My in depth guide to how I've had success and immensely enjoyed FM8.0.1

Hello all.

I know a lot of people are struggling and tearing their hair out in frustration with FM08, particularly with the 8.0.1 patch. But not me. Since starting my Gateshead save I've enjoyed it a lot, and picked up a lot of useful knowledge (hopefully) along the way. So I thought I'd try and write a step by step guide to how I got to the point where I use one tactic with no tweaking, where the quality of the players in my team is the most important thing, and where I don't seem to suffer from the shots/goals ratio or any other bugs that are apparent enough to annoy me in any way.

This 'guide' will cover everything from the tactic I use (this will just incorperate a link to my tactic posted in the tactics forum, so if you don't want to know anything about tactics but still want to read this thread then don't worry, the tactic itself won't be discussed here), the way I incorperate opposition instructions, team talks, transfer tips and hopefully much more. Some of this will have been covered before perhaps but hopefully there will be something useful for someone. And while it may have been covered before what I'm hoping will make this different is that I'll be outlining exactly what I've done so far to take Gateshead from the Blue Square North to the Championship (and hopefully soon The Premiership as I'm currently only in my first season in the Championship. After a bit of a stutter in the Blue Square Premiership where I was developing my tactic I've since won back to back promotions to get here).

*Disclaimer. I never cheat and have never replayed any match or anything like that to get results. With that in mind I believe I've developed a series of techniques that help maximise success. But that being said there is no easy way to win in FM. I hope to outline everything I do in the hope that following all instructions will allow people to have similar success to me with minimum effort. But I've always still had periods where my teams not performed as well as I would have liked and I've got frustrated. But I've found that sticking with the same tactic was the better option in the long run and that judging the performance at the end of the season was a much better indicator than judging the performance game to game.

So with this in mind I'll begin.....

Hello all.

I know a lot of people are struggling and tearing their hair out in frustration with FM08, particularly with the 8.0.1 patch. But not me. Since starting my Gateshead save I've enjoyed it a lot, and picked up a lot of useful knowledge (hopefully) along the way. So I thought I'd try and write a step by step guide to how I got to the point where I use one tactic with no tweaking, where the quality of the players in my team is the most important thing, and where I don't seem to suffer from the shots/goals ratio or any other bugs that are apparent enough to annoy me in any way.

This 'guide' will cover everything from the tactic I use (this will just incorperate a link to my tactic posted in the tactics forum, so if you don't want to know anything about tactics but still want to read this thread then don't worry, the tactic itself won't be discussed here), the way I incorperate opposition instructions, team talks, transfer tips and hopefully much more. Some of this will have been covered before perhaps but hopefully there will be something useful for someone. And while it may have been covered before what I'm hoping will make this different is that I'll be outlining exactly what I've done so far to take Gateshead from the Blue Square North to the Championship (and hopefully soon The Premiership as I'm currently only in my first season in the Championship. After a bit of a stutter in the Blue Square Premiership where I was developing my tactic I've since won back to back promotions to get here).

*Disclaimer. I never cheat and have never replayed any match or anything like that to get results. With that in mind I believe I've developed a series of techniques that help maximise success. But that being said there is no easy way to win in FM. I hope to outline everything I do in the hope that following all instructions will allow people to have similar success to me with minimum effort. But I've always still had periods where my teams not performed as well as I would have liked and I've got frustrated. But I've found that sticking with the same tactic was the better option in the long run and that judging the performance at the end of the season was a much better indicator than judging the performance game to game.

So with this in mind I'll begin.....

Go on then...

Tactics

Firstly, and probably most importantly is the tactic I use.

The tactic can be found here:

Choppers 4-1-2-2-1 tactic

It's Version 3 of this tactic that you want and it can be found at the bottom of the second page. This tactic is very balanced so don't expect loads of full on attacking football but what it does mean is that because it's a balanced tactic you don't need to tweak from game to game. Saying that I have developed a defensive version of this tactic to be used in some of the harder away games I'm now having in the Championship. I'll be uploading this tonight when I get home from work if you feel you need it. However, in the lower leagues I find that just using V3 is good enough.

Players

If you find the tactic is not working for you then it's almost definitely down to the players you're using (particularly if you're also following all of the other things I do which we'll go into later). This has definitely been the case for me. As I managed to get better players my results improved dramatically.

But this is not always easy in the lower leagues and after a few seasons of struggling to find even a half decent player I stumbled upon something that helped me get promoted the next three seasons in a row. And that was not to listen to my assistant in regards to what players would be interested in coming to my team on loan. When asked to filter out unrealistic targets he gave me a list of absolutely useless players, all worth less than £90k. In the end I got fed up and just listed all the players listed for loan that were valued at £1m or less. I then literally made offers to loan all of them (or only the good ones once their values got down to less than £400k). What I found was that the majority of these players will say they're not interested but some will come to you, particularly players from teams close by, so in my case Sunderland, Newcastle etc.

