backing him up. All the defenders guys are quite effective going forward or in set pieces and that will be a key part of the team's goalscoring output. Other than the striker, the biggest failing is the inability to sell more of the Newcastle players. While I did get rid of quite of few of them including Shelvey, this has been quite frustrating as I'm still holding on to pieces like Ryan Fraser and Almirion who you can usually reliably sell for good money. There is another 30-40+ million of transfer income still here that just won't go. I'm hoping I can sell them in the winter transfer window and pick up another good player. Hows the FFP looking? Pretty bad  Maybe the worst I've ever seen it. Will be interesting to see if I can get bailed out! One of the reasons I'm mad about the failure to sell the Newcastle players is that the board will almost certainly cut how transfer revenue I get to retain for the next transfer window to help with the debt. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 23:13
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those are some derby county tier FFP numbers 
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Feb 17, 2022 01:41
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September update: Status at the start of the month, 2nd in the league, 653 million pounds spent After our hot start and a few new signings, its time to try and continue our excellent league form. Currently Liverpool are ahead of us in the table on goal difference, and a bunch of clubs are unbeaten. We really want to qualify for the Champions league this season because: A) It will massively help our club rep, which makes signing better players easier B) It will pump in money to the club C) It will mean we play more matches, which is critical for giving our young players enough time to develop. Overall, this means its more or less do or die for a top 4 finish. A quick note before we begin - I'm still not in the habit of saving screenshots properly so I have had to go back and fill in some stuff. You'll see the date change a fair bit. My bad. The match previews are lost to time and will be appearing in later updates.  Our calendar before the international break after the Manchester United game. This continues our incredibly soft schedule - all these teams are in the bottom half of the table when we play them, and only Manchester United has a history as a 'big club' even if they are in a huge form slump so far this season. Our first game is Tottenham Hotspurs at our St James Park. We should be winning this  And we almost bottle it - very poor quality finishing by our lads and an absolute wondergoal by Spurs where one of there guys makes a 1/100 shot, chipping the keeper and multiple defenders means it takes us until the the match is nearly winding down for Joao Moutinho to give us a screamer of a goal from outside of the box. This goal goes on to be 2nd in the goal of the month competition. Next up is Southampton away. In FM2022 a weirdly high proportion of the time they get bought by an oil tycoon and become a superclub, but that hasn't happened yet. They are still a bottom half quality team.  We absolutely rock them - Musiala is in red hot form, and scoring a hat trick before half time sealed the game. The last goal should have been an assist to Tripper as the goalie could only parry his shot and Musiala was lurking to blast it into the corner. Then we come to the Carabao cup, where we are playing Oldham Athletic - a team in League 2. This is the level below the level the below the level below the Premier league and naturally they have absolutely no chance. We will be playing a rotated team and that shouldn't have any impact on the outcome.  The game was rather more exciting than it had any right to be with poor defending and goal keeping us costing us, but our attacking play was more than enough to keep us out of trouble. Oldham will be happy with the ticket revenue they get though. I want to touch on the analytics in the game that I can show in more detail later. The below shows the average position of the players during the match - you can see Newcastle is pushed quite high up the pitch while Oldham is sat well back. Particularly note where our goalie is - he's working as a sweeper keeper and has a license to come well out of the box to collect the ball when it gets cleared, helping our centrebacks remain pushed up.  After that, Everton away. Everton are a team with a surprising amount of money managed by absolute muppets. If they could deploy the cash effectively, they would be a force to be reckoned with. The AI will do this over time and the club will improve, but you still have the idiot ball squad here at the moment.  The key man to watch is Dominic Calvert Lewin, who is a great striker and has an exceptional and daring fashion sense that is an outlier in the world of football. I love him.  We go 2-0 up, they get a man sent off and we are cruising the rest of the way. I'll do a bit of an explainer why so many cards are happening in our games later, but the short answer is A) I set get stuck into tackles on, and our team is young so somewhat reckless and ill disciplined. B) Our team are all really fast and skillful dribbling the ball, and the #1 to get a card is to make a bad tackle on someone dribbling past you. Both that guys yellow cards where for late tackles on someone getting past him. As a result we are amongst the league leaders in fouls given and taken away. Quick refresher on the league standings prior to the big game against Manchester united at home. Liverpool has dropped points for the first time this season, giving us an opportunity to try and put some distance between us and the pursuit.  In lieu of a match preview, I give you this news article  This is our bigger challenge by far and a win is vital here to demonstrating we can be a real contender for European places this season, and the reputation boost will help to.  We absolutely shell them. They couldn't get any momentum going until right at the end of the game because our midfield was pressing them so hard they couldn't progress the ball out of the back. Later on they switched to trying to go over the top and our guys were getting very tired, but its too little to late. Now we have an international break before our next games against relegating candidates Norwich and league title challengers Arsenal. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Feb 17, 2022 |
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Feb 17, 2022 05:08
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Hmm, clearly we're not spending enough money if other teams can still score goals against us.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:08
