I've found a bloke by the name of Bertrand Robert has good returns in the A-League, plays on the left wing for those who are interested.

indeed, i've had plenty of success in the past with french signings to a-league clubs, particularly wingers and attacking midfielders

Bertrand Robert, Buzzegoli, El Khalifi, Vidarsson (don't remember which one)...all good and useful. Chris James too. And I even signed Fabio Quagliarella as a 29yo in FM07 as my marquee because he wasn't getting a game for Sampdoria.

The only way I pulled myself out of my FM08 addiction was through realising that if I kept at it my marks would decrease dramatically (senior year and all) and I got into Xpert Eleven. Which is basically a simplified version online, where you play against people that you know or forum groups of whatever.

Whole bunch of Man United fans from a MySpace group got one sorted, and that is damn addictive. Gives you a chance to brag to people, too.

Football Manager is defo the best out of the three, followed closely by Fifa, with Pro Evo unlucky in last place

my current game i am managing gillingham. we got promoted (through the playoffs) to the championship after the first season. after sitting on the bottom of the table for the first half of the season i picked up shefki kuqi from crystal palace in the mid season transfer window and he scored something like 13 goals in 15 games and almost single handedly dragged us out of the relegation zone. it came down to the very last game of the season where we were 1 point behind hull city to avoid the drop. we drew our game, which would have been enough to keep us up since we would have been ahead on goal difference, but unfortunately they beat stoke city 2-0! bastards!

so now we're back in league 1 and currently sitting in 4th place with a handful of games to go.

Xpert XI is good. it's the main reason FM brought out FM live. But I still prefer FM.

Yeah, gets a bit too in-depth at times, though. My teacher thought I was turning up ill to class, instead I was just putting more thought into how I would set up my starting eleven with two injuries and a suspension, rather than the Crusades.

I too reached FM master status. With Sheffield United. I think within the 40 days i played it i had about 20 days game time which is ugly. Ive been clean for 3 months i think. I took the Blades from mid table championship to a champions league team in 6 seasons or so and then got bored of it. I reckon ill get back into it when 09 comes out.

I used to do that a fair bit with FM when I'd play mates online, sitting scribbling notes in the back of my textbook. I have an entire tetbook of notes from FM07.
mk - you've just got to find a challenge. Take over a Blue square North/south team, things are a lot more even and a lot more difficult there.
btw, was that you who got shouted down on the FM forums for asking for details on FM09?? mk2008??

Nope. The names a little too close for comfort. Better order a hit.

He got shouted down pretty hardcore and sounded a lot like you...'I've played this a lot but i'm bored with it, when's 09 coming out' - (not verbatim)

I'm kind annoyed, I've got no beta invitation for FMO _or_ Fm09, which shits me as I spent about 5 months testing FM 08 for SI.

When they announce it on their website that they're looking for testers you've got to apply for it. That you've done it in the past normally counts against you because they're looking for new opinions each season.
I got up to the finals tage for one of their testing roles, but they wanted me to fly to london for it :(

nah, this was not paid QA testing, but just beta testing, I'd been posting on their forum for a few years, made a few good, lengthy constructive posts, and was contacted by one of their staff/mods to help test it with a select group of the other non-retarded people.

Maybe they are not doing it this year.

The FMO stuff is a lottery, getting sick of seeing randoms with 2008 reg dates taking it as a free game instead of the long term guys who would actually offer some constructive criticsim and testing.

Yeah, I totally gave up on their forums. I used to be on there fairly frequently and found several problems they didn't know about in both 06 and 07. But the maggots on the forums there are just rediculous. You can't ask a fucking question without being shouted down.
I went on their because my stadium expansion was disappearing, I said my game was unpatched because I didn't have time to do so and couldn't be bothered downloading it on dialup.
And they shout at me to use the search function, don't be so lazy (i'm at school three days a week with shit hours and have better things to do than incessantly sit infront of a computer the rest of the time) and that I'm just generally retarded. Naturally I told them to go fuck themselves.

Question: does any find that when you do manager mode in FIFA 08 and you go the A-league that reinaldo socres like 90 goals a season?

