FM2012: Newcastle United thread - Triumphing by brave defending.....well maybe!

[Abramovic]

Start of 2nd season and I decided to build my team around Vuckic, it will take time for him to develop but im prepared to be patient. But to my surprise Barca came in with a 10 million bid which Cashley decided to accept. Lucky for me he rejected them

Did good few transfers(will post later) so hoping my seasons finishes better than the last

[DandyDon]

Start of 2nd season and I decided to build my team around Vuckic, it will take time for him to develop but im prepared to be patient. But to my surprise Barca came in with a 10 million bid which Cashley decided to accept. Lucky for me he rejected them

Did good few transfers(will post later) so hoping my seasons finishes better than the last

Nice to see a player turn down a move like that.....normally my players can't seem to get out the door quick enough when Barca come calling

[DandyDon]

OH MY GOD

Managed to secure CL football in Season 2 after a credible 3rd place finish.

HBA gets a bad injury at the start of season 3 and ANNOUNCES HIS RETIREMENT AT THE END OF THE SEASON due to injury problems!!!

Ye Gods man!!

I'm still in mid July of first season and you're into the third season already....have you slept recently?

[dutch3723]

Not much Pretty much played all day Saturday

[jlm8695]

Going to start a Newcastle save tonight, will hopefully be a long one

[jakeeboy15]

Feb 1st season

Krul

G.Steinsson

Coloccini

Alderwireld

Santon

Gutierrez

Bressan

Tiote/Cabaye

Ben Arfa

Ba

Sturridge

yet im labouring into 10th position in february, just changed my formation to a diamond hopefully things improve and i can take the toon into top 8!

PL-10th

CC- semi defeat to stoke

FA- 5th round vs Qpr A

[fargerik]

Finished my first season, that ended up really well. Manged to finish 1st in the league and win both FA Cup and League Cup. A bit luck in the cups, but the best teams was using the reserve team in the whole cup, as well in the final.

Using a 4-2-3-1 formation.

Fixtures:

Table:

Squad:

[fargerik]

Transfers:

[13xForever]

you guys should get castro for 16k for cover for jonas. real life contract bug.

[DandyDon]

you guys should get castro for 16k for cover for jonas. real life contract bug.

Only if you get in quick enough, they offer him a new deal pretty sharpish. Having said that he has a release clause in his new deal of only 2.6 million, so still not bad value

[OutClassed]

Fargerik, congratulations that's quite some accomplishment. Nice to see you smash Sunderland both times around! I take it you've used 48 month transfers in order to get all of those players in- wage budget must have taken a bashing

Castro looks immense for that price, will check him out on mygame, but if he was that cheap I'm guessing he would have already moved.

[Hamzterz]

Just reached january in the first season.

Have just sold Jonas to Napoli for £10.5m, Simpson to Arsenal for £5.5m and Coloccini to Aston Villa for £7.75m. Should decrease the wage is bit.

Also sold a lot of "dead wood" including Ameobi, Harper, Best, Løvenkrands, Smith and Williamson for a total of £8m.

Brought in:

M'Bengue £10m - overprice i know - but didn't want Sunderland to get them.

Wilfried - £2.5m

Alderweireld £7m

Fiorillo £450k

Sturridge on loan.

Started with a lot of injuries, using Ranger on top in the first PL-match, losing a narrow 0-1 to Bolton. Since that we have lost on the road to Aston Villa, United and City -and at home to Spurs and Arsenal (2-1 by Arshavin in the overtime - in a game we dominated).

But we've won the rest of the games, meaning we're 3rd in PL after 20 games and 42 points!

[fargerik]

Fargerik, congratulations that's quite some accomplishment. Nice to see you smash Sunderland both times around! I take it you've used 48 month transfers in order to get all of those players in- wage budget must have taken a bashing

Castro looks immense for that price, will check him out on mygame, but if he was that cheap I'm guessing he would have already moved.

Thanks. Almost all of the transfer over 48 month. I have replaced the staff and I have now 5 stars on Fitness, 4,5 GK and the rest 4 stars.