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The soft schedule is masking the teams' issues quite a bit - we've only played 1 top half team. There is a bit of a quality gap between us at the top 4 though. Tactics Interlude I'm going to try and work in a few breaks to talk about game mechanics, and the obvious place to start is tactics. The thing with the tactics screen is that its A) The best way to look at your squad despite being called tactics and not squad. B) Not always clear about what its trying to tell you. You spend a lot of time between matches looking at this screen. How do tactics work? Tactics are comprised of three parts 1) The positions - where do players start on the pitch when out of possession? 2) The roles and duty - what does the player look to do in attack and defence from their position? 3) The team instructions - as a collective unit how is the team been told to play 4) Individual instructions - The previous 3 points are the team gameplan, but individuals can be given additional instructions as well. This update will focus on the first two, then I'll come back for team instructions in the future. Individual instructions I will probably leave out. The below examples are from my single player save where I am starting with no experience and no football background and trying to get to a huge club. Currently I am managing Sunderland in the championship.  Here is a tactics screen with no MS Paint scrawl. The left column is the instructions and team mentality (Very attacking in this example). The pitch with the shirts with numbers standing on it is the tactic showing team positions and role, and all the stuff on the right is the team roster.  Here is a version with some MS paint to try and point you at a specific things. Specifically note that the "BPD - DE" is the role - duty (I accidentally call it mentality in the screenshoot) of the position. Under that is the player name. Position vs Role The most important thing to know about tactics is that the position is just the physical location they will stand on the pitch when you don't have possesion and nothing in particular is happening. What they will DO, particularly when you have possession is determined by the instructions and role. To give a worked example of that, here is the tactic I showed you earlier on the pitch:  You can see everyone standing in their appointed defensive positions that roughly aligns with what you see on the tactics board - our goalie is just clearing the ball so we will move into attack, but this is the basic defensive layout. This is pretty standard, and you'll see I'm using something similar with Newcastle, though it will look very different on the tactics board. Transitioning to Attack I'm not going to go through all the roles and mentality in football manager [url]https://www.guidetofm.com/tactics/roles-duties/] go here if you want that[/url] but to give you enough information to read this. The 'Advanced Fowards" on attack are trying to push the enemy team back and make runs off the shoulder over the last man to get a through ball and secure a 1v1 with the goalie. The guys on the left and right will look to drift a bit wider to create some space. In the midfield we have 'Vol - At.' Vol stands for Volante, a midfielder that looks to get very far forward in attack. You'll see these guys charge forward when we have position. The DLP - Su is a deep lying playmaker in support. He will look to hang back a bit more and make passes through to his 5(!) runners -the Volantes and the Advanced Forward. This is quite hard for teams to deal with as there are a lot of bodies going forward. AT the back we have the ball playing defenders on defend (the central defenders). They will try and carry the ball out of Defence and make progressive passes forward, but for the most part they will hang well back and protect our goals. As you can well imagine, all this attacking is going to leave HUGE spaces between the central defenders and all the attacking bodies. To fill that space, we have the IWB-At. Normal wing backs will move up the sides of the pitch and create attacking width. However, a modern trend is to have the wing backs instead tuck inside towards the centre of the pitch to give you some more solidity in the midfield. And we are going to want that to try and fill the spaces vacated in midfield by our attacking Volante's. Here's a screenshot of that in action:  You can see the AFs are still pushing as far foward as they can, and the VOL + DLP have formed a neat triangle behind them. The triangles are really important and a key objective of any tactic as they enable passing between your players. On the left you can see our defenders hanging around at the half way line, and on the left you can see the IWB is tucking into the midfield. Obviously thats not happening on the right, but nothing is perfect - he's been shown wide by the opposing defenders. Whats the objective of a tactic The basic idea of most tactics is to create a localised overload so you can get a man advantage in a particular area of the pitch, giving your extra man time and space to do something clever. Importantly, you can see in the box that we have created that advantage! Our Volantes have burst past their markers - the one on the right is facing the wrong way and isn't going to turn around in time, and the one on the left is trailing behind his man. Even if he does catch up, our man will be able to keep this defender behind him (same concept as sealing off a defender in basketball) if the cross comes through infront of him. Now our IWB with the ball just needs to put in a cross aiming for our free man, or better yet space that our free man can run onto and we should be able to get a quality shot away. We also have a lot of useful passing triangles set up:  You can see some of the triangles are blocked by opposing players, but not all of them. If Our IWB can get it to our Volantes, they will be well positioned to either shoot themselves, or play a through ball to one of the AFs. The reason the throughball might work well despite all the AFs being marked is that if the ball is played to one of our Volante, someone will have to come to stop him having time to take a clean shot on goal, just breaking up the defensive line. The game gives you lots of tools to help with this, like this passing map.  Key takeaway It's really important when doing a tactic to visualize where your team are going to go when in possession, remember that basic principle of trying to trying to create an overload so you have a free man and consider your passing triangles. How does this relate to Newcastle? Well, we are doing basically the same thing, just with a different defensive setup.. sort of. I'm still tinkering a bit. I'll come back to it once I'm a bit more settled.