Now, if you're playing in England the rules are that you can have 4 long term loans per season. So if you're lucky you should get 4 players that are better than the players you already have agreeing to come on loan to you. If you're very lucky then you might get 5 or 6 of these players agreeing and you can choose your the best 4. To ensure that you don't just take the first 4 that agree just to find out that two better players have agreed to come on loan to you but are no longer allowed as you've used up your allocation, delay any that you're not 100% convinced about for a week until you know if those better players are going to agree to come to you or not.

You then have the option to bring in some short term loans. In England you can have 5 loan players in the match day squad so I always try to bring a couple more players in on 3 month loans. When their 3 months are up you can't extend them as there's a rule that you can only have youngsters on short term loans for 3 months at the most. So once those two players are coming up to the end of their loan deals I try and find two more. By doinf this I try to ensure I always have 6 loan players at my club, 5 which I can always play and 1 for cover. I've found this to work brilliantly as the players you can manage to bring in on loan are usually always better than your useless lower league players. It takes a while to make loan offers for so many players but it's definitely been worth it.

Another tip is to never offer 100% wages to try and keep your outgoings to a minimum. Offer 60% at the most at first, if the loan offer is refused then up it if the player's worth it. Not wasting money is massively important at lower league level, more about that later.

The other thing you need to spend time doing is trawl through the free transfers. At lower league level you only need to concentrate on certain attributes for each position. As there are going to be a lot of free players to trawl through it's much better to sort the decent from the dire in some way. If you have attribute masking enabled this will involve scouting as many free players as possible to reveal all their attributes befor taking the next step.

Once you've done enough scouting of free players (or you never had their attributes masked in the first place) then it's time to start looking for the kind of players that will give maximum benefit to the team. The first thing I'd do is to filter all free players that have pace and acceleration of 15 and above. Pace is massively important at lower league level and if you can get a pacy striker and 2 pacey wingers then it will make a big difference.

Next filter by tackling of 14 or more to see if there's any decent free defenders or defensive midfielders out there. At this stage the standard of player that you'll actually be able to sign will be very low so it's mainly just a case of trying to get a few players that are better than the ones in your current squad at this stage. The main thing is to try and get some pace throughout the team, the loan players you hopefully manage to bring in will be the most important ones.

*Disclaimer 2 - This method is not entirely in keeping with the strict rules used in the LLM forum. But if you do want to keep to those rules you just need to only rely on players found by your scouts etc and try and stay away from the player search screen. I however don't strictly follow the LLM rules as I find I don't enjoy it as much. Each to their own.

Finances

One of the difficult things about lower league management is keeping the finances in the green. I've managed to do this quite comfortably by doing the following.

As soon as you take over your new club get rid of any player or staff member who is not needed to save on wages. I get rid of all youth players that don't require a compensation payout (if they do need compensation I'll use mutual termination and try and sack them on the cheap). I also get rid of any reserve team players. Money will be very tight so I only want enough players for my first team squad, anyone else is just a drain on the finances.

The same goes for the staff. Because of the poor level of facilities and coaches your players are not going to improve. So trying to bring in more coaches is completely pointless. Stick to one assistant and one coach at the most. Same goes for physios, one is enough. You may want to allow yourself 2 or 3 scouts if you have attribute masking on and need to scout players often.

But that's it. Make sure you don't have anyone you don't need and your finances will slowely grow.

Another well known way to inject a bit of cash into the club is to arrange friendlies at your ground with Premier League teams. This could involve approaching all the prem teams as most of them will say no. But hopefully you'll manage to get 3 or 4 to agree. Do this every season to bring in much needed cash.

Training

At this stage the training that you use doesn't really matter. All your players and staff will only be part time, your facilities and coaches will be awful and your players are not going to improve anyway. So it's fine to just stick with the general schedule. I did decide to make my own in part time schedules in the second season. If anyone wants then just ask and I'll upload screenies but to be honest I don't think they made any difference. Not until you're full time and have better facilities and coaches will training actually have much of an effect.

Right, I think that's everything set for the start of your first actual match. You've got your tactics, you've got your players on the way, you've got your training and hopefully you've trimmed down the playing and backroom staff as much as possible to save money.

Now we move onto what I do from game to game in order to try and keep winning.

Media Interaction

This is quite simple for me, I ignore it. Responding to pre or post match comments seems to have more of a negative than positive effect on players in my opinion, or at least it has a negative effect more often. I've been ignoring most media comments since FM07 and found this to be the most steady way to not get fluctuations in moral.

