G1102 said: Congrats zaz for a terrific job.I wonder how your third season is going to go , because that's where i stumbled with both Dulwich and Blyth. Anyway, i started a new season , playing with zaz 4.0 , light blue and solid blue and the results have been spectacular. As you can see . When i started to play(picked the team) my media prediction was 5th , but at the start of the season i was somehow predicted 1st. Nontheless the results have been spactacular. Looking forward to Vanarama National which I expect to boss without problems. I started with 13 wins in a row. Expand
Thank you and good luck on your run! As long as you manage well the physical condition and morale of your players, I'm sure you will breeze at least until Sky Bet Championship.
It's also because after so many seasons, I would rather take a break and start in a new setting. AI teams are pretty stupid buying new players, so their teams usually get weaker as time passes.
Obviously, the reputation of your teams has increased after you won the league in the previous so now your opponents take you more seriously which means the difficulty of winning the league will increase gradually. Expand
Thanks! There is a lottery component to cups, since one bad day can make you lose the entire season. That's why I will only try once, so if I win or lose, that's it for the run.
This final season of Concord run will probably be very anti-climatic. Since I won the league last season with points to spare, I expect it to be even easier this time after improving the team. My plan is to use first team on Champions League and in the league when possible, and second team for other cups (and league when there is a Champions League match within three or four days). In the first ten matches of the league, I played most of them with second team and got seven victories.
My last level of training facilities got done, which means I am definitely leaving a legacy to the club other than just bringing them from lowest division to Premier League champions. The team is also very rich and stadium is on the way.
Lucky for me, scouts are doing a very good job at recommending players spontaneously, so I already know who to go for next transfer window (it's currently closed) without even needing to scout manually. I'm not sure if they are recommending better players and more often because scouts have good attributes or if it just got improved in FM22 compared to FM21. Anyway, make sure to always have most scouts in assignments and a couple free for when you want to manually reveal someone.
At continental level, matches went very easy in the group stage and I'm already qualified to knock outs. I expect to have an easy time until it comes to the big teams like PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Manchester City, but even then, I think I have a good chance in two matches. My biggest problem will be the finals, so I'll cross my fingers.
If anyone doesn't understand how my team can overachieve despite being weaker than most at Premier League, remember that good tactics can bring the best out of players. We are talking about the top tactic in FM-Arena, so it's only natural that I can compete against stronger opponents and even beat them easily as difference between players shrinks. Other than that, it's just about managing players. Feel free to share your experiences here too, so people understand they can also do the same or even better if they try.
Just started the new season to try winning the Champions League. I hired three new players for the team, all suggested by my scouts since I was too lazy to go head hunting (they are pretty good). Pre-season went fine, scoring 134 goals in 6 matches. To be fair, I played those matches with Light Blue since they were weak teams. Below are the three new transfers and the match with 34 goals.
Season is finally over and Concord finally made it from rags to riches! This season was a bit too easy and I didn't even focus much during the last matches, leaving the game minimized when the my team was winning by two goals. We won the league with a couple of points to spare and a huge difference in goals. As a bonus, we also won the Euro Cup, even though I played it mostly with reserve team (except when league was already decided).
It feels really nice that supporters want to build my statue at the stadium (which is funny since it's in someone's else stadium since ours are still under construction). Other than that, I would like to talk about the match against Porto, in which I was doing bad until the very last minutes, when I did two goals in a row and qualified to the finals. That was a very nice feeling!
Anyway, that was a nice journey. I guess I will try one more season to see if I can lift the Champion's League, but my goal for the run was already achieved.
Below is the FM Scout of my team, if anyone is curious about CA and PA of my team. They are not anything special, so anyone using FM Scout and following the tips I gave in this thread should have an even easier time than I did. I didn't know Peter Smith was so much worse than Gavin Kilkenny, I kept the former because he was the team vice-captain, but would have used the latter if I knew.
If you have any questions or comments about the run, leave it below.
Now at 25 matches in the league and leading by 4 points. I don't want to talk too early, but this season is going easier than I expected. I mean, I lost in both Carabao and FA Cup, but I expected to be fighting head to head in the league until the last match. To be fair, I was expecting to only win Premier League in my third season coming from the bottom. Maybe I got better at choosing players to hire, or better at managing in general, or I'm just having luck with RNG, or maybe the tactic is just better than I expected. Anyway, I guess I'll be able to win the league this season, which was one of the main goals of this run. After that, only Champions League to go, which will depend way more in RNG.