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Feb 19, 2022 04:02
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oh hell yeah, triangles chat.
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Feb 19, 2022 04:51
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The Wobbles October-November update: 2nd in the league, 653 million pounds spent So we've got off to a super hot start, but one of the downsides of such a young squad is that they don't cope well with the pressure from, say, playing away from home while constantly being in the media about how you're overperforming . Let's see how this goes then shall we.  The task ahead. Arsenal and Chelsea are big clubs, but a bit down from the level of Liverpool/Man City/Manchester United (atleast, in the game). If we are going to be in the champions league this season we need to be winning these games, particularly at home. Norwich is nailed into the relegation zone, while Brighton/Leicester/Brentford/Aston Villa are all top half type teams. We should be hoping to win almost all of these.  I forgot this one in the last update, but a full on injury crisis is brewing  and brewing  In positive news, our kids are winning plaudits for how much arse they are kicking.  as am I. Quick check in with the club vision before we play Norwich with a partly rotated side as we should easily beat them. We have quite a bit of headroom in wages, so I can afford some more expensive signings  Everything is looking good here, onto the match!  Well, that did not go according to plan. We were unlucky not to win, and there was some hubris for playing a rotated team, but not that unlucky. Once we conceding the early goal meant we were pushing poo poo uphill all match. No-one other than Trippier really had any impact. Because I forgot the pre-game email for the must win game at home vs Chelsa, have a look at what I spend most of my time between matches dealing with.  I'm spending a fuckload of time on man management in the background. The issue is I promised everyone a heap of playing time when signing them all, which obviously cannot happen someone has to be on the bench, so I'm slowly walking all those promises back one notch at a time to try and avoid pissing everyone off. Onto Chelsa  Well, that was a return to form after that lovely game vs Norwich. Everyone was firing. The Woodman assist in particular was cracking, just a perfect pass to St Maximin who ran off the shoulder of the last defender into space, then slammed it home. A great way to start the scoring 2 minutes in and after that Chelsa just looked broken. Because I forgot the pregame email again, we drew Arsenal in the mostly pointless Carabao cup. I want to stay in this though as it will give me more minutes of competitive football to share around the squad to stop people complaining about playing time.  Onto the match - we are away which isn't ideal, but we should win this if we're a champions league side.  gently caress my life - even unluckier than the Norwich match. Our entire attack went to sleep, I'm try a 4-2-3-1 to try and get some more men forward and that doesn't help, Musiala and Rice played like garbage, nothing good happened. Real question at the moment is are we the team that absolutely shelled Chelsea, or are we this team? In the buildup to a must win game vs Brighton who are sitting midtable, this happens to my first choice goalie.  In a way it doesn't matter which team we are because we keep picking up these injuries and its a real bastard. Freddie Woodman is playing a lot of football because Dubravka is constantly getting injured. Freddie Woodman is not a premier league standard goalie. I need to get a new goalie in January.  Davies getting send off completely cripples us - you can see on the xG story when it happens and we just completely fall to pieces. I make changes to go with a 4-2-3 but we have no desire what so ever. They are lucky to win I guess, but it felt inevitable in that second half. Next game is at Leicester. I go shout at some people for training badly, tell everyone that trained well they trained well, cross my fingers and hope. Leicester are floating around mid table, so again, we should be winning.  Playing at home, so we're favourites to win...  And we completely shell them. This team is so inconsistent and it is driving me crazy. Musiala intercepts a lazy pass out of the back to open the scoring and we never look back, everyone is firing on all cylinders. That said, Maudeuke gets strechered off at the 50th minute which is concerning.  FUCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK. He even loses two points of agility as a result of this poo poo. It's a a huge setback for a young player, not only does he lose 2-3 months as a result of the injury and rehab, then he has to 'earn back' the lost agility before he starts progressing. Sets a 19 year old back 6 months easy. I don't give a poo poo about the older guys getting hurt but this really sucks.  Finally some good news - Adeyemi has done enough in a fairly uninspiring spell in the Bundesliga to get a work permit. He's coming back home in the next transfer window - that is the earliest I can recall him. Next up, Brentford  We are in first, they are 14th, we should win this at a canter.  I'm dicking around with the 4-2-3-1 again as a result of playing personnel available, just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.  I would love to know what Sesko is doing here. Is he asleep? Has someone bought a puppy to the game? I am quite mad at events at this point in the game as we are tied 1-1 despite overrunning them.  