Gaming Football Manager 2021 (FM21)

Chipper

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Do players even know who the coaching staff are when moving clubs in the real world? I'd have my doubts outside the odd prominent assistant or if there was a notable ex-player on board.
 

Chipper

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Suppose it means that in FM all players would make great technical directors as they all know all the coaches and who is better than who. In my saves they don't even have to have training sessions with the new coaches, as soon as you sign one they can just tell if he's better or not.
 

Rolandofgilead

Trigger Happy Priest Killer
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I dropped back to my earlier save and instant resulted the 2 games I'd already played and I got through to play Plymouth away and the stevenage away. Seems to be behaving itself so happy days.
 

NinjaFletch

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What am I doing wrong with scouting?

I’ve had a scout out looking for right wingers with basically bugger all other criteria for a year and he’s returned 3 reports.
 

Chipper

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Yeah, wouldn't mind a scouting tutorial myself, any good overviews out there? After continuously using Genie Scout I feel I don't really understand stuff in-game now I'm trying not to use GS. Was okay with this save as we had the highest scouting budget available and I think that meant I could just search for loads of players under the player search tab, but without that I might be struggling.

Specifically I want to know how I can make players I ask to be scouted go straight to the top of the scouting priority list. I had to change priorities for the players I found myself one at a time as the scouts put them at the bottom originally. If your manager is saying "Scout this guy" you'd think it might take precedent automatically but that wasn't the case.
 

Chipper

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I dropped back to my earlier save and instant resulted the 2 games I'd already played and I got through to play Plymouth away and the stevenage away. Seems to be behaving itself so happy days.
Glad to hear it's stable so far, hope it stays that way for you.
 

Rolandofgilead

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Glad to hear it's stable so far, hope it stays that way for you.
I managed to play until the end of the season and backed it up with the save as feature.

Anyway I finished 16th in league 2. Recruitment is hard work! I scored the 4th highest goals last season but conceded the 3rd most. The only centre half I could afford, was interested and could be considered an upgrade....is from Denmark and I can't get him a work permit. I'm in for a frustrating preseason again I feel.
 

Chipper

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Finished 2nd in both the Eastern Conference and overall MLS standings during the regular season. Was top for quite a long time but form was a bit patchy towards the end. Suddenly started letting in and scoring more goals out of nowhere which was a bit weird, we were very boring up until then.


Not sure how retirements work, might have an important player leave us in the middle of the playoffs. Our 2nd top scorer ays he's going to retire on the 28th of November when our first round playoff match is on the 19th. There's an Eastern Conference first round, semi final and final before the MLS final itself and I can'st see them all being played by the 28th.

Hopefully the game can make some adjustments and just have him stay on until the end of the season if we're still in it otherwise we're a bit short here.
 

Chipper

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Was about to throw things if that didn't happen:

The game allowing him to retire when still under contract and potentially 2 games from the title would have been ridiculous.

Got Atlanta at home now in the Eastern Conference final. They just went to Toronto and won which gives our lot home ground advantage for this game because of the seedings. If Toronto had won through we'd be going away to their place. Would obviously rather be at home.

Just about deserved to get past DC United in the first round and then absolutely battered NYFC in one of our best performances of the season. Was thinking we might got out at one point as they took the lead.
 

Chipper

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Boom! MLS Champions, and who scores the extra time winner? Mr retiree of course!
 

Berbaclass

Fallen Muppet. Lest we never forget
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Couldn’t get into my Bilbao save, may go back to it.

Started a game with Newcastle. It’s been a pretty wild 6 months.

Started okay then we dropped off massively, then out of nowhere Qatari takeover and they gave me 90 Million to spend. Only catch was the demanded we get into the Europa League in the current season. I was 15th at the time and probably near a sacking.

Probably to do with the fact I got 16 Million at the start of the game and I blew it all on Moukoko as unrealistic a transfer as that is how could I not :lol:
 

Lay

Correctly predicted Italy to win Euro 2020
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Couldn’t get into my Bilbao save, may go back to it.

Started a game with Newcastle. It’s been a pretty wild 6 months.

