dane0

This I think is essential. It's been mentioned many times, but SAF is a "team builder" and probably the best manager ever at that so far. He's built 4-5 of the best teams in the world more or less from scratch and to me the most amazing part of his reign is this fact. He doesn't necessarily just buy the best players (although the list of world class players he's brought in is long indeed), but he buys players that will make a great team, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. I try to emulate this in FM if I'm at a top club, by only buying players who I know are determined, hard working types. Unfortunately judging personality traits such as the ability to stand up to pressure and how professional the player's attitude is, is needlessly complicated in FM, even as those are massively important in how far you can push your players via team talks. A team of driven players who are motivated to the hilt is a sight to behold :-)

Aww, had hoped to see Mr. Byrne taking over some Spanish segunda división club and seeing some wacky hijinks with an Iberian version of Dagano. Probably for the best though. Very nice story!

Oh, and just as an aside, against a team like Man U, in terms of realism it shouldn't surprise you to concede in the last minute, they tend to do that. In-game, to mirror this, they have determined players that never give up and also in Valencia, Berbatov, Rooney and Nani they have special players where it's often just impossible to stop them from doing something spectacular, even if you've taken all precautions...

What you should be asking yourself is why they were allowed to make the cross that got headed in. Were the wingers and full backs marked tightly? Did your defense sit too deep, so that someone could pop up at the back post and take advantage of the confusion that an overcrowded penalty box inevitably will result in? Did you counter with pacey players and clearing down the flanks that would force the Man U full backs to drop deeper out of fear of a counter goal? Did you drop your forward down to make interceptions from passes to their central midfielders? Did you have a defensive midfielder follow their roaming forwards so that your defense wouldn't be dragged out of shape? Extended highlights are there so that you can see and analyze how the opponent are attacking you and so that you can counter their attacking moves...

I haven't really made any bargain teams in FM11 as I usually keep most of the players around from the original team. In my FM10 save with PSV however, I pulled off a few absolutely amazing deals, which saw us clinch the Europa League plus the Eredevisie and Dutch Cup. The triple winning team cost just under £30M to assemble, but in my 3 seasons there I recouped that money just by selling Marcellis, Pieters and Afellay, so with the other assorted sales we actually ran a profit. Ah, well, PSV was an easy team to play in FM10, but it was still hugely satisfying to get some success on the cheap :-) GK: Andreas Isaksson - was at club at start of game DR: Miguel Torres - 5.5M DL: Christiano Molinaro - Free transfer DC: Jean-Alain Boumsong - Free transfer DC: Nicolás Burdisso - Free transfer DM: Mark van Bommel - Free transfer MC: Rubén de la Red - Free transfer MC: Paulo (Amazing regen) - 2.6M AML: Angel dí Maria - 5.75M AMR: Diego Perotti - 2.8M FC: Artem Milevskiy - 8.75M Backup-players brought in by me: Jelle van Damme: Free transfer Gustav Svensson: 800K Nelson Rivas: 800K Simon Vukcevic: 2.8M Luis Jiménez: Free transfer Lorenzo Davids: Free transfer Salvador Cabanas: 4.2M Cheik Diabate: Free transfer Kurt Elshot: Free transfer

I just took over Tottenham in late 2012 and after 7 matches watching Defoe, Pavlyuchenko and Keane sending shots everywhere, except for into the back of the net I splashed £ 22M and £ 83K a week on this guy. The debut went exceedingly well, as he scored after just 39 seconds and added another one later on. Will be enjoying having him in my team I think :-)

Won the Europa League, the Dutch title (unbeaten, 2 draws and 11 points clear of 2nd place) and the Dutch Cup with PSV. Martin Jol who had taken Ajax to 3rd and gone out in the group stages of the Champions League won manager of the year. Guess the people voting for the award just like Ajax better?

http://www.fmscout.com/q-2550-Getting-Genie-Scout-to-work-with-Mac.html

A quick look at the wikipedia article does seem to lend credence to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzalo_Javier_Rodríguez

He used to have LOTS of injuries on FM2010. I think he has a bit of a history with it IRL as well, so that could be the reason?

In England some of the challenges remain the same as in the last few versions of the game: Reawaken the sleeping giants. There's Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest, Leeds, Southampton and Sheffield United that all have the history and the stadiums/attendances or potential attendances to be Premier League clubs, you just need to guide them there. A special challenge for me, since it's my club in England, will be to take over at Aston Villa and try to better Martin O'Neill's 6th place finishes. With no money for transfers nor wages, no Milner and perhaps no Ashley Young it could make for an interesting challenge to just try and retain that 6th place finish.

Buying youngsters with the sole purpose of selling them on for a profit is a risky business unless you trust your scouts (or your Genie Scout) a lot. The problem is pretty much that once wages, the transfer fees and various bonuses are taken into the equation along with the fact that you will also be paying these sums for those players that you will have to let go for free or for very small sums, you often won't have made a profit at all... Doing a little math is good here so let's put so

Yeah, and a double post as well. Hope, they get this figured out soonish...

An amazing thread. I'm holding off, until you've written all your posts, to come up with any questions as I might go into something that you were going to cover anyway, but let me just say that I had a few pennies drop while reading this. The biggest thing for me until now is probably how important anticipation seems to be. I should have figured that out for myself a long time ago probably, but I always seemed to value it only in strikers and central defenders until now. I always had it more tied to how players anticipated passes into the goal area or "killer balls", not just movement and passes in general. Well, not so anymore... As for the lack of interest, don't feel too hard done by. I had to attempt to post this reply 7 times before the servers were done messing everything up. It was only because you seemed somewhat hurt by the lack of interest that I persisted through so many attempts. I guess until these boards are up and running properly again, everything will just be slightly strange around here.

An amazing thread. I'm holding off, until you've written all your posts, to come up with any questions as I might go into something that you were going to cover anyway, but let me just say that I had a few pennies drop while reading this. The biggest thing for me until now is probably how important anticipation seems to be. I should have figured that out for myself a long time ago probably, but I always seemed to value it only in strikers and central defenders until now. I always had it more tied to how players anticipated passes into the goal area or "killer balls", not just movement and passes in general. Well, not so anymore... As for the lack of interest, don't feel too hard done by. I had to attempt to post this reply 7 times before the servers were done messing everything up. It was only because you seemed somewhat hurt by the lack of interest that I persisted through so many attempts. I guess until these boards are up and running properly again, everything will just be slightly strange around here.