[Curuedhel]

Anyone else having problems with Vuckic's diving? He seems to get booked for it almost every game and he's even been sent off for it a couple of times. Any way to tackle that kind of behaviour?

[Geordie_Gaz]

Christ, I'm only in mid September!

Relatively happy with my signings considering there was a smallish budget to spend. Put more concentration into replacing the back room staff than anything else really.

In: Charlie Mulgrew (£1.8m), Lamine Gassama (£1m - absolute legend for me on FM11), M'Bengue (£4.8m), Nicolai Jorgensen (loan), Johan Martial (£1.9m), James McFadden (free), Lucas Digne (£3.4m), Daniel Jensen (free), Gianni Bruno (£1.9m) and Robbie Cotton (£1.2m).

Out: Danny Simpson (£2.6m), James Perch (£500k), Mike Williamson (£1.9m), Lovenkrands (£725k) and Guthrie (£2.2m).

Realised I had little cover for centre mid after spending most of my budget so ended up signing Jensen. Doesn't look too bad, and could be good backup for Cabaye. Otherwise, I'm trying to prioritise youth and hope to bring a few youngsters into the first team by the end of the season. Shola has surprised me so far though, scoring once and providing four assists in the three games he's played.

[Geordie_Gaz]

Anyone else having problems with Vuckic's diving? He seems to get booked for it almost every game and he's even been sent off for it a couple of times. Any way to tackle that kind of behaviour?

If possible, have him tutored by one of the more honest players - Cabaye maybe?

[Trooper]

what leagues do you guys select at the start of them game? I cant seem to find half these people :S

[DandyDon]

2011/12 Season Update - July to October

Well after an exceptionally slow weekend at work that curtailed my time on FM I've finally managed to put in a few good hours on my save, making it through the slog of the transfer window and friendly after friendly to eventually get the campaign under way. I've reached today's date in the game so figured I'd update our progress so far, and happily we're matching Newcastle's real life progress so far.

The Transfer Window and the plan ahead

I took the Newcastle job with my season starting in late June, (I'd selected the option to start the game in the French season, so we got under way a little earlier) and accepted the basic objective of a Top Half finish from the board. This meant the £8 million transfer budget and £725,000 a week on wages. I've decided to try and avoid taking advantage of the 48 month payments when making signings, and to stay with the budgets as best I can. Trying to emulate Fat Mike's financially prudent business model that he seems to have settled on in real life. I also wanted to keep the wage budget well under control, so I ended up cancelling several deals during the window when I felt players were being too greedy. (Even deals where the board would have allowed us to offer the money they wanted).

My main priority of course was to sign a decent left back, and if possible a decent back left back too after that I wanted to add cover in most areas of the team depending, particularly cover for Cabaye and Tiote as judging by the Demo there was every chance I'd be without one or both of them for large parts of the season.

The Ins and Outs

Overall I managed to keep our spending pretty tight, spending a total of £10.25 million but managing to recoup £9million in sales or loan deals.

The Freebies

At the start of the window we brought in Ivica Dragutinovic to add some experienced cover for Colo and Steven Taylor, Pierre Wome to be the back up left back, assuming we managed to sign the decent young player there we wanted. Mahamadou Diarra was also persuaded to sign and will provide cover/competition for Tiote.

The Signings

The first three purchases came pretty early in the transfer window, Sime Vrasljko was signed from Dinamo after he impressed me on the demo with the intention of rotating him and Davide Santon at right back. I scouted several targets for the left back position, and made several offers but in the end the most affordable target turned out to PSV's Erik Pieters and we bagged him for a very reasonable £2.1 million. The other signing was a player who impressed me as a bargain signing on FM11, and having seen him in action on Sky in the Champs League for BATE he'd impressed me further. Bressan costs a lot more this time round, but at just £1 million he's still a good bargain considering his stats. As he's equally comfortable at MC or AMC he'll provide cover for both Yohan Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa.

