Football Manager 2008 (Soccer for you yanks)

[lamaros]

I'm having trouble sleeping.

Anyone else enjoying this?

[sidereal]

I have some sort of OCD requirement to always start as a middling-to-crappy club from the lower leagues.  I think it's from growing up with and loving RPGs, where the point is to start shitty and build to superpower.  So my last few runs have involved starting Guarani (in the Brazilian lower leagues), Cefn Druids (Welsh "Premier" League), Queen of the South (Scottish), and my relative superpower Wolverhampton.  Addicting as always.

I will say that running a national team in this edition is much, much less boring than running one in '07.  Scouting your players gives you something to do other than clicking Continue for 5 months.  Although I haven't been able to manage both club and country in this edition.  I forget how I managed it in the previous installment, but it looks like this time I have to retire from the club to run the country.  :(

[lamaros]

I gave a the Australian league a go, but the salary cap was fucking killing me. I had 10million transfer budget, but only 60k per week for wage.. and the league cap is 28.22k per week...

Stupid socialists.

So I took a job at Getafe.

[sidereal]

I haven't played Australia in '08.  The cap might be a new thing.  I ran Melbourne Victory in '07 (mmm. . Kristian Sarkies.  You probably suck IRL, but you're a FM star) and didn't notice any salary cap. 

I think it's irritating how some leagues become unplayably unfun for weird realism reasons.  Like in '07 some of the Korean teams (Daegu) didn't have Reserve or U21 teams.  So you've got a roster of like 50 guys, and barely any of them ever get to play and they get pissed off.  Kind of useless.  Pretend there's a Korean U21 league, for Christ's sake!

[lamaros]

Yeah, it's a shame. The A-League is like that too. Supposedly I could run players out in the VIS team, but the reality was it was always greyed out. So I had a max squad of 23, but could only really fit in about 20 at best under the cap, while the younguns and others spent the whole season doing nothing. I tried to make up for it by putting some friendlies in and having a 'B' team runout in those, but it really wasn't going so well.

Also, the way it does the league is a bit off. In the A-League you have a ladder, then the top 4 play off in a finals series to see who wins the league. 1st in the ladder is the 'minor' premiership, and not a huge deal. The real winning is the final series 'cup' (as FM calls it). But in FM the board places great emphasis on the league position, so if you come 2nd then go on a win the cup they'll be more pissed off than if you come 1st and don't win the cup.

But these are minor things.

[AngryGumball]

Wait no Hattrick? I have my team there, still in Div 6 USA.

[Lucas]

Football Manager (or "Worldwide Soccer Manager" in the U.S.) is basically the greatest game of all time that no one ever played (on a global scale. Personally, in that "Top 20" of all time I put it in the top ten) :P

I've been a follower of this series since its very inception back in 1992, when the Collyer Brothers developed it for Domark. Countless hours, countless screams of rage when the opposition tied up a game, infinite sobs when a losing streak seemed to never end, and endless running around the house with my hands lifted whenever I won a big trophy.

Usually I always wait for the second patch, but this year I started a little earlier: I'm currently playing a big game with Man Utd, but when the patch gets released, I would like to start three more careers: Havant&Waterlooville (Conference South), Modena (my hometown team, Italian Serie B) and AC Milan (my favorite team).

One-on-ones are impossible this year...Or maybe it's just Rooney and Tevez sucking at Finishing :P

[lamaros]

I had CM2 in my top 20. :)

My Victory game led me to Getafe, then to the title in my 2second full season there! Out in QF in Euro Cup against Juve and lost the spanish cup to Madrid :(.

Decided to start a new game instead of playing on the next year.

Now at Carrarese in the lower leagues of Italy! Enjoying it a lot (blowing all the money the board has recklessly in order to meet their unrealisticly high goals). There's much fun to be had playing a more serious career than just jumping in with a big club imho.

[Lucas]

I had CM2 in my top 20. :)

My Victory game led me to Getafe, then to the title in my 2second full season there! Out in QF in Euro Cup against Juve and lost the spanish cup to Madrid :(.

Decided to start a new game instead of playing on the next year.

