The First Day at a Club - Taking Over Midseason

[jaysdailydose]

This is a cross-post from my blog at American Werewolf Football, but I thought it might be helpful, especially for those struggling with tactical choices upon taking over a club midseason.

Welcome back, friends!

I got into a nice discussion over Twitter yesterday regarding tactics with a new follower. He had been having some troubles with his tactics, and had Wigan in 20th in the Premier League. I learned that he took over Wigan mid-season, so he didn’t have a preseason to prepare his players to accept his methods.

I felt this would make a fine blog entry, and would provide a look at how I approach my first day at a club, especially considering I just had my first day at my new club, Bristol Rovers, and took over midseason for The Ultimate Manager Challenge on the SI Forums!

The things you can setup before you hit continue for the first time can sometimes be the most important things you do at the club, so make sure you’ve set yourself up for future success before you hit continue!

After writing this piece I decided it would be two parts before I published it, so make sure to look out for Part Two! (It is now available here!)

Backroom Staff

The first thing I do is to look at my backroom staff and staff responsibilities. Go through and make sure that all of your Staff Responsibilities are exactly where you want them as one of the first things you do. Your club could be employing a director of football and he could currently be in charge of transfers, etc — get your club onside with how you want things to go IMMEDIATELY.

Since I am starting at the bottom of League 2, one of the biggest things you can do to improve your club is to make sure you have the best coaching staff possible. As I’m sure we all know, when you take over a new position at a club, all members of your backroom staff will accept a mutual termination of their contracts, so if they do not fit into your plans you can get rid of them for significantly less than if you terminated a contract in the future.

The first move I made was to look at my assistant manager, and I found he simply wasn’t going to be someone who would make the grade. Starting out with a manager who is 20 years old with little to no knowledge of England, there were very few options available for staff. Here’s a look at our now former assistant Marcus Stewart, who we offered a mutual termination to leave Bristol Rovers FC:

Marcus Stewart

As you can see from the highlights, the most important attributes for an assistant are Judging Player Ability and Potential, and Man Management. Obviously, he suffers greatly in these areas, even at this lower level of football. I also look for assistants with a decent amount of tactical knowledge as well — as they are the ones who give you advice during a match. If your assistant doesn’t understand tactics, he can’t really read a game very well and his instructions will often be poor.

For coaches of any kind, you are ideally looking for Determination, Level of Discipline, and Motivating as they are hallmarks of any good coach and part of how FM rates your coaching. If you’re at a lower level, though, sometimes you just have to make sacrifices for what you need, rather than what you want. Obviously, in a perfect world your assistant would be someone who could get the best out of players on the training pitch as well, but this isn’t a perfect world, it’s League Two.

He hasn’t confirmed his arrival at the club yet, but we feel we found a much needed upgrade at the assistant spot in Steve Watson:

Steve Watson

He isn’t amazing, by any means — but he’ll be the first person on the coaching staff we can look to for player analysis and actually get a decent response (14/14 JPA/JPP.) His tactical knowledge bump of 8 points over the outgoing Stewart is also big.

I didn’t make any other moves on my coaching staff for the time being, as I need to acquire more knowledge of staff from around the world — but if you have the resources and can find better staff, do it before you hit continue.

Tactics

Probably the most difficult thing when joining a club mid-season is installing your style of play. You’ve had no chance to recruit “your guys” and you are left trying to make a quality dinner out of the ingredients the previous chef left you. But, you’re taking over mid-season, so in most cases either those ingredients were garbage, or the guy before you couldn’t cook… so you’re in a bit of a pickle.

In my case with the new Bristol Rovers save, I’m in more than a bit of a pickle. I’m propping up League Two and I’m on 13 points through 20 fixtures when I am introduced as manager. I’m here to put out fires, not possibly create more — at least for the time being.

The first thing to do is check out your Team Report and the Tactics analysis located in your Tactics screen, which will give you analysis as to what formations the team used, what they were good against, and what they were bad against. You can really dig into the analysis and come up with an idea of what they were playing.

