CFuller Posted September 16, 2016 Share Posted September 16, 2016 It's the middle of September, and I think I'm finished with FM16. My career with the White Wolves of Uzbekistan is over, and unlike Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, this white wolf is not coming back from the dead. Here's why... It all went catastrophically wrong for Uzbekistan after we failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, courtesy of a 4-0 defeat to Saudi Arabia in the second leg of our play-off. We went on to win just one match throughout the whole of 2018 (against the mighty Malaysia, and we were 2-1 down with not long to go in that!). That said, I was still hopeful that we could produce a good display at the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, held in the United Arab Emirates. We were the highest-seeded team in our group, which contained Bahrain, Palestine and Qatar. The top two would qualify for the Last 16, as would the 3rd-placed team if they performed well enough. Easy as pie? Think again. First group game vs Qatar: 0-0 at half-time, Qatar took the lead, we drew level late on. 1-1 draw. Second group game vs Palestine: 0-0 at half-time, Palestine took the lead, we drew level late on. 1-1 draw. Again. Third group game vs Bahrain: Bahrain moved in front early on, though we quickly equalised. Then my right-back, already carrying a yellow card, decided to lunge in on a Bahraini player who'd been dawdling on the ball for about half a minute. Red card. Bahrain took full advantage and were 3-1 up by the break. I went gung-ho for the second half... but so did another Uzbek defender, who got himself sent off and reduced us to NINE men. Miraculously, Bahrain could not score again, but we had no hope of fighting back and ended up losing by that 3-1 scoreline. We finished 3rd in our group, ahead of Palestine on goal difference, but two points was nowhere near enough to qualify for the Last 16. At that point, I jumped before I could be pushed, and resigned as Uzbekistan manager with immediate effect. It was a shame, really, as I'd been enjoying that save right up until the Saudi debacle. But this seemed to be a common theme with me in FM15/FM16 - sometimes I felt like I'd got the hang of it, and then it all fell apart for whatever reason. It's back to FM13 for me now until FM17 comes out, and I really hope I can find more success and/or luck there. As much as I still enjoy writing "House of Flying Daggers", I'm hankering to start a new long-term story in a newer game. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted September 17, 2016 Share Posted September 17, 2016 Same here. I can never last a full season on FM16 somehow. I feel that the game penalises consistency and forces you to change things up as the computer AI finds ways to combat your winning tactics. For those who are not that tactically inclined it can be a bit tough. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreat10ne1 Posted November 6, 2016 Share Posted November 6, 2016 @BenArsenal It makes sense that the AI tries to work you out, just like in real life. There's no such thing as a perfect tactic in football, and football manager would not be so addictive if it were a case of finding a perfect tactic, because then that'd pretty much make the rest of the game pointless. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mavericktangoII Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 Is playing FM all about winning? Can you not enjoy the game without winning it all? For me it's the thrill of building a club up, if I go on a losing streak you have to tweak things, motivate the players and go again. It's a blow when you lose the big one but it's best to grit your teeth and start again, don't just throw up your hands and accuse the AI of being fixed lol Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted November 7, 2016 Share Posted November 7, 2016 There aren't many games that can be simultaneously enjoyable and infuriating, but FM is not like many games. One case in point - the first season of my Millwall save on FM17. One characteristic of all my saves from FM15 onwards is that my teams score plenty of goals, concede almost as many, and are consistent in their inconsistency. Sometimes I feel like a 20-something football management revolutionary. Other times I feel utterly out of my depth. My Millwall team have no problems with scoring (after all, they tonked Everton 4-0 in the League Cup), but the defence is almost nonexistent. An early symptom of our results schizophrenia came when we lost 7-1 at MK Dons in our second League One game, only to demolish Peterborough by the same scoreline just a few days later. Since then, we've been up and down like an elevator. Up front, Lee Gregory started the season like a house on fire, reaching 10 goals before August was over. His goalscoring dried up in subsequent months, and although he's now on at least 20, he hasn't scored since January (it's now mid-March). Similarly, Aiden O'Brien was unstoppable midway through the season but has since joined Gregory in regularly missing