Ultimate man-management guide - Communication and Psychological Warfare 10

The ultimate man-management guide for FM2010, Communication and Psychological Warfare launches today from FM-Britain.co.uk. An indepth guide to all matters of squad management, it takes you from the match day team talks through to the post match press conference and beyond.

The guide is meant as a learning aid - teaching readers the importance of player personality and how to motivate players with different needs and desires. By taking you through the most important aspects of this player management system, you will be able to define your own strategies for building dynasties in your FM2010 career saves.

We've spent the past two years refining and researching, building on CPW'08 as the base. Now, we're finally in a position to release our 75+-page e-book, very much in the same vein as Tactical Theorems' 10 and with many of the same key authors.

However, this release is not free and costs £7.95. We realise that this is something of a rarity in the scene and that a number of people in the community will immediately refuse to pay for any content. We totally understand that position, and would not want to argue against you. What we are trying to do is to rebuild FM-Britain so that we can produce much better content in the future for our readers. Obviously, we could just plead poverty and place a massive "donate" button on the site; but by releasing a guide we can actually hand over a product to show our gratitude to those who want to support the site.

We will never stop producing high-quality free content. Nor would we want to. But by financing new software on the site and giving our authors some compensation for their time, we hope this paid product will produce even better and even more free content for all to consume. There is absolutely no obligation to buy the guide, and we fully respect the decision of anyone who refuses point-blank to pay for anything in the FM community. We do hope, however, that a number of you will support the site and the efforts of its authors.

We cover a number of topics in CPW10, including:

* The Psychological Warfare Campaign: increasing match performance, managing your team on and around the big match

* Match Build Up: preparation, current form, strengths & weaknesses, dangerman, tactical approach, individual form & injuries

* The Match: understanding the tools; player ratings, morale, motivation, positive, negative and questionable feedback

* The Dressing Room: pre-match, post-match & halftime team talks; individualizing talks, using & judging player reactions

* Post Match Reactions: post-match press conferences, fining players, dealing with red cards, fitness and form management

* Squad Management: day-to-day morale maintenance; commenting on a player’s form

* Building Harmony: choosing a captain, squad rotation & transfer policies, tutoring, player preferred moves, recommendations

* Staff Feedback: backroom advice, team talk feedback, the assistant’s team report, coach & scout reports

* Managerial Warfare: press conferences, new signings, tapping up players, making friends & enemies with other managers

The guide is available to download through FM-Britain and includes a 2.5 hour audio version of the guide. In the audio version, the authors don't just simply read out the e-book verbatim but discuss the key issues in each chapter, providing much more in-depth explanations of certain topics and even passing on some advice which didn't make it into the print version.

Matt vom Brocke (The next Diaby), Thomas Levin (Levo) and myself have tried to cram as much in as we possibly could. We're sure that many people in the community have also produced a lot of good work on man management, and we hope that this guide acts as an accompaniment to, not a replacement for all of that information.

So, follow this link to download from FM-Britain, and if there are any questions about why we are charging or anything to do with the guide's contents, we will be more than happy to answer them in this thread.

77 pages of hints and tips !! wow ... i never knew there could be that many aspects to man management. once my wages come through this weekend i think i might purchase it, i'm having difficulties with most aspects of football manager.

dostoevsky needed less pages to describe his thoughts, and to charge it 7,99 is a disgrace. this is a game and no one needs therapists` help especially not to pay for it. everything in the game can be figured out with a bit of experience and to charge people and taking advantage of them from the community really is disappointing.

dostoevsky needed less pages to describe his thoughts, and to charge it 7,99 is a disgrace. this is a game and no one needs therapists` help especially not to pay for it. everything in the game can be figured out with a bit of experience and to charge people and taking advantage of them from the community really is disappointing.

Yeah I agree. I like reading all the tactical guides and such on here, but would never pay for it. It's okay, wait for some people with more money than sense to buy it then share their thoughts on it themselves.

i can't wait to hear people opinion of this as i believe theres nothing in there that hasn't been on the forums already. there are plenty of other team talk, man management guides for free.

dostoevsky needed less pages to describe his thoughts, and to charge it 7,99 is a disgrace. this is a game and no one needs therapists` help especially not to pay for it. everything in the game can be figured out with a bit of experience and to charge people and taking advantage of them from the community really is disappointing.

couldn't agree with that more, i've played champ since cm2 english/italian leagues (it's scary to think how long ao that is) and buy the new game regardless of price every single year without question sticking with it to the present FM10. This just feels that they have ripped off the fans a bit, also the marketing was very misleading, emails and threads telling you it'll be available for download yesterday and then what do you find £7.95.