Team Report

Tactical Analysis

However, the best way I find to see what tactics your new players are knowledgeable about is to go into the Tactics creator while it is still a blank slate, and hit “Create New Tactic” and go through and look and see the level of fluidity you are given with each formation. It will take you about 5 minutes, but then you have no more questions about which formations your players know and do not know. Obviously, if there are unlisted formations that you are comfortable with, you can move the shirts on the tactics pitch and check those shapes as well. You’re strictly checking level of familiarity at this point.

Once you’ve found something they are fairly comfortable with, still keep everything else a blank slate but start turning on Team Instructions one at a time and checking what they do to your tactical fluidity. For instance, go in and click “Stay on Feet” and go and check the fluidity. Did it raise or drop? Then check the other option “Get Stuck In” and check the fluidity. Finally, check with neither instruction selected. This will give you a great idea as to what your predecessor was teaching your players, as you can do this for every instruction. Even if you never plan on using any of these instructions, it pays to take the 5 minutes and find out how your players were being instructed.

I advise using a notebook, maybe even two, but I’m a strange OCD kind of fellow. But after having done those two tactical steps, I have a small list of shapes the team could be comfortable with, and I generally know what instructions I could give that they would be fluid with or would have to completely relearn. (Changing a team’s passing style or closing down methods mid-season can be a recipe for disaster, just as an example.) My other notebook is what my evaluations tell me would be my best two for each position on the pitch, it just makes for easier comparisons when combined with the FM screen. Or I’m just a freak, your call.

You don’t want to try to re-invent the wheel overnight. In 90% of the cases that you are taking the reins mid-season, you are in trouble. Try to solve one or two of the most glaring areas and get yourself on the right track, and just meet your expectations for the season so you keep yourself in a good light with your board. The time for major tactical overhauls and big transfer swoops is in the summer and a full preseason, not when you’re trying to save your club’s blushes. (This doesn’t mean I won’t try to be active in the market as I took over on December 11th… but most likely it’ll be the loan market or trying to sell deadwood.)

Once I have an idea what type of football my club would be comfortable playing, I then will setup one or two tactics to be trained. In a rescue situation such as this, I try to get one tactic as close to fluid as possible before starting another, but your training methods and situation may vary. In this case, I’m using two but I’ll explain why below.

One thing that I discovered as far as tactics in last season’s version is that it is a very good idea to have a tactic fully fluid with a shorter passing style and one fully fluid with a direct passing style. I found it very useful for in-game adjustments last season where I could play whatever style I wished for the game and could switch between passing styles with the confidence that my players were 100% proficient in both styles. Obviously, having the mixed style to full fluidity is nice as well and I think it is often overlooked. Especially for those of you that will listen to your assistant’s advice “We should advise our players to adopt a more direct form of play” — that’s great, but are your lads proficient in direct passing styles?

My players were actually fairly technically proficient, so I have them training both a counter tactic and a control tactic, but those are personal choices. I’m currently playing a four-man back line, three in central midfield (CM/D, AP/A, B2B/S from left to right) with a winger on the left and an inside forward on the right with a lone striker who is a defensive forward.

My Current Tactic – Note the Fluidity First Day on the Job!

I’ll go into more detail on my own players and my future vision in subsequent posts, but this was already getting long and I just wanted to provide you readers with a visual aid for now. I will definitely be extending this to a second part as there are a lot of other things to consider on the first day on the job to set you up for future success, but this is a solid start towards getting things on the right track!

I would like to thank Cleon of http://sisportscentre.com and the SI Forums for changing the way I analyze football games, and I must admit I’ve been using his methods of at least watching at least the first 15 minutes of every fixture in order to better understand tactical play — and hopefully provide better content for you readers in the long run. (I’ve actually watched the full 90 on several occasions since my wife gave me the game for Christmas.)