The final two signings didn't arrive until almost the last gasp of the transfer window as we needed to offload some players to keep the wage budget in control. Jelle Vossen has been brought in to provide competition for Ba and Best (or play alongside one of them if and when we play 2 upfront), Siphiwe Tshabalala was too much of a bargain to resist at that price and he adds some extra cover at AMC/AML.

Unfortunately we failed with a late bid for Junior Hoillet who'd been my main target for the AMR position as Blackburn weren't will to consider any form of swap deal, so we'll have to wait until the January window before moving for other targets.

The Sales

I identified several players that I felt we could live without and transfer listed them early in the summer to see if they piqued anyone's interest. I could only succeed in attracting loan bids for Dangerous James Perch, but at least Burnley offered a decent loan fee, and a future fee of £800,000. Southampton made the highest offer for Danny Simpson, though two thirds of of the price will arrive over 48 months.

Ryan Taylor, Lovenkrands and Danny Guthrie surprisingly all had several clubs interested in them but due to all three recovering from injuries we couldn't sell any of them until close to the end of August. Lovenkrands had actually annoyed me by turning down a £1.5 million offer from Ajax right at the start of the transfer window, and to add insult to injury he ended up moving for less than half of that in the end. Ryan Taylor was snapped up by Leicester once he resumed full training, though we're still contributing toward his wages. Danny Guthrie caused a mini bidding war with Derby, Reading, Millwall and Watford all joining Leicester in making offers for him. Eventually he decided to join his colleague Taylor in heading off to become part of the Sven revolution.

Results So Far

With the signings in place and the existing talent at the club I'd settled on a 4-2-3-1 formation pretty early on and have played that through the friendlies and most of the games so far. I also have them training on a 4-4-2 and a defensive 4-5-1 formation as alternatives. The 4-2-3-1 is still evolving and has been tweaked several times, especially after the horrific 4-0 gubbing at West Brom which was our worst performance of the the season so far.

Despite that result, and the not unexpected defeat at the hands of Mancini's Millionaires, we've made some very good progress so far and at this point we're sitting on 19 points in the league, just as they are in real life.

[Hamzterz]

Signed Shaqiri, Vertonghen and Damião in january, hoping to keep our good league position.

First game Damião played, he scored 4 goals - in our 4-2 win against Aston Villa. Love him already!

[Curuedhel]

Lots of wheeling & dealing in the January window for me, funded by changing my expectations to Champions League Qualification:

In: Vossen, Wilfried, Griffiths, Vass, Figuereido

Out: Gutierrez, Marveaux (Loan), Ben Arfa (Loan), Perch (Loan)

Made it to the League Cup Final, beating Man City 5-3 on aggregate. Still sitting in 2nd place in the league at Jan 31st.

[Stu232]

anybody got any suggestions for a CM who can play either ball winning midfield or deep lying playmaker to rotate with Cabaye and Tiote? Have maximum of 3million

[dovEs]

Darron Gibson?

[MrMick]

I already mentioned kara from tromso but you have to be quick before a big club buys him and can be bought for 800k , he would be a strong ball winning dmc - mc and can play dc also .

[ChrisNUFC]

Anyone else having problems with Vuckic's diving? He seems to get booked for it almost every game and he's even been sent off for it a couple of times. Any way to tackle that kind of behaviour?

Hmm, that's an interesting one. I'll have a look in the data files so this isn't a long term thing, as he's not that kind of player.

[Curuedhel]

Thanks. I've used him before in FM11 and never had any problems with him, so it seemed a little odd.

[FjollFan]

If you want a 19-year old LB who looks sweet, there is a guy in Cruzeiro named Gabriel Araújo whom you can pick up for about £3m. I'm not sure if you need to have South american leagues loaded or not though.

[col_nufc1]

I am coming to the end of October and these are our transfers in the first season in the first transfer window.

I couldn't sell Alan Smith or Ryan Taylor even when I offered them out on free transfers which is strange considering I could sell them on the demo.

These are the staff we brung in and the staff we released via mutual termination.

