Style or Substance?

We all want to win whilst playing breathtakingly brilliant and attractive football, but when push comes to shove and you can't have both, which one takes a hike first for you? I suspect almost everyone will say they prefer substance over style, but personally I like to play in a style I want and then try to win once I have got my team playing a style of football than I can enjoy watching week in week out in full match mode at Werder Bremen. Obviously when you are at a club that expects success the pressure is on (the Werder board expect me to win the title so not a lot of wiggle room there!), but I will never compromise my style for results at Bremen. I do at most clubs I manage, but for whatever reason I chose to build Werder Bremen as a football team who play football the way I want it to be played.

I'm in my 4th season now so it can't have gone all that bad - I've not been sacked yet. First season we pushed Bayern Munich close, but never quite close enough, 2nd season was the peak of everything I wanted when we added the Bundelsiga title to a 2nd successive German cup title, then 3rd season we were crap, but managed to scramble over all the rest of the onlookers to finish a distant 2nd, 22 points behind Bayern Munich. I fear the bubble has burst, that we will never again win the Bundesliga, but that one season made it worth it and because of that and the fact I love watching this team in full match mode, whatever our results, I will now never put substance ahead of style at Bremen.

I don't watch the team play in full match mode but from what I see on key highlights it seems we play a silky passing and movement game.

That said, I'd much rather win 1-0 against a team with the goal being scored by a long punt and then a 1-on-1 than play skillful football for ninety minutes and not achieve anything.

I play a, just get the ball downfield and hit the net, kind of tactic. Think Celtic when they're a goal behind.

I play to win, so substance but I do like to play good football. If I can't play good football and win, then style has to go because winning means that in the future, I will be able to do both.

It has to be substance every single time. If your not winning games then your not doing your job properly. At the end of the day, you can pass the ball around beautifully, absolutely hammer your opponents with possession, but if your not winning then it's all for nothing. My job is to win football matches. As long as I score more goals than the opposition, I don't care if we completed 2 passes or not. I'd rather be an ugly winner than a beautiful loser.

I might have broken the world record for most cliches in a paragraph there!

It has to be substance every single time. If your not winning games then your not doing your job properly. At the end of the day, you can pass the ball around beautifully, absolutely hammer your opponents with possession, but if your not winning then it's all for nothing. My job is to win football matches. As long as I score more goals than the opposition, I don't care if we completed 2 passes or not. I'd rather be an ugly winner than a beautiful loser.

I might have broken the world record for most cliches in a paragraph there!

Are you over the moon or as sick as a parrot though?

I don't care how I play as long as I win!

I'm a win at all costs kinda guy. That means I'll fill my team with foreigners if I have to. In fact, I'm happy to do it. And it also means I'll play dull, turgid football if it's called for.

I really don't care much about substance. My take is that once your players are doing a proper job, then they win. If they win properly, confidence comes along with the job. And once there is confidence, there will be flair.

If there is only flair but no results, it means the players aren't doing a proper job.

Managing Man. United, I do like my team to play good football. And, as far as I can judge from a bunch of dots flying about, we do seem to move the ball around pretty damn quickly. I'd say it was our hallmark. However, it's not essential. More goals than the opposition is what's essential to me.

As Arsenal,I play with style untill the last 15 mins then it all depends on the score.

I always play an attacking formation, no matter what, which can be a problem if I'm managing a team with mediocre players!

I like to play attractive football, but a win comes first.

I like to play attractive football, but a win comes first.

spot on, i'd say...

Winning is all that is important.

Trying to win trophies with style is almost impossible, just look at Arsenal.

Its got to be samba football all the way. Nobody gets into my team unless they have passing and creativity 15 or over.

But seriously it depends on your idea of stylish football, skill and good passing with no end product is not stylish to me, irl or in FM. I like to play quick tempo short passing football but im not to fussy about the rest.

Players carrying out my game plan and getting a win, my big center back clatering a striker with bravery of 7 in the first few minutes just to 'let him know he was there' or winning by a doggy penalty decision, now thats my idea of style!

No one can tell me that in a champions league final they would preffer to loses pretty then to win ugly.

Winning is all that is important.

Trying to win trophies with style is almost impossible, just look at Arsenal.

If your a leeds supporter thats pretty ironic. I can remember a famous game against southhampton where you made about a thousand consecutive passes, so unnecessary the poor old southampton side of 71 are still chasing shadows

No, certainly not a Leeds fan, just have the displeasure of living here.

Winning is all that is important.

Trying to win trophies with style is almost impossible, just look at Arsenal.

Tell that to the invincibles!

Winning is my priority. Playing in the lower leagues of Eastern Europe doesn't help in getting my team to play attractive football either, although it seems as if the teams movements in the highlights flow nice enough to say we are playing decent football.

Win is what I aim to do, however. How beautiful the game is playing comes naturally or so it should.

