Looking back and looking forward

As my enthusiasm for fm08 begins to wane, i have decided to create this thread. It is in two parts, the first being me looking back to my 10 season game in fm07, trying to find what made it so enjoyable. the second is looking forward to fm09, looking at the major changes i hope to see, which clubs may be the big games of the game and what players may be the important signings

Part one: Looking back (What made football manager 07 so good to play)

This afternoon, i went on fm07 and played it for a bit. i really enjoyed it, and i found seven reasons why:

Reason 1: Good transfer budgets

This game was with chelsea. every season i was given a large sum of money to spend on players. In the first season I was given around £75 million. This was in a season of several big signings, such as shevchenko. in fm08, i was only given £40 million, despite the only in signing that cost money being malouda, and robben being sold, therefore actually making a profit in the real life transfer market.

Reason 2: Good regens

My team was mainly made of regens, good ones at that. in fm08, i haven't been able to go past 5 seasons, and i have only ever given one game to a regen, and 5 seasons in on my 07 game i had many regens in my first team.

Reason 3: Good confidence system

There is no dissapointment in april at that penalty shootout loss in the community shield. enough said

Reason 4: No relying on tactics

Throughout that 10 year game i only used the att 442 that is given by the game. i won 8 premier leagues and numerous fa cups, league cups and champions leagues. if i tried that in fm08, then i would struggle to get any results, even against poor teams.

Reason 5: Ease of selling players.

Throughout the 10 years, i regulary changed my squad, buying players and moving them on a few seasons later when i wanted to.

Reason 6: Older players

In my game, i played players such as lampard and nedved until retirement, and they could still do a job. I still have 34 year olds john terry and fernando torres, and both play regulary, something that could not happen in 08, as they are over the hill as soon as they hit 30.

Reason 7: Innocence

One of the major reasons that i enjoyed it was finding out things for myself. my one great find was john de guzman, who became a major part of my team. i hardly ever bought proper youngesters, the only one i found myself was micheal uzewu (sp). i regulary found my players using the young player of the month/year award.

Now, i shall look forward to fm09. I hope that all the things above will be changed for the better. if anybody at SI feels that doing so will be taking a step back, then please, leave the company for the good of the consumer. I feel that any other improvements would be a bonus.

The second part is looking forward at the clubs that may be the big games. Im sorry that i can only do the english leagues, as i dont know too much about other leagues.

Will the big game be one of the big four? Will it be arsenal with their sound finances and impressive youth system. Maybe Chelsea, with boswinga, deco, and maybe robinho causing joy and difficulty, solving the right back problem, causing a cm problem (5 top quality players) and giving the ablilty to play 2 upfront without making a new signing. will it be manchester united, no new signings as yet, and an ageing side which will soon need a good rehaul. they also have the problem of no rooney, ronaldo or anderson for the beginning of the season, how will you cope with that? or will it be the last member of the top four. now with keane in tow, there is another team who can now play with two upfront.

Maybe the game of 09 will come from outside this elite group. the most appealing may be spurs. with the signings of bentley, dos santos, modric and maybe arshavin, will you be able to cope with the loss of keane and, more importantly, will you be able to break into the top four. the other one will be manchester city, with their new striker Jo, and probably the two hottest prospects in micah richards and micheal johnson.

Or will your challenge lie in the new boys of the prem. will you take the near impossible challenge of saving hull or stoke from relegation, or try the slightly less challenging task of consolidating west broms premierleague place.

Prehaps your game will lie in the championship? will you try to bounce back to the prem as either derby, birmingham or reading? maybe you want to pull anohter sleeping giant out of the depths of the second tier, as wolves or forest. or maybe money is your pull, where ipswich and qpr could be your game.

Going into lower leagues, maybe you wish to bring success back to leeds and leicester, guiding them back into the championship and then maybe further. or in league two, the challenge of saving rotherham, bournmouth, or, if you feel like a major challenge, luton, with their 30 point deduction.