Poor show from the team there was no need for it.

couldn't agree with that more, i've played champ since cm2 english/italian leagues (it's scary to think how long ao that is) and buy the new game regardless of price every single year without question sticking with it to the present FM10. This just feels that they have ripped off the fans a bit, also the marketing was very misleading, emails and threads telling you it'll be available for download yesterday and then what do you find £7.95.

Poor show from the team there was no need for it.

exactley. thing that changed my FM experience the most was graphical add ons. i really couldn't do that myself and those people put the same amount of work and done it for free.

this guides i really enjoy reading but rarely i find something new. its just pages and pages of read, interesting but i find interesting everything about football and its things you can figuree out yourself...

ultimately, its people choice to buy or not, but the idea to sell is what really makes me angry.

If you don't think the guide is worth money, then we don't expect you to buy it. Nobody is under and obligation to pay, and if you don't think you need it or fundamentally disagree with paying for anything to do with FM other than the game, then we're perfectly OK with that.

We won't stop making free content, and everyone is entitled to do whatever they want with their money.

I would also counter claims that we are somehow being "dishonest". We have had the price of the guide up on the site for a while now, and announced that it would cost money about a month ago. But, at the end of the day if you don't want to pay any money - don't. There is no way we would try and convince you otherwise.

I think a bit different, this people work very hard to make a fine ebook for people that realy like to know more about the game.

why not to ask money for all the effort and knowledge?

they work years to make such quality books and i am sure even if you do know alot about the game but still want to know more about tactics and football it will cost you less then normal book, and you enjoy it even more.

no one push some one to buy it, they just say, we have nice ebook for sale and if some one want he can buy it, i cant see what bad about it

Well I did buy it but it was not at the stated price. They did a discount for those buying it the day of their web broadcast.

They also handed out quite a few free ones through easy competitions and so on. However, I do take exception to this arrogant statement from Eastwood "....people with more money than sense to buy it... ".

How dare you say that I have more money then sense, you do not know me!

The ebook for those that are interested and do not take offence (freelaoding a english disease? - discuss) will find it very useful and helpful.

Given that FM Britain puts out so much free stuff it might be worthwhile before firing off angry guns to see why they might be charging.

And the bottom line is that you do not have to buy it. I am sure those that hate parting with their money and expect others to do free stuff will somehow get their hands on the information.

Some of you guys are so negative...phew.

K

£7.95 what next £5 to download a tactic

£7.95 what next £5 to download a tactic

So another ill-informed comment? Are you basing your comment on experience? I see no mention of the possibility of charging £5 for a tactic..bit ott don't you think?

K..

£7.95 what next £5 to download a tactic

I'm now a proud owner of a copy of CPW'10. For those who don't want to buy it don't comment about it. In my opinion, is a well diserved donation for all the guys of FM Britain.

It's a good read and a reference I will keep a copy of on my desk while playing the game. A lot of work has been put into it and they've created a quality product.

Well I did buy it but it was not at the stated price. They did a discount for those buying it the day of their web broadcast.

They also handed out quite a few free ones through easy competitions and so on. However, I do take exception to this arrogant statement from Eastwood "....people with more money than sense to buy it... ".

How dare you say that I have more money then sense, you do not know me!

The ebook for those that are interested and do not take offence (freelaoding a english disease? - discuss) will find it very useful and helpful.

Given that FM Britain puts out so much free stuff it might be worthwhile before firing off angry guns to see why they might be charging.

And the bottom line is that you do not have to buy it. I am sure those that hate parting with their money and expect others to do free stuff will somehow get their hands on the information.

Some of you guys are so negative...phew.

K

To me, anybody paying near £8 for a bunch of information that if you simply look around can all be found for free is stupid with money. It's just my opinion. Okay all read and enjoy, I'd rather spend my money on other things.

I wouldn't mind if it was a more reasonable price, a few quid maybe. As things stand I think they'd make just as much selling it at £3 to a whole lot more people, rather than people calling them greedy and turning their back on it at £7.95.

i can imagine its loads of pages on how to play the game and no information on how to win like the thereoms just loads of information on standard football . So if playing a game which have quite alot of bugs how does trying to play properly comply when in 10.2 wingers didnt work and now a corner bug makes me laugh .

If you don't like it then don't comment.

I personally paid for it not for the guide only, but for the guys at fm-britain.

These guys wrote TT&F 2008.2009,2010, and now this 77 pages guide.

I think for all this hardwork they put throughout the years, they deserve those 8 GBP.

If you don't like it then don't comment.

I personally paid for it not for the guide only, but for the guys at fm-britain.

These guys wrote TT&F 2008.2009,2010, and now this 77 pages guide.

I think for all this hardwork they put throughout the years, they deserve those 8 GBP.

Completly agree! If you think that this guide doesn't worth the money don't buy it. But don't understate this good guide and don't insult the people that have bought it. If you can find all that information for yourself why don't you write a free guide for us?