Winning is important but like Abramovic I want to win in style. After watching the Euro08 matches and enjoying Spain's manner, I went and adapted my FM tactics to a high-tempo short-passing game and it looks lovely. After one game in the EPL this season it's looking like Chelski are catching up with me

I pick my tactics, i pick my players, i manage from the sideline, i win, if not and i feel we should have i give them hell.

I dont care how attractive they play. As long as we are getting the points at the end of the day that win trophies

I play to win, but my tactic does produce nice football.

Tell that to the invincibles!

Preston?

I play in my own version of a 5-3-2 with wing-backs, so, I just hit the ball forward and hope it goes in. Tight defence though, thats good.

Preston?

Erm, Arsenal

Oh, I thought you meant Preston of '88, 1888.

Oh, I thought you meant Preston of '88, 1888.

Yeah. The original Invincibles. Not Wenger's fluky draw merchants.

I wonder how much Fergie pays all those refs, e.g. 7 minutes of injury time that got them the first Premiership title, Champions League '99, the list just goes on.

I suspect that if you were going to bribe referees, you'd want the job done inside the 90 minutes! Unless, of course, the money is dependent on United being down by the end of the 90.

But none of this is on-topic.

Looks pretty much as I expected. I would have to say (as I intimated in my 1st post) that in most of my savegames, at most clubs, I also put winning as my top priority, but I always find polls where the person posting the poll selects the obvious answer to be so tedious so I decided to refer specifically to my Werder Bremen savegame.

Obviously when I refer to "style" I mean whatever each individual considers style, not some definition of mine.

I guess ultimately it depends from what aspect of the game you get your enjoyment though. Even though there is board expectations and pressure etc, this isn't real life where my livelihood would depend on me winning games to keep my job so I can afford to get more experimental. If it all goes pear-shaped and I get sacked I just start a new game

I'm not altogether sure why I decided so totally to go for style first, substance second at Bremen, but now it is 100% ingrained in my philosophy there. I want my team to play football that will entertain the fans for 90 minutes, not just the 10 seconds it takes to score a goal with 89 minutes of crap surrounding it. And, since I chose to start watching most games in full match mode that makes a bit more sense because entertaining the fans basically means entertaining myself. I love watching the team pass the ball around and play and that is where a large part of my enjoyment comes from in that savegame. In other savegames my enjoyment may come from winning 1-0 every week and topping the table (except I can never get my teams to defend properly anyway). Like I said though, there has to be a fair amount of success to go with the style, otherwise I'd have been sacked before now, it's just that I won't compromise my style in an individual game to try to hold onto a 1-0 win or start lumping it up to a target man to save a potential 1-0 defeat.

In that same savegame I'm also managing Fiorentina in a similar style, but of course they are in Serie A which is vastly more difficult than the Bundesliga so Fiorentina's wildly attacking style doesn't really go down brilliantly - we finished 4th, 5th, 6th in my first 3 seasons so we seem to be sliding the wrong way, but again even though I rarely watch them in full match mode (not sure why - they can be as thrilling and more so than Bremen) I love to watch them piling forward in a caution to the wind style.

Winning trophies is great, but when you've won one or two they're all the same really! I've won the Champions League with numerous different teams in different versions (not FM08 though) and it's always nice, but I really couldn't give a toss about it as a tropy really - it just provides the money to fund Bremen's assault on the Bundesliga title that is my holy grail.

I guess ultimately it depends from what aspect of the game you get your enjoyment though. Even though there is board expectations and pressure etc, this isn't real life where my livelihood would depend on me winning games to keep my job so I can afford to get more experimental. If it all goes pear-shaped and I get sacked I just start a new game

That's where I differ. Don't get me wrong, I don't take it too seriously. I don't worry about it in bed at night! But when I play the game, I like to enter into the illusion that I'm a real football manager. For that reason, I feel the weight of responsibility to get results. But in a fun way! That's just how I enjoy the game.

That's where I differ. Don't get me wrong, I don't take it too seriously. I don't worry about it in bed at night! But when I play the game, I like to enter into the illusion that I'm a real football manager. For that reason, I feel the weight of responsibility to get results. But in a fun way! That's just how I enjoy the game.

Well, I guess I do the same, but I'd be the kind of romantic football manager who wants to entertain his fans first and foremost. This Bremen game actually resulted in me writing a story in the FMS forum so in that case I had to have realism, but for me that came from me just being a manager who wanted to entertain those paying fans and make a name for himself forever in Werder Bremen history for the style of football. In real life I would almost certainly become an unemployable dinosaur of a manager, but my location gives a strong hint as to who my idol is as a football manager (despite me having only moved up here 3 years ago) - results and trophies are boring - I want passion and entertainment and players playing football for the love of the game, etc, etc...all those things that make fans from everywhere else in the country mock the lack of trophies