Now at Carrarese in the lower leagues of Italy! Enjoying it a lot (blowing all the money the board has recklessly in order to meet their unrealisticly high goals). There's much fun to be had playing a more serious career than just jumping in with a big club imho.

Yeah, I totally agree regarding the management of a lower league team.

Man Utd, for me, it's a matter of affection: in CM2, it was the team I was most successful at, so, in the following years, it became a tradition to start a new game managing them . Hell, in CM2 it was quite difficult for one of your team to win the European Footballer of the Year, but Roy Keane (yeah, ok :P) did it and I was quite overjoyed :D

Regarding the match engine, I think last year's one was a bit better (7.0.2). In FM 2008, when there is a rush between a fast defender and a fast attacker, the latter wins a little too often and so there are many one-on-ones, IMO. Also, maybe it's just my tactic and individual player settings, but I find that the lateral defenders cut a little too often to the middle, instead of keeping their positions, watching for the opposition wingers.

[Tebonas]

Hah, thats funny. Manchester was my favourite team in the original Football Manager as well.

Didn't play one of these for quite some time now, maybe I should give the 2008 version a try.

[Lucas]

It's remarkable how every version is  always slightly better than the previous one. They add a couple new features, polish other rough edges and you end looking forward to the next implementation, even tho you have been playing the "same" (in a way) game for the previous fifteen years :P.

Sure, it's also a cash cow for them and Sega Europe, but the developers have an almost insane love for the franchise, just like their fans. Sure, they could add more features in a single implementation, but I honestly don't see them "cheating" their customers just because they add only a handful of new characteristics each year. It's one of the most complex games (and in fact, a certain portion of the playerbase left after CM 01-02 because they felt the game was becoming too realistic and not so "gamey" anymore) out there, and a single change in a certain aspect of the game can affect all the rest.

Oh, and I'm quite looking forward to Football Manager Live (basically, Ye Olde football management simulation coupled with the "fantasy league" format with a MMOG flavour).

[lamaros]

New patch is out today. Will it solve thee issues and pring world peace? Find out now!

[Lucas]

Downloaded it and so far, so good, even tho I haven't started a new game, so no updated database for me, yet.

Looking at the match engine fixes, it seems they actually payed attention to the issue I was mentioning earlier (defenders going a little too gung-ho on the incoming midfielders)

[lamaros]

I'm at work so no chance for me to play the new patch yet, but reading around it seems the following is true:

There is a big bug where Pompey pays Tottenham 1mil per game for Defoe, which really screws with Pompey if you dont fix it. Can be fixed by manually editing the database:

Issue - Tottenham become very rich, and Portsmouth poor, in the first season.

Who will it affect - Affects all newly started games with 8.02 data update.

Fix - using the data editor provided with the game, load the 8.02 database into the editor. Search in the "clubs" section for "Portsmouth". Go to the "finances" tab, then "contract clauses 2". Find "Jermain Defoe" (5th from bottom in the list). Change "per league appearances" to "after league appearances".

The other thing is that everyone seems to love the match engine changes. So I can't wait to see this myself.

[Lucas]

The other thing is that everyone seems to love the match engine changes. So I can't wait to see this myself.

Yeah, it seems more "balanced" overall, I like it, and the defenders attitude is improved.

You know, the match engine is addictive: unfortunately, I find myself watching the whole 90 minutes most of the time. I say "unfortunately" because a) I realize it's insane and b) because I got so used to it that now I find a bit hard to understand how my team is performing only through highlights.

One of these days I want to try the "only commentary" option for a few games: I really can't understand how I played for ten or so years without the 2D engine :)

[lamaros]

I tend to put it on full or extended for the first 15mins, depending how important the game is. Then if I'm playing well I switch it over to key to speed things up. Watching the key bits and the stats from then on is normally enough to judge things, and I slow it back down to normal or extended if things stuff up or I make tactical changes and want to see their impact.

Played as any really crappy teams with the 2D view? Golly it can be painful.

