The True Football Manager 2009 / 2008

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Articles: 1, 2, 3

Transfers of Southampton - squad revolution before the 2nd season!
2008-03-16 16:01:00
Taking control over Southampton I was thinking that it has strong squad comparing with other Coca-Cola Championship teams. But during the finish of the season I understood that most of players are rather weak. Or at least, they did not fit my tactics. That is the reason why I decided to do the action which I perform very rarely playing FM/CM series - total renewal of the squad! It is very risky one because you buy the first team players that do not know each other. So they have to have some time (10-20 matches) to become perfectly coordinate as Team. I called it "Squad Revolution ". You can see it on the screen shot below: Among the sold players I would single out Marek Saganowski who had been awarded as the Fans Player of The Year. It was brave transfer because some fans and players reacted negatively on it. But Saganowski was not so good as I had expected before. Moreover he wanted very high salary. And he found it in Middlesbrough (that relegated from Premier League)...
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Youngsters and their development in Football Manager 2008. Part 2 - Striker
2008-03-13 12:08:00
This post is written by Vincent Van Hak. He asked me to share his investigation about development of young talents and wonderkids with all of you, my dear readers.Next up: StrikersAnother important position in the field, a scorer also known as striker. Without any you will probably not get much goals and with you should be guaranteed with goals, or not, if he misses form! I Found about 10 strikers ranging from 16 in the first season to 20 in the first season, starting with the two best know ones and then randomly giving the rest. James VaughanEverton Striker and already very good at the age of 19, if you can get him off Everton in the first season that would rock! BojanProbably the best striker of his age and one of the most talented players in the game, already playing at barcelona will probably make it hard to contract him, since he doesn't want to trade Barcelona for just any club. Gaël KakutaBeing only 16 in the first season it might be a bit to early to contract him right away...
More About: Football , Development , Manager , Part , Football Manager 2008

Links for 2008-03-10 [del.icio.us]
2008-03-11 06:00:00
Youngsters and their development in Football Manager 2008 . Part 1 - Goalkeepers. Since I started playing FM 2008, I've come across a few problems. The first one was tactics, I didnt understand anything of Fm yet since 2008 was and is the first version I bought and played. Once this problem was solved I got to the second problem, Young
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Youngsters and their development in Football Manager 2008. Part 1 - Goalkee
2008-03-10 10:32:00
This post is written by Vincent Van Hak. He asked me to share his investigation about development of young talents and wonderkids with all of you, my dear readers.Since I started playing FM 2008, I've come across a few problems. The first one was tactics, I didnt understand anything of Fm yet since 2008 was and is the first version I bought and played. Once this problem was solved I got to the second problem, Youngsters, I like to call them Youngsters instead of Youngstars because I like looking for young players who, in my eyes, have the potential to grow big. Of course I didn't do this all by myself, I've consulted some websites which gave names of young player whom the writers believed were good or had the potential to become good. I started looking for these players and even come across a few players I found myself (like Joris Delle and Rhys Murphy). As being one of the must in-patient players alive I coudn't wait for them to grow and to see if they were really the players o...
More About: Football , Development , Manager , Part , Football Manager 2008

Finishing the season with Southampton
2008-03-05 07:43:00
Unfortunately the finish of the season was not successful as I had expected.  My Southampton took only 12th place and I got again under fire of fans and board. But that was a great luck not being sacked this time! Board decided to give me one more chance with the club. Poor 12th place (8 points away from promotion playoff zone) was caused by two factors: Weak players, especially forwards Ineffective tactical approach with standard 4-4-2 scheme Therefore we get the following results in the last matches of the season: I decided to forgot these experience with standard 4-4-2 and try to create totally new attacking tactics with 3 forwards. Another my task for the new season is creating of the team buying a lot of new players and selling many old ones. So its human resources revolution is coming to Southampton! :) And, for sure, I could not set season expectations lower than promotion to Premier League. Any other result will be considered as total failure! Th...
More About: Season , Football Manager 2008