If you don't like it then don't comment.

I personally paid for it not for the guide only, but for the guys at fm-britain.

These guys wrote TT&F 2008.2009,2010, and now this 77 pages guide.

I think for all this hardwork they put throughout the years, they deserve those 8 GBP.

Why shouldn't people comment? This is a SI forum where people are allowed to comment on topics.

For my two penny worth I value the work that FM Britain does. I am a member there and have read lots of useful articles and topics. I am however concerned with this charging. People slagged off sortitoutsi a little while ago for charging for various things (think they were facepacks or skins or something). Where is the difference?

I realise it must have taken ages to make and write etc, but this is supposed to be a FM community where we share ideas etc.

Brevity is the soul of wit, isn't it? )

There is nothing about FM what need description on 77 pages. Moreover, there is nothing about FM what cann't be studied during the time which will be wasted by reading through 77 pages of text.

why would i want to read about phycalogical warfare for a computer game

why would i want to read about phycalogical warfare for a computer game

Wow. I'd hate to live in a world where everything was taken literally!

Wow. I'd hate to live in a world where everything was taken literally!

wow id love to post 1500 times and still have a life

Why shouldn't people comment? This is a SI forum where people are allowed to comment on topics.

For my two penny worth I value the work that FM Britain does. I am a member there and have read lots of useful articles and topics. I am however concerned with this charging. People slagged off sortitoutsi a little while ago for charging for various things (think they were facepacks or skins or something). Where is the difference?

I realise it must have taken ages to make and write etc, but this is supposed to be a FM community where we share ideas etc.

This. I'm a member and am on their mailing list and was looking forward to this. Despite what's been said, I never had the impression it would cost anything - maybe I missed it. Out here in Cambodia we live in a largely cash economy - I don't have the wherewithall to pay over the internet so can't get the manual.

There's no question that it's a valuable resource. I have the last edition C&PW and it's brilliant. Many who say it's unnecessary are the same people who slag off team talks and press conferences for being a waste of time. This manual shows you how to use them correctly, so you contradict yourself. Especially people like chronic haze - you have no idea what's in it so you just comment out of ignorance.

So, in short, I know it's a great resource and thoroughly researched, and I've posted on and communicated with FMBritian for a long time and highly regard those guys; I just feel a bit let down that it has to be purchased.

wow id love to post 1500 times and still have a life

It's that time of the month for a certain someone

As this is a commercial enterprise, I wonder if SI could charge FM-Britain for advertising their product..or are they doing?

As this is a commercial enterprise, I wonder if SI could charge FM-Britain for advertising their product..or are they doing?

There's such things as an unofficial game guide which don't necessarily pay royalty fees if they use no copyrighted material.

However, given that the likes of TT&F was involved in the new ME, it wouldn't surprise me if SI have given permission verbally rather than contractually to charge for it.

Or maybe not - who gives a toss, it's done.

I have to admit, I won't be purchasing this as I do not agree with content created for the scene being used for monetary advantage. I also am struggling to understand your reasoning for charging.

What new software are you hoping to purhcase for FM-Britain? I can think of plenty of CMS that are free and can't really see why you would need to use one that charges. The same is true for forums, so I can't see that being where the money will be spent. This leaves site running costs, which surely can be covered by advertising?

I must say that it seems a bit cheeky and against the spirit of the community to charge for this knowledge, however I understand your position and that you feel you should be rewarded for the time and effort you put into all this. I am wondering how you have combated the document being spread among filesharers for free? Is there some sort of protection on the document?

Some of these comments are harsh.

People are moaning and complaining, and winging like a 5-year old throwing their teddies out the pram that you can get all this information on the web for free by scouting the forums on FM and FMBritain. That is probably true for most of what is in this book but it would take you a few months to collate all that information and then you probably wouldn't have all what is written in this book.

These guys have obviously given you their knowledge and other peoples by collating it all. Why should they spend a long time, putting all their effort into making it readable, flow and filtering out the crap and then give it out for free?

They gave us TT10 for free and a podcast for free so if you spend £7.99 on one book, that comes to £4 for each of these two books. Not a bad deal considering they are massive books to read. These will probably last you a good 2-3 years anyway. Although I do echo your concerns that it is a bit too much to ask for.

If you can be bothered why don't you find the information yourself, I can bet it will take you forever to collate it all. Stuff that, id rather make up my own mind in how I spend my money. If I want in-depth knowledge of this games functions then I'll buy the book, especially if it saves me months of trying to find the information myself.

What I will say though is that I do understand why you lot feel aggrieved at having to pay money for it. I did feel £7.99 for a little tad too much and was rather shocked they were asking for money. However you have to put yourself int heir shoes for a minute to understand why they are charging you for this book. £4.99 would have been more realistic though.