[Nebu]

I have some sort of OCD requirement to always start as a middling-to-crappy club from the lower leagues.  I think it's from growing up with and loving RPGs, where the point is to start shitty and build to superpower.  So my last few runs have involved starting Guarani (in the Brazilian lower leagues), Cefn Druids (Welsh "Premier" League), Queen of the South (Scottish), and my relative superpower Wolverhampton.  Addicting as always.

I have exactly the same way of playing these games.  I like to start in a lower league and see how long it takes to land a job in the premier league.  Sometimes I make it, sometimes not.  I do enjoy the financial struggle of the lower leagues though.  Those years where you recruit and develop a cash cow make it all worthwhile. 

I need to pick this up.  I think I'm about 2 years behind. 

[Lucas]

/flirtatious mode - on 

You know, what about trying to organize an internet game between us? Have you ever tried it before? I know you can set up some preferences that range from committed to very casual play, so we could give it a try...

[lamaros]

I'd be tempted, but given the fact I live in Australia timezones probably wont allow it.

I spend 2 hours playing last night and made it through about a month of pre-season. Slow going. I think my team has the quality to stay in Seria C1 this year though.

[Lucas]

I'd be tempted, but given the fact I live in Australia timezones probably wont allow it.

Oh, I see. Yeah, considering that I'm from Italy, that would be a little tricky   

Anyways, I'm currently sitting at the top of the EPL with Man Utd, after nine matches:

Man Utd 23 (W 7, D 2, L 0)
Arsenal 20 ( 6 - 2 - 1)
Chelsea 19 (6 - 1 - 2)
West Ham 19 ( 6 - 1 - 2)
----
Unfortunately I lost to Chelsea already two times and with the same outcome, 0-2, both in the Community Shield and in the Carling Cup 3rd round (yeah, nice draw).

One win and one loss in the Champions League group stages: 4-0 against Sporting Lisbona and 1-4 against Sevilla (yeah, horrible).

Playing most of the time with a 4-2-3-1 with wingers pushing forward. Rooney was playing great then, on international duty with England at the very beginning of september, he got injured: broken ankle, out for almost three months :P

[lamaros]

Ouch. Poor Rooney.

In all my games (I play with English Leagues down to at least League 1, Spain, and Italy in all my games, as well as random other leagues) I've not seen Man Utd do that well. I often see Arsenal and Liverpool splash around silly money and then do well, and Chelsea is the same, but it's rarer for Utd to win easily. A bit odd given how decent a squad they have. Maybe there's something else at work there, I havn't played them myself yet (though I hope to get there in the end with this game--hopefully before Ronaldo retires).

Carrarese is a funny team. It seems to be a smallish town, but they had a 15000 seater staduim and reasonable finances when I joined (but a pretty average squad). I wonder if they used to play in a higher leage and had just dropped down to Seria C2 recently.

[Lucas]

Carrarese Calcio:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrarese_Calcio

Last time they played in Serie B was in '47-'48. I remember my hometown team, Modena, playing them in the middle eighties in Serie C/1 A: at that time, they were a fairly good team and if I recall well they almost got promoted (they also won a Serie C Cup in 1983).

[lamaros]

Carrarese sacked me after I told them to give me more transfer funds or I'd quit. Finding a new job is hard, I don't see why they had to be so tight. We were rakign in about 300k profit a month with the way I'd turned the club around. Were were in the 1/4ers of the Seria C Cup, and were safe out of relegation despite not having won away all season. They could have thrown be a bit more money for transfers and wages in order to push for Seria B.. we had 2mil sitting in the bank.

[Lucas]

Sigh, time to vent 

So, the first series of important games finally arrived:  I won an awesome match against Liverpool at Anfield, 4-2 (I was up 3-0 then they attempted a comeback).

Standings were:

Man Utd 36 (W 11, D 3, L 0 )
Chelsea 34
Arsenal 33
West Ham 30
Aston Villa 26
-----

Fixtures:

Chelsea (at home) 1.12.2007
Man City (away) 8.12.2007

I hate the way I lost to both  : 0-1 against the former and 1-2 against the latter.

