The MLS is a league that even most hardcore FMers struggle to manage in, but here’s your guide of how to manage in the good old US of A!
I will be running through the drafts, trades, how the league is structured and much more.
Every year, around January when the arrival of the Winter Update is imminent, I start asking myself the same question, and this year is no different; who should I manage on football manager 2019? Now that the game is fully-updated what long-term definite save do I do? Do I start a Lower League Management saga, or a campaign to revive a Sleeping Giant? Do I manage in top 5 Leagues with their guaranteed riches, or in one of the more obscure ones and try to build them up to greater glory? All these are the questions that go through my mind in the month of January.
Sometimes restarting multiple times with different clubs, it might take weeks before settling on a save. This year the process has been somewhat easier as I finally realised what I enjoy the most in all my saves; to develop players from youth academy to the heights of continental football. Seeing these youngsters progress, sometimes rising up the leagues with the club, gives me the ultimate feeling of reward. This article is not only an informal guide to my philosophy of youth development but also a guide to those with less time or patience to start their own golden generation and rather jump into a club already possessing one at the start of the season.
Typically, when you search for a new player to join your team on Football Manager, age can be a big factor in whether or not you will sign them. I want to create an experiment that looks at two identical players in terms of attributes, but completely different ages. I want to find out whether age is a defining moment in the signing of a player.
In this particular experiment, I am going to create a player who would be suited to a lot of clubs. I will make him English, he will be 182 CM, either footed, a striker and weigh 80kg. I have made sure the player have no preferred moves.
Christian Pulisic playing for the USMNT
The young American star, Christian Pulisic, joined English Premier League side, Chelsea, on the 2nd January for a fee of $73million, smashing the record for an American player. Pulisic will return to Dortmund until the end of the season, beginning his Chelsea tenure in the summer of 2019. We decided to sim three seasons of the young American (starting in 2019-20) and here are the results…
Having secured the Serie C title by 16 points, my objective in the 2019/20 season was simply to avoid relegation. This post will cover the pre-season and first thirteen games of the Serie B season.
Although I didn’t have any philosophies on which the Board would judge me, I had my values that I wanted to maintain in my second season. These would be:
Since it was first introduced in FM2014, the role of the Wide Target Man has always fascinated and brought out the tactical tinkerer in me, for better or worse. Sometimes I get an idea that takes over whichever save I’m doing, as I try hard to make it work. Most of the time it leads to a lot of wasted time playing around with the tactics screen and the later disappointment of watching game after game and seeing none of the results which I hoped for. My particular weakness has always been the exotic roles in football manager games. I created my share of Raumdeuter, Libero and Enganche tactics. The Wide Target Man is no exception. While my previous exotic experiments led to inconsistent results at best, given all that I have seen from current Football Manager match engine and the revamped tactical interface, I have high hopes that the “Big man” on the wing role is at its best since 2014. Given the right player it could be just be missing ingredient to bring life back to the fallen giant or to build a tactical system to directly counter the high pressing and possession-heavy trend in football today.
So we’re at Christmas! Usually in a Football Manager game this is the mid-point of the season and usually at the point where we get a jump in player numbers (at Christmas) and then people get time off of work/school so they play a bit more. At this time I’m going to look at the records in the game on the official SI Games website to see who’s holding the records and whether any of you can beat these feats.
I will also be looking at these records at the end of the season to see if anyone can top any of the records. I myself will be (hopefully) submitting a few records to the site throughout the year to engrave my name in history.
At this link you can see all the records for yourself, but I’m going to look at a few specific records to showcase the level of competition this year:
https://sortitoutsi.net/records/fm2019
In my previous posts I spoke about how I evaluated the squad at my disposal and then, how I shaped this squad into three systems.
Here I will look at how the season played out, then I’ll go into more detail about my usage of the 4-1-4-1 DM Wide, the 4-4-2. I’ll analyse how my attacks are built from the back, whilst also analysing the team in transition and also out of possession.
I’ll round off by analysing my usage of the 4-4-1-1 system versus Sambenedettese.
Score goals while not conceding any from counter-attacks or set pieces. Simple enough, right? Continue reading
Following my initial post which outlined the rebuilding work at US Triestina in Serie C, this follow-up article will describe the systems I used in my first season. Suffice to say, performances were excellent and after an inauspicious start, I was delighted with the results.
My target for the season as determined by the Board was to achieve a play-off spot in Serie C, which required a top ten finish. I was very confident that I could deliver this, and more.
In this post I will evaluate the existing squad members and explain how I put it all together into three different systems.
