Better than Sir Alex or just crazy?

Just played the last game of my 13th season and check out my competition history: I've now won the league 12 times in a row, 8 league cups in a row, 8 community shields in a row, FA numerous times, Champions League 4 times in a row...7 times in 13 seasons. I don't cheat in any way and play using 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1.

By seals at 2008-10-05

Btw...I also have the urge to go on and on and on with Man Utd even though I know I will be repeating the same thing over. What makes me want to go on is...i've won the Champions Cup 9 times and Real Madrid have won it the most with 10 times so I want to over take them.

Bringing in youngsters is the most challenging and most frightening thing as a manager because in the past few season I have spent big on youngsters aged 16-20, you don't know whether they will be world class or average, this season I bought a 20 year old central midfielder for £14 million. I don't just buy anyone, I use the my best scout and my eye to see how good he is before buying. So this is another thing that keeps me going, I want to see if I can keep Man Utd at the top with players who you don't know and who you have to gamble on.

hmmm the way to see if youre better than Fergie is to go to HallOfFame (although it is likely that you are better than he was)

and playing '08, the regens would be naff (would be able to playint he prem at start, and now they're ripping it up)

nice going btw, even though i hate man u

This player is an example...I came across this player by looking at all the top south american clubs and using View ---> General Info. then clicking on age. If I see a 16-18 year old in south america who is worth more than 500k then I check him out and sign him and I don't cheat or anything like that so this is the best way, I signed him for 250k and now my scout says he has the potential to be a good player.

By seals at 2008-10-05

he's not bad, not too great though either

useless physicals, though he is 18

And this player...I signed hiim when he was 16 years old for 3 million...a gamble. But...the scout said he was good signing, then it changed to decent, and now he has potential to be a quality player and he is in my 1st team and won English Players' player of the year this season.

By seals at 2008-10-05

And check out this signing, I signed him when he was 16 for just 10k!!! My scout said he was a good signing and now he is a World-class goalkeeper, look at him now, the funny thing is...young goalkeepers always show up good by the scout if they are going to be good, but the is one in a few good ones. Btw...I don't use any scouting tools for those who don't know and I don't cheat what so ever.

By seals at 2008-10-05

this proves that football manager is unrealistically easy and some stuff need to be sorted out in the next releases or I will stop buying the game.

this proves that football manager is unrealistically easy and some stuff need to be sorted out in the next releases or I will stop buying the game.

Good grief.

he's not bad, not too great though either

useless physicals, though he is 18

I know...regens have bad physical stats, but there are a few who have great physical stats if your lucky to sign such a player.

this proves that football manager is unrealistically easy and some stuff need to be sorted out in the next releases or I will stop buying the game.

Well my formation I use is 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 and the only thing I mess around with is the sliders and once you know what your doing then all you need is the best players then your set forever if you can bring in top players. But yeah...it is pretty easy because the AI is very weak so you can easily buy the best players and everything else.

Which is unrealistic and never happens in real life.

In other words, this must be sorted, you have just repeated my words.

Which is unrealistic and never happens in real life.

In other words, this must be sorted, you have just repeated my words.

Yeah, an example would be Lionel Messi, how can I buy him in the 3rd season with Man Utd?...that would never ever happen in real life even if he was 28 years old because Barcalona is his heart.

Not just that, even if you get all the players it's not even logical in terms of mathematics that you win 12 titles or was it 11? in such a short space of time.

Remember Real's Galaticos they failed miserably how many trophies the had in that era? I think two maybe... 1 League and 1 Europe and they're struggling for some kind of consistency since then.

Not just that, even if you get all the players it's not even logical in terms of mathematics that you win 12 titles or was it 11? in such a short space of time.

Remember Real's Galaticos they failed miserably how many trophies the had in that era? I think two maybe... 1 League and 1 Europe and they're struggling for some kind of consistency since then.

I keep all my players morale very high, thats why I win, if morale is Superb then don't respond to media comments unless its a very important away game against a big side. Yes...its that easy.

Some handy looking players! I have a similar style of play to yourself, buying in cheap youngsters and then seeing them develop. Really enjoy seeing these players make their way into the first team or maybe get sold to a lesser club (for a healthy profit!).