Fortunately Trippier decides he doesn't want to lose and bails us out after a brilliant move from Bellingham. One other disadvantage of kids is that they get tired more easily than older players who are more used to the rigours of international and domestic football. I'm basically just sending all these dudes on a holiday for a week as it happens so they can have a break.  Next up, Aston villa.  Somehow they are slight favourites despite being 16th. Again, we need to be winning this to stay in Champions league contention. I can see the nightmare run of matches coming up and we need a points cushion for it.  Ollie Watkins carries Aston villa to victory. Araujo getting himself sent off nails the coffin shut. Look at our average ratings though - so bad.  Look at the lads! This bodes well for next season if nothing else. Rematch vs Arsenal, but we are at home this time.  The wobbles have made us fall to 2nd, but its all ridiculously close - they can overtake us if we lose this match.  A pretty convincing performance. We shut down their attacks and have an onslaught of high quality chances at their goal. Finally, we close with a look at the league table! Despite everything we are on top. That said, the schedule has still been pretty cream puff like. We haven't played Liverpool, Man City or Leeds yet...  Next time, we play Liverpool, Man City and Leeds in a row. If we win 3, I reckon we are going to win the league. If we don't win any, we are going to struggle to be in the top 4. I'm shooting for 2 - Liverpool are an unstoppable death machine, but Leeds and City look beatable. On another note, as you can probably tell, this is my first LP. Suggestions are welcome. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 11:31 on Feb 19, 2022 |
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Feb 19, 2022 11:13
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:On another note, as you can probably tell, this is my first LP. Suggestions are welcome.  After all the FM LPs so far I'm just enjoying someone break the game over their knee
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Feb 19, 2022 13:01
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if you can include a seamless TNO interlude in your fm LP you can really do whatever, im enjoying it so far.
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Feb 19, 2022 13:04
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ItohRespectArmy posted:looking forward to the hoi4 part of this LP
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Feb 19, 2022 14:01
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Once you have reached your goal I wouldn't mind seeing what the glitch tactics and set pieces are for fm22. That plus ending by giving Newcastle increasingly large debts his the editor until they go into administration.
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Feb 19, 2022 15:57
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habeasdorkus posted:Once you have reached your goal I wouldn't mind seeing what the glitch tactics and set pieces are for fm22. That plus ending by giving Newcastle increasingly large debts his the editor until they go into administration. I might do it now - I need to talk more about tactics. The Football Manager Match Engine The football manager match engine is kept deliberately as a black box by Sports Interactive. They are cagey about how it works, and even cagier about what they are doing to improve it. What we do know is that its not had a ground up re-write for a decade or more, and probably not ever. The match engine in this excellent FM2014 LP is the same codebase as the match engine in this LP - just with piles and piles more code added ontop of it in a giant messy heap. How does it actually work? It simulates the pitch as a web of interconnected points at which a player can be. Each player is an agent. Each agent is constantly checking its tactic and instructions for what to do, overlaid with its stats. For example, when a goalie has the ball and is about to kick it out, the AI for the strikers will be trying to see if they should try to get free. It uses multifactor dice rolls with some sort of d100 system to 'test' attributes for all sorts of stuff, and tests are multi stage (for example, in a slightly simplified example, if a dude is trying to head a ball but is being contested by another dude, it will use vision to see if they can see the possible places to head the ball too, decisions and their instructions to see if they can decide where to head it, jumping reach to see if they get to it first, and then heading to see if it goes in the rightish direction) This is why player recruitment will always be the most important thing in FM. If your guys are just bigger, faster, and more technical they will get to the ball first, and be able to do something good with it. However, you the manger do have a a reasonable amount of control over what a player does on the pitch by combining A) Positions B) Roles C) Duties D) Team instructions E) Individual instructions But some facets you have no control over - final third decision making (what your players do in the last third of the pitch close to the opponents goal) is almost entirely governed by the players attributes and shared scripting amongst all player roles. You can influence where and how that entry is made to an extent by both the players and the ball which is a huge INPUT to this process, but once they are there you have to leave them to it. Understanding the evolution of the match engine The biggest thing you need to know to make a great tactic in the FM match engine is understand what the FM match engine wants you to do. Because the FM match engine is sedimentary layers of code, what the match engine wants you to do is almost always an overreaction to whatever the last iteration of the match engine was criticked about, if you want to make good tactics you need to understand the history a bit.