The only media comments are do respond to are the following:

When a player gets injured and you get the media comment afterwards about how much will they be missed. In this instance I always respond with 'Well miss player x but I feel we have adequate cover'.

This causes player x to be happy that he will be missed and any other players who play in his position to be pleased that you feel they're good enough to cover. I never bother with any of the other responses here.

Moral is ver important in the game. Keeping it as high as possible is essential if you want to avoid slumps.

Team Talks

Massively important when it comes to keeping moral up, especially after a loss. Can also effectively be used to turn a 2-0 half time deficit into a win. The main thing I try and do is to never get angry with my team for losing, even if I really want to. I always sympathise or tell them it was a good effort when they lose. Full details of team talks here:

At the start of a match:-

If I'm at home and anything other than massive favourite I'll use 'For the fans'.

If I'm at home and im the massive favourite I'll use 'I expect a win'.

If I'm away and I'm the favourite or it's pretty even I'll use 'Good luck for the match ahead'

If I'm away and not favourite I'll use 'You can win tonight'

At half time:-

If I'm 2 or more goals up I'll use 'Pleased'

If I'm 1 goal ahead I'll use whatever version of encourage is shown. This will be the third option and usually says simply 'Encourage' or 'Show Encouragement'. To me this is encouraging the players to go on and finish the game off and this has worked very well for me since FM07.

If I'm drawing at half time then I'll use the same as above although in this instance the option may say 'Tell the players they can win this'.

If I'm 1 goal behind I'll use the same as the above.

If I'm 2 or more goals behind, or I'm 1 goal behind but the team have been playing particularly badly, I'll use 'I want to see more from you'. This will often spur the team on to attempt a come-back.

End of the game:-

If I've won I use the team option of 'Pleased' and the individually tell any player who got a rating of 8 or more that I'm 'Delighted' with them. Giving some individual team talks seems to have a very positive effect on players and I do this after every win.

If we've drawn I'll generally 'Sympathise' unless we were big underdogs in which case I'll use the same as above.

If we've lost the game, no matter how badly, I'll always use sympathise. I do this no matter how annoyed I am with my players as I've found that getting angry or dissapointed with them in the pre match team talk can damage moral to the point where the team goes on a losing streak.

The only exception to the above is if we've lost narrowly, particularly to a better team. In this case I'll used 'Good Effort'.

I've found the above to work very well for me since FM07 and I've found that keeping moral up has a massive effect on team performances over the season.

dear buddy,

the game is poor and you can play 4-3-2-1/4-2-3-1 with your eyes closed, not touch any of the individual settings and waltz to victory.

FmLive is better as you're playing human managers so there is more scope for different tactics to work.

Chopper - a very readable and interesting article. I'd like to see more articles tbh. This forum is so full of people criticising the game, or criticising those who criticise the game, that is's just turned into a slanging match. What this forum needs is more well thought-out pieces like this. Good work!

Opposition Instructions

Another tool that I find very useful, and use at the start of every game is opposition instructions.

The players I look at first are the strikers and the two wingers of the opposition. And this is what I'm looking for:-

Which foot is there strongest. Whichever it is I'll show them onto their weaker foot. I.e if their right footed I'll choose 'Show onto foot -left' from the opposition instructions.

If a striker is either footed I don't bother with the show onto foot option as there's no point. If a winger is either footed I'll still choose to show them inside as my tactic is quite narrow and showing them inside means they'll be more likely to be tackled. So basically I always show right wingers onto their left foot and vice versa.

The next thing I'm looking at on these players is their bravery. If it's 11 or less I select 'Tackling - Hard' from the opposition instructions in the hope of shaking them up a bit. Anything above 11 and I just leave it as is.

Finally I'll look at their pace an acceleration. If both these attributes are under 10 then I'll select 'Closing Down - Always' from the opposition instructions. This means slower players can be closed down quickly and because they're slow you dont have to worry about them racing past the advancing defender/midfielder.

Now that I've got the strikers and wingers covered there's something else I do every game. I select each centre back (there could be 2 or 3 of these depending on the opponents formation) and the Keeper and select 'Closing Down - Always from the opposition instructions. This encourages my forward players to put more pressure on the opposition defence when they have the ball and has so far been quite effective.

There are then a couple of final things I'll look at when setting up my opposition instructions. The first thing I'll do is look at any central midfielders, attacking midfielders, or defensive midfielders. What I'm looking for here is whether any of them have a particularly high number of assists or goals. This tells me they're influential, perhaps a playmaker. If this is the case I'll close this player down often, show them onto their weaker foot and tackle them hard if they're not very brave. This will hopefully nullify the threat from this player.