Have you had any good players through your own youth academy?

my MU game is in 2042 ive stoppd playing got bored of FM lol try & go for that long see how much you can win, ive won 31 EPL's & 98 cups wins which major ones are 19UCL's, 19 FA's & cant be bothered counting the other 1's i did pretty crap with UCL & FA early part of my career then towards the latter end dominated them. ive won 20 EPL's in a row game is too easy wen it gets to the regen stage u just buy the players with the best physical stats & pretty technical high stats & u end up dominating easy so that was why i stopped.

I've never seen the point of taking a team arguably already at the top of the football world and seeing what you can do with them. I know it's not for most people, but I like to have a challenge and see what you can achieve with a lower league team (I always play with Cambridge United) and have the knowledge that you started with no money and average players for lower leagues and made a decent team out of them instead of inheriting a world class team with money and adding very little to them.

Importantly though, there's no right or wrong way to play footie manager, each to their own. It's one of the most freeform games there is, but I'd advise people who go straight to the top teams when they play to pick a non-league team and see how different the game is and how you approach the game.

Just played the last game of my 13th season and check out my competition history: I've now won the league 12 times in a row, 8 league cups in a row, 8 community shields in a row, FA numerous times, Champions League 4 times in a row...7 times in 13 seasons. I don't cheat in any way and play using 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1.

By seals at 2008-10-05

maybe you are better who knows but time will tell if you can rebuild your team again like fergie.i would still say fergie as he built united up you took over a better team than the one he did.

I've never seen the point of taking a team arguably already at the top of the football world and seeing what you can do with them. I know it's not for most people, but I like to have a challenge and see what you can achieve with a lower league team (I always play with Cambridge United) and have the knowledge that you started with no money and average players for lower leagues and made a decent team out of them instead of inheriting a world class team with money and adding very little to them.

Importantly though, there's no right or wrong way to play footie manager, each to their own. It's one of the most freeform games there is, but I'd advise people who go straight to the top teams when they play to pick a non-league team and see how different the game is and how you approach the game.

That's not the point. The point is that even if you're a top club in a top league, it shouldn't be that easy. I mean, I've managed in India and a number of other countries that aren't followed by the European press. Who the hell cares though? We aren't debating that . . .

I find it very hilarious that he must remind everyone in almost every post that he is definitely NOT a cheater.

I find it very hilarious that he must remind everyone in almost every post that he is definitely NOT a cheater.

I was gonna point this out myself - of course he used Fm Scout or whatever.

I signed a lot of young players who looked average and turned out world-class in my Man U save, and when all the staff about fm09 came out i was about to leave the game, at 2016, i checked with a real-time editor (for the first time) their p.a. and found out about numbers like 187, 190 etc.. But i wasn't cheating at all before.. So, don't judge so easy

The joy of taking a club from a lower league is much better in my view, or earning the right to be linked with a job like Chelsea - Man Utd etc is still good, don't have to take it but always good to see their thinking about you.

Yeah, an example would be Lionel Messi, how can I buy him in the 3rd season with Man Utd?...that would never ever happen in real life even if he was 28 years old because Barcalona is his heart.

Dont necesarily agree with this - Two players from my favourite club Liverpool were idolised and loved it at Liverpool but were sold - Rush and Fowler. Just because they love the club does not mean that the club will never sell them - you might have trouble negotiating a contract but it is certainly not impossible.

Not just that, even if you get all the players it's not even logical in terms of mathematics that you win 12 titles or was it 11? in such a short space of time.

How is not logical in terms of mathematics? If 12 seasons are played then it is entirely possible that 11 titels could be won in a row. :confused:

I based it on the odds that a team to win the league is 25% in England.

so that's a 0.25^11 which is close to zero.

Yeah, an example would be Lionel Messi, how can I buy him in the 3rd season with Man Utd?...that would never ever happen in real life even if he was 28 years old because Barcalona is his heart.

