I had decided that I’m going to buy three new players – one each in attack, midfield and defence. Also I had made up my mind that I’m not going to sell anyone at the start of the season. That’s because I want to move away from 4-3-3 and if my new 4-4-2 or 3-5-2 sucks big time, I need to get back to 4-3-3 and I would need my existing wingers.
Firstly, in the attack department, Drogba, Sheva and Kalou are my untouchables. Sheva is a different monster in these games than he is in real life now. Now I need quality strikers to support Drogba and Sheva. I made my bids for Villa (22m), Huntelaar (10m), Podolski (5.25m) and Bojan (4.4m). I wasn’t too keen about Villa myself as I thought I wouldn’t be able to start him in as many games as he wants. You know, in this game too, players get upset when they are not played or played out of position too often unless they’re fine with it. Whereas Huntelaar and Podolski are young strikers who should be looking forward to play and train alongside Sheva and Drogba. In midfield, I went for red hot Modric (4.1m), good old Riquelme (13.75), Mancini (11m) and Quaresma (16.75m). I personally wanted Modric as I’m keen to reduce the average age of the squad. If these bids fail, I thought of going in for more. In defence, I went for Dani Alves (17m), Cicinho (5.5m) and Sergio Ramos (18.75m). Of course my choice here is Alves. In defence, I also thought of providing chances to a promising talent from the reserve squad.
This was the time I had quite a few friendly matches before the start of the season. Though I could have given the friendlies responsibilities to Steve Clarke, I wanted to personally see who is fit, who’s hot and who’s not. I won all the friendly matches very comfortably. To be exact, we scored 18 goals and conceded 4 in all those six matches. In each of these matches, I made clear in my team talk that I wanted us to win. I could have told them to relax and play ball but I wanted us to be sharp and confident when we take on Man Utd in the Community Shield.
The date is 5th August 2007. My real first test. Chelsea vs Man Utd. I had all my tactics ready. I went for a diamond 4-4-2. I had two players marking Ronaldo. Also I tweaked my tactics to ensure that we have more players in the attacking set pieces. I assigned the playmaker role to Lampard, target man role to Drogba and gave Sheva free role to roam around. Man Utd played their 4-4-2 with wide men. Chelsea started very brightly with Sheva scoring within the very first minute. If that shattered the Reds a bit, then came the second blow from Sheva again within 15 minutes. Chelsea made the best of Man Utd panic as Sheva sensationally completed his hattrick in just under 35 minutes. It reminded me of the Chelsea – Barca game where we went 3-0 up in just 20 minutes. At 3-0, Man Utd were pushing up desperately. They got everyone to attack but a swift counter attack from Chelsea gave an easy goal to leave the half time score at 4-0. An amazing half of goal-filled football.
By the start of second half, Fergie had played all his cards in terms of substitutions and formation. By this time, I shifted our tactic to be more defensive and also reduced the tempo of our game. I wanted us to counter attack as much as possible. I swapped Sheva for Mikel and Ashley Cole (injured) for Alex and also had changed the formation to 4-5-1. I did not want to leave anything for chances. I wanted to beat Man Utd, and with some margin. The Reds could not unlock the Chelsea defence despite having all but their keeper on the attack, but conceded two more goals to our counter attacks in the process. Chelsea had just defeated Man Utd 6-1 in the Community Shield. That was the result of my first competitive match in charge of Chelsea. You would expect the fans to go berserk, they did indeed!
I got certain things right but 6-1 is bloody flattering score. Don’t think it’s easy to get such wins. It is MIGHTY difficult against such good oppositions. Before the kick off, I spent about 20 minutes only tweaking the tactics and that alongwith some luck, we ripped them apart. Anyway, 3-1 or 4-1 might have been reasonable scoreline. I’m sure I cannot come up with such nice wins every time. At least I’m rejoicing when it lasts. With just two weeks to go for the transfer window closure, I started getting responses for all the bids I had made. I’m certainly going to sign three of these players – Villa, Huntelaar, Podolski, Bojan, Modric, Riquelme, Mancini, Quaresma, Alves, Cicinho, Ramos.
Most of the players you are looking at are seen as “stars” in the game too. This is in my opinion the only weak point of the game- the exagerrated prices demanded for players.
I recommend:
DL – Chiellini (Juventus)
DC – Criscito (Juventus) – Won Best Defender of the Year in 2009 | Eduardo from Sao Paulo is ok too.
DR/C – Micah Richards – bought him for 57 mil $ and he deserves every dollar.
MC – Steven Defour (Standard) – young, talented and kinda cheap.
AMC – Modric – play him ONLY as AMC. Scores a lot of goals for a midfielder.
ST – Carlos Vela – monster scorer, but pricey.
They ALL are young and have a HUGE potential.