Tactical Dark Arts or The completely inexplicable mystery of why 4-4-2 wide diamond is a great tactic in football manager every loving year? NB: There are two parts to making an OP tactic - the tactic, and what you do with set pieces. You change these in completely separate UIs, and as far as the game is concerned they are almost entirely unrelated. This post is just talking about the tactic, and not set pieces. Any discussion of 'unfairly good' tactics in Football manager recently needs to start with Knap. Knap is.. some guy who plays a lot of football manager. They are a divisive figure in the community, but every year and every patch they crank out a zillion tactics that are 'quite good'. These tactics and their usage as 'plug and play' tactics have spawned the derogatory label 'Knaptics' (which is a great term imho). Knap makes an effort to produce a tactic that is good for all the common formations in real life football, like a 4-4-2, a 4-2-3-1 a 4-3-3 (usually a couple of these), and then some random stuff that is just whatever happens to work in the match engine this year. Pick up one of these, Liverpool will score 100-105 goals (for reference in a bunch of random sims for me they score 90-95 goals with the AI running the show) and probably win a pile of silverware. But what if we don't want to stop at 'quite good.' What if we want to win the league with an absolutely garbage team? Well, we The history of FM 'uber tactics' So a key piece of context. These uber tactics are created in 'test leagues.' In these, basically you get all of Europe's top clubs, disable injury, fatigue, blah blah blah and jam them into a 192 game a season league. Then you add a couple of generic synthetic teams to be your test dummies, and they play your tactic. Then run that league 40 times to get a huge sample size of performance of your tactic. Then you make some tweaks and you try again. For the below, I've normalized the results to a 38 game season, just like the premier league. But remember, the competition is verytough, so a generic tactic is going to have a goal difference of +0, or maybe even a bit worse. So with that said, here is the 'best' tactics through recent FM history. I've included the best tactic in the left column which includes whatever random shite people have come up with, and then the 2nd column is the best 'real football' tactic where real football is defined as a premier league team might have tried this at some point in the last 30 years. The +XX numbers are the goal difference, with obviously +0 being a mid generic middle of the road, comparable to the AI tactic.  As you can see the 'uber' tactics have steadily got worse with a blip caused by FM21 and strikerless bullshit which I will come back to in a second. Those +50 goal differences are disgusting, and you really have to see it to believe it. They take relegation candidates and make them into title challengers. If you plugged those into the hypothetical Liverpool team from before, you're not scoring 100-105 goals. You're scoring 140-160 goals or more - the all time Premier League record is 106. But that doesn't work any more. The 'best' tactics are still very good, and they'll cause you to overperform, but its more taking Norwich (a team likely to get relegated with normal tactics) and getting them out of the drop zone with a bit of breathing room. So you're telling me there is no dark arts any more Nah, there is, but its just not as much as a big deal as it used to be. The same approach to get to a busted tactic still works, just the ceiling you reach is a lot lower. How do you get to a busted tactic into Football manager A) Identify what the match engine wants you to do. In this case its overload the midfield while having some attacking threat wide. B) What are 'OP' roles/duty combinations. Roles govern what each player does during the match, and some of them are more favourable than others in a given iteration of the match engine. In this match engine, there are a couple of likely candiates. I've done a bit of research for you here by surveying the most common roles in the 'best' tactics identified by tactics testing.
What about wingers and wing backs you cry? These two are related. Inverted Wing Backs on Attack are by far the most popular choice, because they tuck into the midfield and help give you that critical midfield overload. If you are doing that, you need that deep and wide crossing threat, so you need generic wingers, on support or attack. If you're not doing that because you are using inside forwards or Inverted wingers (the 2nd and 3rd most popular choice), you need wing backs on support. C) What are the best team mentalities? The team mentalities are are Very Defensive, Defensive, Cautious, Balanced, Positive, Attacking, Very Attacking. Your team mentality intersects with everything else that is happening in the game in a variety of ways. For example, if you have the middle option selected on the 5 position tempo slider, but change your team mentality from Balanced to very attacking, the tempo of the team will markedly increase (despite you not touching that slider). This occurs on literally everything that has a slider. Additionally, the 'gaps' between the mentalities are not even. The impact on for example tempo from switching to balanced to positive is smaller than switching from positive to attacking, despite that both being one notch on the mentality slide. Additionally, the mentality effects how the team positions. If you are more defensive, they will try and have more players between the ball and your own goal - even when you have the