The documents that are downloaded are all waterstamped with the persons name, transaction number and email address so if anyone share it they are also sharing that information with the world and we can also track them down and take any legal action.

In terms of software and reinvestment that we are looking for the game.

1. FM Britain guys are a staff that range from 20-40 all of which have to sustain day jobs, families etc... as well as putting time and effort into the game. CPW is a result of almost 500 man hours, that is alot of time that we have sacrificed. If we can afford to put more time into the game and guides that we produce, we will be able to create better and more regular content. FM Britain will continue also to offer fantastic free content and don't feel obliged to spend any money on the guide if you don't see any value within it for you.

2. There is other software that we can do to make the site better, it is true there is free content out there. But as is always, you get what you pay for and much of the free software just does not fit into our plans. For example the forums would be much better if they were on a much better software. But the most exciting thing is to buy software similar to UStream (Which we have used for our broadcasts) but this software has now allowed us to play live games, bring up chalkboards and other interactions that will allow the guys live to answer questions and demonstrate different tactical theories.

phnompenhandy, you know I really enjoy the interaction with you on FM Pundit. I am sorry that you feel let down, but as I say we will continue to produce good high quality content for free along side the paid products, the simple freeimum business model that the site will follow. We never did hide the fact that this content was going to be charged for.

But I leave many of you with this. If you think there is value in the product and that it will help you then buy the product and we appreciate that. But if you don't want to buy the product and think you 1. already have knowledge that the game offers, 2. Think you can get the knowledge for free elsewhere. 3. Dont think that CPW has any real affect on the game. That is fine also. But we are offering value in having a high quality ebook in one package which can help gamers and conveniently in one package. It is like I could clean my own car, but I don't instead I go to the car was to get my car cleaned, I see more value in that then doing it myself.

For those that have bought the book, thanks and I hope that you get alot out of it and it improves your own Football Manager experience.

Brevity is the soul of wit, isn't it? )

There is nothing about FM what need description on 77 pages. Moreover, there is nothing about FM what cann't be studied during the time which will be wasted by reading through 77 pages of text.

Id like to have your brain because there is no way you'd be able to know everything that is in this book. I doubt that very much. I will bet you miss out things from studying the ME which is written in this book.

Brevity is the soul of wit, isn't it? )

There is nothing about FM what need description on 77 pages. Moreover, there is nothing about FM what cann't be studied during the time which will be wasted by reading through 77 pages of text.

The documents that are downloaded are all waterstamped with the persons name, transaction number and email address so if anyone share it they are also sharing that information with the world and we can also track them down and take any legal action.

In terms of software and reinvestment that we are looking for the game.

1. FM Britain guys are a staff that range from 20-40 all of which have to sustain day jobs, families etc... as well as putting time and effort into the game. CPW is a result of almost 500 man hours, that is alot of time that we have sacrificed. If we can afford to put more time into the game and guides that we produce, we will be able to create better and more regular content. FM Britain will continue also to offer fantastic free content and don't feel obliged to spend any money on the guide if you don't see any value within it for you.

2. There is other software that we can do to make the site better, it is true there is free content out there. But as is always, you get what you pay for and much of the free software just does not fit into our plans. For example the forums would be much better if they were on a much better software. But the most exciting thing is to buy software similar to UStream (Which we have used for our broadcasts) but this software has now allowed us to play live games, bring up chalkboards and other interactions that will allow the guys live to answer questions and demonstrate different tactical theories.

phnompenhandy, you know I really enjoy the interaction with you on FM Pundit. I am sorry that you feel let down, but as I say we will continue to produce good high quality content for free along side the paid products, the simple freeimum business model that the site will follow. We never did hide the fact that this content was going to be charged for.

But I leave many of you with this. If you think there is value in the product and that it will help you then buy the product and we appreciate that. But if you don't want to buy the product and think you 1. already have knowledge that the game offers, 2. Think you can get the knowledge for free elsewhere. 3. Dont think that CPW has any real affect on the game. That is fine also. But we are offering value in having a high quality ebook in one package which can help gamers and conveniently in one package. It is like I could clean my own car, but I don't instead I go to the car was to get my car cleaned, I see more value in that then doing it myself.

For those that have bought the book, thanks and I hope that you get alot out of it and it improves your own Football Manager experience.

You can get a good website produced on the cheap - no excuses.

You can also get a good hosting for cheap - no excuses.

It would be better for you to have a donation button on the website and earn money through that way. This means you aren't asking for something in return, instead you are asking for a kind gesture.

I run a charity and manage to get all this done on pennies. No subsidide costs for hosting and its cheap. I pay for this out my own pocket, I run the whole charity on my own hard earned cash and yet I mange to keep costs down with ease. £80 per year it costs me to run my charity - I work out, with sensibility, how much it will costs to keep the charity running each year keeping in with what the objective are etc.

