Football Manager 2012

Well well well. 5 games to go, and I'm 5 points off relegation. Danny Graham just scored a hattrick in a completely unexpected 4-1 win at home to Wolves. Now 7 clear with 4 to play, I think I might just do this.

Still playing infront of 17000 seats hopefully Bassini will expand it a bit if I stay up. Scouting situation is dire right now, I have barely any knowledge of anyone still and it's going to be a struggle to find players to get this summer.

 

My preparations for league one were hit pretty substantially by the board actually lowering my budget rather than increasing it - no transfer money, and a smaller wage budget. I feared for the first anyway in that I never expected to go up, I usually prepare in advance by signing young players capable of playing in the new level. So I let anyone on any sort of substantial wages who's contract is up leave on a free, and set about working the market - hoping two have two decent players in every position. Here's what I ended up with...

GK: Richard Lee, Glenn Morris

Defenders: Vermijl (loan), Malone(loan), Batth(loan), Ferdinand, Barker and some great frees in Corbin-Ong, McKeown and Bouhenna

Midfield: Grant, Kerr, Hall and Aluko, brought in Sene, James Chambers and Suso Santana - who all look quality frees, loaned Joe Mckee due to 20 free kicks, and great long shots

Strikers: Kept Neil Harris and Liam ****inson, brought in Roland Bergkamp and Lee Novak.

Predicted to come 19th, which i'd take - but think I have an outside shot of the top half if my tactics from last year adapt to this team and I don't have to get the team used to a new system.

 

Anyone else manage to sign Nathan Delfouneso on loan first season? Great signing.

Also, any big scores against Cardiff?

 

I'm quite surprised at some of the big scores I'm seeing in the Championship most weeks. One week there was a 5-6 and 5-4, also 4-1 is a regular score. The exception is me at Watford where if we score 2 it's a miracle. However, saying that I'm solid mid-table in my first season. Loads of 1-1 & 0-0 draws and 1-0 wins. Trying to blood the youngsters a bit to see how they develop. Patience (and plenty of time) required.

 

I beat them 4-1 at home iirc. That was after malky got the chop I think.

It's amazing how quickly you can go through a season when you're happy with your setup, I ended my debut prem season on 36 points, coming 16th. Can't help but feel that was a bit lucky but I've strengthened with 2 new CBs - mapps wasn't cutting it, tiny has an avg rating of 6.3 and I conceded 90 goals. Amazingly, Loach has been one of my best players.

 

Having won the Premier League with Spurs in my first season, it feels like the challenge I was hoping for is over already. The only thing to do now is start a new game as Watford. Once I've got my exam over with today, I'll crack on. Any good free transfers that people have noticed?

 

How far in to the English non league system does it go?

 

There's a fair few freebies as well as good loan signings. I signed Bruins on a free however he's been kept out the team by my top scorer..... Craig Forsyth....

 

I'm only a little way in, but if I recall correctly I lost my first game 5-1 vs Brum, then won: 4-0 vs Bristol City, 3-0 vs Barnsleys, 3-2 (the only realistic result perhaps) vs Burnley, 5-0 vs Cardiff, and 5-4 vs Peterborough.

But then again, I have a really weird formation and play attacking football. Seems to work at the moment. My formation pretty much consists of 2 CBs 1 RB 1 DML 1 DMC 1 MC 1 AMR 1 AML 2 STC...

 

Conference North and South, but you can use the editor to create divisions lower down than that. If you can be bothered.

 

Cool man. Once i've conquered political science, it'll be time for some FM.

 

I got the bullet from Watford and so ended up at Havent and Waterloo. In the BS South and looking great for promotion. Managed to get Jake Nicholson on a free with Counargo up front on a free as well. Despite the budget constraints and a crowd on 600 average, I sit proudly top and look set for promotion after taking them on when they were 17th.

Shame I have to head out to football now!

 

Righty, well the game arrived today (Tuesday morning) whilst I was at lectures, so I had a nice surprise waiting for me when I got back at 6:30pm. Got it installed, and whilst listening to the Brighton match, decided I would crack on and start a Watford save as I always do for my first game.

Pre-Season out of the way, off-loaded Jenkins for £1.3m to Southampton - and loaned out a heap of my youngsters to league 1 and 2 clubs. As far as incoming transfers were concerned, i've landed myself:

Chris Herd (CDM) - Aston Villa (Season Long loan)
Andros Townsend (AML) - Spurs (Season Long loan)
John Bostock (AMC) - Spurs (Season Long loan)
Heidar Helguson (STC) - QPR (Season Long loan)

No permanent deals as of yet, though i've lodged a bid for Nosworthy on the cheap as I need some more cover at centre-back.

Still, seeing as Sordell & Townsend are both away with the U20s, I've had to go the first 4 league games without either! But, that hasn't hindered my progress so far. The opening game against Middlesborough saw me lose 3-2 after being 3-0 down after 85 minutes - for a brief moment, I thought the impossible was possible... but no. This was followed by a comfortable 2-0 win in the Carling Cup over Torquay. And following this my team has won 3 on the bounce in the league, which leaves me sitting 3rd, level on points with table-topping Hull - after a 1-0 home win against Burnley (Iwelumo the scorer), a 2-1 win away at Barnsley, and an emphatic 3-1 win over Malky's Cardiff at The Vic.