ball. Conversely, on more attacking mentalities they will try and put more players forward of the ball, between the ball and the opponents goal. This has a HUGE impact on possession and passing. Say you regain possesion of the ball in your own half. If you are very defensive, all your players will be behind the ball. So your player who just won the ball now only has 1 choice: pass backwards or sidewards. Now he's in a big jam: and hes also at his most vulnerable, if the opponent counter presses now (and all the best tactics counter press), you are likely to turn it back over, but now the opponents have picked up the ball in your half! Altenatively, your guy can just hoof it away, but the opponent will obviously collect that and immediately resume attacking again. A disaster. Conversely, if you where more attacking, you have men in-front of the ball. Now your guy who has just won the ball has someone to kick it forward to, you might get to retain possession, and this takes the pressure off your team. As a result you do not want to use defensive mentalities when you are playing against a better team! If you do you are just conceding possession to them over and over again, so they will attack you relentlessly, and if they are better than you eventually they will get through. The upshot of all of this is that you basically want to be on positive or attacking all game. D) What are the best team instructions You've got to turn on everything related to pressing. Pressing is super important to secure turnovers in dangerous areas of the pitch, prevent them having the time to make good decisions or progress the ball, and generally disrupt their style of play. You want to dynamically adjust it during the match - no point maxing out the press when you are 3 goals up. Additionally, a super high tempo with relatively short passing is important to rapidly progress the ball up the pitch with vertical tikitaka. So where does that leave us? Well, I haven't touched on individual instructions yet, and I'm going to leave the 'not football' tactics out for a minute. The best FM2022 tactics look more or less like this: 4-3-3 DM  The first of two very similar 4-3-3s. I've been using this one a lot more as I accidentally promised Paulinho that I'd use him as a Central Midfielder on Attack.. so this seemed like a good fit.  Altenative arrangement of the 4-3-3 with a more traditional midfield setup. You can see the same basic idea with the IWBs tucking in to create a 5 man midfield when going forward to overwhelm the opponents midfielders, while the two wingers provide that attacking width and threaten to cross from deep. The very 'not football' thing here is the roaming playmaker at the base of the midfield 3. Normally in 'football' you'd expect to see a much more defensively minded play here, or at least a deep lying playmaker with defensive responsibilities.... and actually a Defensive Mid on support or a DLP on support works quite well as well. Just the RPM is a bit better, probably though the tests are noisy. There are lots of other 4-3-3 combos that work to, I think my favourite is  4-2-3-1  The best 4-2-3-1 kicking around that I've seenThese aren't really glitch tactics in my opinion, though I leave that as an exercise for the reader. The not football tactics are maybe, but I will come back to the 4-4-2 diamond in another post. The big thing is that they skew much more attacking overall, and we are sacrificing defensive solidity to create attacking pressure. I'm hoping to get some screenshots of tactics from readers so I can compare and contrast, and to start that I have TFLlamas multiple Champions League winning Feynord side.  The differences that leap off the page are A) Overall team mentality! The 'best' 4-2-3-1 has attacking over a positive mentality, but that's not a huge shift B) The in possession and transition instructions are almost identical, and the variation in transition is actually because of the roles. Ball playing defenders carry the ball forward much more aggressively than Central Defenders, so it makes sense that the tactic with BPDs wants to give them the ball. C) Defensively, there is a big stylistic decision: I'm more worried about getting beaten in the middle and are happy to show them wide. @TFLlama is happy to concede attacks in the middle to prevent them from going wide. D) Roles are.. quite similar, but the differences are all adding more attacking. SS-At and AM-At are almost identical, and the backline is similar (the BPDs in the tactics pushes into the midfield), so the biggest thing is the Newcastle midfield is much more attacking minded - the DLP on support will get further forward and look to play more passes than the CM-De and similarly the Mezzala - Su is not going to be as attentive to his defensive duties as the BBM - Su, but will go forward a bit more often as a result. Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 13:51 on Feb 20, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 13:38
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That post really explains a lot of the difficulties I had with OM in my first season of the FM21 goon league. I kept trying to play much more of an earlier style of wide, crossing based style and just got mulched in the midfield. Tactically, in general, FM does still love through balls (where you progress up the pitch via a pass to your attacker streaking past the last defender and just barely staying onside). Which makes sense, since they're incredibly effective when they work IRL. But you can get them to work pretty consistently without super talented players in FM.