Started okay then we dropped off massively, then out of nowhere Qatari takeover and they gave me 90 Million to spend. Only catch was the demanded we get into the Europa League in the current season. I was 15th at the time and probably near a sacking.

Probably to do with the fact I got 16 Million at the start of the game and I blew it all on Moukoko as unrealistic a transfer as that is how could I not :lol:
Me neither. Went to Valencia instead
 

Berbaclass

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Also, I've seen all the memes about Callum Wilson before and I've been a little disappointed with him until recently when his form exploded!

 

Chipper

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Will come back to MLS in the future but I'm done with that save. Too much work trying to find the players with 5 vowels in their name/on their shirt and I think the tactics I was using were just overpowered. Could just change everything but would rather start afresh in the future with a new club/new save later down the line.

Think I already know it'll be at Montreal if/when I do another save at that league. Montreal is in Quebec, the official language of Quebec is French, they've recently had Thierry Henry as coach, Remi Garde has been there too. Lots of Frenchness going on! Was thinking a save where everyone that plays must speak fluent French. Their academy players already speak it, as would anyone already at the club who has been there a while when the save starts. Plenty of choice with players from France, parts of Belgium and Switzerland, French-speaking parts of Africa etc. Could be a good one, limiting myself somewhat but not too much.

Now I'm actually going to try and find the easiest team I can to manage. Sounds counter-intuitive when I'm leaving my current save because it was a bit easy but that was using downloaded tactics. Even though I play FM quite a lot down the years I always do that and I'm a total noob when it comes to going it alone. Want to jump in somewhere nice and forgiving, not sure where yet but I soon will. Basically somewhere with a much better team, and more money than everyone else in their league akin to Celtic before Rangers came back to the SPL. Don't know if there's anywhere quite that easy these days but I'll try and pick somewhere along those lines.
 

NoLogo

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Wow. Wtf just happened? My DoF apparently has bid 91M€ for Tuanzebe oO. I have not set him to be allowed to make bids for players. What is going on in my game?



He was unwilling though to negotiate a contract with us but how the feck did that happen? Anyone else had their DOF going rogue on them?

What the??? Now he made an offer for Zainolo??? 79M € also doesn't want to enter contract talks. What is going on here????
 

Rolandofgilead

Trigger Happy Priest Killer
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Wow. Wtf just happened? My DoF apparently has bid 91M€ for Tuanzebe oO. I have not set him to be allowed to make bids for players. What is going on in my game?



He was unwilling though to negotiate a contract with us but how the feck did that happen? Anyone else had their DOF going rogue on them?

What the??? Now he made an offer for Zainolo??? 79M € also doesn't want to enter contract talks. What is going on here????
Very quickly double check the responsibilities. I'd sack him personally (although I don't actually know if you can sack a dof)
 

Berbaclass

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I personally have decided recently that I won't ever hire one. Purely because there is just literally no need for them in any way.
 

Berbaclass

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Yeah, you are probably right, I never use them apart from extending contracts of some staff members that I don't want to negotiate with.
I used to do that myself but I can’t stand them giving everybody a % wage increase per year. Absolutely kills your wage budget after a few seasons.
 

NoLogo

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He any good?
Looks like ready for some first team football tbh even though he isn't my biggest talent he has now 25 goals in 11 games for the youth team, yeah admittedly 11 in one game but still looks like I should give him some playing time this season.

How the feck did your keeper get a 9 rating in a game where you scored 20 goals :lol:
Probably got a few assists.
Hey, he saved two shots, that should earn you a 9.0 rating, no? :D

No idea how he got that rating, had 4 interceptions, no key passes or created CCCs or assists. I think he simply got such a good rating because of the result it seems if the team has a really great result and the goalie doesn't make a mistake he will also get a high rating.
 

NoLogo

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Oh yeah btw short update on my third season with Sporting so far. I unfortunately lost my best goal scorer of last season to Chelsea for 45M € which was way less than I wanted, and I also had to pay his previous club Portimonese 75%!!! of the transfer fee, what in the name of feck, who agreed to a deal like that?