I want to talk about how important it is to choose players properly. First, I will let you compare a young striker from Manchester City (wonderkid) with my best striker in the pictures below. As you can see, there is nothing to compare there, he is better in every single way. When the difference between CA is that big (not sure about exact numbers, but I would assume his striker is 180+ while mine is around 120-130), you need to focus on attributes that really matter. If you check the table of attributes in the first post of Blue, you will see that the priority for ST are acceleration, finishing, dribbling, pace, technique, stamina and work rate, all of which are well covered by my player. Focusing in the right attributes is key to overachieve when you play a weaker team, as well as using a strong tactic, and managing players physically and emotionally.
Another point is that I don't see the CA or PA of players, which means I don't have attachment with anyone. I hire players for the attributes they have right now, not by the attributes they might have in two or three seasons. If I find a player with better attributes and good cost, I just hire him and kick the weakest of my team for that position. I can consider the growth in case there are only options of similar ability, then I keep those that are still growing instead of those that stagnated for several months.
Speaking of choosing players properly, I hired two new players this transfer window, one left wing back (Rayan Aït-Nouri) and one left winger (Bryan Gil). The same day as the winger signed his contract, he got injured for two months. Just my luck! To make things better, my defensive midfielder also got injured for two months, so I recalled a player on loan (Gavin Kilkenny) to replace him. My best defender (Tenden Mengi) also got injured for around two months, but he was easier to manage since I could rotate with the other reserve.
Nebuuuu said: I don`t have these probs. They are usually good on my Offensives. Only classical DCM, sometimes.
I finally finished my 1st season and wow, what a rollercoaster. Bayern was so damn strong and Lewandowski 37 Goals in the Bundesliga. Last Bundesliga game day... I`ve lost (a) 4:6 to Dortmund (Haaland is such a beast..went for 200+Mio. to PSG, when Mbappe went for 0€ to Bayern next season)...had 0 chance (1st season with Hertha) because of Injuries and yeah..player were nervious af.
BUT...Bayern also lost 2:3 (a) to Wolfsburg, so i still won the Bundesliga with only 1p+.
My team had an awesome run with a 4:2 (h) win vs Dortmund, 7:3 win (h)@the german cup vs Dortmund (what a match!), 3:1 (h) win vs Leipzig, 6:2 (a) win vs Gladbach, 5:2 (a) vs Leverkusen etc. But at the final phase of the season, it was getting harder to win. 1:0 vs Mainz, lucky. 1:0 vs Union. 1:0 vs Bielefeld. 0:2 vs Stuttgart.
Bayern went out in the german cup, so it was kinda "easy" after i beat Dortmund 7:3 and then RB Leipzig in the quarterfinal, 113. Min, Gnonto 2:1! Stuttgart in the half-final 1:0, should be a way higher score for us. Bielefeld in the final 3:2, my OMEGA-Talent Brenner(Brazil, young talent 22y, BUY HIM!♥) with a hattrick.
So far, this 1st season was overwhelming good and my squad is pretty good for the 2nd season, even when i will try to sell 3-4 players.
Also the first 2 matches (German-Supercup + 1st League-Match) were already played and it looks promising.
I still don`t had so much impact on the corners, idk why. My CD have good header-stats but yeah. Let`s check the 2nd season. So far, great tactic, again ZaZ. Thx and stay safe everyone. ♥ Expand
Thanks and gratz! The corner routine should score around 10-20 goals a season, depending on the quality of your team. That's around one goal every 3 or 4 matches. Not a lot, but not so little either.
Just some extra insights of things I usually do. In the picture below, you can see I finished the match with one striker in each wing and a defender playing as defensive midfielder. They are all proficient in the positions, just not being trained to play there. For context, this match was played with reserve team because I had an important match against Tottenham (3rd place) after just two days, so I wanted to have main team in good condition. The reason why I used strikers instead of wingers is because they use less energy during a match, meaning they would be able to recover better to next match than if I used wingers. For the defender in defensive midfield, the other player was just suspended, so it was lack of choice.
In the following match against Tottneham, you can see at half time that all players were at very good condition, which allowed me to completely dominate them. Since I didn't have anyone tired, I chose to substitute the guy with yellow card and low rate during half time, to avoid getting someone sent off and because he was probably in a bad day due to consistency / important matches.
I also wanna show something very hard to get, but every manage should try to achieve. After a couple of victories and lots of praises to training, I managed to finally get perfect morale on the team.