Playing FIFA Manager 08 ATM with Arsenal and it seems that 90% of the teams I play use the same 5-3-2 formation and some of the stupidest selections are being made for the wingbacks. Babel, Pennant and Tuncay to name a few. All I have to do is get my wingers dribbling at them and I pretty much have the game in the bag. Is anyone else getting the same thing on their game?

I've heard the AI in the game was a little lacking and I guess that's yet another reason why the game has struggled. In FM the AI is very good, swapping strikers around to throw off your defenders, and there are some very tactically astute managers. However, your Assistant Manager can be a total fucking moron sometimes.

Just suffered the worst loss to Chelsea...Had held them to 0-0 all game, which is quite an achievement considering we're tipped to get relegated this year(playing as spurs in 2019). There are 4 minutes of Injury Time. the clock reads 93:50. Our goalie takes the goal kick. Our DM runs back with the flight of the ball, and is about to take it, unchallenged...He completely misses it, somehow, allowing it to run to their CB, who lofts it down to their AMC who is now unmarked because of my DM going for the ball. He then runs forward a few steps, takes aim, and slots it in to the top corner from 30 yards. We don't even have the time to take the restart, literally the last kick of the game. Horrible way to lose.

On the lighter side, its quite interesting seeing where current players have ended up. For instance, Viduka and Wilkshere are both Youth Coaches at Chelsea, while Muscat is a Coach at Utd. Stevie G is Blackburn's manager.

Edited by Funky Munky: 14/8/2008 08:32:59 PM

Speaking of goalies influences late in the game, I've been finding just that being a problem in my game...if I leave the goalie positioning on "default" for attacking corners, the keeper decides that his contribution is necessary in the opposition's box and we have a nasty habit of then conceding. I don't like to change it to "stay back" because then he doesn't leave the 6 yard box and this makes us in a rather precarious position should we decide to back-pass.

As for your conceded goal Funky, why when it is 0-0 late on and you're hanging onto the game by the tips of your fingers did you not tell the keeper to distribute to a defender so as to hold posession?

[scarcasm]You know gee, I'm a complete noob at this game, why didn't I think of that???[/scarcasm]
The fact that all our defenders were all being practically man-marked by their forwards didn't help.

When they throw four up front you set your defensive line as deep as you can, set your fullbacks forward runs to 'rarely' and waste time. Works for me.

](*,) Sorry, you must have missed it, I was being sarcastic when I said I was a noob at this. I'm aware of how to defend against 4-2-4. Like I said, I'm not exactly new at this. I was just showing how heartbreaking this game can get. Not asking/needing advice.

And i'm jsut saying perhaps your tactics just suck because I've never had that happen to me:P

My tactics that just got a team who were tipped as relegation certainties at the start of the year int 9th, just missing out on Europe? You're right, they do suck :p

I took Redditch who were tipped to come dead last to 11th on the table in the BSP ;)

i joined west brom at the end of the 07-08 season. they ended up coming 21st with only a win between them and sheff utd. stoke and hull also got relgated. i picked up james beattie for about 11 mil, tymoshuk from zenit (complete fluke he wanted to come) for about 20 mil, plessis he has been awesome, gary naysmith for about 4 mil, carney who has been good for us, tommy spurr was another person, and i signed lee sawyer in the latter stages of the transfer period and i have micheal woods coming in january. manchester city was one team that came sown with sunderland and derby. i picked up mpenza for 2.9 mil and he has been firing. i am placed second after 21 or so games. i have about 3 or 4 draws 2 losses and all the rest wins. i am behind manchester city. i was predicted to come 14

Keeper AI/instructions have been pretty bad in FM for a few years now.

On the forums, in the off topic section (where the regulars hang out to avoid the retarded trash from the FML/general questions forum) there is one guy who I think is a newcastle fan. For the last oh.. 3 games he always plays newcastle, always has Michael Owen and always complains because his keeper ignores set instructions and pretty much constantly hoofs it long to Owen. Unsurprisingly it often results in him losing the ball.

I think the keeper going up thing is caused by shifts in the formation and/or substitions, iirc when you swap on a striker, for some reason the keeper was being shifted to a position inside the attacking box for corners for some reason.

i've been playing sin ce 05 so I know, it's really inflexible and shits me. It seems that just generally all the football computer games skimp on the keeper details.

Can't say I noticed that. But I constantly swap my strikers back and forth to throw off the opposition defenders:(