Links for 2008-02-29 [del.icio.us]
2008-03-01 07:00:00
Young talents and wonderkids in Football Manager 2008 : Left Defenders (DL) Wonderkid defenders. Marcelo from Real Madrid is certain wonderkid who can play for any club in the world and be very successful. Has brilliant fitness and technical attributes. He is able to beat any opponent on a flank by means of his fast and agile tec The True Football Manager - Podcasts - Powered by Odiogo
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Young talents and wonderkids in Football Manager 2008: Left Defenders (DL)
2008-02-29 08:05:00
Having reviewed potential stars for positions of Goalkeeper (GK), Central Defender (DC) and Central Attacking Midfielder (AMC) I decided to investigate situation about young left backs. As a result I found out that there are not so many young player who can become future stars: Wonderkid defenders Marcelo   Certain wonderkid who can play for any club in the world and be very successful. Has brilliant fitness and technical attributes. He is able to beat any opponent on a flank by means of his fast and agile technics.  Possesses vey high values of Flair, Anticipation, Off The Ball and First Touch for player of left back role. The only disadvantage is that Marcelo belongs to Real Madrid and costs $9.75M. So buying him is really hard! Gareth Bale Well-known wonderkid from Wales playing for Tottenham (sorry for wrong photo in the profile - this is made by some of numerous FM facepacks installed at my laptop). He is more balanced than Marcelo, better performs as tea...
More About: Football , Manager , Young , Left , Talents

Blog design is updated
2008-02-27 13:23:00
Finally I finished updating the design of this blog. Hope you will like it :-) Comments are always welcome! The True Football Manager
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Welcome to Southampton
2008-02-27 08:49:00
Hey, all my readers! I have a good news! Southampton became the new club that I will be managing. They accepted my suggestion and I was glad to be invited to such well-known club. I never managed it before in the previous versions of Football or Championship Manager. It will be rather tough challenge for me because Southampton board has Premier League promotion ambitions:   And the current situation in the Coca-Cola Championship is: You see my new club is on the 9th place (and this was enough for sacking the previous manager of Southampton). The rules of this league say that two top teams win promotion to Premier Division. And teams placed 3rd-6th qualify for Playoff rounds having very difficult and nervous battle for only one last promotion place. My Southampton is far from the 2nd placed Sheffield United on 12 points and just 4 points from the 6th place. So I think it will be a very interesting challenge because now I do not have time to tune the tactics. I should ...
More About: Football Manager 2008

Links for 2008-02-26 [del.icio.us]
2008-02-27 07:00:00
How I was sacked in Football Manager 2008 at first I have been playing Championship Manager/Football Manager series for more than 12 years. It's a pity to be sacked because last this happened in even CM 2003/2004... But there was no chance after many unsuccessful matches in which Wigan needed one more goa
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How I was sacked in Football Manager 2008 at first
2008-02-26 09:52:00
In the end of the previous post I informed you that there is possibility to be sacked if my new tactics will not give necessary results. Actually it didn't give, and : I have been playing Championship Manager /Football Manager series for more than 12 years. It's a pity to be sacked because last this happened in even CM 2003/2004... But there was no chance after many unsuccessful matches in which Wigan needed one more goal very often: So the Premier League standing after my last match with Manchester City was really sad. Sad for me, sad for board... And their patience ran out totally. So now I'm seeking for a new club to manage because I do not want to restart the game. By the way, there is new FM 2008 screen for job seeking manager without club: You see I applied for Reading, but they rejected. It seems Premier League clubs doesn't want me due to average reputation (National)...  The True Football Manager
More About: Sacked , Football Manager 2008