The final thing I'll look at is the condition of each opposition player. If they happen to be playing a player who's condition is quite low, say below 90%, I'll set 'Tackling - Hard' from the opposition instructions for this player in the hope of injuring him. This has worked for me on some occasions.

Summery

Well I think that's it. That's everything I've done to ensure that I could have success without worrying about tweaking my tactics at all. On that subject I'd just like to point out that if I'm behind or ahead in a game I also don't change or tweak my tactics. I trust it to either protect the lead I have or get the goal I need. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but hey, you can't win 'em all. The fact is at the end of the season I've managed to finishe where I wanted to finish without tweaking but by following the methods outlined above.

Hopefully this will be of help to someone. I'd like to say that if you follow everything I've done here to the letter you'll have success. Hopefully that will be the case, I've used most of this stuff since FM07 and it's always worked for me. But there are no guarentees of success in FM08. What I will say is that the above should allow you to concentrate on just improving the players at your club. With these methods better players should equal success.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by pauly15:

dear buddy,

the game is poor and you can play 4-3-2-1/4-2-3-1 with your eyes closed, not touch any of the individual settings and waltz to victory.

FmLive is better as you're playing human managers so there is more scope for different tactics to work. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I think you'll find that a lot of people disagree with you. YOU might be able to do this but plenty of people are having trouble getting long term success. Hopefully they'll find something here to help them, or at least something that will start some decent discussion.

Bunp.

Simply because I'm not spending this much time writing something just to have it knocked off the first page by some truly awful topics

chopper,

I think this is an excellent topic, and echos my experiences with FM08, which I feel has been most responsive of the FM series, if you use the tactics and instructions sensibly, and not try anything unnatural, i.e. very attacking styles, for the team or individuals.

The only thing I have to say is regarding the angry team talk after a very disappointing result. I played the league leaders in th Championship, third from last match needing one more win to gain promotion, knowing I was playing third place in the next fixture. My team played truely appalling losing 4-0, including two players scoring 4 and two players scoring 5 and the rest scoring 6. Only my substitute came on in the second half and scored 7.

I told them I was angry, and half the team had a messge in their profile which said that they knew they had let the supporters down (or something similar). They then played the third placed team next, totally dominated the game and won. I feel that if I had't have given them the reaction I had to the previous game that they wouldn't have performed as they did the next game. I then stated that they were excellent (or whatever the option was) and there moral was pretty much completely superb to a man.

I think having read your posts that the opposition instructions are very important, as I spend a reasonable amount of time setting them up as well for each game, and have experienced more success than failure.

I'm sorry if this has hijacked your thread a bit but I wanted to show that you aren't the only one having success, and believing that this version responds more naturally to the tactics etc.

This is a good, well thought out post.....very different from the morons who don't stop moaning. Cheers!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by polegategavin:

The only thing I have to say is regarding the angry team talk after a very disappointing result. I played the league leaders in th Championship, third from last match needing one more win to gain promotion, knowing I was playing third place in the next fixture. My team played truely appalling losing 4-0, including two players scoring 4 and two players scoring 5 and the rest scoring 6. Only my substitute came on in the second half and scored 7.

I told them I was angry, and half the team had a messge in their profile which said that they knew they had let the supporters down (or something similar). They then played the third placed team next, totally dominated the game and won. I feel that if I had't have given them the reaction I had to the previous game that they wouldn't have performed as they did the next game. I then stated that they were excellent (or whatever the option was) and there moral was pretty much completely superb to a man. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

This is very interesting, perhaps when used carefully being angry at full time can have a positive effect. I think I've become quite cautious in my team talks in an attempt to never damage moral too much and cause my team to go on a downward spiral. But that being said I think I'll keep this in mind and using sparingly to see what happens.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content"> I'm sorry if this has hijacked your thread a bit but I wanted to show that you aren't the only one having success, and believing that this version responds more naturally to the tactics etc. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

No need to apologise, if this thread promotes any kind of sensible discussion then I'll be all the happier

Hi chopper - good thread, need more people out there like you willing to make this kind of effort to help others.

one thing with team talks - you have written the above as someone who uses these methods for a lower league team - how about a top/higher league team? most of what you suggest can still apply, but at the end of a game, say you were a big team playing a small team, if you draw its obviously a bad result, so should you be saying 'sympathise'? and the same when you lose. even if you are clear favourites for a game do you still say 'sympathise'?

if it works for moral then mayb its best, but would just feel strange sympathising with your hundred-grand-a-week players who failed to just beat a selection of part time pig farmers, when what you really want to do is get the ol' hairdryer out!