It aint rocket science mate.

So there's always the two sides, all the FM Britain members raving how on it's totally worth it and all their heroes deserve money for this. But this isn't their forums, if people don't agree with it that's totally fine and want to post they can surely, you can't have expected a thread full of "this is great paying nearly £8 for an ebook!"?

In terms of software and reinvestment that we are looking for the game.

1. FM Britain guys are a staff that range from 20-40 all of which have to sustain day jobs, families etc... as well as putting time and effort into the game. CPW is a result of almost 500 man hours, that is alot of time that we have sacrificed. If we can afford to put more time into the game and guides that we produce, we will be able to create better and more regular content. FM Britain will continue also to offer fantastic free content and don't feel obliged to spend any money on the guide if you don't see any value within it for you.

Which in basic terms means these people want money for themselves, for doing a hobby we all love playing and discussing. Like Jay-Producer said it's not expensive running a site just through donations. People forget we are on a discussion forum, there's plenty of people here who know what they are talking about. Give us some topic headers from the book, and I will start a thread or two and see where we get from there.

You can get a good website produced on the cheap - no excuses.

You can also get a good hosting for cheap - no excuses.

It would be better for you to have a donation button on the website and earn money through that way. This means you aren't asking for something in return, instead you are asking for a kind gesture.

I run a charity and manage to get all this done on pennies. No subsidide costs for hosting and its cheap. I pay for this out my own pocket, I run the whole charity on my own hard earned cash and yet I mange to keep costs down with ease. £80 per year it costs me to run my charity - I work out, with sensibility, how much it will costs to keep the charity running each year keeping in with what the objective are etc.

It aint rocket science mate.

I appreciate that you are running a charity. But we aren't running a charity and even if we charged for the content or not, we would never be looked as like a charity, we are now running a business however you like to look at it. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to spend more time doing the thing you love, we are able to do this if we see a return as everyone on whole wrote on the book did so with families, jobs and Millie doing a pHD, in the shops you will find plenty of strategy guides written by companies that specialise in them. CPW piece of content is written by guys with a passion for football, tactics and FM. Where would you rather put your money?

The hosting costs are not the problem, creating a website is not a problem FM Britain scrapes that together with the advertisements (which have now been reduced). We want to build on top of this and offer more then just a website and forum and be able to create content such as TT10 and CPW at as high a quality (and ever better) in the future, investing in software to do more cool stuff and help more people enjoy the game. FM Pundit the site that I run, I am paying everything entirely myself and as I said if it was a charity I would be running the site much differently.

Donate buttons would be great, but how many people do you think are going to donate to FM Britain? The model just doesn't work for a site like ours. Instead people can put down their money and get something back for that money that they are putting in, something they can use and get something out. Value is all relative as well, so pay for it if you think it will help you, or carry on consuming the free content that is available if you are happy doing that. I could put a donate button on FM Pundit and I can guarantee you that I would make about £10 at best, which would cover a months hosting.

Thread reported for being nothing but a commercial advertisement.

If fansites may not be advertised on here, then even less any commercial product should be allowed to have its thread on here.

I don't want to get into any discussion on whether or not it is legitimate to charge money on a fansite (they have a valid interest to have their servers paid though I don't see a legitimate business model on top of that which would allow them to remain genuine), but certainly you must not misuse this forum as your personal ad-board

I think you guys are getting carried away a bit...

Hi

For those that say “the information is out there”, well if you got the time to draw it all together and make sense of it in a logical structured format good luck to you. As I stated previously the price was cheaper for some on the day of release and there were freebies given away.

As tomedeira stated, “there is other software that we can do to make the site better, it is true there is free content out there. But as is always, you get what you pay for and much of the free software just does not fit into our plans. For example the forums would be much better if they were on much better software. But the most exciting thing is to buy software similar to UStream (Which we have used for our broadcasts) but this software has now allowed us to play live games, bring up chalkboards and other interactions that will allow the guys live to answer questions and demonstrate different tactical theories.

Apologies Jay-produced but I think that you would not be able to do this re your point about “good website on the cheap”. I think you would need a better set-up.

TriAn well presumably, taking you view to its logical conclusion, you do not read as it is a waste of time as everything can be gleaned off the internet! And your “brevity of comment” was not very witty!

chronic haze – presumably you do not play any RPG/Strategy games were physiological warfare can be a key element to winning that game?

Apart from the actual price that tends to be what is annoying some folk the only other real debate seems to be that people want it free. Did people actually read Millie’s opening statement in full as to why there are doing it and what they hope to get out of it?

I take it that those that are complaining about the price would have downloaded the content for free.