Part Two is now available, it is in Post #9 of this thread, and you can link directly to it here!

[jaysdailydose]

I'll be writing the second piece tomorrow, I've been a bit under the weather today and took a long nap.

[pattricb]

But, you’re taking over mid-season, so in most cases either those ingredients were garbage, or the guy before you couldn’t cook… so you’re in a bit of a pickle.

Loving that quote haha great word play. All too often that seems to be the case when taking over a new club midseason.

This is a great thread though! Looking forward to see how you get on with Bristol Rovers the rest of the way.

[jaysdailydose]

Loving that quote haha great word play. All too often that seems to be the case when taking over a new club midseason.

This is a great thread though! Looking forward to see how you get on with Bristol Rovers the rest of the way.

Glad I could inspire a few laughs and that you enjoyed the thread. I'll definitely be posting more parts to it as we didn't cover any of the squad, initial training, and things of that nature.

It takes me the better part of a human day to hit continue for the first time, lets put it that way.

I'm not a frequent poster to the Tactics forum, I usually hang out in the Challenges forum -- but last year I went from League 2 to Europe in five seasons, so I've got a good bit of confidence in my methods. I've been inspired by posters like Cleon and The Hand of God and felt I should try to give a little something back, so I'm glad you've enjoyed it!

Thank you!

[Cleon]

Nice to see you contributing on here, I was reading your blog last night on my journey home and enjoyed what I saw

I enjoy threads like this where we get an insight into what a player is thinking and how/why they make certain decisions. Good work and I look forward to the next part.

[jaysdailydose]

Nice to see you contributing on here, I was reading your blog last night on my journey home and enjoyed what I saw

I enjoy threads like this where we get an insight into what a player is thinking and how/why they make certain decisions. Good work and I look forward to the next part.

Thank you very much! I obviously enjoy your writing very much and I felt I could reach more people if I cross-posted it here as well as sparking more discussion.

I appreciate the support (and the retweet.) I look forward to providing a lot more quality content in the future so its nice that people are enjoying it!

[MartinGregory84]

Fantastic Post am in the throws of leaving a job midseason this has popped up at the right time.

[jaysdailydose]

Fantastic Post am in the throws of leaving a job midseason this has popped up at the right time.

Well, unfortunately, I just got out of bed (12:30PM EST) because I've been a bit ill, so Part 2 will either be later today or tomorrow. I do have much more to cover that was just a really long blog entry.

By all means, feel free to ask any questions you may have in the meantime, though!

Thanks very much, glad people are enjoying it, I'll continue to cross-post any tactics/strategy stuff here in the future.

[jaysdailydose]

Welcome back, friends!

This is the second part of the series I began yesterday detailing my first day at any new club. I feel that you can do so much to set yourself up for future success before you even hit continue that I had to break the post into two parts so I could cover all the ground I wanted to. Here we go!

The Squad

I know it’s a weird time, but I usually haven’t looked at my players until I’ve done the steps in Part One. (OK, maybe I take a peek…)

Since I was only going through formations and TI’s to deduce tactical familiarity in Part One, I haven’t wanted to burden myself with knowing who I have to this point. I’ve got my list of shapes they are comfortable with, and then I can go and look at the players.

The one time I stray from this is if I’m going to immediately do mutual terminations with all staff that have any ability to judge player ability and potential. You can obviously gauge a lot through attributes, but not which roles players are comfortable in, what is judged to be their best position, and things of that nature. And of course, the star rating if you fire your assistant.

This is one of those times I make my handy-dandy lists! I go through my squad and make a list with the following positions:

GK:

DR:

DL:

DCR:

DCL:

DM:

MCR:

MCL:

AMR:

AML:

AMC:

CF:

Obviously, if you play with actual positional wingbacks, you’ll want to add those. I never do in any formation, so I don’t add them. I also like to have my left centre-back with at least a reasonable left foot, so I differentiate the position. You may not give a damn.

