New Player: In need of a few questions answered

Hey everyone, I am a recent American football convert and after realizing that FIFA wasn't realistic enough for my tastes I have bought Football Manager 12 and I am loving it so far. However there are a few questions that I could not seem to find an answer to in-game and I am hoping to get those answered here without sounding like too much of a noob.

1. I saw a cheap and talented young Argentinian in the 'Good Players' forum area and I decided he would fit perfectly with my Middlesbrough side in the Npower Championship. I attempted to search for him by name and he wasn't in the player database. I have all the Argentinian leagues turned on, yet he isn't available on my player search, what am I doing wrong here?

2. I attempted an MLS save as my first game, but when I started the game I was already mid-season, is there any way to start the save at the beginning of the MLS season and not the rest of the world's season?

3. Where can I find the Staff Budget? I attempted to sign a scout for 1,400 per week but for some reason that was not allowed by the game even though i had a large transfer budget available and instead the largest I could offer was 950. I know transfer budget isn't the same thing, but I figured I could still sign another scout without going over budget.

This is more of a training question but I don't want to waste another thread:

Do you guys prefer to train your U-18's by focusing 100% on the physical attributes? Or is it better to begin to train them towards their future position?

I hope these questions weren't too obvious and I put this in the right place. I was hoping to see a beginners forum available but I couldn't see one.

Any help would really help me to learn and appreciate this game more than I already am.

1. Do you have all the argentina divisions loaded? Does he play in argentina? and what level of database do you have loaded? Low, medium or high?

2. At the start of the game it gives you different start dates choose the MLS start date for the season to start then.

3. The staff budget is in the board room interaction, and the short answer is it is to do with reputation! The long is that the board don't know what the income of the club will be in the future and although your under wage budget they don't want to risk the club with a long big contract!

This is a personal question I look at training players for good decision and posistioning stats as they will put themselves in the best position so remove the need to be very quick! But physical stats allow for a player recover from making a mistake quicker, so basically it is a personally preferance in how you want your team to play! ie. ,more physical or tehcnical although a player with both is obviously beneficial!

1. Do you have all the argentina divisions loaded? Does he play in argentina? and what level of database do you have loaded? Low' date=' medium or high?

2. At the start of the game it gives you different start dates choose the MLS start date for the season to start then.

3. The staff budget is in the board room interaction, and the short answer is it is to do with reputation! The long is that the board don't know what the income of the club will be in the future and although your under wage budget they don't want to risk the club with a long big contract!

This is a personal question I look at training players for good decision and posistioning stats as they will put themselves in the best position so remove the need to be very quick! But physical stats allow for a player recover from making a mistake quicker, so basically it is a personally preferance in how you want your team to play! ie. ,more physical or tehcnical although a player with both is obviously beneficial![/quote']

First off, thanks for replying I was hoping to figure these out tonight so I could play again.

1. Yes to all of your questions, but I believe it said I was using a small database. This seemed weird to me because I loaded most of the leagues. How can the database be small with 50,000 players? Can I change this mid-season and how?

2. Thanks, I must have missed that.

3. So from what you are saying the better reputation I have the more money I will get to spend on staff? Or do you mean the reputation of the club?

Hello mate and welcome to the forums.

1) You probably have no scouting knowledge of Argentina so he won't appear in your search. If you know which club he plays for you can search their squad lists to find him. You could also use the search facility on the top right of any screen rather than the transfer search section if your not already.

2) I've noy played MLS but Brazil lets me start in January. You could perhaps holiday until season start and then add a manager but hopefully someone else can help with this.

3) Your wage budget includes both staff and players and what you can offer to an individual will depend on your wage budget primarily. Even if you have plenty of wage budget left it will still only allow you to go so high. I believe this is because your board wants you to remain within a certain structure. You can however move available transfer budget over to your wage budget therefore increasing the amount you can pay to an individual.

To change your budgets go to the board overview screen.

Hello mate and welcome to the forums.

1) You probably have no scouting knowledge of Argentina so he won't appear in your search. If you know which club he plays for you can search their squad lists to find him. You could also use the search facility on the top right of any screen rather than the transfer search section if your not already.

2) I've noy played MLS but Brazil lets me start in January. You could perhaps holiday until season start and then add a manager but hopefully someone else can help with this.

3) Your wage budget includes both staff and players and what you can offer to an individual will depend on your wage budget primarily. Even if you have plenty of wage budget left it will still only allow you to go so high. I believe this is because your board wants you to remain within a certain structure. You can however move available transfer budget over to your wage budget therefore increasing the amount you can pay to an individual.

To change your budgets go to the board overview screen.

Thanks Marty, I tried to search for him in the search facility and I found him and was able to sign him.

That answers all my questions thanks!

Regarding the training question:

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As you see in this screen shot, I have set up a bit more specialized training for my youth players, but not fully specialized (player by player). I think that youngsters are not fully developed in any attribute and as such could need a bit of improvement in all areas of their future roles and duties. When I look for youngsters to sign, I mainly look at their mental attributes, then afterwards for possible weaknesses in key attributes for their role. In my experience, the physical attributes are the easiest to "fix", so I tend to sign players that are well-developed mentally and technically and then focus on the physical aspects of training to make them more complete players. Rather than extreme strengths and big weaknesses, I like my players to be balanced. A striker that has 15 in every attribute is a world-class player, while one that has 20 in pace, acceleration, dribbling, finishing and technique but 12 in everything else will have certain limitations to his game that I feel often makes the team as a whole worse off (but such a player is overpowered in the match engine so it is silly to say he is not a good player to have).

Thanks Biggus, that makes sense. I was thinking that the technical and mental attributes would be easier to improve later in a players career and the physical stats would be harder.

I guess I was just thinking about having a well-conditioned team would be the most important aspect, but I will definitely change that around so I can improve their important stats as well.

Hey everyone, I am a recent American football convert and after realizing that FIFA wasn't realistic enough for my tastes I have bought Football Manager 12 and I am loving it so far. However there are a few questions that I could not seem to find an answer to in-game and I am hoping to get those answered here without sounding like too much of a noob.

1. I saw a cheap and talented young Argentinian in the 'Good Players' forum area and I decided he would fit perfectly with my Middlesbrough side in the Npower Championship. I attempted to search for him by name and he wasn't in the player database. I have all the Argentinian leagues turned on, yet he isn't available on my player search, what am I doing wrong here?

Maybe the player in the forum you wanted was a Newgen (came into the game after the 1st season) which means only the person in the forum would have him in his game. Sure you might have him eventually but under a different name at a different time in the game.

2. I attempted an MLS save as my first game, but when I started the game I was already mid-season, is there any way to start the save at the beginning of the MLS season and not the rest of the world's season?

When you create a new saved game, you get to select where to start at, you need to change the default to MLS. I think default is England July 2011.

3. Where can I find the Staff Budget? I attempted to sign a scout for 1,400 per week but for some reason that was not allowed by the game even though i had a large transfer budget available and instead the largest I could offer was 950. I know transfer budget isn't the same thing, but I figured I could still sign another scout without going over budget.

Maybe you are only allowed to hire a certain amount of scouts. Maybe fire a scout that has poor attribute and then you can hire this scout you want. As you go well in the saved game, the club may allow you to hire more scouts at the start of each season.

hope this has helped