Dyvim Tvar

First season is in the books and as I predicted the propensity for draws cost us, however it was fractional when compared to our expected finish so complaining would be churlish. We managed to grab third, which to be honest was a bit clutch since we hit a poor run of form in April and May, so while I'm somewhat disappointed that we didn't challenge for the title better I think it's definitely a good achievement. Ended up mostly abandoning the five at the back variant of my tactic since it just kind of fell apart and never recaptured the magic of the Chelsea and Leicester results. Still never really settled on deeper wingers or ones slightly higher up, probably never will but that's fine. Selling Lanzini might also have harmed us fractionally, since Lansbury (who replaced him mostly in the Treq role) only managed to finish the season with the same amount of goals and assists as Lanzini had in his 16 games for us. Swings and roundabouts though, Lansbury was still very influential so I don't imagine it would've been the difference between winning the league. I'm up in the air about if I'm going to continue into season two with West Ham or if I'm going to jump ship and try to build another team around the tactic. Spurs have an interim manager right now and Arsenal look like they're going to be sacking Wenger soon, either of those are interesting prospects since I think they'll provide a different challenge to what I faced with West Ham. Although neither team have CL football and the prospect of testing my tactic there is very appealing so we shall see. Challenge accomplished I guess, now all that's left is to see if I can win some silverware with this instead of choking kappa

I haven't really gotten into the groove with FM for a long time, but since I just picked up FM18 this week and this challenge caught my eye I figured I'd give it a go. My West Ham team operating with this frame work are currently unbeaten in competitive fixtures and is sitting fourth in the PL with a media predicted finish of 9th. So far so good. This tactic has become my primary tactic, it began development after a very nail biting result at Liverpool showed me that the original tactic developed during preseason probably wouldn't cut it against the top teams. It's primary focus is to frustrate and break up the opponent's attacking play in the defensive unit and limit the opposition to shooting from disadvantageous positions. In attack the focus is the "front three" of treq and wingers, who are always looking to one another when it comes to creating chances. The central midfield pairing is a bit fluid and their roles depends on who I'm facing, however what they do never changes too much. They make a nuisance of themselves during defensive play and then when we're attacking they provide support to the front three and offer an illusion of an attacking threat even though they very rarely act on it, they still come close enough to pull some heat from the Treq. The wide players have 16 goals between them and are heavily the focus of my attack. No small part of the inspiration for how I want them to play in attack is from my memory of the Ljungberg/Pires days of Arsenal. This is the tactic I started with. It generally moves the ball around in a manner that is more aesthetically pleasing and produces more goals, however it also gives up more chances in return. The wide men are usually deployed further back as regular wingers on attack duty, I decided to return to an experiment with the specialist roles that I started in friendlies but abandoned when Fernandes got injured since nobody else was quite getting as much out of the role as he did. The first return to IF and RMD for them yielded a really good result at Brighton, but I'm not convinced it would've mattered either way in that game since Brighton are struggling hard on my save. Will probably persist with them at least at the start of games, if I see increased fragility then I at least know what to expect from moving them deeper. Results to date: I'm still trying to get to grips with how the tactical system works in the modern games and this is undoubtedly the best result in a long time that I've seen from attempting to create my own tactic instead of just downloading something. There are still things I need to iron out (like how to get the attack a little more direct since we still take too many touches right now, if pass into space and run at defence instructions on my 5 and 4 man defence variants respectively add any value, and if the RMD and IF roles really even add anything) but for the first time in a long time I feel like I'm finally equipped to deal with implementing my theory into practice, it's a nice feeling.

Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name: Marc Bartra Your Team: Arsenal Buyer/Seller: Barcelona Player's Value: £17.5m Offer: £8.5m (£11.75m after his contract signing bonuses) (95k p/w wages) Transfer/Wage Budget: £58m/400k p/w space left on the wage budget Patch: 16.2 Season: 1st Ideally I'd like to have waited a season before worrying about replacing one of Kos or PerMer (29 and 30 respectively) but the release fee for Bartra is a good price I think, and if I don't move now either he signs for Chelsea or gets another contract with Barce and probably doubles that fee going forward. That competition for him is also why I've had to go higher on the wages, the real sticking point of this transfer for me, than I would like to. Any thoughts/alternatives?

Haven't had much joy with 2015 so far, so decided to give a downloaded tactic a whirl, also since I wasn't having much luck or fun with my beloved Arsenal I figured starting unemployed might be worth a go. I enjoyed your tactics for 2014 Mr. Rosler so this thread was my first port of call. Ended up employed by Vise in the Belgian Third Division B. Predicted to be relegated, and set the goal by the board of just avoiding the automatic relegation spot. It's been a pretty rocky ride: but ultimately the outcome isn't something I would turn my nose up at: Never actually played classic mode before, so I don't know if bringing in ten new players (all but three of which were pretty much regular starters for the whole season) really had any effect on the up and down nature of things. I know it would have done in full fat mode, but honestly my knowledge of classic is negligible at best. Team still isn't exactly great, as you would expect from part-timers, but some of the performances were pretty nice to watch. And honestly more than a few of those defeats and draws were just really bad luck. For example at the start of the competitive season I had a run of five games with an injury a game, then went one game without any before having two players injured in the next, the upshot of which being I spent pretty much the first half of the season with a makeshift team most of the time. I also got a more than a handful (ten if my count is right) pretty unfortunate goals against me (dubious penalties and insane flukes etc.), each of which decided results of games. Of course I got a few dubious and flukey goals of my own, so I'm not going to grumble about that. I also noticed that injuries were rife all across the league so at least it wasn't just me suffering (seriously, I lost track of the amount of games that saw two to three of my opponents players go off injured). My DLF managed a solid return of 20 goals and 8 assists (to be fair this is skewed because he had to play more than a few games in the more advanced role due to injuries) in 28 league games. The AF didn't fare quite as well with 12 goals and 5 assists in 20 games (injuries hampered him quite a bit I think). The rest of the squad chipped in nicely with goals as well, which is something I always quite like to see. I messed around with switching to counter in away games, but honestly that never made much of a difference (my heaviest losses came with that strategy in fact) so eventually I just gave up on that and let control do it's thing. All in all I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. Sure I never got a storming run together but this kind of finish for a team like Vise is still pretty damn good.