I then try to see if I have two players with at least a 2.5* rating at each position, and preferably 3*. So when I add to the list I would write “Jones (3*, 26)” and the secondary player the same way. This list serves two purposes as a quick reference. First, I have it for when I am in the tactics creator and really don’t feel like flipping screens to look at a sorted squad, and it lets me know immediately if certain shapes are out. If you don’t have anyone who can play defensive midfielder, you’re not going to build tactics that play any. Second, it lets you know very quickly which areas you’ll need to immediately prioritize in the transfer and loan market. Using the same example, if you like playing tactics that involve defensive midfielders, and you don’t have any, your list just let you know one area you need to approach in the transfer market.

You could obviously get more in-depth with your list and add the players preferred role, but I find when I’m actually designing the tactic is when I just use the in-game filters on the individual positions.

By now, you’ve got you shape in mind and know if you have the players to carry it out and can start to build your tactic. There are many articles and threads on the SI forums themselves by far better tacticians than myself to aid you in building successful tactics and using player roles in a coherent fashion and I advise you to check those out as they are beyond the scope of this piece.

Tactics and Coaching Staff

After you’ve built your tactic and know what roles you need at which positions, you’ll want to get your players training programs setup before you hit continue. Odds are, you will want your players on a different training regimen than they were on. Again, you are taking over mid-season for a reason, don’t assume for a second that any area of your club was being soundly managed. It may very well have been, but don’t leave it to chance.

In a lot of cases, your initial squad won’t have a player whose primary role is the one you envision for that position in your tactic. You’ll want that player training attributes or the role itself for what YOU envision as soon as possible, so do it before you’ve ever hit continue. You aren’t getting the benefit of a pre-season taking over when you are, so you’ve got to manage a full fixture schedule while at the same time trying to use match preparation for tactics! I tend to use individual training on all of my players from senior to my lowest youth level, but I’m a micro-manager.

I could literally link his ideas in every article, so here’s the best place for it — Cleon, moderator at the SI forums, has great information both in threads there and at his website http://sisportscentre.com that go into a lot more detail on great training setups, so by all means, educate yourself!

You also want to go into the “Coaches” tab of each of your squad’s training screens, and make sure that the coaches you have are being utilized properly. If your coaches are setup improperly, what you’re trying to teach them is going to fail anyway, and you might not understand why!

Whatever training program you use, don’t forget to install it immediately on your arrival before pressing continue. It will pay dividends in the long run, leading to better player development, and hopefully, a lot less injuries!

Scouting Assignments

You may be bringing in new scouts, or you may not have any, but if you do, don’t forget to get them scouting for your new club immediately. I always advocate having your next opposition scouted first and foremost, but after that, you need to have your scouts out there trying to find the next great players for your club’s future success. A lot of people get caught up in all of their other responsibilities that they do not setup their scouting system on the first day. Obviously, if you’ve used mutual terminations and don’t have a scouting staff, there isn’t anything you can do — but in that case you must make sure to assign your scouts the day they join the club. You’re paying them, make them work!

Summary

We’ve covered a great deal of ground now, so I’ll just put up a short “to-do” list summarizing a full day’s work before hitting “Continue” for the first time and starting your voyage as your new club’s manager!

· Get your staff in order and mutually terminate any backroom staff that you can replace with an upgrade. (If you can afford to do it, of course.)

· Do a tactical familiarity check with only formations, and only turning individual team instructions on/off or to different levels to check what players were being taught.

· Make a list detailing your best two players for each possible position in a tactic, so you can discard shapes you can’t use and give you top priorities in loan and transfer market.

· Armed with that information, build solid tactics or research and then build the best tactics for your new club.

· Set up your desired training programs for either your entire squad, or everyone by individuals. Remember there’s no preseason and adapt!

· Make sure the coaches you have at your club are optimized to train the correct areas. If your coaches are setup incorrectly, your players will not learn your methods!

· If you have scouts, begin setting up your scouting network immediately. Joining midseason, you do not have time to waste and you need to have as much information as possible as fast as possible to help you save your club!