Links for 2008-02-24 [del.icio.us]
2008-02-25 07:00:00
New tactics = new perfomance. Wigan matches of October and November (FM 2008 ) After the weak start I changed tactics of Wigan totally. 4-4-1-1 was replaced on 5-2-1-2 with two fullbacks covering the whole flanks. Then I began to tune new tactics scheme trying different individual settings and different players on positions (I will
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New tactics = new perfomance. Wigan matches of October and November (FM 200
2008-02-22 23:28:00
After the weak start I changed tactics of Wigan totally. 4-4-1-1 was replaced on 5-2-1-2 with two fullbacks covering the whole flanks. Then I began to tune new tactics scheme trying different individual settings and different players on positions (I will describe my new tactics in one of the next post). As a result I'm glad with the performance of my at the moment. In October and November we had row of the following matches in the Premier League: There is only one annoying match with Portsmouth where we could do nothing to resist with dignity. The performance in the other games was very keen. Though in half of matches we suffered a lack of class for gaining a needed result. For example, Arsenal - Wigan after the first half - 1:2 and than 4:2 in the end. By the way it was very principal match for me (as for the former manager of Arsenal) :) Another example of game lost on class is Bolton - Wigan. We could win there but again got a ball in the net on the last minutes. Lack of co...
More About: Tactics , Matches

Links for 2008-02-21 [del.icio.us]
2008-02-22 07:00:00
Wigan matches of the first months. Weak start. 38 years old Luis Cristaldo is really unexpected to be the first in the list. I advice you to buy him in your club. He will help during the first season you even if you play managing Machester United or Real Madrid! Currently he is the best our midfield Text Mining Tool - PDF, DOC, RTF, CHM, HTML to Text Converter Text Mining Tool is the free PDF, DOC, CHM, RTF, HTML converter. It performs analysis of pdf, doc, rtf, chm, html files and converts them to text. It has a lot of advantages: - No payment or license restrictions. Tool is absolutely free. - Works as conv Text Mining Tool - free PDF, DOC, CHM, RTF, HTML to text converter Text Mining Tool is a freeware program for extraction of text from files of the next types: pdf, doc, rtf, chm, html without need to have installed any other programs like Word, Arcrobat, etc. The beauty of the program is that it works, extremely sim
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Wigan matches of the first months. Weak start.
2008-02-20 06:58:00
Starting as Wigan manager I suspected that it would be hard to make a good start in the first row of matches. And this is it what I've got: Only 3 victories and 1 draw in 10 matches. My current problem (linked with such poor statistics) is finding the tactics that will be suitable for the team. Almost all these matches I've been playing 4-4-1-1 formation with Whole Pitch pressing. And performance of the team was rather good - I liked playing style. But there was very poor realization of goal moments. And after all I decided to develop more successive tactics having more than one forward. At the current period I'm working on this question. Returning to the results of Wigan in August and September I would say that the most negative game was with Burnley which is certainly weaker but managed to overcame my team with 2:3 score. And this happened tragically during the last minutes of the match. My boys lost concentration :( There were goals on 87th and 90th minutes: Statis...
More About: Matches , Start , Months

Transfers of Wigan before the first season
2008-02-17 13:43:00
After the previous post where I had reviewed the players of my Wigan I decided that the teams needs to be strengthened by footballers of more high quality. Therefore I spent a lot of money on different transfers (12) - more than any other Premier League club: My starting transfer money amount was rather high for such modest football club - $25M. We bought 11 players spending $23M and took 1 player on loan also: There are very different types of transferred players, I would say: Young prospective : Nacer Barazite, Kevin Monnet-Paquet, Rence van der Wal, Oussama Assaidi, Antony Di Lallo, Joe Mattock - all of at most 19 years old. Old good Bolivian cheap guys: Ivan Castillo, Luis Cristaldo, Oscar Sanchez - all are of at least 36 years old, but have rather good attribute values. The most important transfers: Kikin Fonseca, Julio Caceres, Alessandro Parisi, Carlton Cole (loaned). I will not describe all new players of Wigan. Just want to say some words about the be...
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Wigan players review and squad analysis
2008-02-13 07:19:00
The first step when you take a team as its manager is analysis of the team's squad. I'm going to do this with Wigan players now. Goalkeepers There is no competition for a place in the first team. Kris Kirkland is certainly the most strong keeper of Wigan. Former Liverpool player has high values of Reflexes, Jumping, One On Ones, Handling, Positioning attributes. Rather young for goalkeeper - only 26 years old. Giant height - 199 cm. The only suspicious thing is his weakness in coach report: "Kirkland is a player who may be fairly susceptible to injuries". It seems I should think about other first team goalkeeper if I have enough money. Defenders The most high valued and, as far as I believe, strongest defender is Titus Bramble. He seems to be rather fast and reliable central defender who has stable good characteristics important for DC. Another good and somewhat versatile guy in defence is Emmerson Boyce. He can play either DC or DR. Has strong fitness attrib...
More About: Players , Analysis , Review , Squad