The King's Lynn 4-5-1 works a treat as well.

chopper99- a well laid out and interestying post- such a nice change from most of the recent ones. Even if we dont always agree with what you write, it is still worth documenting for discussion purposes. Well done.

Some interesting points on re-reading the posts about opposition instrauctions. I sometimes, but not always, give instructions aginst the opposition's attackers, but I have never considered using them against their defenders.

I agree with the poster above about the careful and rare use of the "angry " team talk. If used sensibly it can work well altho I do feel that the whole morale issue is over-effective in this version. I cannot see that, for example, the Man Utd players will care one toss about what Sir Alex says about the opposition to the press, but in this game it can have a large effect, apparantly.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chopper99:

Tactics

Firstly, and probably most importantly is the tactic I use.

The tactic can be found here:

Choppers 4-1-2-2-1 tactic

It's Version 3 of this tactic that you want and it can be found at the bottom of the second page.

.[/i] </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

sorry for another question but when i looked at your tactics page, you also have a version 2, which you say is the one you used for bigger teams.

so are you now saying version 3 is the one to use for any team, or is v3 still just more for lower league teams? thanks

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by neilb242:

Hi chopper - good thread, need more people out there like you willing to make this kind of effort to help others.

one thing with team talks - you have written the above as someone who uses these methods for a lower league team - how about a top/higher league team? most of what you suggest can still apply, but at the end of a game, say you were a big team playing a small team, if you draw its obviously a bad result, so should you be saying 'sympathise'? and the same when you lose. even if you are clear favourites for a game do you still say 'sympathise'?

if it works for moral then mayb its best, but would just feel strange sympathising with your hundred-grand-a-week players who failed to just beat a selection of part time pig farmers, when what you really want to do is get the ol' hairdryer out! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I personally use the same method for big clubs as well (my first game on FM08 was with Man Utd). I always try to keep the effects on moral of team talks to a minimum, so even when losing or drawing to smaller teams I tend to stay away from angry/disappointed as I've rarely seen it have anything other than a negative effect on morale. And once morale starts to drop performances can suffer a lot.

There may be instances where using angry is effective, by all means try it. I've just found that in the long run keeping morale steady has had a much better long term effect than playing the 'morale lottery'.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by neilb242:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chopper99:

Tactics

Firstly, and probably most importantly is the tactic I use.

The tactic can be found here:

Choppers 4-1-2-2-1 tactic

It's Version 3 of this tactic that you want and it can be found at the bottom of the second page.

.[/i] </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

sorry for another question but when i looked at your tactics page, you also have a version 2, which you say is the one you used for bigger teams.

so are you now saying version 3 is the one to use for any team, or is v3 still just more for lower league teams? thanks </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

V2 is the tactic I developed for Man Utd so is probably better for bigger clubs. Having said that I haven't tried V3 with a bigger club so feel free to try them both and let me know which one works best at the bigger clubs.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">There may be instances where using angry is effective, by all means try it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Such an instance would be when losing at half-time, with a "highly ambitious" squad, such as Liverpool. I suspect the more ambitious the squad the more harshly they should be judged. Wolfsong's approach can be a disaster with such a squad 'cos it uses "wish luck" far too often; this leads to demotivated players.

Respect for all the effort and time put in.

Some very good tips there, especially for people who are finding it just a bit too tough.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chopper99:

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by neilb242:

Hi chopper - good thread, need more people out there like you willing to make this kind of effort to help others.

one thing with team talks - you have written the above as someone who uses these methods for a lower league team - how about a top/higher league team? most of what you suggest can still apply, but at the end of a game, say you were a big team playing a small team, if you draw its obviously a bad result, so should you be saying 'sympathise'? and the same when you lose. even if you are clear favourites for a game do you still say 'sympathise'?

if it works for moral then mayb its best, but would just feel strange sympathising with your hundred-grand-a-week players who failed to just beat a selection of part time pig farmers, when what you really want to do is get the ol' hairdryer out! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I personally use the same method for big clubs as well (my first game on FM08 was with Man Utd). I always try to keep the effects on moral of team talks to a minimum, so even when losing or drawing to smaller teams I tend to stay away from angry/disappointed as I've rarely seen it have anything other than a negative effect on morale. And once morale starts to drop performances can suffer a lot.

There may be instances where using angry is effective, by all means try it. I've just found that in the long run keeping morale steady has had a much better long term effect than playing the 'morale lottery'. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Chopper,

You have understood the context in which I used the angry response, I agree it is to be used sparingly.

My comment earlier was just one example, and probably about the only occasion where I used it as a 'team answer'. I have however used the disappointed/ angry response for individuals who have performed below their usual high standard, and use it whenever the perfrmance drops unacceptably if there reaction to it the first time or two hasn't been too negative.