Well needless to say that was a real kick in the teeth but he was kicking up too much of a fuzz to force him to stay and well, Chelsea offering the big bugs, I can somewhat understand it. He went from 60k pw to now 185k pw.

Unfortunately I also couldn't hold on to my best goal chance creator Nuno Santos, who desperately wanted to join City where he is now a bit of a super sub still earning 50k pw more than he did with us.

On a positive note though I kept hold of Nuno Mendes, despite PSG making a shitty offer for him he didn't kick up a fuzz and didn't want to leave but instead signed a new contract with us and is now by far our best payed player at 120k pw, I have two more players at 80k pw but the rest is more at around 30-50k pw, I just hope I didn't escalate a wage demand spiral with that.

Only notable intake apart from youth players was a 29-year-old Rafinha for 18.5M € which is now my new record purchase. I also bid for Miranda who had been played on the transfer list by Barca for 5M € who could have been a replacement for Nuno Santos, but Miranda decided to go to PSG instead, where he is probably not getting any playing time.

While I actually didn't want to buy any ready-made players and only go with youth I felt a bit forced to act in the transfer market because I essentially lost my best two players and I didn't feel like my youngsters are really ready yet so I deviated a bit from the play but from now on it's full on trusting my youngsters.

I have certainly felt the quality loss in the squad and am currently only 6th place after 7 games in the league, but only 3 points off the top so nothing is lost yet.
 

Berbaclass

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Looks like ready for some first team football tbh even though he isn't my biggest talent he has now 25 goals in 11 games for the youth team, yeah admittedly 11 in one game but still looks like I should give him some playing time this season.




Hey, he saved two shots, that should earn you a 9.0 rating, no? :D

No idea how he got that rating, had 4 interceptions, no key passes or created CCCs or assists. I think he simply got such a good rating because of the result it seems if the team has a really great result and the goalie doesn't make a mistake he will also get a high rating.
He’s pretty good.
 

Chipper

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Been putting together a list of easiest teams to manage, kind of. It's actually the teams with the biggest advantage in terms of their best starting XI in the game when it starts compared to other teams in their divisions as per Genie Scout. It's not taking expectations into account, any financial disadvantages or advantages for other teams, or squad depth.

Top 25, and there's no surprise who is leading the way:

PSG (France, tier 1)
Dinamo Zagreb (Croatia, tier 1)
Johor Darul Ta'zim FC (Malaysia, tier 1)
Queen's Park (Scotland, tier 4)
Hearts (Scotland, tier 2)
Bangor City (Wales, tier 2 North)
CSA Steaua Bucuresti (Romania, tier 3, group 4)
OFK Pirin Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria, tier 2)
FC Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine, tier 1)
Xanthi (Greece, tier 2)
Volyn (Ukraine, tier 2)
Esbjerg (Denmark, tier 2)
Lillestrom (Norway, tier 2)
Slovan Bratislava (Slovakia, tier 1)
Bayern Munchen (Germany, tier 1)
Ängelholms FF (Sweden tier 4, Vastra Gotalund group)
Red Star (Serbia, tier 1)
Olympiakos (Greece, tier 1)
Red Bull Salzburg (Austria, tier 1)
Cruzeiro (Brazil, tier 2)
Ajax (Holland, tier 1)
Ludogorets (Bulgaria, tier 1)
Amutat Hapoel Ra'anana (Israel, tier 2)
IF Brommapojkarna (Norway, tier 3 North)
Espanyol (Spain, tier 2)

I don't know what the pressure is on PSG to win in Europe or domestic cups for example, and likewise with others here but could be some good teams here to start with to experiment with. Good for me becuase despite being a long-time FM player I'm still that novice when it comes to making my own tactics and that's what I'm going to do.

Bangor City are strangely appealing to me, might go there.

CSA Steaua Bucuresti too, I don't really understand from reading on Google but there's 2 Steaua Bucharests, this one in the third tier with a tiny stadium who claim to be the real one and FCSB who aren't legally allowed to use the "Steaua" name but are recognised by UEFA as the real one with the great history of winning trophies and are the big club in the top division. Might be fun to try and take CSA to glory and finish ahead of the other lot one day.