New laptop. Arsenal game is lost.
2008-02-10 09:35:00
Dear readers, I have two news of very different kind. The good news is that I bought rather powerful HP laptop with Core2Duo (T7250, 2GHz) processor. The model is HP Compaq 6710b if anyone is interested. It?s really fast and allows playing Football Manager 2008 faster than on the old one (Toshiba with Celeron M).The bad news happened a bit earlier than good. The problem is in that I lost all the data on the hard drive of my old laptop together including FM 2008 and saves of my game as Arsenal manager. My first feelings were really terrible. And it?s just because it would be much easier if I had never been blogging about my game. So many youngsters were bought and developed during the first season? In the end especially I was interested in guys from Arsenal academy like Rhys Murphy and Henry Langsbury... They were terrific and led U18 team to the first place in U18 group with large advantage by points ? 16. Murphy had more scored goals than played games! But unfortunately the hard dr...
More About: Lost , Laptop , Game , Wigan

My favorite Arsenal players of the 1st season
2008-02-06 22:29:00
Talking about the totals of the whole first season I would like to select three best players of the team. In my humble opinion they are William Gallas, Francesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie. These guys performed better than others and their performance had the highest influence on the team results.William GallasHe is a king of defence, certainly! At the start of the season I thought that younger Kolo Toure is a little bit better than Gallas in the centre of defence. But Gallas overcame his main partner performing very good and almost without mistakes. He is quick (what is rare) central back who anticipated ball in many different dangerous situations. William Gallas had been doing important headers very often and also managed to score few goals from the corners using his head. Very successful vice-captain of the Gunners!Francesc FabregasTeam-leader, playmaker and merely bright head. During some matches I used ?Playmaker? setting with Fabregas being set on this role to cope with an o...
More About: Arsenal , Players , Season , Favorite

Tactics of Senegal National Team in FM 2008
2008-02-02 11:17:00
In the end of Crisis in Arsenal post I mentioned that I had been signed as new manager of Senegal . Their manager was sacked after failure on Cup of African Nations, and my reputation was enough to be signed as new one. For my first nation team in Football Manager 2008 I have chosen the following tactics Download this tactics here. First results using this tactics - two 3:0 victories against very simple opponents Swaziland and Tanzania. I use some interesting approaches in this tactics: Intelligent sweeper Fast dribbling forwards Direct passing Closing down over whole pitch by forwards and midfielders The True Football Manager
More About: National , Tactics , Team

New tactics scheme for Arsenal
2008-01-28 08:32:00
In the post Crisis in my Arsenal I described real problems encountered during Arsenal management. It was a real crisis and dangerous situation when my board could sack me. To resolve the situation I decided to apply new tactics for the team with 4-3-1-2 formation.   The main features of this tactics: Ball possession Attacking through middle High speed of players cooperation Playmaker usage Link to download tactics: 4-3-1-2 Possession Tactics   3 central midfielders After the first matches with this tactics I felt that is really ball possessive one. Three central midfielders are very careful with a ball, though they are rather quick in combinations. One can set different types of halfbacks on these positions. It depends on what kind of opponent you have in a concrete match. If I play with strong attacking team like Manchester United I would advice to set more DMCs on these positions (2 or even 3). For opponent like Derby I would use only one DMC set...

