bigdunk

And it's not like Kane is taking them very well either.

Man Utd against Liverpool was a textbook example of how to play against a back 3. Tonight we've been the epitome of how not to play against one. The whole thing has just been a midfield clogging match with no real quality from either team. Get Walcott out wide running into spaces behind their wing backs, not trying to dribble through their entire team.

The thing is, your new system is effectively the exact same thing we have now. Assuming that there is a maximum amount of 'PA boost' he can get for being in form, a maximum amount for having the theoretical best coaches and facilities, a maximum amount for his mental attributes etc, he will still have a hard cap on his PA. All you are doing is going from a system where the fixed maximum PA is stated in the database, to a system where the fixed maximum PA is a function of a bunch of fixed values .In both cases there is a fixed PA, your new system just obscures it behind a bunch of other values, making the database and research much harder to balance.

Last year, the UI was almost exactly the same as the previous version, and people moaned that the game didn't look different enough to pay full price for. So now we have a new UI, and people want the old one back .

'Beta' is just a stage of software development - normally when the piece of software is feature-complete, but not necessarily finished bug testing. Any piece of software that is in this state is in beta, whether it is released to the public or not.

If I was going to replace/rework the scouts judging attributes, I would really push the scouting knowledge aspect of it and maybe even do away with the attributes altogether. As well as the knowledge of specific countries/regions that we have now, break it down further into age groups, scouting specific positions, scouting specific attributes (e.g. a scout may excel at judging technical aspects, but struggle to pick up a players mental strengths). The closer a player was to a scouts areas of expertise, the more likely he is to give an accurate opinion of the player. That would give me some interesting decisions to make as a manager - do I focus on scouting young technically-able players, do I want to pick up experienced players from the continent and so on. It would also differentiate scouts a lot more - at the moment, a JCA/JPA 20/20 scout is pretty much identical to another 20/20 scout. You'd probably have to beef up the head scout stuff as well - the focus being on building a network of scouts that the head scout manages, with the manager just setting overall targets. So if you request a scout report, the head scout would automatically assign the most suitable scout. It could also apply to the other staff members, with coaches having specialist knowledge of coaching age groups, positions, attributes etc. Again with the intention being building up a core of coaching staff focussed on specific aims, with maybe the assistant manager actually managing the individual assignments.

I'm not sure that hiding scouts judging attributes is that great of an idea. If they are just removed with no other changes, it becomes a logistical nightmare trying to figure out if a scout is any good or not - you'll have to cross reference hundreds of player reports with the scouts that made them and compare them to how the play turned out to figure out if a scout is any good or not, to the extent that nobody will actually bother. Scouts will just become interchangeable, with nobody really knowing if they're any good or not.And if it goes the other way, and SI add a bunch of analysis tools to help with figuring out if a scout is good or not, it just becomes busywork. Instead of reading two attribute values, you have to go to another screen and somehow calculate them yourselves from a bunch of source values - wasting time for no real gain. It does feel like a realistic addition, but I don't think it actually adds anything of value to the game. It doesn't give me any interesting decisions to make, and it doesn't add anything to other areas of the game.

Rules say if the foul continues into the area, then a penalty should be given. I think it did, just about. Should be a red though.

I've got Lahm in my team at the moment, but I'm waiting for more solid news about the German Flu thing. I've heard several people say he's one of the 7 guys that have supposedly caught it.

As is rojo.

Looked a bit like handball. Great finish though.

Unless the new manager is going to be able to magic a top class centre half and central midfielder out of a hat, then sacking Hodgson is a waste of time.

I only noticed because when I checked my team this morning, everyone had gone back down to 0 points. After I'd stopped swearing, I realised it was showing round 2

They actually seem to have accounted for that - you can pick your round 2 lineup now, there's a separate team sheet for each round. Just a shame everything else is broken.

because it's garbage? I need to make decisions on who to drop before the Russia game, so they better get it sorted by then.