Football Manager 2013

I also upgraded to FM15 with the Steam Summer Sale today.

Started my standard first game of bottom tier English club. This time I went with Whitehawk. The formation I ended up stumbling my way into with my complete tactical ineptness. Biggest weakness is my defensive line, but I couldn't find any free agents that were an improvement. On the plus side, my midfield players are fantastic.



The first few league games were a bit wild. In three games scored 8 and gave up 8. But things have settled down since then, going 6-2-1 after tinkering with the formation a bit to get where it is in the above screenshot. Before I had tried a 4-4-2 Diamond, but it didn't seem to work well, so I dropped the AMC to the MC position.



The overall results. If you ignore the goals from the first three games I'm at 20:9 for goals for and against.

 
madviking said:
3-1-4-2 with a b2b and an advanced playmaker in the midfield. anchorman dm to stymie attacks. i like the poacher + AF combo up top.
Click to expand...

I'll give that a try tomorrow and have my team train that tactic. Poacher/AF has been working great, Mills has just been on fire so far, and Robinson has knocked a few goals in too.
 
Well, my Everton save file got corrupted, so started unemployed with the same coach, took a job at Barnsley. Haven't started the season itself yet, but so far things look good. I'm trying to play a more direct brand of soccer. Using a 4-4-2 flat for the first time in forever. LB and RB set to WB(A), standard CDs and GK. CML is a BBM(S) and one of my stronger players, with the CMR set to CM(D) and an absolute beast on defense. Wide mids set to WM(S), playing overlap heavily with my WB(A). Strikers paired as a AF(A) and F9(S), so far been a deadly combo though I've only played friendlies up to this point. I'll play my first few matches then upload some screenshots.
 
madviking said:
i might be concerned about how to defend teams who play wide. i guess you kinda have to do possession? or counter?
Click to expand...

Any suggestions for team instructions?
 
SuperBeaverInc. said:
Any suggestions for team instructions?
Click to expand...

lemme spitball some ideas (note: i play with two forms of the same 4-2-3-1 formation so i may be of limited assistance here)

your defenders are gonna have a lot to do. in lower leagues i'm not sure if this is such a great idea but since your defenders are so bad, sticking an extra midfielder should make it less bad, if it is indeed bad.

strikers should be pretty fluid. allow them to roam from position.

center mids should be able to dribble wide? to help the wide mids? AP should get further forward to link up with the striker?

play around with having some defenders be D and some be cover.

defenders should mark closely and close down closely.

screw around and have a sweeper keeper, why not?

Code: 
        ST(AF) ST(P)

ML(W) MCL(B2B) MCR(AP) MR(W)
           DM(DLP)
     DCL(D) DC(C) DCR(D)

A - ST, ST, MCR
S - ML, MCL, MR
D - DCL, DC, DCR, DM, GK
 
Switched up to the 3-1-4-2, I'd say the results were fairly decent.



Before:

6-3-2, 28 goals for (2.54/game), 17 against (1.54/game), 54.5% win percentage

After:

18-7-4, 61 goals for (2.1/game), 29 against (1/game), 62.1% win percentage


I basically had the title guaranteed with three games left. Not officially, as I was only 9 points ahead, by my goal differential was so huge that I couldn't be caught.
 
hm. the average GD/game increase only by 0.1 on a limited initial sample size. but defense certainly tightened up as the GA/game went down a lot. getting better strikers could help with increasing GF/game.

but i'm glad to see that it worked so well!
 
Second season update.

Finished in 8th place in Vanarama Conference. At one point in the season I was actually leading the league.



Looking at the fixture list paints a picture.

Spoiler :

First third, everything going great. No problems. First 12 games undefeated, 1 loss in first 16. 9-6-1 league record.



Spoiler :

Midseason, the wheels fall off. Clearly the AI had figured out how to counter me, but being stubborn I kept trying to make it work. Only three league wins in this stretch. 3-9-3 league record.



Spoiler :

Finally I change things up. Moved one MC to an AMC advanced playmaker, things immediately turned around. Given how well the team played after this, had I changed things up earlier I probably could have picked up enough points to sneak into at least the last playoff spot. 8-5-2 league record.



Next season need to work on conceding less.
 
having three in the back will probably lead to you conceding a bunch.

i've almost found that having fewer centerbacks is better as the probability that one screws up (by allowing a player onside, for example) decreases. for my 4-2-3-1 formations, i have the fullbacks on attack (CWBs). my two centerbacks just sit around back and, with a good offside trap, you can defend pretty well.
 
Update after three more seasons of playing as Whitehawk.

2016-17
Spoiler :

After the previous season, was hopeful going in that I could get promoted. Things went well, challenged for the title up until the end of the season. I was consistently between 0 and 2 points behind Hartlepool for the last 10 matches or so, but they never slipped up so I wasn't able to close any ground on them. On the plus side, I won the FA Trophy this season, appropriately enough beating Hartlepool in the final. Won the promotion playoffs, entered Football League.




2017-18

Spoiler :

First season in the Football League was rough. Whitehawk are in real life a fairly ambitious club. If you went back to Football Manager 2011, you would have to go all the way down to tier 9 to find them. So as you can imagine, I don't really have much reputation, meaning the quality of players I was able to attract wasn't the best. Struggled most of the season, only just avoiding relegation at the very end. Doesn't help that Crawley managed the highest number of points for a relegated League 2 team in every season played in this save so far.