Also, I already told here that I always give rest to tired players, usually two days off for those at half heart condition, one day off for those at 75%. However, here I have eight days until next match, so I decided to give three days off to all tired players (half heart) and two days off to everyone else. This is done to reduce fatigue, since by the middle of season you can see most of my team with low fatigue (instead of fresh), even though I'm rotating a lot (players with most matches have around 15 while those with least matches have around 10). The next picture show the results, with everyone fresh before the next match (I gave one extra day off for those that were still fatigued four days before the match).
Season at 15 matches, leading the league and coming from 8 games without defeat. Notable match was against Manchester United, that would probably win if they didn't get a red card in first half when winning 1-0.
Other than that, I got some good news from the board and they will give me 40 mi euros more to spend on transfers. Time to splash some cash!
Anyway, some people have asked me how I do my subs during matches. In short, I always use all subs, and my priorities are the following: - Very tired or injured players (at any time). - Players with yellow card (at half time). - Players with injured reserve, which means I need to use him again next match (at half time or 60+ min. - Players with grade under 6.4 (at half time).
If none of those conditions are met, I put some player with low match fitness or someone without much match time. If I don't have any better option, I can also sub someone with poor body language, like when they say "about to get booked", "nervous" or something like that.
I always save at least one sub until 60-70+ minutes (depending on score), in case someone gets injured.
New season started and I hired exactly one player for each position, for a total of eleven new players. Since I exploded the budget and would still need to renew some contracts during the season, I have decided to sell/loan eleven players (obviously the worst ones) to keep a squad of 22 again. My main team is playing league matches, while second team is playing all cups (Carabao, FA Cup and Euro).
Right now, my team has the second lowest budget of the league and I'm predicted last again (but closer 19th than before). Season is going pretty well, challenging for the title on the league and qualifying to next stage of Euro League. I was kicked out of Carabao on the first match, but that's life. On a positive note, new players are doing very well and I think this squad might be able to at least get a spot on Champions League. Some positions can still be improved, but I'm not changing any player for someone with the same quality and higher cost, so I'll keep scouting for next transfer window.
For notable matches, I would pick my victory 5-1 against Manchester City. They got completely dominated and gave me three important points. I also had a good match against Liverpool away, but they stole my victory in the last minute (90+4). On the bad side, I lost points home against Leicester and West Ham, matches that I should have won.
Last but not least, Ben McNamee (my AMR) is not described as a wonderkid anymore. It's a shame, but I suppose he must have PA at least above 150 to have been described that way at some point.
By the way, I also noticed it's better to do additional training for endurance instead of quickness on defensive midfielders and wingbacks, since stamina and work rate are more important to those positions.
pixar said: Very nice ZaZ. Can you share your scouting filters? of course if there is Expand
I just set it manually, because sometimes I need to tweak to reveal more or less players. I believe someone made a filter for FM in that thread for player attributes.
G1102 said: Great first season.6th is unthinkable in first season. With Dulwich I managed 13th and with Blyth even worse 14th. Seeing you playing I kinda want to start all over again and I might since I never used zaz 4.0. Your scouting method is great. I used the opz elite skin , which show current ability number and that helped a lot since you keep increasing that number over the leagues as if in Vanarama National N/S a 65 current ability is considered great , then in the Vanarama National is not so much ,so you look for 75/80 current ability, obviously players with pace and accelaration, in regards to outfield players and reflexes and agility in regards to GK. The way you do it is harder but way more fair . Looking forward to updates in regard to the new season. Good luck. Expand
Thanks! I hope you have fun in a new run.
Anyway, I have 50 mi euros for transfers and 50 mi for wage budget (currently using 18 mi), so I might as well hire a full new team and play with a 33 man squad, since there will be one more competition this season. I'll see if I can manage it within the budget while increasing the quality of my team.
Harrison said: Interesting that the AF didn't increase the amount of goals scored. Not sure if this means that F9 is better than AF on this match engine or IFs really benefit a lot from having a F9 paired with them. Expand
Look at the two tactics on the top of the table. They are the same, just changing the role of wingers and strikers. As you can see, results are very close, because W-Su + AF-At has similar performance to F9-Su + IF-At. Maybe they wouldn't work as well without the SS-At or the RPM-Su behind them, or even the IWB-At. In short, there are some roles that make other roles play better.