This is where the assistant's comments about team talks I find useful, as it does provide you with an insight in to how certain players react to your comments. (giving an idea of their hidden attributes, which I would never learn otherwise as I won't use an in-game editor). I can then judge will players not to use a negative comment to.

I find using the 'notes' to record these reactions, although time consuming to start with helps you to know how to deal with certain players, particularly your key players.

As you have rightly pointed out the morale issue is key to success, the longer you can keep morale high the better your results tend to be, and possibly this has slightly too much of an affect.............or does it, how important is this IRL honestly?

I should have read my post properly before posting!

Chopper,

You have understood the context in which I used the angry response, I agree it is to be used sparingly.

My comment earlier was just one example, and probably about the only occasion where I used it as a 'team answer'. I have however used the disappointed/ angry response for individuals who have performed below their usual high standard, and use it whenever the perfrmance drops unacceptably if there reaction to it the first time or two hasn't been too negative.

This is where the assistant's comments about team talks I find useful, as it does provide you with an insight in to how certain players react to your comments. (giving an idea of their hidden attributes, which I would never learn otherwise as I won't use an in-game editor). I can then judge which players not to use a negative comment to.

I find using the 'notes' to record these reactions, although time consuming to start with helps you to know how to deal with certain players, particularly your key players.

As you have rightly pointed out the morale issue is key to success, the longer you can keep morale high the better your results tend to be, and possibly this has slightly too much of an affect.............or does it, how important is this IRL honestly?

Interesting article. I'll read it in full when I have a bit more time.

I did almost the same as you did but I played for Vauxhall, brought them up to Premiership almost all through playoffs (beat Newcastle in the Championship playoffs) before the bugs kicked in in the offseason for FM08. (scouts giving almost all players 1 star when previously they had 4-5 stars, so I signed only a handful of 3 star scouted players willing to come to the club and those became regen wonderkids) and suddenly after a few months, the scouts gave the 1 star players 5 stars again...which is mindbogglng and a turnoff. Also, the youth players bug because you can't RELEASE them as they are all signed to contracts made it harder in 08 as well. Overall though, I think it is possible to make it from BSN all the way to Championship through solid transfers...I didn't have any good feeder clubs (always said no choices and once I got to League 2 Tranmare couldn't be my feeder anymore).

One thing that irks me was the chairman interference that sold both my players that were "solid premiership potential" players although I got a relative fortune for them. Having been at the club and promoted them to League status from non-professional, I think the chairman should give me the benefit of trusting that I can get that money through selling other players than to give away my future GK (who became a staple for West Ham when I faced him in the Premiership).

Because of the bug though, (and also forgetting to enable MLS, I want to play for Toronto FC sometime in my career) I'll have to start again, maybe try Defuge's challenge this time around. I've been playing for Vauxhall ever since they had BSN and before was for the now-defunct Scarborough team. Every time, I managed to get quite a lot of income through selling/ releasing all players like you said above, and having no reserves and youth. I filtered similar as you did, although I do use my assistant to filter unrealistic targets, since it's a chore to ask players who don't want to come (I'm a Sunday League manager and Vauxhall doesn't have the best of reputations).

Anyhow, great article. I'll definitely be back when the patch comes through, and hopefully the game mechanics change. It's really annoying to see EVERY SINGLE AI to change tactics depending on outcome and having to counter it when I got to Championship in order to retain a lead. In real life, most players play to the gameplan and rarely drastically change their tactics without risking of losing more than they gain.

I played similar Found a good tactic and worked well until L1

---ST----ST---

------^-------

-<-CM-CM-CM->-

-----DMC------

LB--CB--CB--RB

with 12 passing, tempo and 8 DL, width

But my strikers haven't been good after, so I play at home

------ST------

<-AMC-AMC-AMC->

---CM----CM---

---v-----v----

LB--CB--CB--RB

with 10 in all sliders

Which players I use? I can't choose, because I'm playing only welsh players but playing in English league. I like fast defenders and strikers, mids with good decissions and strength, and like wingers with dribbling if I have a good set pieces taker.

How I take them? Looking at u19 and u21 teams, loaning when I could. And of course those players suggested by my scouts (I prefer u19 and u21 tough).

Discipline: I'm quite hard with players, but in few months they get used. 2 weeks fee for direct red card or missing training.

I critizise referees if they were against me and critizise rivals if they were harmed. When I reach 20 in club loyalty I stop doing this because I'm fined often and have lots of enemies (but it does not matter really).

Training: last medium tick in overall. Quite balanced maybe too much but 1 defence point does not worth to me more than 1 creativity, 1 decisions, 1 passing, for example. I prefer 18/9 than 20/5.