Of course the opposite applies to the list too, should in theory be some of the hardest teams to overcome in season 1 if one wanted to pick another team in their leagues for a challenge.
 
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Chipper

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Bangor City have 7 Argentinians, 5 Italians, 5 Welsh, 3 Uruguyans, 2 English, a Nigerian, Albanian and Brazilian in their squad.

How's that happening in the Welsh 2nd division? Thought there was something wrong with my game but it's real. Owned by an Italian musician whose son plays for them, previous manager was an Argnetinian World Cup winner, current a former Argentina U20 player.
 

Tiber

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Convinced the board to sign Haaland in year 2. Scored 4 on his debut and hasn't stopped scoring since.

This is going to be an easy save!
 

Chipper

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Think I might be trying to be too clever here, but I'm going to test this:


After it inevitably fails I'll move the CWBs into midfield for a more orthodox look and play around with them and the full backs. Wingers + IWBs (so one is staying wide, one coming inside), inverted wingers + WBs (the same effect, but the other way around), 1 of those combos on one flank + 1 on the other, and dual wide, (winger + wing back).
 

Chipper

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Was too chicken to jump right in with that so started a Premier League game, holidaying with Liverpool for a season.

Why them? It's funny if I mess up their season and lots of people try out tactics with Liverpool, gives me plenty to compare with.

I've seen unbeaten tests so it's not the best and it is easy to win with Liverpool but I'd say this is viable. Gives me confidence to try it out for real now, and it could probably be improved with a little tweaking.









 

Schmeichel's Cartwheel

Correctly predicted Italy to win Euro 2020
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Tried going a season without a transfer window & didn’t sign anyone in January. Finished 3rd in the league, behind Liverpool & City obviously. Won the league cup beating Brighton in the final. Lost to City in the FA Cup semi & got knocked out of the CL by Bayern in the quarter. Overall a decent season. Started the save in a 4-3-3 with Bruno & Pogba as 8’s but Bruno wasn’t contributing as much as I wanted & Greemwood was dreadful on the right so switched to a 4-4-2 diamond with Pogba & van De Beek as mezzalas, both have excelled, Bruno as attacking midfielder & rotating Rashford, Martial, Greenwood & Cavani as my advanced & deep lying forwards. Why use wingers when you’ve got none?

Fred is absolutely horrendous on it so rotated Matic & McTominay as DM. McTominay also covered a couple of games as mezzala when VDB got injured but it didn’t work too well, Bruno at mezzala with Mata at AM was more effective. Shaw, Telles & shockingly Wan-Bissaka were assist machines for me. Maguire also got about 10 goals from headers on corners. Brandon Williams is fantastic backup for Wan-Bissaka, wish I could say the same in real life. Fun save anyway. My targets in the summer are Haaland to replace Cavani a centre back to partner Maguire as Lindelof & Bailly, while better than they are in real life still aren’t quite good enough, & a DM as Matic & McTominay while good, aren’t quite at the level to challenge in Europe. I enquired about Declan Rice & was quoted £128m so the hunt continues.
 

NoLogo

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Due to the stupid winter WC I'm currently running into an insane fixture congestion playing 8 games every month from January straight to the end of April. The injuries are already piling up, and I'm not even fully through February yet, so I had to promote 6 of my youngsters to the first team. Just started a cup game with 3 17-year-olds and one 16-year-old. The youngsters passed the test and we won the game 3-1, pretty happy about that. One of them even picked up the player of the match.

Oh yeah my best player, Nuno Mendes, out for 6 months with a broken lower leg he suffered at the stupid winter WC, which Portugal won though.
 
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Chipper

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Still just playing around with tactics, holidaying for a season. While the previous pic I posted was viable enough to work with wing backs in the DM line and defensive line it's just weird and ugly, innit? Ended up doing what I said I would and got rid of cwbs on attack, moving them into midfield on support.