[col_nufc1]

anybody got any suggestions for a CM who can play either ball winning midfield or deep lying playmaker to rotate with Cabaye and Tiote? Have maximum of 3million

Andile Jali is a good cheap option at £350k, Mahamadou Diarra on a free transfer or as already mentioned Darron Gibson for £1.4m is a good player.

[Stu232]

Gibson has rejected my contract offer, disappointed as i was looking forward to having him, i might wait a few days then bid again for him.

how much did you offer him col?

[james_wilko]

Season one finished, ended up a very happy 5th in the league and won the League Cup, hammering QPR in the final.

Star players - Demba Ba (goalmachine), Cabaye & HBA.

Best signing - Either James Morrison (5mil from WBA) or Adil Rami in Jan (7mil from Valencia). Morrison wasn't a starter, but he constantly performed and was first choice RW by the end of the season.

Biggest disappointment - one point short of Champions League football & getting obliterated off the big boys repeatedly (can't even share the scores...)

Oh well. Onward and upward. Hopefully with this bit extra experience my young superstars (Santon, Vuckic, Abeid et al) will be helping me push on this season. Ashley just expects mid table again so no pressure thankfully.

[Abramovic]

Finished my first season, that ended up really well. Manged to finish 1st in the league and win both FA Cup and League Cup. A bit luck in the cups, but the best teams was using the reserve team in the whole cup, as well in the final.

Using a 4-2-3-1 formation.

Ahhhh here now, you have to be messing, i was happy with 10th

Dont suppose you are willing to spare some tactical nuggets for the rest of us to catch up ?

[col_nufc1]

Gibson has rejected my contract offer, disappointed as i was looking forward to having him, i might wait a few days then bid again for him.

how much did you offer him col?

He's on £17.5k a week, £2.2k Appearence fee, £110k team of the year bonus.

[Abramovic]

Loving the start of the season after a clearout/getting the team to my liking

transfers:

As you can see ive splashed the cash somewhat but still maintained core of the side.

Having never gotten Ba to perform for me Bangura has been a signing of the season. 8 goals in 8 appearances and my cheapest signing (loans dont count )

Here is the squad as it stands:

And lastly table as it stands:

The only downside is that i got knocked out of the League cup in round 3 but it wasnt high on my list as i had few injuries to content with.

[OutClassed]

Already looking forward to my squad at the end of the season. I'm only half way through January but in the summer will come Vertonghen (£5.5m), De Bruyne (£3.2m), Garcia (£700k - Regen) and Labyad (Free). It means I'm going to have quite some midfield options, which unfortunately might see Jonas leaves if I can get around £10m for him. As for actual january transfers, only Simpson (£6m) has left and I'm trying to shift Guthrie.

Depending on how well the rest of the season goes I won't bring in any more first teamers, so hopefully selling returning loanees Ameobi, Ranger and Xisco will cover the £10m in future transfer fees.

[wils2603]

how are you getting wilfried to score? he's not playing great for me as the lone striker in a 4231, ive played him as a poacher and advanced forward and hes not setting the world alight, neither is my team tbh. ive got the wide men playing as support wingers, do you think i should change them, will that unlock wilfrieds scoring potential???

he always gets injured as well!

[NUFCdave]

is it worth starting the game again or continuing with the demo save? Is it easier to buy/sell players? half the players i look for aren't loaded in and selling players is nigh impossable

i've had some good (and bad) results and sit 7th

aside from that i'm having masses of luck atm with 4-3-2-1. Ben arfa on the right, Jonas/Ba on the left and Ba/maiga up front, two inside forwards and a targetman support striker, though i've been jumping around with my formations. i jump between, 442, 4411, 4231 etc to keep the opposition guessing. sometimes it works sometimes i get thrashed

also picked up liam ridgewell to be my left back + backup center back. performs well enough, though i do plan to drop him to the bench and pick up a proper full back as he gets skinned quite badly when jonas goes forward

[Bene the horse]

How has Ben Arfa done for you guys? I would like to know for when hes back from injury. I was thinking of slotting him in as an inside forward on the right. Anyone had any luck with him there?