Doing all this, you can still fail, or you can be a great success! But even if you fail, it won’t be because you didn’t prepare correctly, sometimes that is just football. Just try to meet your expectations, and make sure you survive to do your big summer overhaul. Be the savior, THEN be the great architect!

Please feel free to leave a comment either here or on the SI forums! I post on the SI Forums as jaysdailydose and I am on Twitter @USAWerewolfFB! Thank you very much for reading!

[vikeologist]

Doing a journeyman save, one thing that saves a lot of time is making sure that you save your preferred tactics so you can load them up quickly. Like you, JDD, I'm a micro-manager, and spend ages getting all this stuff sorted out when I take over a club, but I do try to cut down the time it will take.

Obviously there's a debate about whether you should make your new players fit into your tactics, or base yours around the strengths of the team. (You seem to be on the other side of this). It depends how much time you have, because if they're not familiar with your tactics, they may lose a lot of games at the start. If you have about 5 games to save your new team from relegation (or if like me you're an opportunistic so and so who's taken over a team days or even hours before a major cup final) this might not be the time to reinvent the tactical wheel.

It usually takes about 5 matches before my team starts playing how I want, so if i have time, I'll start them off how I want them to continue.

One mistake I've made in the past is thinking that the players with more stars are actually going to be good enough. If the team sucks, (and often that's why you've got a job in mid-season) there's a good chance that the whole team isn't good enough, and you're going to have to replace all of them. Of course mid-season you may be stuck with them. It's always worth remembering that your assistant manager may be wrong about the squad's ability.

JDD- Do you ever change the team captains? Do you do anything different with the match / general training slider. (maybe this isn't applicable in FM16. I'm still on 15). I usually want to up the match preparation to try to get some immediate short-term improvements (if I have to avoid relegation or win something in the near future). Also, i'm never sure which one to use for bosting their familiarity for my tactics, and which one to use for cohesion (if I've brought any new players in straight away). As i say, maybe this isn't applicable in FM16, in which case ignore. Hopefully I've finished with club management until FM16 anyway.

[jaysdailydose]

Doing a journeyman save, one thing that saves a lot of time is making sure that you save your preferred tactics so you can load them up quickly. Like you, JDD, I'm a micro-manager, and spend ages getting all this stuff sorted out when I take over a club, but I do try to cut down the time it will take.

Obviously there's a debate about whether you should make your new players fit into your tactics, or base yours around the strengths of the team. (You seem to be on the other side of this). It depends how much time you have, because if they're not familiar with your tactics, they may lose a lot of games at the start. If you have about 5 games to save your new team from relegation (or if like me you're an opportunistic so and so who's taken over a team days or even hours before a major cup final) this might not be the time to reinvent the tactical wheel.

I mean, I definitely have certain ways I'd prefer to play... I'm a definite old-school Ajax and then on to Barcelona of the Rinus Michels/Johan Cruijff school of football, so if I could play that way, I'd almost always prefer to. Using my current save, I took over at the very bottom of League Two and I'm more worried about keeping them up for now and then doing the major tactical overhaul in the summer, or later on in the season start working on teaching them if I can get us to safety first. (We haven't started well.) When I'm doing a fireman job I'm definitely going to look more towards how the players are comfortable than trying to shove my "style" down their throat.

It usually takes about 5 matches before my team starts playing how I want, so if i have time, I'll start them off how I want them to continue.

I would agree with this, even if you play a style they are fairly familiar with. You're almost assuredly going to make a few changes of the playing staff and probably the coaching staff, and most likely your first 11 will be a bit different. I just chalk this up as an adaptation period because as you said, its pretty standard.

One mistake I've made in the past is thinking that the players with more stars are actually going to be good enough. If the team sucks, (and often that's why you've got a job in mid-season) there's a good chance that the whole team isn't good enough, and you're going to have to replace all of them. Of course mid-season you may be stuck with them. It's always worth remembering that your assistant manager may be wrong about the squad's ability.