I don't know, where I'm at now still doesn't feel too much different to the downloaded tactic I was using, like it's not my own work. That was

---------------------------GK (De)--------
IWB (SU)---BPD (De)---BPD (DE)---IWB (Su)
--------------------------DLP (Su)
W (Su)---------------CM (At)----------------W (Su)
------------SS (At)---------------SS(At)-------------
--------------------------------------------------------------

All I've done from that is change the IWBs to conventional WBs and put a conventional striker in there instead of two shadow strikers. SS + F9, SS + T (forward line) and SS + PF (At) all worked well on my test runs.

---------------------------GK (De)--------
WB (SU)---BPD (De)---BPD (DE)---WB (Su)
--------------------------DLP (Su)
W (Su)---------------CM (At)----------------W (Su)
--------------------------SS(At)--------------------------
--------------------------F9 (Su)-------------------------

I tried other forward roles too but they didn't work so well. On the wingers I tried inverted or making them attacking and didn't improve things, nor did changing the CM for a BBM. Would like to make more changes so it feels more different. One other little tweak I did was to enable distribute to playmaker.

Still some stuff to try out:
CDs instead of BPDs
Wide Midfielders instead of wingers
Something else instead of the DLP
Something else instead of the SS

Getting rid of the SS and still being happy with everything would be good, the dowloaded tactic had two SS and was a big feature of it. If I didn't have any at all then it would feel much more like my own thing. AM (At) would be most likely to work as a guess, maybe even a Trequarista, could also try 2 up top.

Still not really altered possession, transition and out of possession settings too much so that could bring a different feel to things too.Did play around with the tempo but it only made results worse.
 
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NoLogo

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Made it through season 3 winning the league again by quite a margin.


Apart from that I only won the domestic super cup and the Taca de Protugal Placard, while losing the Allianz Cup final on penalties.

CL we got to the first knock out round but without our best goal scorer and best defender we were knocked out losing 4-1 away and getting fairly close to a comeback leading at home already leading 3-0 but conceding from a corner just after the second half started and despite throwing everything and the kitchen sink at Inter we just simply couldn't find another goal and were knocked out.

But I think the main problem was the first leg where we looked good in the first half drawing 1-1. In hindsight, I probably tried to contain the result too early. Long story short Lukaku overpowered my defenders twice and we conceded the third fourth goal from a corner after not clearing the ball properly.

Brenner, despite being injured a lot was my best attacking player by a country mile. Retraining him to be a shadow striker really payed off for me.


He is scoring goals for fun and I think he might have even scored more if he wouldn't have picked up a fairly lengthy injury that kept him out for 1 1/2 months and he only got slowly going after that again.

Second best goal scorer was Pedro Goncalves with 18 goals btw, just to make clear what kind of distance there is between my players in goal scoring potential which means I'm also looking a bit blunt in attack if he is out injured or having an off day.

I also played quite a few of my youngsters due to injury problems. So far no real standout performers but a couple of them are really looking promising and ready for a push to the first team. Which might prove vital since about 90% of my starting eleven is wanted by mostly the entire PL and I'm not sure if I'll be able to hold on to all of them, well I'm actually sure I won't be.

Oh yeah I think my biggest talent isn't even at the club yet.


The kid already looks like he will slot right into my starting eleven and I bought him really cheap for like 350k about two years ago and he has developed at a crazy rate and also seems to be already starting for Cruzeiro since this season.

In other news. Manchester United just won the CL with goals from Greenwood (52.), Rashford (54.) and Martial (89.) hitting a dominant City side thrice on the counter. :devil:
 
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Chipper

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Still playing around with stuff. None of the AM, Trequarista or engache variants I tried with a striker were better than SS + a striker. SS + F9 still seemed to work best.

Jumped into 2 striker combos. Dual AFs is mental. Still using Liverpool to test with as a lot of the guys who test tactics online do, particularly someone called knap. Just had Salah and Mane score 94 between them in all comps although F9+SS and a couple of others got more points in the league.

Would be really fun to play the 2x AF and might well do. Easy to build a squad too as you're always looking for the same types of player. Might feel more pure or even realistic to have 2 different roles instead though. Can't imagine there's many managers who instruct a pair of strikers to play exactly the same way as each other.

Anyway, now at this:


Just want to try some stuff with the Dm and central defenders now, goalie too where #I don't anticipate it making too much difference what role you have him set to but we'll see.