proverbial cow derrières with proverbial banjos. The team as a whole was particularly erratic in January, and by February, the chairman had offered me an ultimatum - take 8 points from your next 5 games, or you're sacked. I got to 9 with a game to spare - the solitary loss coming against bottom club Rochdale. Since I was given that stay of execution, we've drawn at home to leaders MK Dons and won away to 2nd-placed Sheffield United, so it seems that we're back on the right track... for now. As things stand, with nine games to go, we are in 13th place - but just six points off the top six. If we can really get ourselves together in the run-in, I might just meet the board's minimum expectations of a play-off place. If not, then I guess I might have to rebuild my career at another club in another league. As a game, FM17 is certainly the best of its kind yet - it's fast, stable, more realistic, and ridiculously addictive. As a manager, though, I've still got a lot of work to do. Oh, and as deep-lying playmakers go, Shaun Williams is Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Sounds like me and my ill-fated spell with Crystal Palace. We were losing games 3-4 and 5-6. It was silly. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
tenthreeleader Posted November 8, 2016 Share Posted November 8, 2016 Because of the detailed writing I do. I tend to only really get into FM in its odd-numbered iterations. This should be an interesting year, yeah? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted November 9, 2016 Share Posted November 9, 2016 My Millwall team finished 11th in the end, six points off the play-off places. Goodness knows how I came out of that season still in a job. The last few weeks of the season have, though, given me hope that we can turn it around and win promotion to the Championship next season. I've stumbled across a 4-3-2-1 tactic that really seems to suit us, and our defence tightened up significantly late on as well. Now it's up to me to rebuild the team and get us heading in the right direction again. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 EMOTIONAL FMT RANT ALERT. PROCEED WITH CAUTION. I really, really wanted to get into FM Touch this year. Unfortunately, it just has not worked out for me at all. I've played seven matches and lost the lot of them. First of all, I played a couple of draft mode matches against AI Mark Wilson and his Hardly Athletic boys. I lost both legs - 1-3 at home, and 0-2 away. Then, this weekend, I started an "Injury Crisis" challenge with Saint-Étienne - a club I've always wanted to manage in FM. My first five matches went as follows: 0-3 vs Lille, 1-2 at Caen, 1-2 vs Guingamp, 0-2 at Rennes, and - finally - 0-1 vs Nancy. Challenge abandoned. FMT uninstalled after 5 hours of play. That was such a shame, because I had this wonderful FMS idea of a story in which I would take on all 10 FMT challenges separately and write about them in the same topic. I even had a title for the Saint-Étienne segment of the story written up: "Only Love Can Break Your Heart (And Other Assorted Body Parts)". Now I might as well change it to "Only FMT Can Break Your Heart". Maybe I'm overreacting, but the truth is that I cannot seem to get into FMT at all, and not simply because I have a 0-0-7 record. I miss the team talks, the player interactions, the extra staff members, the youth teams... even the insanely repetitive press conferences. I can understand the reasoning behind why some people (particularly those with less spare time than others) play FMT over FM, but to me, it just seems like FM Lite. I don't think I'll ever go back to FMT. For me, the day that I give up on Football Manager's full-fat version will be the day that I give up on the whole franchise. Sorry about that, guys. I just had to get it off my chest. Normal service will resume on "House of Flying Daggers" tomorrow. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark wilson27 Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 Im not surprised you lost against my side with me in charge. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 2 minutes ago, mark wilson27 said: Im not surprised you lost against my side with me in charge. I never liked you anyway. I kid, of course, but Draft Mode probably isn't my thing either as well. I played five other AI teams in a draft league on full-fat FM and somehow managed to come 5th of 6 teams! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark wilson27 Posted November 20, 2016 Share Posted November 20, 2016 For me the draft mode was fun but trying to sort out a team within budget and on a time limit was a challenge Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted December 2, 2016 Share Posted December 2, 2016 After my brief and failed dalliance with FM Touch, I went back to my Millwall save on FM17. I haven't been so engrossed in a single FM save since my big FM13 career, and as you're about to find out, things have gone rather well! Despite getting off to a mediocre start in Season 2, we consolidated our place in the League One play-off spots and then upped our efforts for automatic promotion midway through the campaign. From New Year's Day onwards until early April, we went through 17 (SEVENTEEN) consecutive league matches without defeat, which I believe is a personal record for me. After the final game of that run, we were top of the league - and 5 points clear of 3rd place, with only four games left to play. It sort of fell apart then, as successive away defeats to Chesterfield and Port Vale reduced our lead on 3rd place to just two points. Thankfully, we did win 3-2 in our penultimate game at home to Shrewsbury, although we were 3-0 up with three minutes to go, so I was a bit of a nervous wreck towards the end! That result meant we secured promotion , not to mention the League One title , and it rendered our final-day loss to Rochdale academic. Millwall are my second club, after Arsenal, and I've managed the Lions goodness knows how many times over the years on CM/FM. This is actually the first time that I have got them promoted since CM4 (when the likes of Tijani Babangida, Neil Harris and Tim Cahill helped us to win Division 1 and the FA Cup in the same season). My big heroes from this season were Chris Long (24 goals and 12 assists while on loan from Burnley), Byron Webster (our captain marvel at the back), Jake Hesketh (Millwall's answer to Ivan Rakitic, with a 91% pass completion rate) and Michael Cain (a fantastic roaming playmaker, and not a lot of people know that). With so many excellent players in the side, I feel that we're more than good enough to survive in the Championship, but a few signings here and there could turn us into possible contenders for another promotion. I'd best get cracking, then... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted December 7, 2016 Share Posted December 7, 2016 I'm just about to start my third season with Millwall - my first in the Championship. Our opening game's at home to Swansea. Also in the Championship this season are Southampton, who have just come down from the Premier League. They're managed by Zinedine Zidane, they've signed Jésé and Alphonse Areola from PSG and Victor Moses from Chelsea this summer, and they still have players like Virgil van Dijk and Nathan Redmond. Remember, they're now a Championship club. I'm really not looking forward to playing Southampton this season... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 So, I've been on a rather interesting save game recently, with a team in the Chinese Super League, and given current climes I figured that might be an interesting story to tell. Thing is, the save recently got corrupted. I might go back and take a look at it at some point but otherwise there is the possibility that all the material I have available to write could be restricted to about four games at the end of the previous season (quite a good four games though. I saved the team from relegation after being stone bottom). Thus it might end up being just a short story. Would such a short story work? Obviously if the save is corrupted then the ending will have to be modified somewhat. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 I don't see why such an idea wouldn't work. Give it a go. How far back is your most recent backup, Ben? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
WLKRAS Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 1 hour ago, BenArsenal said: So, I've been on a rather interesting save game recently, with a team in the Chinese Super League, and given current climes I figured that might be an interesting story to tell. Thing is, the save recently got corrupted. I might go back and take a look at it at some point but otherwise there is the possibility that all the material I have available to write could be restricted to about four games at the end of the previous season (quite a good four games though. I saved the team from relegation after being stone bottom). Thus it might end up being just a short story. Would such a short story work? Obviously if the save is corrupted then the ending will have to be modified somewhat. Yeah, I don't see why not. I did a five post short story on an impending board takeover at Hartlepool once and that didn't even contain any actual football! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
BenArsenal Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 Okay I've tried reloading the save again. It loads but the game won't continue (it just hangs), so I figure that's the end of that. I guess I'll do the short story then. Will be interesting to think of the ending though. Sacked? Murdered? World comes to an end after Trump declares nuclear war on China? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
CFuller Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 26 minutes ago, BenArsenal said: I guess I'll do the short story then. Will be interesting to think of the ending though. Sacked? Murdered? World comes to an end after Trump declares nuclear war on China? The third ending sounds most realistic. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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