Yes, your assistant could be horrifically wrong, and you should always remember when in the squad screen looking to make sure to change the opinion to your better player evaluators. I'm definitely someone who believes in "the wisdom of crowds" but often in the lower leagues or in a rescue job you're dealing with poor or limited staff, so you're absolutely right it should be considered. Getting a solid talent evaluator or two on my staff is always a top priority... I was just trying to focus the article on things to do before we hit continue.

JDD- Do you ever change the team captains? Do you do anything different with the match / general training slider. (maybe this isn't applicable in FM16. I'm still on 15). I usually want to up the match preparation to try to get some immediate short-term improvements (if I have to avoid relegation or win something in the near future). Also, i'm never sure which one to use for bosting their familiarity for my tactics, and which one to use for cohesion (if I've brought any new players in straight away). As i say, maybe this isn't applicable in FM16, in which case ignore. Hopefully I've finished with club management until FM16 anyway.

I did change my team captains on this most recent save, but I also made sure to speak with the previous captain and tell him I was planning on switching the role first. It all depends on what I think can be gained from it, and if I have a player with the leadership who is also going to be a near undroppable in the team. I do find it very important to make sure the captain is one of the better players in the team AND has the leadership skills, otherwise the players respect him less anyway. The captains who were in charge at Bristol Rovers when I took over were being played as squad players and while they were great leaders they were hardly ever on the field.

The match and general training slider still does matter, and in most cases I follow Cleon's advice for the individual training of players. I use Balanced/Low for general training (other choices will skew the attributes trained) and tactical familiarity is ONLY trained in match preparation by our current knowledge. Most of the time during the season I run my slider on 20%, but you may want to adjust higher towards a preseason style of match preparation if your players are lacking a lot in tactical familiarity. By the latest research, using Tactical during General Training does nothing to boost tactical familiarity.

I *do* believe that using Team Cohesion in general training does work, as does Teamwork in the match preparation settings, but I don't use that much. If my tactical familiarity is up to snuff, I'm generally using one of the "one-game boosters" for either set-pieces or Attacking Movement/Defensive Positioning.

I only slightly modify from Cleon's methods as far as training goes, and only sometimes, so I would definitely look at his work on training for a much deeper look at that.

See you in the Ultimate Manager Challenge thread, bud, thanks for checking it out! I so wish you could visit my blog, but I understand with what goes on where you live.

[jaysdailydose]

I'm definitely not hamstrung as far as playing styles go, though... last year I wound up starting playing 4-4-2 Diamond Narrow in League 2 and played it all the way into Europe with only minor changes. Definitely looking to expand a bit tactically this year, but I've got to keep my club afloat first.

[mikewalker]

One thing I always do when taking over a club midseason is look at the previous fixture and the ratings awarded to my new players, and where someone has done particularly well or badly, have a conversation with them about it. I like to think of this as if I've watch ed the teams recent games back on video and want to talk with the players one by one. I'm still playing FM11 but I'd imagine the conversation options are still there, if not enhanced. This usually helps boost morale a bit. Which seeing as the club has just given the manager the boot, usually means there is red/orange and yellow morale everywhere.

The other thing is to talk with players who are unhappy ("I promise you we will turn this around), talk with older veteran players about coaching/scouting etc when they retire, this can make them happy and boost morale. Also schedule friendlies for the reserves if possible as I always find when taking over a club that there will be a huge amount of players lacking match fitness and morale and a few easy games will get that up and running.

As for the team I pick in the first game or two, I always go for the ones with the best morale and fitness. I disregard stars/values etc, as you need 11 blokes out there who (a) can last 90 mins if needed (b) will not start and immediately show up as lacking confidence.

Also, its worth having a look in the U18's to see if they happen to have some kid with 18 dribbling, determination or pace or whatever who is worth a spot on the bench. Quite often, if you're a few years into a save, the AI will have some interesting players kicking around in the reserves or U18's who are crying out for a game.