It will now be easier to sign Messi after Barcelona went to great lengths to stop him from playing the full Olympics for Argentina after he said he wanted to, if any club done this to any player their affection for that club will be less and therefore be more likely to agree to a contract with another club! Personally I was disgusted by Barcelona this summer over this, that - to me - shows that they were scared of loosing this player therefore being a 1 man squad! I have lost alot of respect for Barcelona over this along with being VERY unsporting in their Champions League game last week, do they think they are above everyone? I think not!!!

I based it on the odds that a team to win the league is 25% in England.

so that's a 0.25^11 which is close to zero.

You make it sound so crazy despite Man Utd winning 8 prem league titles in the 1st 11 seasons... Maybe it isnt so unrealistic you can make a team dominate?

You make it sound so crazy despite Man Utd winning 8 prem league titles in the 1st 11 seasons... Maybe it isnt so unrealistic you can make a team dominate?

how may times has a team won 4 leagues in a row in England? Never.

winning 8 in 11 is not close to zero as when you do not win it, the math problem restarts and you are back very far from zero. Sorry, you are obviously very bad at math.

but winning 3 times which was recently done by Man Unites is less possible, its 0.015625 assuming that one of the top four is a title challenger.

now you are saying u want to win the league 11 times in a row?? that's 2.38418579 × 10-7 which is impossible to happen in real life. Absolutely no chance what so ever not in this world. (assuming one of the big four is a hot challenger)

Even if its one of two teams (50% chance), winning 11 in a row is still impossible as its 0.00048828125.

I hope you see what I'm talking about.

No I am not bad at math, I agree the mathematical probability is extremely low for 11 seasons in a row based on your 25% odds at winning the league, which I would say is closer to 33% nowadays.. But in theory it isn't stupidly unrealistic considering 1 point was the difference in the 2 times Utd didn't win the league, what is the mathematical probabality of finishing in the top 2 10 years in a row?

what is the mathematical probabality of finishing in the top 2 10 years in a row?

that is a bit tricky

You need to finish 1st or second and power that up to 10 seasons.

finishing first is 0.25 assuming that one of the top four only does it.

the same goes to finishing second, which is also 0.25.

(not that we are assuming your team never finishes out of the big four, neither does anyone else of the big four)

So you have an accumulated chance of 0.50 of finishing in the top two for one year.

For 10 years that is: 0.5^10 = 0.0009765625

I know you do not mean it literally, but i just calculated it for fun, I see what you are meaning but It's still extremely hard and a bit far from reality to finish in the top two 10 season in a row, not sure if it happened in real life or not but its still pretty tough though.

This is high school maths. Well, its poor maths. You don't need to be a mathematician to see that there is something seriously wrong with the maths done so far.

at school atm, I will clarify later

interesting what u say.

well see.

btw, can you please not post at the math "problem" issue until 16gmt today as i will be sleeping when you post, and if you are wrong i will look like an idiot for not proving im right, so i will be happy if you post whilst i am online as i am going to sleep now.

thanks

The maths is all wrong there. You're also assuming random chance - this isn't throwing a dice though, there's far more too it. Domination in football is often self perpetuating. Check out Lyon, whose business model is pretty much what Navie is describing.

I think that's taking away from the point though. To me, if you're finding it too easy, do something to make it harder. If it's too easy to find the best youngsters, stop using the techniques you're using. Rely on your scouts finding them instead, say - the top clubs do not look at every player in South America. There's a million ways to make it tougher.

The maths is all wrong there. You're also assuming random chance - this isn't throwing a dice though, there's far more too it. Domination in football is often self perpetuating. Check out Lyon, whose business model is pretty much what Navie is describing.

i mentioned what i assumed, nothing wrong there.

i assumed that the top four never change and only one of the top four will win the league, so according to my assumption the math is correct.

i am not assuming random chance, when only one of the big four will when so i got 1/4 chance.

maybe i agree that my assumptions are not correct but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mathematics i have done.

i can argue about that and i am more than ready. even if you want me to correct the assumptions and make them more complicated,that will result in less chance u win the league, so in the minimal chance its impossible how then if i make it realistic like you say?