Like I said in a previous message, I lost twice to Chelsea, but they were deserved losses. This time I fuckin' dominated for the entire match (Vidic did his job well and injured Drogba seven minutes into the first half  ), and FRICKIN' LAMPARD scored from outside the box with a lucky curled shot, damnit, 20 minutes 'til the end of the match.

Against Man City, I was playing well, then they scored with a shot during a massive brawl into the penalty area, and while I was attacking full speed in the second half, penalty for them :(. I scored at 88 minute with Carrick, but it was too late :(

Oh, and of course Chelsea won its match and oh, of couse Arsenal won both, so I'm now third :P
-----

But yes, worse thing was yet to come: I struggle a llitte in the Champions league. I was too eager to apply the turn-over, so I lost a relative easy match against Sporting Lisbona. Only one match to go, standings are as follows:

Sporting CP 9
Sevilla 9
Man Utd 7
Olympiakos 4

Fixture: Sevilla (at home). If I win, I'll be through, of course.


Yes, I lost 0-1 

II'm now officially qualified for the Uefa Cup.

And for both the boards and the Fans I passed from the next Robot Jesus to "Go to Hell" status.

Tough times ahead 
---

I need to back off a little from that game, so I also started a new one with Havant & Waterlooville (Conference South), with the 8.0.2 database. But I definitely want to climb back again to the top with United.

[Jobu]

Like I said in a previous message, I lost twice to Chelsea, but they were deserved losses. This time I fuckin' dominated for the entire match (Vidic did his job well and injured Drogba seven minutes into the first half  ), and FRICKIN' LAMPARD scored from outside the box with a lucky curled shot, damnit, 20 minutes 'til the end of the match.

Against Man City, I was playing well, then they scored with a shot during a massive brawl into the penalty area, and while I was attacking full speed in the second half, penalty for them :(. I scored at 88 minute with Carrick, but it was too late :(

So I'm curious. How does the game present the narrative you wrote above? My understanding of Football Manager was it's lots of spreadsheets, team selection, training stuff, budget management, etc. Do you just read fictional news reports of games your team played?

[lamaros]

There's a 2D game engine that shows you the play. It's actualy pretty decent.

[Jobu]

Like watching a bunch of dots jiggling around on the pitch, or like watching a Super Nintendo version of FIFA?





p.s. FIFA not in the spell checker. For shame.

[lamaros]

Though in that image the person has customised the look of the 'dots' a little.

Sometimes the movement is really great, only a little video would do it justice.

[Lucas]

Yeah, a pic doesn't do it justice. The engine is great, but even a Youtube video wouldn't suffice.

There is also a demo of FM2008 you can download: FM2008 is the "european/international" version, Worlwide Soccer Manager is the U.S. version while Futbol Manager is the version currently marketed in the spanish (castellano?) speaking countries (go straight for the strawberry demo). It's just a marketing matter, tho, I think you can play whatever version you want in whatever country you live :)

The engine is great because it shows fantastic little touches. The overall A.I. is great, but for example: I was playing against Sevilla in the Champions League. They played with a 4-4-2 formation.

Kanoute is one of their strikers: strong, great jumping ability, a total pain in the ass. I didn't instruct my two central defenders to man mark him or whatever. Result: while his team was in possession of the ball, he kept pointing at my weaker central defender, and infact he started winning all the aerial challenges; hence, I switched my defenders. Fooled the A.I.? No sir, the A.I. started switching the two strikers regularly, so I always had to keep an eye on him.

Another similar thing happened in another match: the A.I. manager realized his attacker was losing a lot of the aerial challenges against one of my defenders, so the striker started getting wide on the right side of the pitch to go against my left-back, then cutting inside to displace my defensive line.

I could list more of these examples, but that is just to give you an idea on how refined the system is.

[Lucas]

Ok, an update on my (mis)fortunes with Man Utd:

Premier League:

After that bad strings of results I managed to recollect quickly. In-game, it's March 2nd, and matchday 28th (out of 38). The standings:

Chelsea 68 (Pld 28, W 21, D 5, L 2....For 47 Ag 8 <---- )

Man Utd 60 (Pld 27, W 18, D 6, L 3...For 49 Ag 17)

Arsenal 58 (Pld 28, W 17 D 7, L 4...For 46 Ag 21)

Everton is eleven points behind :P

Today I'll play against Tottenham (away), which lies in fifth place. I still have to play against both Arsenal and Chelsea, so not everything is lost concerning the title.