2018-19

Spoiler :

This was an interesting season. Things started out alright. By this point I've shifted to a 4-4-2 Diamond Wide, and attracted some decent players, and a midtable finish would have been a good result for us. We were floating around between 13th and 17th, and I was expecting to stay around that area.

But then something happened. First, the final league results:




Amazingly, we got promoted. But how did a lower half League 2 team suddenly go on a winning streak and get itself promoted?

Well, around August, one of my scouts was searching in Wales. He finished his assignment, and gave me his report. It was mostly uninteresting, but one thing jumped out. He had found an 18 year old Welsh striker playing for Aberystwyth, who at current wasn't really anything special. However, his potential was through the roof. I managed to buy him for a mere $525.

Here are his stats and report at the end of the season.




Within a few weeks of the start of the season, he was starting for me. He still wasn't anything amazing yet, as can be demonstrated by the first half results.



But around January, something suddenly clicked. Terry Jones became unstoppable, and started scoring goals with ease, and his attributes started climbing.



Terry Jones pretty much lifted the team on his back and carried them all the way to League 1. 41 games played, 26 goals, 10 assists, 7.29 average rating. And that is with ~15 games of mediocrity at the start of the season.

League positions chart, with blue line marking Terry's emergence.



Basically, I hit the jackpot. I got promoted a bit sooner than I had wanted, as I had hoped to strengthen up defensively before maybe getting promoted next season.

I will also have to see how long I can keep hold of him. The big clubs don't seem to have taken notice of him yet, but once they do I'm sure they will come calling. At least I should be able to get a good payday out of them, but I want to try and keep him around for as long as I can, obviously.
 
i think you can hold on to him. i'd be worried about him refusing to sign a new contract or for him to want to move onto a bigger club. i'd worry once get starts getting national team caps, i guess.

edit: i guess i should say that on my end, my Red Star FC save is going aight-ly. i finished my first season after winning champions league a few days ago. (for me, the game lost its luster once i won champions league; something that was a much longer term goal of mine) anyway, i won ligue 1 for the third time in a row, besting monaco on gd.

the new season is going kinda poorly. i can defend anymore and my team has become (frustratingly) inconsistent. a good 3-2 victory versus psg one week and a 3-0 drumming at bourdeaux where i had exactly 0 shots on goal. my striker, in particular, has become kinda meh after i signed him to a new £120k/week deal. in december, i'm closer to fourth than i am to second and i'm in the middle of a pretty bad injury party.

on the plus side, an awesome youth intake classes/two amazing regen poaches means i am set with 3 central defenders, 2 midfielders, a keeper and a winger... france is fun! so many great regens!

Spoiler Ricardo Colonnette :

Spoiler Benoit Jean :

Spoiler Denis Brunet :

Spoiler Rifa Randriawhatever :

Spoiler El Hadji Fall :

Spoiler Alpha Didi :

Spoiler Richmond Essien :
 
Completed several more seasons, might do a recap later. But I just had to share what is perhaps my greatest FM achievement so far.



I won the Capital One Cup with a team in the Championship. Dat 90' equalizer.
 
I won the Champion's League two times in a row (in FM15) with Feyenoord. Although I have quite some FM years under my belt (starting when it was still CM), this week I figured out that I just can't stand losing to the AI. Winning the CL with this team is quite absurd, but the first time I won my group and got an easy pairing. So what do you do when you reach the semis and can't stand losing to the AI... you revert to save scumming like you're 12 years old. This season I got to the quarter finals with ease, and I just had to... so I faced Barcelona in the finals for the second time in a row.

Now, maybe something changed in the ME in the two months between these two finals, but this time it was very annoying. It's not that this team was too weak to win the thing (since eventually I won) but the Barca players are simply better. The annoying part: this means that every time two opposing players are close, the Barca player simply wins the ball. Graphically this is shown as a shoulder press, so all you see are your players tumbling and tumbling and tumbling like they're all Arjen Robben. Good thing I have two 4 star CD. Anyway, ten reloads and too much time wasted I got the cup. Never doing that again. Unfortunately the domestic league is too boring with this team. I'm not sure if I'll start with another team or try for a 10+ seasons run with this team.

I have to say that this is a decent team to start with, as there are several high potentials in the first team.

Quite funny btw, the thing that triggered this save scumming was a conversation with my best player. He wanted to leave because he wanted to win the CL... so I promised him we would win. And winning made him decide to stay... but the next day Monaco paid his limited transfer fee of 60M euro.
 
I stopped watching the games and went back to the text messages as I found it quite frustrating watching the weird plays where a striker clears in back to the defence etc.

In my last game I won my two CL and Europa League qualifying matches before the group stage normally but if I had lost I would have been extremely tempted to reload as it would have felt like the entire previous season was a waste.
 
It is a waste in a sense. I'm not sure if every match is winnable by reloading, but it almost seems that way (which also explains some absurd draws and losses...). Anyway, watching and reloading was such a fun-suck that I'd rather lose in the quarters instead.

But.

By now I loathe Iniesta enough to never, ever lose a match against him ever again. So here's to wishing I'll never get paired with Barca again...

Suarez is a close second, but he isn't a very likeable chap to begin with.
 
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