All this has been achieved adopting a 4-2-3-1 approach with a prefered starting XI of:

Loach
Doyley - Mariappa - Taylor - ****inson
Herd - Eustace
Yeates - Bostock - Forsyth
Iwelumo
​

(Obviously I would rather be starting Sordell, but he's not available at the moment!)

Loving it so far, shame I have to be up early or I would genuinely be playing it all night! I look forward to tomorrow afternoon when I should be able to continue with it

(Helguson was an inspired signing - scored 2 crucial goals for me after coming off the bench in both games, and Yeates has netted 3 times in 5 appearances).

 

Technical difficulties meant a painful and short end to my Southend game after winning promotion to the Championship. About to start a new game, any recommendations? I'm thinking Southampton, Brighton or Huddersfield.

 

I'm getting slightly pi**ed off with the fact that occasionally when I load the game, Steam pops up and says 'game currently unavaliable', this has happened a couple of times, and I've had to go into the Steam folder on my PC and delete some files to get it to update so it works again. What annoys me is, that I've paid for the game (the boxed version), and yet sometimes I can't actually play what I have brought. Steam is shi(t). Is there no way I can play this without using steam? After all I've got the disk, I thought Steam would only be used to register the game, then after that I wouldn't need it again.

 

Anyone found somewhere decent to get default/standard logos and faces?

 

Set steam to offline mode maybe?

 

No steam is fixed annoyingly. It also uses roughly 20 percent of a macs CPU, = very hot mac and very slow gameplay. Cheers steam.

I'm playing to expectations in the premier league, hovering above and around the relegation spots. Currently in the middle of a run of fixtures that saw me face Chelsea, Man Utd, (fulham), Man City, Arsenal. Lost 1-0 to chels and 3-0 to utd.

One bright spark this season is Elliot Bennet who is great, and helped me to a surprise 4-1 win at the reebok. But reckon i'll probably go down in all honestly.

 

Lo and behold I just got it handed to me by Fulham, who spanked me 4-1.

Gonna be a long season.

 

The Metallic Logos 2011 pack pretty much has every club and competition logos. Google it.

Not sure about faces, but I'm sure I saw one pack to download as a torrent. I'll try and find it

 

Just had this issue myself. It's a bit crap.

 

You've effectively bought a license to run the game. With the current DRM measures in place (not just this game), it doesn't really feel like I own a lot of what I buy.

 

I thought this happens when Steam is updating, for example when it is downloading a new patch to fix some issues with the game. It is happened to me in the last week as well.

 

5th at the start of December, playing a 4-2-3-1. Having a great season but Sordell is my lone striker and he can't seem to score! He's got 3 this whole season and hasn't scored in about 1000 minutes

 

2nd after 7 games with Watford. Signed Pablo Mouche from Boca for £130k. He's scored 7 in the first 6, with 3 assists. Yeates has notched 5 in 7 games. Not sure if it'll continue, but we'll see how it goes.

 

Really need to get into this, have only just finished preseason. Once essay dealines have passed, I'll spend most of my time on FM I reckon. Though I might as well be playing it now, the amount of work I'm getting done... I did raelly well preseason with Watford though, made me think it'd be a breeze, but will be interesting to see how the season pans out.

One thing I must say though, I don't like how you can't undo team talk stuff. I accidentally said something like 'i'm angry with your performance', when I meant to say something completely different. You wouldn't even need to undo what you say, because that would be using their reactions to your advantage, i just mean it'd be good to to select what you want to say to everyone, then click something that actually makes you say it, you know? Ah well, very minor but just annoyed me that time.

 

Just lost 5-2 at home to Birmingham (who were 20th), Iwelumo getting 2 for me. Such a strange match

 

Noticed a lot of crazy scorelines. I'm talking like regular 6-3's or 5-2's.

Settling down for a nice late night FM session now. LA v NYRB on the tv and FM. Beautiful.

 

Glad it isn't just me. I've scored something crazy like 47 goals in 15 games

 

I started off playing the 4-2-3-1, but when Sordell came back from the U20s tournement, I did not fare well with just the lone striker, so I reverted to a 4-4-2. As a result, I'm currently sitting 2nd after about 13 games. However, loanee Bostock suffered a broken ankle in the 2-1 away win over Palace and is out for 3 months. He had been nominated player of the month and came 2nd in successive months, with an average rating of 7.60. Looks like my fortunes could be about to change! (Also, Palace haven't won a match yet! )

Current preferred starting XI:

Loach
Doyley - Mapps - Taylor - ****inson
Yeates - Herd - Hogg - Townsend
Helguson - Sordell​

 

Anybody else noticed a downturn in form since the latest patch downloaded yesterday? Or is it just my good luck running out?

 

This game is f**ked up.

I'm in my first season with Watford and despite being only 11th in the league, have just beaten Liverpool, Stoke and Arsenal to win the Carling Cup... What. the. f**k?

 

The girlfriend is not around tonight. So for the first time in ages, tonight I play FM! (Unless I get annoyed with Steam, or go play Batman on the Xbox...).

 

Take my laptop to school sometimes and fancied a game of FM today, then I couldn't open it because I had no internet connection and couldn't work Steam! Any way around this?

 

You should get the option to open steam in offline mode when you try to start the game and your laptop isn't connected to the internet. That's how it is for me anyway.