Well we are all free to express a view but really some of the comments are band-wagon stuff and others I think put across a differing view re community content. My bottom line is I value the resources that the FM community put together.

I use these resources extensively in this game, which I consider to be a fairly tough game to crack. Without these various “bible”, documents and so on the game would not be as enriched for me. And to boot, it has added a new element that keeps the game fresh and one that adds extra enjoyment to me (so I am a poor tactician – we all cannot be Brian Clough).

Have a nice day,

K...

From a personal point of view Millie and others at FMB have taken a lot of time to help me with the game. The ebook has obviously taken a huge amount of time and effort to make and I think it is perfectly reasonable to charge for it.

Hi

jayahr

I certainly agree with you that your post should be deleted.

k

Hi

jayahr

I certainly agree with you that your post should be deleted.

k

Good, though I'd love to agree with you on more than that

*Original Post Deleted*

This thread is being left in the meantime pending Tactics Mod review so lets not get silly about it

I still do not understand the antagonism been shown?

Well I don't agree with all the points raised, but I'm not surprised there's some unease about charging for material, because there is a culture on forums and web-sites of people sharing and developing ideas together and helping eachother out. I feel like I have a decent grasp on most aspects of FM and could help beginners understand certain parts of the game, but that's in large part down to conversations and discussions with other forum users. Basically, it's fun and distracting to talk about FM and put forward ideas - there's something in it for everyone, it's not a chore - so to charge for material does change that a bit.

People might feel, also, that if SI's own documentation or in-game information was more helpful, there'd be no reason to read an additional guide to team-talks or player motivation and interaction, written by people who aren't strictly involved in developing or coding the game.

The e-mails sent out to the mailing list have, until today, not mentioned that it would cost anything, so (even it was inadvertent), I can see why people like phnompenhandy would feel a bit mislead.

Ultimately, though, while it may feel as it goes against the spirit of the community, it's up to people to decide whether or not they want to spend their own money on the guide and I've no doubt that it's a great resource for those who want help with this part of the game (I don't, however, think it should be advertised here).

Well, it's two separate issues.

The first is whether they should charge us for their works. Imho this is entirely up to them. They have provided us with great work in the past which lots of people enjoyed reading and found helpful. And they've done this for free and deserve lots of gratitude for that . We certainly cannot demand them to continue doing all this for free. If it costs too much money to keep the servers running, then it's just a fair thing if they try to redeem somehow. However, within a community like ours it is usually frowned upon to charge others for the work created by a fansite, no matter how much effort people put into it. Thus by charging people you are basically leaving the community in favour of becoming an ambush marketer. That's perfectly okay. I cannot demand being given great work for nothing just as anybody offering me work for money via email is immediately added to my SPAM filter.

The second issue is whether anybody is allowed to use SI as a platform for commercial advertisement. This and the according nature of this thread I claim is an absolute no-brainer. I'm not here to be exposed to ads other than those which SI might decide to be paid for. Thus I will continue to oppose this vigorously.

edit: I was intrigued already by their way of advertising TT&F 10 and commented accordingly in there. It was as if they tried or needed to sell something with excerpts as 'teasers', mirroring SI's campaign for FM10 a bit. Now this too looks a bit more shady again.

While I think this guide is great and all, I do have a couple of problems with this way doing it...

(1) This will be a sign of things to come, once one group has charged, the rest will follow. In the future all the training schedules, similar motivation ideal and so on will carry a charge.

(2) I think it's slightly unfair to advertise it here. As has already been mentioned, no commercial advertising is allowed, so why change it for the one group?

(3) It's been defended about how it's been well known you were gonna charge etc. but looking on your site just a few weeks ago I didn't see anything saying it was going to be charged for. I accept I may have missed it etc.

(4) You said somewhere about a donation button. TBH, I think this would be better. I understand you may make a lot less, but I can't accept a straight charge. I don't know what information is contained in the guide, if its all common sense stuff, and I pay £8 for it I wouldn't be too happy, and it's not like we are gonna get our money back if we ask is it?

Perhaps another way to do it would have been to have a free non-downloadable copy on FMBritain say, and you have to pay to download or print it etc. Meh I dunno, just seems a very odd thng to have done... Especially so late on as well, with the football season almost finished etc, many players have stopped regularly playing the game now, so the value simply isn't there.