[GeordieTodger]

I'm about half way through the season now, doing well, top of the league and in the semis of the league cup, albeit after some favourable draws!

Ganso - I can't get to play well at all in the AMC slot. I'm currently playing a 4-2-3-1 with 2 DMC and an AML AMC AMR setup. Shaqiri and Ben Arfa on the wings are flying, both getting goals and 7.50+ average ratings but Ganso isn't scoring and getting between 6 and 7 each game. Anyone having any success with an AMC? I have Ganso set as an attacking Trequartista and have tried a couple of other settings but something isn't working.

The other problem I am finding is training and finding a system that everyone is happy with. What is a good level of training? At the moment I have a schedule for each position (FB, DC, MC, Wing etc) and have set the necessary sliders with an overall intensity of medium but am finding loads of people, despite having good morale overall are unhappy with either the level of training or the schedule!

A few people have said they are finding it hard to shift players and I am too. After a flurry at the start of the season where I got good money for a few, I'm finding it hard to shift the dregs, namely Smith, Ameobi and Guthrie!! Have even offered Smith for nowt and still noone wants him...can't blame them really!!

[Scott1892]

GeordieTodger, how are you playing Shaqiri? I've currently got him at AMR and playing as an advanced playmaker - attack, however he hasn't exactly set the world alight so far. Then again, not many of my players have.

Currently 3rd after 12 games with 25 points, I think I've done pretty well, only dropping points so far to the top 6, with Man City and Arsenal the two left to play out of them. It's been more of a team effort with no player standing out, and I've been plagued with various injuries such as Aldrete being out for 3 months, Tshabalala breaking his leg on international duty and Ben Arfa being ruled out for a month after only playing 4 games, in which he scored 3. And on more than one occasion I've only had one available striker due to injuries.

Main transfers:

IN:

Shaqiri - £9.75m (Over 48 months)

Wilfried - £2.5m

Aldrete - £1.9m

Andersen - £625k

Tshabalala - £325k

Maniche - Free

OUT:

Ameobi - £3.6m

Lovenkrands - £1.4m

Perch - Ln(625k)

I'm going to try to restrict myself to only one 48 month transfer a season, if any, and I really wanted someone to fill the AMR position long term, and so after looking around Shaqiri seemed the best option. Also couldn't resist the bid from Saints for Shola, although a lot of it is over 48 months. Checked up on him in October and he hadn't even played a match due to getting injured in preseason. Poor lad. When I get to January I'll be offloading more deadwood in order to sign maybe a backup for CB and a striker in case Ba and Wilfried both go to the ACoN, as I don't think Best will cut it for two months.

[OutClassed]

Just got out of January (Season 1) and strangely brought no one in, although I did tie up some deals for the summer. To recap, joining in the summer will be:

Kevin De Bruyne - £3.2m

Jan Vertonghen - £5.5m

Carl Garcia (regen) - £700k

Zakaria Labyard - Free

Martin Montoya - Free

So far in the cups I was knocked out by Norwich in the 4th Round of the FA Cup and I'm into the final of the League Cup against Sunderland. In the league we've played 24 games so far and have 42pts, putting us 5th in the league. I'm quite shocked as we don't have any standout players and aren't playing that impressively. Upfront is lacking so much though- my three main central defenders have scored almost as many goals than my three main strikers: C.Dawson- 5 in 17(1), F.Coloccini- 2 in 24, S.Taylor- 1 in 8(1) compared to Wilfried- 8 in 14(4), N.Maynard- 2 in 5(6), D.Ba- 0 in 5(6). So for all my transfers, the new budget will be blown on one top quality striker... when I can think of one.