Eh, he had solid athleticism and a bit of charisma but I don't think he was special. However his tag team with Davey Boy Jr has been a revelation in Japan. Both guys have shown a real knack for playing destroyers and they've fit right in, although until this G1 Hoyte has still been sub par in singles matches. Sure it's not hard to have a great match with a guy like Prince Devitt, but I don't believe Hoyte played no part in making the match as good as it was.

Anybody with even a passing interest in fighting games should strongly consider picking up Skullgirls. Art style can be a bit...questionable but it's a superb little anime fighter and it has probably the finest tutorial the genre has ever seen, it not only explains the things you should be doing to be competitive in fighting games, it also tells you the why behind it. Also the soundtrack is great.

Anybody around these parts keeping up with the New Japan G1 Climax tournament? As a man who literally cannot be trusted to have his own bank account I may have purchased the 9 event iPPV set. Four nights in and it's been utterly ridiculous, nights one and three were "only" solid shows but night two was the best wrestling event I'd seen this year right up until the point when I watched night four, which somehow managed to be better. There's been some weird match results so far, but that's kind of par for the course in a New Japan tournament in the early stages. The biggest shock so far has been Vance Lance Archer Hoyte not only being not terrible, but actually having two of the better matches on the events so far.

One might even call it...Dreddful. ( •_•) ( •_•)>⌐■-■ (⌐■_■) Sorry.

Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name: Michael Essien Your Team: Leverkusen Buyer/Seller: Chelsea Player's Value: £3.6mil Offer: £3.5mil Transfer/Wage Budget: £23mil/£240k Patch: 12.1.1 Season: 2013/14 I have Gago and Bender as my go to CM players, and I couldn't get rid of a pesky "match highest earner" clause in David Luiz's contract, which means he and Essien would both be earning £80k p/w should I make this signing, which is counter productive to the wage bill trimming I just did over the summer to try and stem some of the bleeding the club finances have done since I took charge in November. On the other hand I'm fond of Essien and think he might help meet the board's demands that we challenge for the title this year since he's still got quite a bit of quality about him. Thoughts?

Elmander has become a perpetual thorn in my side since joining Bolton. Always seems to have the games of his life when he comes against a team that I'm in charge of and it's not unheard for him to bag on the wrong side of five goals a season against me.

Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name: Miralem Pjanic Your Team: Arsenal Buyer/Seller: Lyon Player's Value: £6m Offer: £15m in installments Transfer/Wage Budget: £15m Patch: 11.2.0 Season: Start of first.

Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name:Gaetano D'Agostino Your Team: Arsenal Buyer/Seller: Udinese Player's Value: £7m Offer: £7m Transfer/Wage Budget: £26m Patch: 10.1.1 Season: Start of 1st Season. Udinese just offered him out since it seems he wants to leave. I sent Denilson out for £16 mil to Man City so I am a little light on the dmc front, however I have to admit that I don't know much of anything about this guy so any advice would be welcome.

I like Lukas, he's been a fairly consistent FM signing for me for quite a while now and he usually comes good for me. Never any good for anybody else I know who manages top flight clubs in the game, and he's never recomended by my scouts or assistants but he just seems to work. It's wierd, I'm going to assume it's the power of faith! I'll take a look at Chygrynskyy, new players are always interesting thanks.

Yeah I liked the look of Burdisso's stats a little more, just wasn't sure if Chivu was going to be the rock I needed or not. Well Chivu rejected my watered down contract offer (I will not be paying anybody 115k a week) but Burdisso accepted his. So Burdisso it shall certainly be. Chiellini apparantly has no interest in signing for us, which is a shame because he's a quality player. Is Fazio worth the look then? I've bought him in the past but he never quite broke into the side in that experiment so I've ignored him since, he is available for under £10 mil though this time. I'm also eyeing Sinkiewicz for £4.5 mil, but that's one of those crazy "I really like this player" things and I don't expect anybody to support the notion;-p

Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name: Christian Chivu Your Team: Arsenal Buyer/Seller: Inter Player Value: £9.25 mil Offer: £19 mil Patch: 9.3.0 Season: 1 Also have: Buying/Selling: Buying Player Name: Nicolas Burdisso Your Team: Arsenal Buyer/Seller: Inter Player Value: £3.1 mil Offer: £5 mil Patch: 9.3.0 Season: 1 I like Chivu and all but the price is pretty hefty, Burdisso is a moderate problem since he's after 60k in wages with 25k app fees. Centre backs are a pain:-<