PPM's: I like to have players with lots of PPM's, and other clubs love too (you can sell players for lots more). Being in BSS and BSP I managed to sign mature crap players who could teach nice PPM's to my players. Specially "places shots" and "lob the ball" if they have poor finishinh, but also "shoots with power" or "makes one-twos with mates" for players with bad dribbling. these for strikers, and works well.

team talks and answer press: I don't master it, but never have problems. Just logical actions here, but always talk with players and nearly also with press unless I want a neutral answer.

Another clues:

-always tweak tactics before matches. It can seem boring, but it's absolutely needed if you change players often due to injuries or form. Also use rival instructions to hard tackle players with bad form and sometimes show wingers antiposition foot (right foot for LW).

-train youngers to don't have useless legs. I do it to all, but maybe it's not needed. I train STs into LW or LM if they are right footed, specially if they have crossing and dribbling. I did it to one of my st's and he has been the LM of wales since 24, and he has both legs to maximum (he's the only tough, most players only improve their bad leg 1 point every year,of a maximum of 20). But If I have a MC with no crossing I often train him as AMC or DMC. All my players are changing their position but GK's and two players I bought quite old.

-I like to play with young players. My academy has created an inusual bunch of stars, I never have seen something similar. In 15 seasons I have had 12 players from my academy who had played in welsh national team, and lots in u19 and u21. useful if you have a poor club.

-If you have good young players and expect to promote in few years, sign long contracts. Most of your players would demand better wages, but maybe you can't pay them so much in the future. Also they won't go to better teams for free. Take care to do it with good prospects, maybe you will have to pay 4 years a player not good enough for your team!

-Don't go mad if you lose lots of matches in a bad run. Try to detect problems and if you just are having bad luck, don't make many changes. I have had worst run first season, in BSS, when I was changing the tactic every week to find a good one.

-Sign free players from 1st of june if you are in england. and then also in 1st of july, because lots of players are released and it's easier then to sign them.

Sorry chopper if I'm hijacking your thread, I liked it a lot and wanted to give some of my clues

Hi Chopper, nice article.

Some questions about ‘refreshing’ your players when you promote to a higher level. If you look primarily look at players attributes for certain positions and you don’t put effort into training

How long do player stay with your team?

What is the average length of your players contract (short 1-2 years) or longer (3-5) years?

Do you give full-time contracts or stick to part-time?

get a girlfriend mate

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Mister Z:

Hi Chopper, nice article.

Some questions about ‘refreshing’ your players when you promote to a higher level. If you look primarily look at players attributes for certain positions and you don’t put effort into training

How long do player stay with your team?

What is the average length of your players contract (short 1-2 years) or longer (3-5) years?

Do you give full-time contracts or stick to part-time? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

To start with I look to just give players 2 year contracts unless they're really good players who I know will be able to perform well if I win one or two promotions in the next few years. In that case I'll look to get them on at least 3 year contracts if they'll be willing to sign for that long.

As for how long players stay with my team. I generally just try and get better players every year, especialy if I've just got promoted. So if I can get a better player for a position I'll either look to keep the previous player who was in that position for cover unless I need the money from his wages, in which case I'll get rid of him. I did end up with 3 players who've been with me since the first or second season, and still get in the team now that I'm in the Championship, but in general my players were replaced every 2 or 3 seasons at most as I moved up the leagues and more players became interested in joining my club.

As for the contracts you'll generally only be able to get people on part time contracts while in the Blue Square North/South and the Blue Square Premier. This is fine as you need the money so having them on part time contracts is preferable because even if they were training full time the other factors mentioned earlier are going to prevent them from improving anyway.

Once you get promoted to league 2 the board will make the club full time and at that point you'll have to get all your players and staff on full time contracts and any future signings will also go on full time contracts.

The thing to keep in mind about the training is that it's generally not until you get to league 1 (in my experience anyway) that you've got any kind of facilities and staff to get any improvement in a players attributes. So until the just sign players to do the job and move them on as you get better players. Once you start moving up the leagues you can start thinking about players for the future.

Fo rme it's only now that I'm in the championship that I've had enough money to improve training facilities and the board have allowed me to appoint more than 3 coaches. So now I'll start to see some improvement in players and will look to sign players with potential if I see them.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Sam-Williams:

get a girlfriend mate </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I didn't realise it was the school holidays already.

Very good work chopper99! I've just started a new game with Norwich and I'm going to give this tactic a crack. Will let you know how it goes.

I'm also Gateshead I think having that 11,000 stadium is a GOD send

Good thread Chopper mate, makes a change from the usual dross we're reading daily.

Naturally I won't be needing to use your tactic as I'm an immensely successful manager on the FM series, as you should know from following my Liverpool threads.