Now hiring players for next season. I'll try to describe the method I use, which might not be the best but at least it works for me.
First step is to identify what position(s) you want to improve. Jacob Shepherd (AML) is one of the weakest players in the group, and Dennis Cirkin (AML) has stopped improving, which means he is very close to the top of his potential. Therefore, I'll start searching a player to that position.
I'll start with the most conventional approach, going to player search in scouting. There, I'll search for all AML with good attributes, looking at the table of important attributes in the first post of Blue. My approach is simple: 14+ for attributes marked 100, 13+ for 75 and 12+ for 50 and so on. I also search for players up to 27 years old, but I usually start with 23 years old, then increase if I don't find too many good players.
That gives me a list of potential candidates with interest to join. Next step is to check if they are economically worth, so I ask their agents for their availability estimate the price. Those that are within my budget I will scout for one week to reveal their attributes. If they are sub-23 or listed to transfer, I might even ask for a trial instead.
After knowing the attributes, it's just a matter of choosing the one you like the most.
The second method requires a bit of extra work. First, I will visit the squad of teams and filter for AML, in both main team and youth teams. I'll start with Burnley since they were relegated this season. Then I will look at attributes with a view that shows the most important attributes, then do the same as previous step, asking agent for availability and scouting the ones I like the most. I usually do that for teams one division below and the same division as me (but only youth teams, since they are usually stronger than me and players in main team don't want to join).
I'll have to hire some new scouts first since I have only three at the moment, but I guess you got an idea of how I hire players. I accept suggestions if anyone knows of a better method (consider that I don't use FM Scout or similar).
Season is over. Concord finished the league in 6th, which gives me a spot on Euro League. However, we lost the FA Cup finals 3-2 to Newcastle, and a red card at first half didn't help much. As a bonus, I discovered one of my players is a wonderkid (not sure if media description changed or if I just didn't pay attention before).
For next season, my goal is to win Premier League and qualify to Champions League. Meanwhile, I will keep building my squad in the hope of winning Champions League in the season after that. I'll also show my process of scouting players and how I decide which players to hire.
G1102 said: Hy @ZaZ . If you remember my dulwich hamlet career . I started another with Blyth spartans after the 22.3 patch. Results were pretty much the same as with dulwich hamlet . Promoted every year . 1st season in the Pl ,survived relegation and 2nd season finishing second in the PL. Problems always came after the second season, because although investement in the team was huge the team somehow reverted to relegation candidates. Missing a lot of chances , playing well below their expectations. My theory is that happend both times because of squad building based on youth. As your reputation increases you start to find great youth players that want to play for you, but they also don't have top flight experience who seems to make them play bang avarege. I remember that i replaced stephy mavidid then age 30 with a 20 year old striker , better in all aspects . It was a disaster , granted that it played next to a 21 year old striker(scored 21 goals 1st season, next to Elanga(age 26 and mavididi age 29 at the time), better than the 20 year old striker . Really looking forward to how you do. Unfortunetly something came up and i didn't want the game to interfere with my personal life so i deleted the saves and the game because it tends to make an addict out of me. Good luck. Expand
I believe it's more because as you grow in reputation, opponents stop being complacent against you, which makes things naturally harder. First season they look at you like "no way we can lose to those guys, we can play at ease", but after two or three seasons they look at you like "those guys are strong, we need focus to win".
About you deleting your game, I completely understand that. It's exactly the same reason why I limit myself to playing only 5 or 10 matches a day, so I know I won't use more time than I should in the game.
By the way, I played a couple more of matches today. Now at 35 matches and the season is going well. I wasn't expecting anything from FA Cup, but now I'm on the finals. That's especially impressive considering I played all matches with second team (stronger teams probably got complacent since I came from lower division). Anyway, one good match against Newcastle and I might win the cup in my first season coming from below.
About the league, I got a bad form with three matches without winning against weaker teams, but I'm still in 7th in the league. Lucky for me, Liverpool won Carabao Cup and increased the Euro League zone. I had a couple of injuries and suspensions in the past matches, but the team is now back to top shape.
Anyway, one more tip that I already gave before and would like to say again is to always rest players individually after matches. Just sort them by condition, select all tired players and give one or two days of rest, and leave other players to train normally. That's not only useful to improve condition for next match and avoid fatigue, but it also avoids lots of injuries (tired players are more susceptible to get injured in training).