Analysis of Football Manager 2008 Patch 8.0.1
2008-01-24 16:36:00
I have been playing almost all the first season in Football Manager 2008 without installed patch 8.0.1. I just wanted to feel enough the initial version of FM 2008, see some bugs and then compare my feelings with changelist in the patch. So I installed Patch 8.0.1 and figured out such most important fixes and enhancements from it:General· Team-mates will no longer dislike each other for seemingly no reason.· Reduced incidents of players having "Worried by lack of discipline" unhappiness.Crashes· Fixed crash if user retires whilst on the Jobs screen.· Fixed possible crash when user accepted job offers from other teams.User Interface· Fixed bug where coming out of tactics sometimes wasn't returning the user back to full match highlight mode properly. Contracts· Boosted the squad status expectations and wage requests of players involved in big money transfers.Transfers· Increased the threshold before chairman will accept bids over the head of the manager in charge.Europe· Champions Cu...
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AMC: Wonderkids and young stars in Football Manager 2008
2008-01-23 20:31:00
Today I would like to share with you my research about young talents for position of central attacking midfielders. Wonderkids Sergio Aguerro The greatest wonderkid from Atletico Madrid for this position! But he costs very much and can be bought only by grand clubs. Brilliant technique, dribbling, speed, stamina and mental abilities.   Samir Nasri Very good wonderkid-playmaker from Marseille who can develop many chances and dictate tempo. Young hope of nation team of France.   Anderson Flamboyant Mancherster United's newcomer. Tricky and fast guy with good Stamina. Costs much as well as Nasri.   Matias Fernandez Wonderful wonderkid from Villarreal!!! Just look at his attributes - many of them are 17-19! Costs $18M at the current moment in my game.   Giovani dos Santos New Barcelona's mega-talent who is very-very young (only 18 years old) and can become superstar!   Juan Mata Another wonderkid from Spanish League. He pl...
More About: Stars , Football , Manager , Football Manager 2008

Crisis in my Arsenal: January and February matches of the 1st season (Footb
2008-01-20 13:47:00
You all noticed that the first half of the first season was lucky and successful for my Arsenal . Nevertheless two first months of the 2008 year in the FM game brought just disappointments for the team and me as its manager. Look at these results and you will understand what I'm talking about: We got to the real big crisis having been knocked out of League Cup, FA Cup and, what is totally terrible, Champions League!!! I do not what to talk about all the matches, of course - there are too much of them. Just want to make some analysis of reasons that led to the crisis. The first signs of upcoming problems appeared in January during three matches in row without wins: 1:2 away with Newcastle, 2:2 home with Everton and 0:2 away with Wigan in League Cup (when the first game with Wigan was won with 1:0). During this period we have been playing without our very important African players Toure, Adebayor and Eboue who left to participate in the Cup of African Nations. This somewhat imbal...
More About: Matches , Season , Crisis

Arsenal transfers during winter window of the 1st season (Football Manager
2008-01-14 21:20:00
I was waiting for this winter transfer window with a wish to get some new young talents to Arsenal . But at first I suddenly lost one wonderkid player - Denilson - whom I considered to be substitute playmaker for Francesc Fabregas. Chairman of Arsenal decided everything without me accepting the offer from Inter:Yes, It's the very good offer taking into account that transfer price of Denilson was $9M but it's a pity...Therefore I made decision to find young prospective replace for Denilson and signed Marek Hamsik who had been on the official transfer list. He's young, fast, creative defensive midfielder with high Teamwork and Workrate attributes. Among Arsenal other new signings are Jermain Defoe, Henry Saivet and Giles Barnes.Jermain Defoe was bought to be the 5th forward in the team and play in the second squad. It's necessary because when any of four forwards (Adebayor, Van Persie, Eduardo, Bendtner) receive an injury I can't do full rotation of attacking player. Defoe was t...
More About: Football , Winter , Manager , Season

Tips and hints: How to select players for a first squad in Football Manager
2008-01-12 09:19:00
Usually playing Football Manager 2008 I follow the next principles when it is necessary to select the first squad before a match:? At first when you select players for participate in the match, look at their morale and conditions. Try to use players with the highest morale, and do not set to the first squad 'Very poor' or 'Poor' moraled footballers.? As far as conditions concerned, usually I do not use players who has less then 94% giving them rest from the game or just placing them to the substitution.? Another small hint is checking current level of fitness of a player. I never set a player to the first squad when he has fitness - 'Several lacking in match fitness', 'Tired' or something like that except matches with very weak opponent teams.? Never set injured players with orange 'Inj' sign to participate in a match.? It is also important to understand form of your footballer: how good he played last matches, what kind of performance he shows during this season, how oft...
More About: Players , Tips , Hints