Squad for next season (As it stands):

GK: Krul, Forster, Harper

RB: Montoya, Gosling

LB: Santon, Aldrete

CB: Coloccini, Dawson

CB: Vertonghen, S.Taylor, Clark

DM: Tiote, Enoh

CM: Diame,

CM: Cabaye, De Bruyne

AMR: Ben Arfa, Hoilett, Labyad

AML: Jonas, Marveaux, Obertan

ST: Wilfried, Maynard, Ba

As you can probably tell, it's a little overcrowded, so I'm thinking that I might try and flog Coloccini, Jonas, Marveaux and Ba to raise (hopefully) close to £25m from all four of them. Take in to account the sales of players returning from loan (Ameobi, Ranger, Xisco, Guthrie and Kadar) I'm hoping to have around £35m pumped into the funds. BUT, the problem is trying to find a striker who can lead the line well enough to make next season even better. Any suggestions?

[GeordieTodger]

GeordieTodger, how are you playing Shaqiri? I've currently got him at AMR and playing as an advanced playmaker - attack, however he hasn't exactly set the world alight so far. Then again, not many of my players have.

I have him as a AMR winger, very attacking, very creative and cutting in

[GeordieTodger]

How has Ben Arfa done for you guys? I would like to know for when hes back from injury. I was thinking of slotting him in as an inside forward on the right. Anyone had any luck with him there?

I've had him on the left wing as a winger and he does ok, not as good as Shaqiri on the right and cutting in though.

[Scott1892]

I have him as a AMR winger, very attacking, very creative and cutting in

Thanks will try that in the next few matches to see if he improves.

[OutClassed]

Just won the League Cup. I was 1-0 down after 70 minutes so threw on Ben Arfa and Wilfried. 75th minute, Wilfried scores and we go level: 1-1. Into ET and Wilfried scores again: 3-2. Larsson gets his 2nd for Sunderland on the 108th minute: 2-2. Less than two minutes later Wilfried completes his hattrick and puts us 3-2 up. Ben Arfa put the final nail in Sunderland's coffin in the 116th minute. Should point out that Eyong Enoh was sent off directly after Sunderlands second for protesting and receiving his second booking.

[NUFCdave]

How has Ben Arfa done for you guys? I would like to know for when hes back from injury. I was thinking of slotting him in as an inside forward on the right. Anyone had any luck with him there?

hes been amazing for me now i've switched him to an inside forward on the right wing. more than a few fullbacks can't cope with him

[dishy91]

I've read through and not heard anybody mention any use of Mehdi Abeid yet, has anyone used him?

Obviously at the start the injury to HBA leaves a AMC space free if you're looking to use one, and I prefer the loan striker. Overall I'm currently 2nd at the beginning of October and unbeaten after draws with Liverpool and city (1-1) and wins over Tottenham and Chelsea (2-1) on the way.

Abeid in particular has been the standout performer so far, stats as follows:

PL - Played 5(1), Scored 3, Assists 1, MOM 2, Avg 7.53.

Obviously the assists' isn't great and will need to be improved on long term, but the we're built at the moment on winning games by 1 goal.

[ChrisNUFC]

Made some slight changes to the Newcastle data, nothing official, just things I was unhappy with post release: http://www.fileplanet.com/223025/220000/fileinfo/FM12---Newcastle-Data-Update-1

[nufc1]

how are you getting wilfried to score? he's not playing great for me as the lone striker in a 4231, ive played him as a poacher and advanced forward and hes not setting the world alight, neither is my team tbh. ive got the wide men playing as support wingers, do you think i should change them, will that unlock wilfrieds scoring potential???

he always gets injured as well!

In a 442 formation i use him as a poacher but he has scored alot in my 4231 formation as a support target man. He's strong and holds it up nicely and ends up being in the right place at the right time to score quite a few

[DandyDon]

@col_nufc1

That was a bit mean wasn't it, nicking both Ajax's best defenders?

@dishy91

I've started Abeid in a couple of the cup games so far, and he's come on as a sub a couple times as well, so has Vukic. The coaches are reporting he's making good progress in training so far and would benefit from more first team action, I'll try and start a few more times and then maybe look for a decent loan deal in January.

[OutClassed]

ChrisNUFC, I guess you'd be the best person to ask. Do you have any idea what the 'Non-Football costs' that the club pay each month go towards and whether or not they can be cut? I seem to be losing money each month and I'm not sure where £900k is going.