1. I would welcome other people to charge for their product if it is worth paying for. People won't charge for training, and game modifications I think legally that isn't allowed. We offer plenty of free content on the site and forums, if you think you have a good grasp of the game already this guide isn't for you. The guide is for people that need the help in a convienient package. Just look at these articles on the very subject that is given away by FM Britain and FM Pundit on the subjects that CPW covers:

Exploiting opposition motivations

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/18/exploiting-opposition-using-motivation/

Why team talks can make the best tactics useless, a CPW 10 audio preview

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/15/why-team-talks-best-tactics-useless-cpw-10-audio-preview/

Why your assistant manager could be wasting your press conferences

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/13/assistant-manager-wasting-press-conferences/

3 Squad Management Techniques learned from Pellegrini

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/11/3-squad-management-techniques-pellegrini/

How to make friends and influence people in Football Manager

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/09/how-to-make-friends-and-influence-people-in-football-manager/

Advantages of taking the Arsene Wenger approach to building a squad

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/strategy/advantages-arsene-wenger-squad-building-strategy/

Getting to know players personalities

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/players/knowing-player-personality/

Helping your squad gel

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/strategy/advantages-consistent-squad/

And FM Britain have all the old CPW content hosted on the site for you to read and alot of it is the foundations of what CPW 2010 is built upon.

It is not an easy business model to just create something and charge for it. What this book represents is 5 years of building up a reputation that people trust the value that is in the book. It is no going to revloutionise the scene and I don't feel that it is something that everyone is going to do. People will continue to share their information for free all over and so will FM Pundit and FM Britain

2. I will leave that decision up to the mods of the forum regading this issue.

3. We didn't make a song and dance about charging you, but the sales page had the price on. We never made any false promises or mislead anyone. a week before the book was launched was posted on the FM Britain forums asking are we charging, we give him a straight anwser straight away.

4. The content in the guide is nothing revolutionary, it is common sense if you have spent months around the forums, reading other guides etc... Then you may already know alot of what is contained in the guide. We are offering this for people who want to learning more about player interaction, squad management etc... That they may not have considered before. If they are having trouble with the game, this maybe one of the options to help them. The first post of the thread and the resulting sales page etc... all have a full run down of what is contained in the book. As I have said before if we are charging for a book, we get investment and the buyer gains something from the transaction too. Unlike donations, in an ideal world the donations system would be great, but it just doesn't offer much value to anyone other then good causes imo.

As we can see from what people who have bought the book have said, alot of positive things are coming out. As they seem to think what they have bought has a value to them. People who don't think the book has a value won't buy it and that is fine.

1. I would welcome other people to charge for their product if it is worth paying for. People won't charge for training, and game modifications I think legally that isn't allowed. We offer plenty of free content on the site and forums, if you think you have a good grasp of the game already this guide isn't for you. The guide is for people that need the help in a convienient package. Just look at these articles on the very subject that is given away by FM Britain and FM Pundit on the subjects that CPW covers:

Exploiting opposition motivations

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/18/exploiting-opposition-using-motivation/

Why team talks can make the best tactics useless, a CPW 10 audio preview

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/15/why-team-talks-best-tactics-useless-cpw-10-audio-preview/

Why your assistant manager could be wasting your press conferences

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/13/assistant-manager-wasting-press-conferences/

3 Squad Management Techniques learned from Pellegrini

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/11/3-squad-management-techniques-pellegrini/

How to make friends and influence people in Football Manager

http://www.fm-britain.co.uk/2010/03/09/how-to-make-friends-and-influence-people-in-football-manager/

Advantages of taking the Arsene Wenger approach to building a squad

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/strategy/advantages-arsene-wenger-squad-building-strategy/

Getting to know players personalities

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/players/knowing-player-personality/

Helping your squad gel

http://www.fmpundit.com/2010/strategy/advantages-consistent-squad/

Again, thank you.

And FM Britain have all the old CPW content hosted on the site for you to read and alot of it is the foundations of what CPW 2010 is built upon.

It is not an easy business model to just create something and charge for it. What this book represents is 5 years of building up a reputation that people trust the value that is in the book. It is no going to revloutionise the scene and I don't feel that it is something that everyone is going to do. People will continue to share their information for free all over and so will FM Pundit and FM Britain

Again, this makes me worry. This statement makes all your oh so unselfish work mentioned above look like the build-up of good-will which was commercially inspired from day 1

2. I will leave that decision up to the mods of the forum regading this issue.

Erm???? Are you in the position to not leave it to them????? Talking about getting carried away.

4. The content in the guide is nothing revolutionary, it is common sense if you have spent months around the forums, reading other guides etc... Then you may already know alot of what is contained in the guide. We are offering this for people who want to learning more about player interaction, squad management etc... That they may not have considered before. If they are having trouble with the game, this maybe one of the options to help them. The first post of the thread and the resulting sales page etc... all have a full run down of what is contained in the book. As I have said before if we are charging for a book, we get investment and the buyer gains something from the transaction too. Unlike donations, in an ideal world the donations system would be great, but it just doesn't offer much value to anyone other then good causes imo.

As we can see from what people who have bought the book have said, alot of positive things are coming out. As they seem to think what they have bought has a value to them. People who don't think the book has a value won't buy it and that is fine.