Arsenal December matches in FM 2008 (the 1st season)
2008-01-08 20:43:00
I with my Arsenal played the following matches in December of the first season:8 games during the one month. This is famous English December when stamina of all teams is checked. This is the time when team without strong second squad players can sunk in the table. Anyway, my Arsenal overcame this hard period with honor gaining brilliant away victories against Chelsea and Manchester United.Chelsea is our main counterpart in the fighting for the Premiership Title. We won the very hard match. Chelsea managed to shoot on target 19 times! So Jens Lehmann was fantastic saving all those shots. Especially difficult strikes were caused by Didier Drogba. From the other side my guys did 6 shots playing counter attacks. The goals were scored by two our best players in the first half of the season: Cesc Fabregas and Emmanuel Adebayor. It was really flamboyant game and may be you will be interested to check out its highlights:Chelsea - Arsenal HighlightsAfterwhile we played with Manchester City...
More About: Matches , Season , 2008

Arsenal Trainings: Improvements after the first half of the season
2008-01-05 21:27:00
In my game I have just reached the 1st of January. So the winter transfer window is starting . And before going deeper to research of new talents and making some transfers I decided to give you the results of the trainings which have been used since the start of the season.Training - GK (for goalkeepers).Lucasz Fabianski. Fabianski has the best training report among three keepers of Arsenal . Many attributes: + 1 point.Jens Lehmann. Improved only few attributes on 1 point.Vito Mannone. Many increases of attributes on 1 point.Training - DRL (for left and right defenders).Gael Clichy. Almost not improved because of his 3(!) short-time injuries.Emmanuel Eboue. Many improvements on 1 point. Passing and Crossing are improved on 2 points!Bakary Sagna. A lot of increases (15!) on 2 points!! Just take a look on these improvements:Lassana Diarra. 8 attributes: + 2 points; many other attributes: +1 point.Armand Traore. Stamina, Teamwork, Concentration: +3 (!) points; 6 attribu...
More About: Season , Half , Raining

Graphics for Football Manager 2008: Facepacks, Kit Packs, Logos, Skins
2008-01-02 10:42:00
Hello, my dear readers! Happy New Year! :-)I decided to do some internet research trying to find kit packs, facepacks, logos and skins for Football Manager 2008. The target of this research is grouping of useful links on the site with free FM Graphics content. It will allow you to download some desired facepack or skin without waste of time on its search in the Internet.As a result I found the following sites:sortitoutsi.net - Football Manager FansiteFootball Manager 2008 Portal - Download FM2008 GraphicsUnderground FC Forums -> Download Manager -> GraphicsFMFan.ru (in Russian)CMFrenzy.Com - FM 2008 GraphicsFootball Manager ClubFMFormation.Net
More About: Logos , Skins

Young talents and wonderkids in Football Manager 2008: Central Defenders (D
2007-12-30 14:50:00
The next my research for young talents and wonderkids is linked with the idea of having youngsters to replace William Gallas in the future. Of course, I have already some candidates in my team. The first one is Phillipe Senderos. He is really good and tough central defender, though not so fast. The second one is Johan Djourou who is on the loan in Birmingham. But anyway I was going to seek for some very young (age Wonderkid central defendersMicah Richards - the best one as for me. This guy from Manchester City is still 19 years old. Very tough, fast defender and tight marker who can play as right back and defensive midfielder. My scout considers him to be so good as Kolo Toure. But he costs $14M and Man City bosses don't want to sell him at the moment.Micah Richards from Manchester City" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149763154435052754" />Ezequiel Garay - Argentinian 21 years old defender from Racing. He costs $13.75M, has the most of attributes the same as Micah Richards. Richards has ...
More About: Football , Manager , Young , Talents , Central