KUTGW mate.

Yeah great thread

I'm using the beta patch as i've found the shots to goals problem is not infact a problem at all with this version. I flopped big time at Boro (after a good start), Southampton and Shrewsbury, before finally finding success with Barnsley- me being negative, every time something good happens (i've come from 2 goals down 4 times already this season before Xmas) it makes me think it's due to a flaw in the game- but then i think even if that's the case, my past saved games have shown it isn't a walk in the park anyway

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Starr_Man5:

Good thread Chopper mate, makes a change from the usual dross we're reading daily.

Naturally I won't be needing to use your tactic as I'm an immensely successful manager on the FM series, as you should know from following my Liverpool threads.

KUTGW mate. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That I do mate. As a Sunderland fan I'd hoped you would get the Newcastle job in real life

Thought I'd give the non-league experience a go with Fisher. Used my own tactic, similar to Choppers with only one striker up front. hat striker has 15+ Pace as do the wingers who are on loan. Got another two loan signings, one in Goal and the other DC. Pretty amazed with it all so far... beat teams from higher divisions in the cups and scoring for fun!

arse, ballsed up the image insertion!

Excellent guide there mate. Ever thought of writing more and getting them posted up onto other websites main site?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by chopper99:

Hello all.

I know a lot of people are struggling and tearing their hair out in frustration with FM08, particularly with the 8.0.1 patch. But not me. Since starting my Gateshead save I've enjoyed it a lot, and picked up a lot of useful knowledge (hopefully) along the way. So I thought I'd try and write a step by step guide to how I got to the point where I use one tactic with no tweaking, where the quality of the players in my team is the most important thing, and where I don't seem to suffer from the shots/goals ratio or any other bugs that are apparent enough to annoy me in any way.

This 'guide' will cover everything from the tactic I use (this will just incorperate a link to my tactic posted in the tactics forum, so if you don't want to know anything about tactics but still want to read this thread then don't worry, the tactic itself won't be discussed here), the way I incorperate opposition instructions, team talks, transfer tips and hopefully much more. Some of this will have been covered before perhaps but hopefully there will be something useful for someone. And while it may have been covered before what I'm hoping will make this different is that I'll be outlining exactly what I've done so far to take Gateshead from the Blue Square North to the Championship (and hopefully soon The Premiership as I'm currently only in my first season in the Championship. After a bit of a stutter in the Blue Square Premiership where I was developing my tactic I've since won back to back promotions to get here).

*Disclaimer. I never cheat and have never replayed any match or anything like that to get results. With that in mind I believe I've developed a series of techniques that help maximise success. But that being said there is no easy way to win in FM. I hope to outline everything I do in the hope that following all instructions will allow people to have similar success to me with minimum effort. But I've always still had periods where my teams not performed as well as I would have liked and I've got frustrated. But I've found that sticking with the same tactic was the better option in the long run and that judging the performance at the end of the season was a much better indicator than judging the performance game to game.

So with this in mind I'll begin..... </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

You do realise when the 8.0.2 your gonna have to start all over again...gutted

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by rbnrbn:

You do realise when the 8.0.2 your gonna have to start all over again...gutted </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I've been using most of these techniques since FM07 and have used the same formation since the first beta patch, just tweaked the tactic itself slightly for the 8.0.1 patch. So I really doubt much will change for the 8.0.2 patch.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Frankie 7:

Excellent guide there mate. Ever thought of writing more and getting them posted up onto other websites main site? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I haven't considered this up to now but would be willing to give it a go if it would be useful to anyone.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by williamshankley:

I'm also Gateshead I think having that 11,000 stadium is a GOD send </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is a very nice bonus when using Gateshead to be honest, although you'll be lucky to get more than a couple of thousand in for the first few seasons.

In my first two seasons I think I sold less than 30 season tickets

KUTGW chopper

This tactic has allowed me to enjoy the game once again...thank god! Although it's a shame I couldn't come up with it meself, it's a joy to see players passing the ball properly, scoring lots of goals...and closing down, yesssss! Cheers chopper

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Stimps2:

This is a good, well thought out post.....very different from the morons who don't stop moaning. Cheers! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

deal with it

Hey Chopper,

Great post - i have just started using your red arrows formation (although had to rename as i'm a man city fan) - thats going well & coupled with a few tips from here i think will be excellent

Keep up the good work & please ignore the idiots on here - there are a lot of people who appreciate the help & also enjoy sharing ideas even if dont 100% agree

I spend ages on this forum at work (cos i got a BORING job, lol) and i really enjoy reading these topics

Great stuff - keep it comming!!!

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by PaulC:

I like this thread, cheers Chopper! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

High praise indeed