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Feb 20, 2022 19:56
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habeasdorkus posted:That post really explains a lot of the difficulties I had with OM in my first season of the FM21 goon league. I kept trying to play much more of an earlier style of wide, crossing based style and just got mulched in the midfield. One thing I forgot to mention is well, how much does this matter compared to other things. Straightforwardly, 10 points of goal difference is worth roughly 1) ~12 points of Current ability (measured on a 1-200 scale) 2) Morale Perfect to Okay 3) Players positional familiarity from natural (maximum) to accomplished (16 out of 20) 4) Players consistency value going from 20 (perfect) to 16(!) To try and put a real world example on this, that's taking the difference between Benzema and Robert Lewandowski at each position. Both are legendary players, Lewandowski is better but not insanely so. The other half of this question is A) how much value in these uber tactics is coming from the set piece routines (which I will come back to, but maybe 5? goals) B) that goal difference is relative to the AI, what would a human get in the same situation (maybe 3-5 goals with a good player) So using that we can say 1) A busted tactic is worth maybe 30-35 points of Current ability in FM2020. This is taking a team of relegation bait and making them all very good Premier league players. 2) the busted tactics in FM2021 are worth 40+ of current ability against a normal player, though more like 20 against an optimised tactic. This is just an overwhelming large amount. It's impossible to win against these without having something very highly optimised. It's to equivalent of taking all of Norwich's players and replacing them with world class players. Or to put it another way, it takes Jozy Altidore as of today and makes him into Zlatan Ibrahimovic at the peak of his powers. 3) the busted tactics in Fm2022 are worth, like, 6, 12 if we are being generous. In FM22, smart recruitment is going to drown out the effect of your tactics to a greater extent than ever before, particularly as hidden attributes like player consistency don't count towards current ability, so it's very possible to find those extra 4 points of consistency or whatever for your team. Similarly, morale management is of the highest importance, once you've got a decent tactic, your team's morale is going to be more significant Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Dec 25, 2022 |
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Feb 20, 2022 23:35
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December - we are good or are we great? December is a tough month. Liverpool, Leeds and Man City are 3 of the 4 teams other than us in contention for the title and champions league spots. A great month, and we look like title contenders. A bad month and we will struggle to finish in the champions league  First up, Liverpool away at Anfield Park. A big test of character, if we can get a point here we are title contenders. A win is huge.  Unfortunately we have a disaster. We are looking competitive until Paulinho gets sent off for two yellow cards within 60 seconds. I was literally trying to click on the button to lay off tackles when the second red card happened. After that, nothing good was going to happen, and whats worse is Reyna gets a twisted ankle. A low point, and we don't have much time to bounce back for another tough challenge.  Manchester united at home at St James park. This is a six point game for champions league spots, so we'd love a win.  And we get one! We are pressuring them all match, but the Davies goal was a wondergoal - he picked the ball up deep in our half and just dribbled all the way up the pitch to score from the penalty box. Crazy run by him and was decisive. He also completed every pass he made and made every tackle he attempted. Absolute heroics by him to carry us. After this the media starts calling for Pep's head.  We shouldn't have needed it though - look how far up the pitch we were, and we had so many quality chances. So a positive sign, though concerning about our finishing.  Now Leeds away - another 6 point game for champions league spots. Rice, Reyna and Madueke are out, so we are in a bit of a spot re: injuries as well.  Interested chart about passing - all the other good teams are clustered in the top right, (well, Liverpool maybe not), we-as we are in the bottom left with few passes and poor compeletion. This is for two reasons which I touched on in the tactics post. We are playing very aggressive attacking football so we are making lots of riskier forward passes, but also we just pass less and dribble more. We lead the league in dribbles by some margin.  But oh no! We collapse at the end of the game conceding a winner deep in injury time. We win the xG game but we are looking very tired towards the end of the game and the bench is thin with so many players out. Very disapointing and now we have to do some work to dig ourselves back up.  Playing against the mid table  OH. MY. GOD. I am so mad about Davies doing this! Why! WHY!  Despite Davies getting sent off we are still running all over them, but poor finishing up front means we fail to convert and don't get the 3 points. Davies gets a huge fine and promises to do better.  Okay they are in the Relegation spots, we have to win this. I give a team talk about not letting our heads drop to improve morale (very important) and the boys seem up for it.  When Edouardo scored to equalise, I was worried we were going to have another fiasco. By the end I was laughing when Sesko put the 2nd injury time goal away. A great performance to come back, but not enough productivity from our wingers. I wish Reyna was back so I could play him out there.  A christmas present from Norwich. Joelinton is having a great 2nd chance moving from striker to the midfield still with Newcastle in real life, but he's not going to do that with us.  Next up, Burnley. They are in the bottom half, we are at home, should be easy 3 points.  Well that happened. Tarkowski gave away a penalty (he must hate playing us now) in the 5th minute, we slotted that away and then just tore them to pieces with constant pressure as they had to try and come forward. Richie is an ex-newcastle player which made the 2nd red card even funnier but we were 5-0 up then so it didn't matter.  BYE.  Its the end of the year so the big awards are announced. Haaland here won literally everything he was eligable for, Lewandowski came second, and Lukaku third.  But he's not eligable for everything and Musiala won the golden boy award. 11 goals and 6 assists in 22 games is a good performance.  League table at the end of the year, just past the half way mark. We're obviously right on the league leaders and still very much in title contention. The big gap between Man U and Leicester shows where the quality is, I just want to make sure we get that champions league spot and maybe a title?
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Feb 21, 2022 11:22
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The inconsistency of this team is absolutely wild. I look forward to what it's like next season.
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Feb 21, 2022 12:18
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Rogue0071 posted:The inconsistency of this team is absolutely wild. I look forward to what it's like next season. Poor recruitment is costing me a bit - I should have paid up to get Belotti at the start of the season. It would give me another striking option for this ridiculous games where we cannot score, and he's got a model citizen personality with great consistency etc so he'd be a good mentor for the kids in attacking positions while Joao does the midfielders. The other issues are Adeyemi is my best striker and is not even playing for us at the moment, and we're just generally very young and raw so this sort of thing is going to happen. Also our goalkeeping situation is diabolical. Freddie Woodman is a fine player but he's not a top half premier league goalie, let along a champions league goalie. An upgrade in this position will be significant I think.