Finally, what players will be the big signings? alves has moved on, as has lloris, kalouda, stancu and many other of our favourite buys. however, aguero and fernandez have stayed put, so will they be the first port of call for any managers.

Thank you for reading, it feels good to get this all off my chest. feel free to comment

Great Post!!. Was a joy to read and brings up many "issues" (want of a better word) that will be came up against whilst playing FM09. These issues will not only be for player but for the makers of FM09 aswell. SI should definatley think about your look back at FM07 and to what features they tried to improve for 08 but would be better off expanding on "old" ideas but not a complete overhaul of the whole game. Once again great read!

Yeah that is a good post and I agree with a lot of what you said but here are a few things which I have different opinions on. Here is what I think:

1. Transfer Budgets - I don't see any problem with the amount of money you are given to spend in transfer budgets. The problem here is that when buying players they are usually overpriced and when selling it is quite difficult to get a reasonable price.

2. Good Regens - 100% agreed with you there

3. Good Confidence System - Again totally agree

4. No relying on tactics - This, I am afraid I totally disagree with. Tactics are an important part of football and certainly should play a major part in success but it is debatable whether they are too important on the game. Using just the default tactics and being able to achieve huge success should not happen, as far as I am concerned.

5. Ease of Selling Players - Totally agree with you

6. Older Players - Not something I ever noticed in the game. For me older players still do a decent job, nothing much spectacular, but solid which for the most part is how it should be.

7. Innocence - You can still find out things in FM08, can't you?

There are also several other things that need improving like media, training and the realism of long-term games.

I must mention one more thing though - Man United, an ageing team? - You must be joking. Sure they have a few experienced players (Van der Sar, Giggs, Scholes, Neville) but they also have many young players including Rooney, Ronaldo, Tevez, Nani, Anderson. Need I go on.

Anyway you did give a good post an I do agree with a lot of what you say and I did enjoy reading it (except the Man United comment ).

jod, cheers for the reply, just a few comments. firstly, about the tactics. maybe you are right about not being able to have success with the default tactics, but maybe find a way to make it easier to adjust tactics and not need everything perfect for it to work.

secondly, about the man u comment. many people like to have 2 players in both positions, and the four old men you pointed out may need to be replaced here a couple of seasons in.

finally, about the innocence, maybe its just the fact that i start a lot of games but i always know who to sign, and can often plan 4 of 5 seasons ahead

A very good post, but I disagree with most of the points you've made as to why FM07 is better than '08. Here's why:

1 - Transfer Budgets.

Considering that when you start the game you have all the transfers already made by the club that summer a transfer budget of £75 million is ridiculous, especially considering Chelsea had already spent a lot of money on Shevchenko and Ballack that year. I think a starting budget of £40m is much more realistic, and I doubt Avram Grant had even £40m spare that summer. You can then ask for more cash if your reputation's good enough or you can use the budget adjustment feature to find more transfer funds.

2 - Good Regens.

While I agree that regens need work in FM08 (mainly in terms of physical attributes) there were similar issues with the regens in FM07, mainly (if I remember rightly) the fact that players had the wrong attributes for their positions. So you would have centre backs with 20 for finishing and strikers with 20 for marking etc. In FM08 I'm in 2029 with Gateshead and there are some fantastic regens around. I'd like more physical attribues for regens and there are without a doubt improvements to be made but, as I said, there will similar problems in '07 and you can still play on and have a squad full of fantastic players.

3 - Confidence System.

This is only better in '07 because there was a very limited confidence model in that game. Again there are still some minor issues with '08 (which are much improved since the 8.0.2 patch) but it's a feature that, once refined, will be very good. So for that reason I'm glad it was introduced into FM08, even if it has had some teething problems.

4 - No relying on tactics.

Because I think that being a football manager is largely dependent on being a half decent tactician I'd hate to play a management game where tactics are not important. I personally think it's depressing that in '07 you could just use one of the standard tactics supplied with the game and win 8 Premier League titles in 10 years. Where's the fun and challenge in that? The player does need to be given more tools with which to analyse their tactics and find out why things aren't working, but again I feel it's a step in the right direction.