Congrats, BC. In all my days in FM I don’t think I’ve beaten Man Utd 6-1 haha. Although I did beat them 6-4 with West Brom. Still not as good.
What instructions are you setting? I have trouble with this sometimes, because although I can get the goals I find I sometimes conceed more than necessary.
For players, I recommend Sergio Aguero. Absolute gun, in FM and in real life. Hopefully you get Alves, he is quality. And Modric or Riquelme would do great in the side, although when Ballack gets fit you might have too many central midfielders with Essien, Lampard, Ballack, Mikel, (Makelele and Sidwell if you ever would use them), and then your signing.
Hey Nubskeh! I don’t want to sound like I score six goals week in week out. It just happened. In fact, I’ve scored six only a few times. That’s why I said 3-1 or 4-1 would have been a reasonable score. As regards settings, I set individual settings for most of the players, including micro details in attacking and defending set pieces. May be I hit the sweet spot somewhere!
[...] is little interesting for me. Just like Grant, I’m busy in the transfer market for Chelsea. Hope both of us end up with some good moves. Discuss all your transfer rumours here. [...]
Believe Me BC
Football Manager DOES NOT work based on your settings all the time.Sometimes it just happens.Just with a half decent squad you can always win the title too.
I know it won’t. That’s how it is in real life too. For each player there are some strengths and limitations. If you can make the best use of your players’ strengths and expose their weaknesses as little as possible, you can win great things with average squads too. It’s like having a good defender with 15+ ratings in all key areas except tackles where he s just 10. If you set him to hard tackle more often, you’re not getting the best from him. May be he is better, in blocking, jumping, heading and soft tackles but not so much in hard tackles. Say someone like David Beckham who is strong in crosses and weak in dribbling, should not be set to ‘run with ball’ or ‘make forward runs’. He can be set to ‘hold the ball’ and ‘cross often’ to the head or feet depending on the target man’s strength.
So what I’m trying to say is, you can completely screw up a very good team with your bad tactics while you can achieve with average team with spot-on tactics.
Also there is concept of consistency. Somebody with a 14/20 rating with a 18/20 consistency rating is far better than someone with a 16/20 rating with 12/20 consistency rating. Further more when you set the creative freedom for your team at anything above zero, there are going to be cases where they do things on their own to surprise, pleasantly or unpleasantly.
Once again, I’m fine if it does not always work to my plan because that’s how it is in real life too. If it works 7/10 times or 8/10 times I’m fine with it. The trick is to realise when it is not working to your plan and do something about it to minimise the damage. Sometimes, we forget to realise that there is an opponent (human or computer) who can out-think us and make our tactics go waste. Finally, remember that all games are based on random numbers and that’s why they are interesting.
good response BC . . amen
You will find that at the start of the season you are happy to tweak the tactics of each player and even set individual half time and full time talks to players. However as the season progresses you will find these tasks tedious.
Each new version of the game I await with high anticipation, however about 3-4 months in I don’t play anymore.
BLUE_VICTORYAUS
The problem with FM is that it is so addictive that you play it all day all night and actually get an overdose of it. May be you should play the game like I do. In a week, I would play about 3 – 4 FM hours only. And never play for long stretch of time (say 6 hours at a stretch or something).
It’s alot easier said then done. BC. Once I start I cannot control myself.
LOL…
NO, no ,You got it wrong
What i am trying to say is that it is all set up.
You need not care about the settings(about the strength and the weekness’),it always gives you a chance
WELL I GOT A SAY U SHOULD TAKE OUT KALOU AND GET LIONEL MESSI AND/OR WAYNE ROONEY U SAID MESSI ISNT GOOD HES GREAT AT 20 YEARS OF AGE HES DONE ALOT OF THING DIEGO MARADONA HAS DONE IN HIS CARRER MARADONA HIM SELF SAID MESSI WILL BE THE GRETEST AND WILL BECOME THE NEW MARADONA AND KALOU IS GOOD NO DOUGHT BUT I GOT EVRY SINGLE FIFA SOCCER GAME FOR PS2 I ONLY USE CHELSEA FC I GOT THE FORWARDS DROGBA,SHEVA AND MESSI THATS A GRAT TEAM U SHOULD CONSIDER THIS IF U AGREE WITH ME OOR DISAGREE IM ME AT ARG_MESSI@HOTMAIL.COM
CONSIDER MESSI U REALLY SHOULD I HATE MANCHESTER UNITED AND I HATE ARSENAL ARNT YALL TIRED OF COMIN IN 2ND AND/OR 3RD WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS ITS TIME TO GET OUR CROWN BACK WE NEED TO SHOW THE WORLD WHAT WE CAN DO I AM 16 AND REALLY WOULD LOVE TO PLAY FOR CHELSEA FC PROFRSIONALLY JAJA WELL LETS BECOME CHAMPIONS YET AGAIN
——–BLUE UNTIL I DIE ———— PEACE