That's fine but you're ignoring everything else here. If you're able to break football down into simple maths you should become a professional gambler or a bookie.

what is your problem mate?

you say my math is incorrect and it could happen in real life.

you tell me to make my math more realistic.

but this will cause that the chances are LESS THAT THIS HAPPENS. And i think that my math is more than realstic.

what are the chances that the winner of the premiere league this season is a team from the top four? its 100%

perhaps its not 0.25 each like i said, but definitely very close. anyway i am going to sleep, everybody don't post on math tillim online so i can show you how YOU are wrong not me. you need to understand that according to my assumptions my math is correct. if you don't think the assumptions are anywhere near reality then the problem is with them not with "my math"

how may times has a team won 4 leagues in a row in England? Never.

winning 8 in 11 is not close to zero as when you do not win it, the math problem restarts and you are back very far from zero. Sorry, you are obviously very bad at math.

but winning 3 times which was recently done by Man Unites is less possible, its 0.015625 assuming that one of the top four is a title challenger.

now you are saying u want to win the league 11 times in a row?? that's 2.38418579 × 10-7 which is impossible to happen in real life. Absolutely no chance what so ever not in this world. (assuming one of the big four is a hot challenger)

Even if its one of two teams (50% chance), winning 11 in a row is still impossible as its 0.00048828125.

I hope you see what I'm talking about.

he game is diffrent from reallife so he could have won the league 11 times in a row.

Navie, once you beat Real Madrid`s record 10 European Cups why don`t you SELL your best 5-9 players and see how you go from there. You would still probably win the premiership, after all you are Man Utd

what an enlightening post toon, i can have sweet dreams now.

Navie, once you beat Real Madrid`s record 10 European Cups why don`t you SELL your best 5-9 players and see how you go from there. You would still probably win the premiership, after all you are Man Utd

Indeed. Or impose some sort of under-21 rule on yourself maybe. Loads of ways to make it tougher. I'm not 100% Navie is in any way complaining though!

the chance of winning the league technically is 1 in 20 at the start of each season. now i suck at maths but im pretty sure that that is a true statement.

football is a game were teams like say hull can beat teams like arsenal. whilst its not probable it can happen. even if the odds are terrible. thats what we all (or at least i) love about football. nothing is set in stone, not even the top four anymore.

statistics are pointless in this argument. who cares what the chances of it happening in real life are. it all comes down to whos the best throughout a season and if a team can avoid those 1-0 defeats to hull and 1-1 draws with stoke throughout the season then they can win the league. even if the statistics say that man utd won it last year so for them to do it again they have less chance, well they dont, they still have the same chance of winning the league as they did every other year.

Thats just my opinion though. and as i mentioned, i really suck at maths.

i think berbatov9 got an A in his math test and just came in here to throw his weight about..

I'm sorry I can't post to your schedule, you are very welcome to revisit this when you come back, this is a forum for free discussion and we just have to get our facts right without assuming things. There are two major things wrong with your method (I think I may have forgotten the second as I wrote this):

As people have pointed out your assumption of the chances being 25% to win the league title is flawed. But that problem would not have come about if you had used correct statistical tools to analyze the facts, as there are too many factors to account for. Everybody can probably think of different examples BUT the statistical way to test for whether the result of 12 league titles in a row for Manchester United is a result of chance or not is to simply conduct a t-test. I don't have much time to think up completely fair parameters but I'm going to use the game results, and use them to compare with how Manchester United have actually done in the last 13 years of the premier league (to obtain the average position of the regular Manchester United). The t-test, if you do not know will check whether a difference between two means is large enough to assume that it they are too large to be attributed to random chance. Now, I won't be cheeky and miss out the result of the first season and I will include that as well. The result that came out is as follows:

Mean of in-game results: 1.0769 (mean position in table)

Mean of Real life results: 1.5385

t-value = 1.897

degrees of freedom = 12

I'll miss out some of the other stuff because it is fairly pointless and I have a pre-lab to get to work on.

Anyway the main calculation is:

Significance: 0.082

that means, at 95% significance level (p>0.05) , we CAN accept that the results obtained in-game by Navie to be consistent with Manchester United's chances of winning the league based on the past 13 seasons.

whether my tests mean anything practically, I do not know. If you did the same thing with Chelsea and won the league for 10 seasons in a row the test would not have worked, however we cannot use the history of a team to judge perfectly (Manchester United, who have always been a strong team are a good example to use, whereas other teams of the top 4 have not been consistently high-quality in the last decade, least of all Chelsea are harder to model). The strength of teams are fluid and changing, not even because of different players but often due to unseen changes such as in form or deteriorating/increasing ability. If we used Abramovich's Chelsea to test this, from the last 4 seasons since he bought the team, if Chelsea were to win the next 4 Premier League titles in a row, it would not be statistically surprising.