5 - Ease of selling players

How you can find this easier in FM07 I don't know. During 07 people complained every week on here that it was too hard to get rid of unwanted players. It's still difficult at times on '08, but it's still easier to get rid of players than it was in '07.

6 - Older players

Again I can see no difference between '07 and '08 here. This was a plroblem in FM07 and is still a problem in FM08

7 - Innocence

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make here. You still need to discover players in '08. If you already know who are the best players to buy in '08 then that's nothing to do with the game. Or are you referring to the fact that in '07 it was much easier to find unknown quality players because the scouts were scarily accurate? If so then do you not think this was unrealistic? In '08 scouts can be wrong, and takes a good few scoutings of a player for them to get a good idea of a players potential.

So all in all I think that most of the things you've mentioned are things that need improving. But for me they are not things that make FM07 better than FM08.

chopper99, chelsea got ballack on a free, and shevchenko for 30-32M, which for chelsea isn't a lot and at the time, 15-16M each for ballack and shev would've seemed like absolute bargains. i do agree that 75M is too much, and 40M is about right though.

2. gutted about the regens in 08, yet to have a true star, whereas in 07 i thought they got the balance right

3. i liked the idea of a confidence system, but it is flawed, eg all players have the same expectations, so saivet will always be poor initially if he is held to the same standards as aguero or silva

4. i agree with everything everyone's said about the tactics. i feel that in 07 they were slightly too easy, but i've struggled to find a good tactic in 08, and have just ended up using the same one for each league, which gets really boring.

5. bang on

6. some players are pants the minute they hit thirty, eg ferdinand dropped instantly in one of my games, but in others i've been playing toure until he's 35

7. not too sure what you mean, i consider de guzman to be a "proper youngster"

great post though, i agree with most things you've said, as i had several games that went past 2020 in 07, only managed to get up to 2016 once on 08.

Starting in the premier league is the worst thing for me

Now,I'm not saying start way lower league,where you dont even know 1 player

Thats why I always take the Championship

Reason 1: Good transfer budgets

I'd say it was FM07 that's unrealistic. An unproven manager with £75million? And IRL, Abramovich curtailed the Chosen One's spending quite dramatically. In a couple of seasons as Chelski, with a moderate amount of success, FM08 gives you £100-150Million to spend.

Reason 2: Good regens

The next generation of regens/newgens are pretty good in FM08. It's the one after that when they really start to decline. I never get that far myself, but from what I hear, 30-40 year games are very disappointing.

Reason 3: Good confidence system

Agree, although the problems are mostly cosmetic on the 802 patch. You don't get sacked any more for losing against Man U in the 3rd round of the FA cup.

Reason 4: No relying on tactics

I got bored of just buying the best players and winning nearly every game on FM07. Much prefer the idea that the AI can "crack" your tactics. Probably too much importance on team talks and media comments though. How saying the wrong thing in the press can demotivate your players so much that they lose against a team 2 divs down is beyond me.

Reason 5: Ease of selling players.

Should be easier, but not as easy as FM07. If I'm offering a low-paid, high-rep player for half-price, I should have teams beating a path to my door. If he's highly-paid but mediocre I can see why he's so hard to off-load.

Reason 6: Older players

Unless I'm very attached to my player I sell as follows: strikers aged 31, midfielders aged 32, defenders aged 33. Any older and no one is interested and you get virtually zero money for them. I kept hold of Lampard until he was virtually dragging himself around the pitch on a small carty-thing and he still thought he should be a first team regular. Idiot.

Reason 7: Innocence

Not sure what you mean, but you can still play FM08 without cheating or resorting to the forums if you really want to. There are several databases you can download, such as the "unattached players" where everyone starts without a club, or "2143" where you start in the year 2143 (regens have become a bit rubbish by then but everyone's in the same boat). Or just be disciplined and set yourself a bunch of rules like "sign no players over 21" or "a net zero transfer budget" -- I did the zero budget one with Chelski, only allowing myself to buy when I've sold. Tempting to just blow it, but got there in the end.