This time, I picked a match against Newcastle to talk about. I started the match conceding one goal and my DL got a red card, which is always a bad sign. I then removed one striker to balance the team and shouted encouragement like crazy. We got a goal and the match ended in a very even tie. The other option I was considering was to remove my AMR (which was having a bad match) to keep two strikers, but I opted for going the other way.
Now, there are four more matches in the season, three in the league against weaker teams and the cup finals against Newcastle. With a bit of luck I can get more than just a spot on Euro League, but things could also go bad and I end the season without anything. I'll finish the season tonight and see how it goes.
nijak05 said: Am i the only one where the ss is getting really inconsitent ratings around 6.7 unless he scores? Is it just the match engine where the AMC gets so so ratings? Expand
One or other role can get some bad rate, but it's fine as long as the tactic is performing well as a whole. Last year it was DM who never got over 7.0.
A couple matches forward and I got some very good results against the top teams. Unfortunately, that didn't bring me up on the table, so I'm still in 7th and now out of the Euro League zone.
In case anyone wants to know to keep morale always high, my biggest tip is to compliment training every single week, when you get the training report. You can see the difference in the pictures below (before and after), where I praised all players circled in red (8.05+) and team morale went from good to almost perfect.
I also decided to pick one match to talk about every 5 or 10 matches. This time, I pick the victory against Manchester City. Before the match, I thought it was impossible to win. On first half, I won 3-0 because they were having one of those days that they miss all shots and keep giving possession away all time. Second half, on the other hand, they came flying and almost won the game. I suppose I have to blame myself for telling my team to not get complacent, instead of telling them to play without pressure.
P.S.: I like to use that progress bar, which you can see in the last squad view, to identify when a player is reaching his top potential. If he stops growing for a couple of months, I then evaluate if he is good enough to stay in the team or if it's better to replace with a young player of similar level that still has chance to grow. For example, Rosannah, Olayinka, Hunt and Cirkin seem to have peaked, so they are positions that I might check for replacement in the future, if they don't improve until next transfer window.
Anyway, i started a new season , playing with zaz 4.0 , light blue and solid blue and the results have been spectacular. As you can see . When i started to play(picked the team) my media prediction was 5th , but at the start of the season i was somehow predicted 1st.
Nontheless the results have been spactacular. Looking forward to Vanarama National which I expect to boss without problems.
I started with 13 wins in a row.
Thank you and good luck on your run! As long as you manage well the physical condition and morale of your players, I'm sure you will breeze at least until Sky Bet Championship.
Obviously, the reputation of your teams has increased after you won the league in the previous so now your opponents take you more seriously which means the difficulty of winning the league will increase gradually.
Thanks! There is a lottery component to cups, since one bad day can make you lose the entire season. That's why I will only try once, so if I win or lose, that's it for the run.
My last level of training facilities got done, which means I am definitely leaving a legacy to the club other than just bringing them from lowest division to Premier League champions. The team is also very rich and stadium is on the way.
Lucky for me, scouts are doing a very good job at recommending players spontaneously, so I already know who to go for next transfer window (it's currently closed) without even needing to scout manually. I'm not sure if they are recommending better players and more often because scouts have good attributes or if it just got improved in FM22 compared to FM21. Anyway, make sure to always have most scouts in assignments and a couple free for when you want to manually reveal someone.
At continental level, matches went very easy in the group stage and I'm already qualified to knock outs. I expect to have an easy time until it comes to the big teams like PSG, Bayern Munich, Real Madrid or Manchester City, but even then, I think I have a good chance in two matches. My biggest problem will be the finals, so I'll cross my fingers.
If anyone doesn't understand how my team can overachieve despite being weaker than most at Premier League, remember that good tactics can bring the best out of players. We are talking about the top tactic in FM-Arena, so it's only natural that I can compete against stronger opponents and even beat them easily as difference between players shrinks. Other than that, it's just about managing players. Feel free to share your experiences here too, so people understand they can also do the same or even better if they try.
It feels really nice that supporters want to build my statue at the stadium (which is funny since it's in someone's else stadium since ours are still under construction). Other than that, I would like to talk about the match against Porto, in which I was doing bad until the very last minutes, when I did two goals in a row and qualified to the finals. That was a very nice feeling!
Anyway, that was a nice journey. I guess I will try one more season to see if I can lift the Champion's League, but my goal for the run was already achieved.
