FMHi 2012 Guide

Here's how to destroy the English league.

A few things before you read:

1) The absolute most important thing at lower levels is scouting. Scout absolutely everyone under the age of 21 and only sign U21 players you can get for free until you can start bidding in the multi-millions for top prospects. This keeps your costs down and still lets you find some extremely high quality players.

2) There is "no one tactic to rule them all" but if there was one tactic that seems to overwhelm your opponents more often than other tactics, it's the tactic I have posted.

3) Further note that anytime you drastically change tactics, your team will need a few games to adjust. Thus you might not see stellar results for the first game or two.

4) At any level below championship, your team's coach report should have mostly 5+ star potential guys. Even if their current ability is 1 or 2 stars, if they don't have potential to play at the next level, then they don't have potential to play for your team at the next level. It's that simple.

Tactics

I will post more tactics once I have some others that are as overwhelmingly dominating as this one.

For now, just use these tactics. They work at every level. The idea is to play possession, hence the short passing option.

Positional Roles and suggested attributes in order of importance:

*Note Decisions 10+ is required by all players

WBk - Pace, Tackling, Crossing, Stamina, Movement, Technique, Dribbling

LiD - Tackling, Heading, Strength, Positioning, Stamina, Teamwork

BWM - Tackling, Aggression, Strength, Pace, Stamina

APM - Passing, Creativity, Dribbling, Technique, Stamina, Crossing, Teamwork

InF - Pace, Finishing, Technique, Dribbling, Movement, Passing, Creativity

DLF - Strength, Finishing, Passing, Teamwork, Technique, Dribbling, Movement, Creativity, Pace

Formation Movement

Attacking

Defensive

Training

Currently there are 6 categories you can train a player. (these may be wrong, I'm still trying to figure them out)

1) Fitness - Pace, Stamina, Strength

2) Tactics - Decisions, Teamwork, Crossing, Technique

3) Attacking - Creativity, Movement, Shooting, Passing, Dribbling

4) Goalkeeping - All GK stats

5) Defensive - Heading, Tackling, Positioning

6) Motivation - Leadership?

Currently there are 6 training schedules.

1) Goalkeeper

2) Defending

3) Attacking

4) Fitness

5) Technical

6) General

There are two ways to go about training:

1) Leave all the schedules as they are and set each player to a schedule that corresponds to the necessary requirements for his role (listed above). At low levels you just need to focus on rounding out the player in question.

2) Adjust the General schedule to be all intensive and put everyone (except keepers) on it.

If you choose #2 be aware that your players are more likely to be injured, which means it works best with a large squad. If you have a small squad, option 1 is much better.

Positional Training

I think of positional training not as which specific position someone can play in, but rather their movement on the pitch. For example, you want your wing backs to run up and down the side lines. Ideally they would be "green" in D, DM, M, and AM for whatever side they play on. Yes I do prefer plays that only play one side, but I'd rather have a player that can play both sides in one position if he can't play any positions further up the pitch.

Here's the ideal positions your players should be able to play:

L WBk - D/DM/M/AM L

R WBk - D/DM/M/AM R

L LiD - D C

R LiD - D C

C BWM - D/DM/M C

C APM - DM/M/AM LRC

C APM - DM/M/AM LRC

L InF - AM/F LC

R InF - AM/F RC

C DLF - AM/F LRC

Selecting Your Squad

Try to play players only in their Natural position. However this isn't always possible, so try to play players only in their accomplished positions.

I usually put my over 25 guys as my subs and leave my young prospects off my first team. Before a match, check your first team to see if any players are tired (less than 90% stamina). If any are, swap them with your prospect to let your prospect get some playing time.

For your subs, as I said, I usually use guys that are over 25. The only exception is I might include one or two prospects at midfield. Your subs need to be versatile. Your subs need to be able to cover all 11 positions between the 7 of them (or 5). This tactic will tire out your midfielders quickly, so you will probably sub in for your two midfielders around the 60th minute, meaning you need two guys who you plan to use at CM (this is why I might use prospects for CM). Most of the time I like to use older domestic players for the rest of the subs. This helps you boost your Domestic Bias rating as well!

Scouting

Your first season should be spent manually scouting absolutely everyone under the age of 21. Since you can now scroll backwards on the player list, just sort by potential and go to the last page and scout everyone who isn't on your short list. When you scout someone they will be placed on your short list. For now, just leave them there. Once you have everyone scouted, then you should clear your shortlist at the beginning of every season so that you can easily identify newly generated players.

Occasionally you will see an option to "Offer Contract" to a player. At this point, you need to go look at his attributes and determine 1 thing: will this guy make me decent money in the future? The idea is to fill your team not with players that fit your system, but with players that you can sell off to bring money into your club. Since you are a low league team, you have to start making investments now on these young players. The beauty is you can make these investments without ever paying a dime for a single player.

How do you determine if a player will fetch a decent return in the transfer market? Strikers > Midfielders > Defenders > Keepers. That is the order at which players are valued. Of course a world class Defender will fetch you more than an average striker, but if everyone was the same level, that is the order of value for players. (Some could say keepers before defenders, but meh, I don't care).

Anyway, back to scouting. Once you have scouted absolutely everyone under the age of 21, start looking for any player that you can sign who has 7 star potential. If a player has 7 stars, sign him even if he looks like a terrible player. Remember that since we are only signing free players by offering contracts to them, if a player turns out to be a bust it is almost insignificant to your squad.

Once you get to League 2, your team should be starting to take shape...meaning you should have one or two guys who you think have the potential to play at the EPL level and a few guys who you know can play at champ level. It takes practice, but spotting future stars will become second nature to you eventually.

Also, every season at the beginning of the season you need to reassess your squad. If you didn't get promoted, then well, you didn't sign good enough players. If you did get promoted, then some of those 7 star potential guys might turn out to only be 5-6 star guys. These 5-6 star guys will work for you team, however you should start looking for replacements immediately. However keep in mind that once you reach the EPL I doubt you will see any 7 star guys.

I will update once I get promoted at the end of this season

Reserved for future stuff

On the same day as release, you release a guide! Well done sir!

That's not really a guide

That's not really a guide

It's a work in progress

Nice effort but normally a guide isn't just "play this tactic, do this and do that".

Google definition: "Show or indicate the way to (someone)"

In my opinion this means do not just say do this, do that as that isn't showing the way but instead instructing them and will not be that helpful to developing future players as such (you didn't explain much), a such with your tactic it is very Barcelona-esque but when you come up against Chelsea you will struggle as Premier League newbies as it is attacking with short passing (the mix of this can be deadly when on top but you need to dominate the game to win), also Man Utd wouldn't suit this formation as you will be leaving Rooney or Hernandez out.

Sorry but FMH really isn't the game to say "do this, do that" as it doesn't work but if you can develop this I think it will be a good read.

I think it's a great guide, especially as it's a WIP, so great work. Oh, and Dec; you've never read any guides to android multithreading, that's where youhave a guide fail. It seems perfectly like a guide to me. (And for the record, short passing has always worked for me in the EPL)

When I looked at it first it had only one tactic. Now it's taking shape Keep it up!

Where do I find the formation movement screens?

Where do I find the formation movement screens?

There's not such a screen. He just created those pictures for better visualization of where your players normally are during attack/defense match highlights.

Wow very quick reply thanks very much!!

Is so weird...been sooo long since i've been struggling to find things on an FM game - almost makes it seem like new again!

Updated as of 12/12/11