Anyway the assumptions you give favor my test and does damage to yours. Here:

i assumed that the top four never change and only one of the top four will win the league, so according to my assumption the math is correct.

The fact is that the top four do change, HOWEVER if the strength of the teams are assumed to be static and unchanging (for over a decade!), my test is better because I specifically looked at Manchester United and if the strength of teams are truly unchanging then I can use the positions from previous seasons to measure future ones.

i am not assuming random chance, when only one of the big four will when so i got 1/4 chance.

Why 25% chance? Manchester United have won 8 out of the last 13 premier league campaigns. 25% seems arbitrary, if you were truly measuring the chances objectively, and if you followed your assumption from your previous statement, surely you should look at the records like I did. With the current record, Manchester United have a 61.5% chance of winning the league based on previous seasons (note: this is not Manchester United's CAPACITY to win, this is just an example) and if I used your calculations the chances of Manchester United winning the league 11 times in a row would instead be: 0.00476. Slightly higher than how you predicted it. When it is 12 times it becomes 0.00293.

maybe i agree that my assumptions are not correct but there is absolutely nothing wrong with the mathematics i have done.

The actual calculations have not been wrong, but you have failed to conduct a fair test (well, any test really). Let's look at an example:

[THIS IS POOR MATHEMATICS AND I WITHDRAW THIS STATEMENT] Instead of winning 12 seasons in a row, Manchester United came:

1,3,4,2,3,1,4,2,3,1,2,3 respectively. What are the chances of Manchester United having those results? According to your work, the exact same chance as they have of getting 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1. With my test, the mean of Manchester United in the made up values is 2.4167. The significance is 0.025, which means that the results Manchester United got is not realistic using the model of the last 12 seasons to judge. [/THIS IS POOR MATHEMATICS AND I WITHDRAW THIS STATEMENT]*

how may times has a team won 4 leagues in a row in England? Never.

winning 8 in 11 is not close to zero as when you do not win it, the math problem restarts and you are back very far from zero. Sorry, you are obviously very bad at math.

but winning 3 times which was recently done by Man Unites is less possible, its 0.015625 assuming that one of the top four is a title challenger.

now you are saying u want to win the league 11 times in a row?? that's 2.38418579 × 10-7 which is impossible to happen in real life. Absolutely no chance what so ever not in this world. (assuming one of the big four is a hot challenger)

Even if its one of two teams (50% chance), winning 11 in a row is still impossible as its 0.00048828125.

I hope you see what I'm talking about.

I hope that my previous example has shown you the problem with your calculation, but just to make sure:

when you do not win it, the math problem restarts and you are back very far from zero

[THIS IS POOR MATHEMATICS AND I WITHDRAW THIS STATEMENT] the math problem does not restart because, by your math, if you win 3 in a row, that is 0.25^3, which is 0.015625. If you do not win the next one, you will get (by your logic) one out of the other three spots, which is 0.75. So, 0.015625 x 0.75 = 0.01171875. If they win the next one, which is 0.25 again, it will be 0.0029. Following this, if Manchester United won the next 7 titles (total = 3 in a row, then not winning, then 7 in a row), the chances would still be 7.152557373046875 x10^-7 which is not so much more than 2.38418579 × 10-7. If you win 3 in a row but then lose the fourth time every time (WWWLWWWLWWW), the chance is:2.145767212 x 10^-6. Again, not so much more. One more, the true number of times Manchester United have done in the league (WWLLLWLWWWL): 5.793571472 x 10^-5. [/THIS IS POOR MATHEMATICS AND I WITHDRAW THIS STATEMENT]*

The whole thing is screwed because you attempted to place percentage chances for winning the league instead of looking at the whole picture. The fact that nobody can gauge the relative strengths of the teams should be a clue why you should not have attempted to do it. This is not a betting website where you must give the odds for a team to win because we're not trying to bet for money here!