Below is the FM Scout of my team, if anyone is curious about CA and PA of my team. They are not anything special, so anyone using FM Scout and following the tips I gave in this thread should have an even easier time than I did. I didn't know Peter Smith was so much worse than Gavin Kilkenny, I kept the former because he was the team vice-captain, but would have used the latter if I knew.
If you have any questions or comments about the run, leave it below.
I want to talk about how important it is to choose players properly. First, I will let you compare a young striker from Manchester City (wonderkid) with my best striker in the pictures below. As you can see, there is nothing to compare there, he is better in every single way. When the difference between CA is that big (not sure about exact numbers, but I would assume his striker is 180+ while mine is around 120-130), you need to focus on attributes that really matter. If you check the table of attributes in the first post of Blue, you will see that the priority for ST are acceleration, finishing, dribbling, pace, technique, stamina and work rate, all of which are well covered by my player. Focusing in the right attributes is key to overachieve when you play a weaker team, as well as using a strong tactic, and managing players physically and emotionally.
Another point is that I don't see the CA or PA of players, which means I don't have attachment with anyone. I hire players for the attributes they have right now, not by the attributes they might have in two or three seasons. If I find a player with better attributes and good cost, I just hire him and kick the weakest of my team for that position. I can consider the growth in case there are only options of similar ability, then I keep those that are still growing instead of those that stagnated for several months.
Speaking of choosing players properly, I hired two new players this transfer window, one left wing back (Rayan Aït-Nouri) and one left winger (Bryan Gil). The same day as the winger signed his contract, he got injured for two months. Just my luck! To make things better, my defensive midfielder also got injured for two months, so I recalled a player on loan (Gavin Kilkenny) to replace him. My best defender (Tenden Mengi) also got injured for around two months, but he was easier to manage since I could rotate with the other reserve.
Only classical DCM, sometimes.
I finally finished my 1st season and wow, what a rollercoaster.
Bayern was so damn strong and Lewandowski 37 Goals in the Bundesliga.
Last Bundesliga game day...
I`ve lost (a) 4:6 to Dortmund (Haaland is such a beast..went for 200+Mio. to PSG, when Mbappe went for 0€ to Bayern next season)...had 0 chance (1st season with Hertha) because of Injuries and yeah..player were nervious af.
BUT...Bayern also lost 2:3 (a) to Wolfsburg, so i still won the Bundesliga with only 1p+.
My team had an awesome run with a 4:2 (h) win vs Dortmund, 7:3 win (h)@the german cup vs Dortmund (what a match!), 3:1 (h) win vs Leipzig, 6:2 (a) win vs Gladbach, 5:2 (a) vs Leverkusen etc.
But at the final phase of the season, it was getting harder to win.
1:0 vs Mainz, lucky.
1:0 vs Union.
1:0 vs Bielefeld.
0:2 vs Stuttgart.
Bayern went out in the german cup, so it was kinda "easy" after i beat Dortmund 7:3 and then RB Leipzig in the quarterfinal, 113. Min, Gnonto 2:1!
Stuttgart in the half-final 1:0, should be a way higher score for us.
Bielefeld in the final 3:2, my OMEGA-Talent Brenner(Brazil, young talent 22y, BUY HIM!♥) with a hattrick.
So far, this 1st season was overwhelming good and my squad is pretty good for the 2nd season, even when i will try to sell 3-4 players.
Also the first 2 matches (German-Supercup + 1st League-Match) were already played and it looks promising.
I still don`t had so much impact on the corners, idk why.
My CD have good header-stats but yeah. Let`s check the 2nd season.
So far, great tactic, again ZaZ. Thx and stay safe everyone. ♥
Thanks and gratz! The corner routine should score around 10-20 goals a season, depending on the quality of your team. That's around one goal every 3 or 4 matches. Not a lot, but not so little either.
In the following match against Tottneham, you can see at half time that all players were at very good condition, which allowed me to completely dominate them. Since I didn't have anyone tired, I chose to substitute the guy with yellow card and low rate during half time, to avoid getting someone sent off and because he was probably in a bad day due to consistency / important matches.
I also wanna show something very hard to get, but every manage should try to achieve. After a couple of victories and lots of praises to training, I managed to finally get perfect morale on the team.
Also, I already told here that I always give rest to tired players, usually two days off for those at half heart condition, one day off for those at 75%. However, here I have eight days until next match, so I decided to give three days off to all tired players (half heart) and two days off to everyone else. This is done to reduce fatigue, since by the middle of season you can see most of my team with low fatigue (instead of fresh), even though I'm rotating a lot (players with most matches have around 15 while those with least matches have around 10). The next picture show the results, with everyone fresh before the next match (I gave one extra day off for those that were still fatigued four days before the match).