I appreciate this as an honest statement.

I appreciate that you are running a charity. But we aren't running a charity and even if we charged for the content or not, we would never be looked as like a charity, we are now running a business however you like to look at it. Wouldn't it be cool to be able to spend more time doing the thing you love, we are able to do this if we see a return as everyone on whole wrote on the book did so with families, jobs and Millie doing a pHD, in the shops you will find plenty of strategy guides written by companies that specialise in them. CPW piece of content is written by guys with a passion for football, tactics and FM. Where would you rather put your money?

The hosting costs are not the problem, creating a website is not a problem FM Britain scrapes that together with the advertisements (which have now been reduced). We want to build on top of this and offer more then just a website and forum and be able to create content such as TT10 and CPW at as high a quality (and ever better) in the future, investing in software to do more cool stuff and help more people enjoy the game. FM Pundit the site that I run, I am paying everything entirely myself and as I said if it was a charity I would be running the site much differently.

Donate buttons would be great, but how many people do you think are going to donate to FM Britain? The model just doesn't work for a site like ours. Instead people can put down their money and get something back for that money that they are putting in, something they can use and get something out. Value is all relative as well, so pay for it if you think it will help you, or carry on consuming the free content that is available if you are happy doing that. I could put a donate button on FM Pundit and I can guarantee you that I would make about £10 at best, which would cover a months hosting.

Is there any harm in having a donation button to see how much you raise? no so give it a go and find out how much you generate over the year. Its great what you do. I appreciate that. The website I personally feel is poor and looks dreadful but that's my opinion. £10 is better than nothing - no harm in trying.

Apologies Jay-produced but I think that you would not be able to do this re your point about “good website on the cheap”. I think you would need a better set-up.

Yes I would thanks. I'm more than capable of finding good deals. My set-up on my website is excellent and it look lush. It cost me cheaply because I shopped around and did my homework.

Snip

If your stupid enough to buy rip-off clothing from sweatshops go ahead. Id never dream of buying that chavy crap.

If your stupid enough to buy rip-off clothing from sweatshops go ahead. Id never dream of buying that chavy crap.

I actually just googled 'sale' to come up with any random sort of commercials I could link to in order to demontrate my point. Kudos to RL to getting their page top-ranked under this keyword.

The content in the guide is nothing revolutionary, it is common sense if you have spent months around the forums, reading other guides etc... Then you may already know alot of what is contained in the guide. We are offering this for people who want to learning more about player interaction, squad management etc... That they may not have considered before.

But doesn't that suggest that the information presented in the guide is, in effect, the result of sharing and learning ideas with and from other FM forum users? TT&F has in the past quite clearly acknowledged that the ideas shared in the guide have been influenced by various forum posters over the years, and I can imagine that C&PW is no different in that regard.

I know if I were to advise someone on how to best use team-talks, for instance, I'd be using a little bit of my own FM experience but also a lot of information that I've picked up from other people around here.

I guess that's where it gets tricky when you come to charge people for such a guide. Obviously a lot of work has gone in to collating all this information, and presenting it clearly is a great skill in itself, but aren't you benefiting (to some extent, at least) from other people's experimenting and sharing of their thoughts?

Is there any harm in having a donation button to see how much you raise? no so give it a go and find out how much you generate over the year. Its great what you do. I appreciate that. The website I personally feel is poor and looks dreadful but that's my opinion. £10 is better than nothing - no harm in trying.

Jay, you make a completely valid point here. There *isn't* any harm in having a donation button whatsoever. We could have easily went that route.

It was our feeling, though, that blindly asking for a handout was not in the best interests of our site or the community. We have never wanted to receive money for doing nothing - and I believe the "donation" route would have sent the wrong message in that regard.

We would much rather have to WORK and *continue* to work on producing quality content in order to get financial support from the community. We create a product in which you find value, then *and only then* would we receive any type of funds to support our endeavors. I think that's a much more honorable way to raise funds than to solicit for donations and have people just rely on hope that we'd follow that up with quality content.

Echoing Millie, Levo & the rest of FM-Britain's team, we understand completely why you would not want to purchase this eBook and would not want you to if you feel it's not worth it's value. We also expected & understand why there's been a knee-jerk reaction over charging for our work and absolutely respect the sentiments of those who feel it's unwarranted to do so in our community.

In either case, we will *still* produce a continued stream of quality content by way of articles, podcasts, videos and so forth absolutely free with no strings attached.

If you feel the semantics over charging vs. donations to be an issue, I would implore you to view it from the angle that we are asking for a 7.95 GBP donation to support our work over the past 5 years up until now, and in return you get a eBook + bonus audio in return as a way of us saying "thank you" for the donation.