It sounds like you are very interested in the statistical side of maths, I don't know how old you are, but if you are keen on it I suggest for you to take a statistics course if you go to university or whatever. I'm personally not a maths guy, I did it for a prerequisite for another paper but I still found it quite interesting and I am sure the university lecturer's will have an easier time explaining this than I did. Anyway, I just have to say that the test I did was probably a completely horrible one, however I think I did communicate the point that your calculation is not the best to model a team's position in the league for a sustained number of seasons. I'm leaving now also, I hope you see the sense in my jumble of messed up thoughts.

My own view on the difficulty thing is that the developers have already got an inbuilt difficulty system in the game, and that is the different teams you can choose. You can choose a good one or a bad one. The problem with this is the generally poor AI and making horrible decisions letting the player sneak in. My take: Difficulty levels - not needed, overall improved AI that models real life behaviour realistically - needed.

i think berbatov9 got an A in his math test and just came in here to throw his weight about..

Chullibun: Sharing your knowledge is a good thing if everybody had their own system of right and wrongs rather than combining, refining and compromising then we would be an anarchy.

*I just remembered some things I learned a couple years ago and forgive me for this, but I have fixed them, I don't have the time to re-do them today I will do it later if anybody does not understand why I deleted them but ignore the bracketed calculations. However any way you use those assumptions to do the maths it will not get you a realistic estimate of the percentage chance it takes to get a certain number of league titles in a row, since the method was wrong to begin with. I also don't see why we have to adhere to your assumptions anyway, as the validity of your calculations do hinge on whether your assumptions are to be trusted or not.

Personally the chances of Man Utd winning the league is 20% along with every other "Top 4" team in the division so that would calculate to 80% over 4 teams therefore giving 20% to the rest of the 16 teams in the division, it is football and anything can happen but the reality is 1 of the Top 4 teams will win it and having the 80% over the Top 4 shows this BUT it seems people fail to realise that there is more than 4 teams in this division and it is a massively outside chance that any team outside of the Top 4 will win it and the 20% over 16 teams shows this also!

how may times has a team won 4 leagues in a row in England? Never.

winning 8 in 11 is not close to zero as when you do not win it, the math problem restarts and you are back very far from zero. Sorry, you are obviously very bad at math.

but winning 3 times which was recently done by Man Unites is less possible, its 0.015625 assuming that one of the top four is a title challenger.

now you are saying u want to win the league 11 times in a row?? that's 2.38418579 × 10-7 which is impossible to happen in real life. Absolutely no chance what so ever not in this world. (assuming one of the big four is a hot challenger)

Even if its one of two teams (50% chance), winning 11 in a row is still impossible as its 0.00048828125.

I hope you see what I'm talking about.

Since when does winning a football match have anything to do with maths? Just because the probability of something happening is low mathmatically doesnt mean it wont. We are talking about football here not rolling a dice.

There are actually so many things wrong with what your saying its quite funny.

P.S - this guy did not use any cheating methods of scouting by the way. just to highlight this piont!! ;-)

MSCCG thats just over complicated and unnecessary, and i can argue forever that only one of the top four has a chance to win the league, no point in arguing because this is a fact.

each top four has 25% chance and if you want to win x times then its .25^x

so simple and no need for your arguements you are being a bit annoying as i don't want to calculate the real chance with everything in mind i just need a simple calculation and i mentioned that but people fail to understand it.

Navie, once you beat Real Madrid`s record 10 European Cups why don`t you SELL your best 5-9 players and see how you go from there. You would still probably win the premiership, after all you are Man Utd

I've always wanted to keep my squad very young.

To the person who said that I obviously use a scouting tool because I kept saying that I don't cheat...I don't cheat and I have no reason to lie about it, if I were to cheat I wouldn't keep on playing as I know there would be no challenge.

Look who I have just signed for a free using the Bosman ruling...I offered him a contract around 1st January and my top scout said he was a decent signing, I thought if his stats are good then he is worth getting on a free and now he has potential to be a good player, I know scouts underrate youngsters alot.

By seals at 2008-10-07