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Feb 21, 2022 12:47
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Sold for less than 6 months wages. Classy.
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Feb 21, 2022 13:44
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genuinely shocking moukoko didnt get the golden boy award, he usually wins it at a canter.
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Feb 21, 2022 15:20
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Good thing it's now a transfer window. Time to bring home Adeyemi, sign another striker, and get a solid keeper at the very least. Also, man, a straight red by a striker. I'd have murdered Davies for that.
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Feb 21, 2022 15:45
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also sign Andraz Sporar (he's slovenian)
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Feb 21, 2022 16:16
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Do not, under any circumstances, sign Joe Lumley.
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Feb 21, 2022 16:30
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Seeing these real life newcastle contracts is so funny
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Feb 21, 2022 20:15
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January Transfer Windowhabeasdorkus posted:Good thing it's now a transfer window. Time to bring home Adeyemi, sign another striker, and get a solid keeper at the very least. This is the plan. Spoilers, it does not go to plan.  In addition to the transfer window, we still have to play some football.  Current financial situation, still grim.  But wait!  All fixed.  So the message says they gave us 90 million, but they actually gave the club one hundred and forty eight million pounds.  Adeyemi is coming home and immediately becomes our first choice striker.  I start trying to sign people, but I keep getting blocked by two issues: some people keep getting poached by other clubs if their contracts are expiring  Other clubs just want absolutely ridiculously vast sums of cash. 4.7 million a month and a MANDATORY 251 million? This is happening because the game has a mechanic where prices are jacked up in the summer window if clubs don't really want to sell. And they get jacked up a lot.  Jude Bellingham tries to throw the match against Watford. He makes a two footed spikes up tackle at the kickoff and immediately gets off, then suspended for the next 3 matches. Despite playing 90 minutes with 10 men, we still should have won. xG of 2 vs 0.43 but a familiar refrain: a lack of finishing costs us.  We then play a league 2 side, Forest Green in the FA cup. This should go very badly for them despite us being away. I've managed Forrest Green before and love their stadium name: 'Fully Charged New Lawn.' It's insane, but great. I'm going to use a 4-2-4 I've used before because we are very short of midfielders due to the Bellingham Incident and I want to get Sesko and Adeyemi on the pitch at the same time.  Adeyemi scores on his debut for the club. However, reining European Golden boy Musiala gets stretchered off in the 6th minute. I forgot to screenshot it I was so sad, but he's out for 3 months with a broken ankle. I'd rather have forfeited the game and not had the injury.  Next up Wolves away. We've fallen to 5th in the table, and we have a very depleted squad as Reyna is out on international duty, 3 players are suspended due to red cards, Woodman has the flu and Musiala has the broken ankle. I cannot actually fill the bench for the game.  And we pay for the depleted squad with another unlucky loss. xG of 2-1, 1-2 result, standard stuff. Goal keeping situation needs help, but Adeyemi scores again in his league debut.  I said we'd come back for him, and we did. However, as we can only sign 6 u21 players the transfer goes through at the end of the season. He will be behind Davis in the squad.  Southampton have found some form and won the Carabao cup booking themselves a ticket to Europe for next season while we are missing 3 players so it might be tough.  ANOTHER loving RED CARD. ARE YOU JOKING. I nearly threw my mouse at my screen. Despite that we come away with a comfortable 3-0 win with Adeyemi bagging a hatrick and a perfect 10 rating. That's 5 goals from 3 matches.  The window so far has been a disaster. Every striker has said no because of big name clubs going in for them, and every goalie who is a significant upgrade on Dubravka is being held onto tightly by their clubs. I am so frustrated with the transfer market at this point I randomly buy a CB prospect to make myself feel better. Inexplicably he gets a work permit, but he doesn't show up for another 2 years.  PSG come in for Moutinho, he wants to leave and I let him go. While I'd rather get rid of Paulinho he doesn't get any offers and I'm having problems with minutes for midfielders so this makes sense. They basically pay us the transfer free we paid in the first place and so we got a free rental. Ironically he only plays 3 games for them.  Deadline day is a total fizzer on the ins, but I unload all the remaining Newcastle players. I have 66 million pounds to play with, so I'm trying to make some signings all day but absolutely no-one I want can be wrestled out of their club's vice like grip. Nothing happens. Summer Window Wrap Up Disaster! We lost very winnable matches, we didn't get ANY reinforcements in the summer window, and we took 5 points and put them directly in the bin by drawing with Watford and losing to Wolves. The only bright sparks are Adeyemi's excellent goal scoring form and I do still get to spend that 66 million pounds Next time, at Newcastle 
Cthulhu Dreams fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Feb 22, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 04:09
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