The England Project

[daleuk8]

THE ENGLAND PROJECT

Over the years I’ve read great threads and gained some great advice from the likes of: Heath, Cleon, WWfan and many others. The people who I have mentioned all have very different ways of playing the game. One thing they do have in common is they believe in the way they play the game and stick to it. They also try and get FM gamers to try things and work things out for themselves.

With this in mind I thought I would try and contribute to the forums with my first real career thread.

Although I love playing FM I started to lose my interest so I decided not to play for a few months. I needed something new!

So the England Project was born!! My aim is to start in League 2 and work my way up to the big job.

First I needed to decide what club I wanted to join. I went with my home town club Swindon Town.

After relegation Swindon are favourites to win league. Although we had a transfer budget of £250K our wage budget was very low and the club were in financial trouble so any players I wanted to bring in would need to on free transfers and loans. I would also need to get the best out of my current squad.

I felt my current set of players would be good enough to at least get me to the January transfer window. Now I needed to get my tactics in place.

At the start of the season I decided to create a classic tactic, I won’t go into detail about that but half way through the season we were sitting in the play offs places.

Now although I felt things were going well, the board wanted nothing less than the league 2 title. I also had unsettled players and moral was low so I needed to re-think or I would be looking for a new job.

I needed some inspiration so it was time to read!

The first thing I did was open the TC and I went back to what I know.

This was how I set up:

442

Very rigid

Team instructions on default

GK: Defend

Fullbacks: Automatic

DC: Defend

DC: Defend

Winger: Attack

Winger: Attack

Advanced Playmaker: Support

Ball winning midfielder: Defend

Deep Lying Forward: Support

Advanced Forward: Attack

I have always felt that I needed to play defensively away from home. After reading post, threads and guides I found this might be causing me a few problems.

I decided to start using the match odds as a starting point for my starting strategy.

My rule of thumb:

Odds slightly in my favor/even: Standard

Odds slightly against: Counter

Heavy underdogs: Defensive

Comfortable Favorites: Attacking

I also use shouts but these vary on the match situation.

To get moral up I would have to use all the tools at my disposal. (Media and player/team interaction) One thing I do struggle with is team talks. Feel free to give advice.

With the transfer window open I decided to back up my team with three new players: one being the experienced Gavin Mahon and the others: Shaun Batt and Dan Harding

With these changes I soon saw a change in fortunes. Although we did with things the hard way. We needed to get 3 points out of our last two games to win the league.

Our first game was a tricky tie at mid-table Torquay. 15mins in and my CB would make a blunder and Torquay took the lead. Although we would go gung ho with 10mins to go, we lost the game 1-0.

Our last game would be Port Vale:

We would win this game 1-0.

JOB SAFE! LEAGUE WON!

Although we had a good season the clubs financial state was still in a bad way. I couldn’t even offer my top players new contracts. With no take over insight I knew I would have to move on if I wanted to keep my eye on the top job.

The day I gained promotion with Swindon Town, the Leicester City board felt they needed to relieve Sven Goran Eriksson of his duties. And who would be tipped to replace him? You guessed it..Me!!

I soon signed a three year contract at Leicester.

My aim for the season is a mid-table spot and I have a £3million budget.

To do this I felt I needed to bring in some new faces. Two would be from my old club: Matt Ritchie and Simon Ferry would be joined by: Leon Best and Billy Sharp.

I have managed to win my first two games with a 4-2 win over Millwall and a 2-0 victory in the League cup.

Please feel free to give your advice. Things I feel I need help with are assessing my new squad, team talks, oh and adding screenshots.

"Daleuk8"

[Cleon]

I've not got time to offer ny kind of feedback as of yet but a good opening post and a thread I will be following

[daleuk8]

I've not got time to offer ny kind of feedback as of yet but a good opening post and a thread I will be following

Thank you:) I stupidly didn't save the game, so have to play those games again.. Will add more soon

[daleuk8]

I will try and update soon.. Been a little busy..

[Cleon]

Don't worry, every time I try and update I always end up busy as well

[LlamaZA]

Pictures and formatting would go a long way to adding to the readability of the thread.

Also perhaps show us some of the more interesting things you've done in the process, e.g. switching a players training to something different, an in-game tactical adjustment that worked (or didn't) with a bit of an analysis why.

No offense, but without these you aren't actually adding anything to the understanding of the game from a tactical or training perspective and I can't see the point of being in this forum as opposed to the FM Stories one.

[daleuk8]

Pictures and formatting would go a long way to adding to the readability of the thread.

Also perhaps show us some of the more interesting things you've done in the process, e.g. switching a players training to something different, an in-game tactical adjustment that worked (or didn't) with a bit of an analysis why.

No offense, but without these you aren't actually adding anything to the understanding of the game from a tactical or training perspective and I can't see the point of being in this forum as opposed to the FM Stories one.

Thank you for the advice.

As in the OP I would have no problem adding screen shots..Just need advice on how to do this.

I hope when I have had time to update then there will be more detail and I hope some discussion.

[LlamaZA]

As in the OP I would have no problem adding screen shots..Just need advice on how to do this.

If you are using Windows 7, you can use the Snipping Tool (just click the start menu and type Snipping Tool and you'll see), you can then pick the area of the screen you want to capture. You can then save this image and upload it to whichever host site you want to use. I used imageshack.

If you're using another version of Windows that doesn't have the Snipping Tool - Alt + PrtScn will take a screenshot of the current window - you can past this into MS Paint and crop then save.

Inside your post - use the {img}link to image{/img} tags (replace {} with []) to add the image. Make sure the link you use ends with .jpg or whichever file format you used.