[jaysdailydose]

One thing I always do when taking over a club midseason is look at the previous fixture and the ratings awarded to my new players, and where someone has done particularly well or badly, have a conversation with them about it. I like to think of this as if I've watch ed the teams recent games back on video and want to talk with the players one by one. I'm still playing FM11 but I'd imagine the conversation options are still there, if not enhanced. This usually helps boost morale a bit. Which seeing as the club has just given the manager the boot, usually means there is red/orange and yellow morale everywhere.

The other thing is to talk with players who are unhappy ("I promise you we will turn this around), talk with older veteran players about coaching/scouting etc when they retire, this can make them happy and boost morale. Also schedule friendlies for the reserves if possible as I always find when taking over a club that there will be a huge amount of players lacking match fitness and morale and a few easy games will get that up and running.

As for the team I pick in the first game or two, I always go for the ones with the best morale and fitness. I disregard stars/values etc, as you need 11 blokes out there who (a) can last 90 mins if needed (b) will not start and immediately show up as lacking confidence.

Also, its worth having a look in the U18's to see if they happen to have some kid with 18 dribbling, determination or pace or whatever who is worth a spot on the bench. Quite often, if you're a few years into a save, the AI will have some interesting players kicking around in the reserves or U18's who are crying out for a game.

These are all excellent points and ideas! What is great about FM16 is that when you join a new club, it sends you an email now detailing who your unhappy players at the club are. For instance, I have a young player (22) named Jake Gosling at Bristol Rovers. He was unhappy when I came in, and it was because he'd only made 1 appearance in 20 games. He felt he needed to leave for first team football but I was able to tell him that it was a new start for everyone at the club and he'd definitely be able to work his way into my plans.

I didn't go into a great amount of detail with the youth squads, but absolutely you should be checking to see what you have there -- you may have players ready for the first team, or at very least, players who need gametime to develop into the stars they could be.

Excellent post, Mike -- I'm hopeful you're able to get into a newer version soon, you are missing out!

[mikewalker]

Cheers Jay, I did get 2014 but have ended up back on 11 because my laptop at the moment is not the best and I didn't really like the look of the matches in 14. Might get into the ipad version when all the glitches are fixed in the spring.

I do find that morale is vital especially when you're at a struggling club. That and checking for sell on clauses you can cash in to get some funds together to replace all the dross asap!

[jaysdailydose]

Cheers Jay, I did get 2014 but have ended up back on 11 because my laptop at the moment is not the best and I didn't really like the look of the matches in 14. Might get into the ipad version when all the glitches are fixed in the spring.

I do find that morale is vital especially when you're at a struggling club. That and checking for sell on clauses you can cash in to get some funds together to replace all the dross asap!

Morale, in my humble opinion, is the most vital thing in any version. If all of your players are pissed off and constantly looking at the floor during team talks, you're done and must start getting results immediately.. and usually that is impossible with everyone on the squad pissed off and looking at the floor during your team talks.

I am sympathetic to the CPU issues, I only upgraded to a newer machine last year and have been through the hell you find yourself in. Luckily, the game has been great for years and you're really just missing out on new features and roles and such. At least you can still get your fix! In most cases, I think this information will still apply to any version, as well!

[jaysdailydose]

I just wanted to say I'm touched and honored by the response these articles have gotten both here, on my blog, and on Twitter. I'm by no means a tactical whiz like Cleon or The Hand of God -- but I'm dedicated to bringing quality readings to the masses.

I write for my job in real life, so writing on FM is a passion and an escape. So, while I might not have a ton of tactical stuff in the future, I greatly appreciate you all taking the time to read and share my work.

Thanks so much!

[mikewalker]

double post! about 3 hrs apart!

[jaysdailydose]

Just bumping this for those that may have missed Part 2, which is in Post 9 or linked in the original post.

Thank you!