Other than that, I got some good news from the board and they will give me 40 mi euros more to spend on transfers. Time to splash some cash!
Anyway, some people have asked me how I do my subs during matches. In short, I always use all subs, and my priorities are the following:
- Very tired or injured players (at any time).
- Players with yellow card (at half time).
- Players with injured reserve, which means I need to use him again next match (at half time or 60+ min.
- Players with grade under 6.4 (at half time).
If none of those conditions are met, I put some player with low match fitness or someone without much match time. If I don't have any better option, I can also sub someone with poor body language, like when they say "about to get booked", "nervous" or something like that.
I always save at least one sub until 60-70+ minutes (depending on score), in case someone gets injured.
Right now, my team has the second lowest budget of the league and I'm predicted last again (but closer 19th than before). Season is going pretty well, challenging for the title on the league and qualifying to next stage of Euro League. I was kicked out of Carabao on the first match, but that's life. On a positive note, new players are doing very well and I think this squad might be able to at least get a spot on Champions League. Some positions can still be improved, but I'm not changing any player for someone with the same quality and higher cost, so I'll keep scouting for next transfer window.
For notable matches, I would pick my victory 5-1 against Manchester City. They got completely dominated and gave me three important points. I also had a good match against Liverpool away, but they stole my victory in the last minute (90+4). On the bad side, I lost points home against Leicester and West Ham, matches that I should have won.
Last but not least, Ben McNamee (my AMR) is not described as a wonderkid anymore. It's a shame, but I suppose he must have PA at least above 150 to have been described that way at some point.
By the way, I also noticed it's better to do additional training for endurance instead of quickness on defensive midfielders and wingbacks, since stamina and work rate are more important to those positions.
Can you share your scouting filters? of course if there is
I just set it manually, because sometimes I need to tweak to reveal more or less players. I believe someone made a filter for FM in that thread for player attributes.
With Dulwich I managed 13th and with Blyth even worse 14th.
Seeing you playing I kinda want to start all over again
Your scouting method is great. I used the opz elite skin , which show current ability number and that helped a lot since you keep increasing that number over the leagues as if in Vanarama National N/S a 65 current ability is considered great , then in the Vanarama National is not so much ,so you look for 75/80 current ability, obviously players with pace and accelaration, in regards to outfield players and reflexes and agility in regards to GK. The way you do it is harder but way more fair .
Looking forward to updates in regard to the new season.
Good luck.
Thanks! I hope you have fun in a new run.
Anyway, I have 50 mi euros for transfers and 50 mi for wage budget (currently using 18 mi), so I might as well hire a full new team and play with a 33 man squad, since there will be one more competition this season. I'll see if I can manage it within the budget while increasing the quality of my team.
Look at the two tactics on the top of the table. They are the same, just changing the role of wingers and strikers. As you can see, results are very close, because W-Su + AF-At has similar performance to F9-Su + IF-At. Maybe they wouldn't work as well without the SS-At or the RPM-Su behind them, or even the IWB-At. In short, there are some roles that make other roles play better.
First step is to identify what position(s) you want to improve. Jacob Shepherd (AML) is one of the weakest players in the group, and Dennis Cirkin (AML) has stopped improving, which means he is very close to the top of his potential. Therefore, I'll start searching a player to that position.
I'll start with the most conventional approach, going to player search in scouting. There, I'll search for all AML with good attributes, looking at the table of important attributes in the first post of Blue. My approach is simple: 14+ for attributes marked 100, 13+ for 75 and 12+ for 50 and so on. I also search for players up to 27 years old, but I usually start with 23 years old, then increase if I don't find too many good players.
That gives me a list of potential candidates with interest to join. Next step is to check if they are economically worth, so I ask their agents for their availability estimate the price. Those that are within my budget I will scout for one week to reveal their attributes. If they are sub-23 or listed to transfer, I might even ask for a trial instead.
After knowing the attributes, it's just a matter of choosing the one you like the most.
The second method requires a bit of extra work. First, I will visit the squad of teams and filter for AML, in both main team and youth teams. I'll start with Burnley since they were relegated this season. Then I will look at attributes with a view that shows the most important attributes, then do the same as previous step, asking agent for availability and scouting the ones I like the most. I usually do that for teams one division below and the same division as me (but only youth teams, since they are usually stronger than me and players in main team don't want to join).