FA Cup :

Reached the Quarter Finals (Sixth Round):

Man Utd - Blackburn
Chelsea Everton
Aston Villa - Arsenal
Charlton (Championship team) - Man City

Oh, Everton won the League Cup against Bolton, 3-2 :P

UEFA Cup:

I beat Dinamo Bucarest in the first knockout round, and now I'm up against spanish team Getafe.
-----------

During the Winter market, I bought former Boca's player Ever Banega (DM/Midfielder Centre, 19 yrs old, quality player).

Regarding tactics, in general I favour a crowded midfield: during the first part of the season I played with just one striker (Rooney until he got hurt, then Tevez or Saha) upfront, three attacking midfields behind (Nani/Giggs - Anderson - Cristiano Ronaldo), two midfielders (Scholes - Hargreaves) and four defenders (Evra - Ferdinand - Vidic - Neville). Yeah, I know, having at my disposal three attackers like that (Tevez, Rooney and Saha) is a bit foolish to put just one in the field, in fact I'm starting to experiment with a more traditional 4-4-2 or a 4-3-1-2. Anyways, next season I' absolutely want to look for a "beast" striker with inane strenght and strong jumping, like Hunteelar or Kanoute.

My players are developing a good understanding and their morale is quite high, so whatever I cook for them they seem to appreciate :)

[HaemishM]

During the Winter market, I bought former Boca's player Ever Banega (DM/Midfielder Centre, 19 yrs old, quality player).

I've seen him play for Valencia this season (they got him in the real winter market). That kid is good. Seems like he'd be a bit surplus to requirements at United.

[Lucas]

During the Winter market, I bought former Boca's player Ever Banega (DM/Midfielder Centre, 19 yrs old, quality player).

I've seen him play for Valencia this season (they got him in the real winter market). That kid is good. Seems like he'd be a bit surplus to requirements at United.

I bought him after I decided to sell Fletcher and Pique (great player, at least in FM). With Banega, I now have three very promising youngsters: Gibson (who is being tutored by Carrick and made a few positive appearances in the first team), Hewson (reserve team), tutored by Scholes, and Banega himself.

[lamaros]

I've seen him play for Valencia this season (they got him in the real winter market). That kid is good. Seems like he'd be a bit surplus to requirements at United.

If you play a bit too much FM you find when watching real games thinking "hmm, that guy is good! I'll get him in my team!" or "I knew that guy was good! He's carving it up in my FM team!". Sometimes they're a bit off, but very often they get it right about players you've never heard of from everwhere in the world, even at young ages. The scouting team FM has at it's disposal for such things must be amazing.

[Jobu]

So I checked out the demo, you both were right, the game totally drew me in just as much as playing Civilization.

I picked Man. United, swept through the pre-season with a badass goalfest at Barca (lost 4-5), lost to Chelsea in the community shield with PKs (7-8), and so far am 2-0-0 in the EPL. I'm paranoid and save before each match.

I especially like it, because as a staunch ManU fan, it's so fun to be able to play the team how I want. I threw out 4-4-2 almost immediately, switched to 4-3-3 or 3-4-2-1 and it was great fun. I bought Rafael Van Der Vart after Werder Bremen wouldn't sell me Diego, and he's quite effective right behind Tevez and Rooney. I wish I could nudge people around a bit more, instead of dropping them into their pre-ordained slots, like push the hole player a bit closer to the left to dovetail with Nani and Giggs.

What does the full version have that is lacking in the demo? Because I can't find much that's missing or crippled, except player pictures.

[sidereal]

I wish I could ...

A good rule of thumb is that if you wish you could do something in FM, you probably can.  There's an enormous amount of control over individual player tactics on the team tactics screen.  Just click on the arrow next to each player in the lineup.  If you want a player to nudge left, you can hold the right mouse button down on them on the tactics screen and drag an arrow where you want them to go, and they'll move that way on attacks.