I'll have to hire some new scouts first since I have only three at the moment, but I guess you got an idea of how I hire players. I accept suggestions if anyone knows of a better method (consider that I don't use FM Scout or similar).
For next season, my goal is to win Premier League and qualify to Champions League. Meanwhile, I will keep building my squad in the hope of winning Champions League in the season after that. I'll also show my process of scouting players and how I decide which players to hire.
I started another with Blyth spartans after the 22.3 patch. Results were pretty much the same as with dulwich hamlet .
Promoted every year . 1st season in the Pl ,survived relegation and 2nd season finishing second in the PL.
Problems always came after the second season, because although investement in the team was huge the team somehow reverted to relegation candidates. Missing a lot of chances , playing well below their expectations.
My theory is that happend both times because of squad building based on youth.
As your reputation increases you start to find great youth players that want to play for you, but they also don't have top flight experience who seems to make them play bang avarege.
I remember that i replaced stephy mavidid then age 30 with a 20 year old striker , better in all aspects . It was a disaster , granted that it played next to a 21 year old striker(scored 21 goals 1st season, next to Elanga(age 26 and mavididi age 29 at the time), better than the 20 year old striker .
Really looking forward to how you do.
Unfortunetly something came up and i didn't want the game to interfere with my personal life so i deleted the saves and the game because it tends to make an addict out of me.
Good luck.
I believe it's more because as you grow in reputation, opponents stop being complacent against you, which makes things naturally harder. First season they look at you like "no way we can lose to those guys, we can play at ease", but after two or three seasons they look at you like "those guys are strong, we need focus to win".
About you deleting your game, I completely understand that. It's exactly the same reason why I limit myself to playing only 5 or 10 matches a day, so I know I won't use more time than I should in the game.
Thanks!
By the way, I played a couple more of matches today. Now at 35 matches and the season is going well. I wasn't expecting anything from FA Cup, but now I'm on the finals. That's especially impressive considering I played all matches with second team (stronger teams probably got complacent since I came from lower division). Anyway, one good match against Newcastle and I might win the cup in my first season coming from below.
About the league, I got a bad form with three matches without winning against weaker teams, but I'm still in 7th in the league. Lucky for me, Liverpool won Carabao Cup and increased the Euro League zone. I had a couple of injuries and suspensions in the past matches, but the team is now back to top shape.
Anyway, one more tip that I already gave before and would like to say again is to always rest players individually after matches. Just sort them by condition, select all tired players and give one or two days of rest, and leave other players to train normally. That's not only useful to improve condition for next match and avoid fatigue, but it also avoids lots of injuries (tired players are more susceptible to get injured in training).
This time, I picked a match against Newcastle to talk about. I started the match conceding one goal and my DL got a red card, which is always a bad sign. I then removed one striker to balance the team and shouted encouragement like crazy. We got a goal and the match ended in a very even tie. The other option I was considering was to remove my AMR (which was having a bad match) to keep two strikers, but I opted for going the other way.
Now, there are four more matches in the season, three in the league against weaker teams and the cup finals against Newcastle. With a bit of luck I can get more than just a spot on Euro League, but things could also go bad and I end the season without anything. I'll finish the season tonight and see how it goes.
One or other role can get some bad rate, but it's fine as long as the tactic is performing well as a whole. Last year it was DM who never got over 7.0.
In case anyone wants to know to keep morale always high, my biggest tip is to compliment training every single week, when you get the training report. You can see the difference in the pictures below (before and after), where I praised all players circled in red (8.05+) and team morale went from good to almost perfect.
I also decided to pick one match to talk about every 5 or 10 matches. This time, I pick the victory against Manchester City. Before the match, I thought it was impossible to win. On first half, I won 3-0 because they were having one of those days that they miss all shots and keep giving possession away all time. Second half, on the other hand, they came flying and almost won the game. I suppose I have to blame myself for telling my team to not get complacent, instead of telling them to play without pressure.
P.S.: I like to use that progress bar, which you can see in the last squad view, to identify when a player is reaching his top potential. If he stops growing for a couple of months, I then evaluate if he is good enough to stay in the team or if it's better to replace with a young player of similar level that still has chance to grow. For example, Rosannah, Olayinka, Hunt and Cirkin seem to have peaked, so they are positions that I might check for replacement in the future, if they don't improve until next transfer window.