FM2009 - The thread, we still need one.

[Viking]

To boast. I bought regen Esteban Defender/Wing Back (Right) from Man City for €8,5M halfway through the 2018-19 season. He played 16 games out of 19 and was promptly bought back by Man City for €25M.

Now I need a new Right Defender.

[Liep]

I had never figured that nickname out if you hadn't made this thread.

[Viking]

From the Torygraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/leagues/premierleague/4958515/Fantasy-Championship-manager-becomes-football-reality.html

Fantasy Championship manager becomes football reality
Ask anyone. Football Manager is more than a computer game.


By Sandy Macaskill
Last Updated: 9:32PM GMT 08 Mar 2009


Formerly known as Championship Manager, FM started life as 500 lines of computer code written by two brothers, Paul and Oliver Collyer, back in 1985 on a farm in Shropshire. It has since evolved into a tool of the football trade which can claim to have predicted the rise of Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney, to name just two. Scouts add to it, agents want their clients on it, a Premier League club had adopted it into their transfer policy.

Of course, for over one million people who are expected to purchase FM 2009, and for those who already have it, it is simply a way of pretending to be in charge of a football club, buy and sell players, win trophies.

It also makes financial sense. According to Sports Interactive (SI), the game's developers, many of those who bought FM 09 on its release in November are still playing on it now; months of entertainment for £30 represents rather good value in a recession.

One of the reasons for FM's success (it only got knocked off the No 1 spot in the PC Charts last week) is that it transcends traditional views on computer games. It makes a mockery of the conviction that computer games are for wonks, schoolboys and the socially challenged.

That the game now allows female managers to be created shows that even [italics] girls play it, while its ability to inspire devotion is borne out by England cricketer Matt Prior, who became obsessed with the game during the England tour of Sri Lanka in 2007.

"I know," Prior wrote in his column for the BBC, "I'm a grown man and, honestly, computer games are not normally my thing - but it's so addictive!"

As with any addiction, there are side-effects. It is not unknown for those who play to give press conferences in the shower in the morning, or experience guilt at omitting players from the big matches, but more seriously, fixation with the game has apparently been cited in 35 cases divorces.

At the heart of it's popularity, though, is the realism. SI employ 1,500 researchers around the world, with a scout at every club in Britain in the top four leagues, to compile data on the 380,000 players and staff listed in their database, so that rather than playing with randoms, players manage something close to reality.

It is perhaps unsurprising, as a result of this realism, that the game should at some point dovetail with the real sport. Legend has Harry Redknapp saying in jest that he was reassured by the stats on Football Manager when he was asked by the press to explain why he had just signed a relatively unknown.

But if that was a joke, gradually more managers and scouts have owned up to playing. The chief scout who headed up Jose Mourinho's "Opponent Observation Department" at Chelsea, Andre Villas Boas, is a self-confessed reformed addict of the game, while others actually began contacting FM's developers for information on players.

"Stories started coming through that managers were using the game and that it was being used inside football," Miles Jacobson, the game's Studio Director, told The Daily Telegraph. "We get regular phone calls from international managers asking about players." When Laurie Sanchez took over as coach of the Northern Ireland national side in 2004 for instance, Sanchez called SI for the number of their head Northern Ireland researcher for insider information about players in the local leagues. "And low and behold a couple of them got picked," Jacobsen says.

"We are able to put the seeds into peoples heads. We are incredibly proud and humbled by the fact that it has become part of the football world." If managers only made underground, furtive forays to the developers, that ended last year when Everton went public, paying for total access to the developers' database which is now used as part of the club's scouting network. That David Moyes might have used a computer game to scout Republic of Ireland under-21 right back Seamus Coleman, for example, does sound rather absurd. But as one agent put it: "If it helps to identify players that they have not heard of, so that they can send a scout along to watch, why not?"

Top tips for the future:
Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi are just two of the players that FM has correctly predicted will rise to super-star status. The FM database currently has 13 players who are expected to turn into world class players. None of them are British. Two to watch are Martin Galvan, the 16-year-old Mexican striker who currently plays for Cruz Azul, and Mamadou Sakho, the defender who captains his Paris Saint Germain despite only being 18-years-old.

The nearly men:
For every Rooney, there is a Kevin Street. Disciples of the game used to swear by Street, the midfielder who was almost guaranteed to always turn into an England international. His electronic meteoric rise hasn't quite mirrored real life, as Street is plying his trade at Altringham. Tommy Svindal-Larsen was another mis-fire. The Norwegian was one of the best players in the early versions of the game, which even earns a credit on his wikipedia page. In reality he never lived up to the hype.

[Pedrito]

As with any addiction, there are side-effects. It is not unknown for those who play to give press conferences in the shower in the morning, or experience guilt at omitting players from the big matches, but more seriously, fixation with the game has apparently been cited in 35 cases divorces.

a friend of mine is almost there!

L.

[bogh]

I bought this on a whim and it's been eating away my free time and personal life since.

Currently trying to lead 1. division Lyngby FC to better things, but hampered somewhat by the extreme suck of the club finances. I've been doing OK in the league (third, just below promotion spots and have exceeded the managements expectations on virtually all accounts). I am trying to sell enough players to keep the place somewhat floating, but any tips on that? Any tips in general for an almost complete novice.

[Viking]

Bogh, you seem to be doing fine. Winning promotion and keeping the squad happy, that's doing ok. If you need more cash you can either

A) play attacking football in the Superliga and staying up.
B) aggressively scout youngsters, sign the good ones and then sell them with sell on percentages to higher prestige clubs.
C) aggressively scout adults, sign the best ones you can get for free and then sell them on to better clubs for high money fees.

Don't forget to hire the best possible scouts, physios and coaches. If you want details I'll give you what you need.

[bogh]

I can't seem to sell my players - I've got a pretty bloated rooster and have put quite a few on the transfer-list (slashing their prices to a fraction of their value), but no bids come in. Sending around offers to clubs does nothing either. Is there some trick I am missing?

[Viking]

I can't seem to sell my players - I've got a pretty bloated rooster and have put quite a few on the transfer-list (slashing their prices to a fraction of their value), but no bids come in. Sending around offers to clubs does nothing either. Is there some trick I am missing?

If you are desperate, hold a dutch auction. Make lower and lower offers until somebody bids. Or you give them a free transfer. But you have to play the player you are trying to get rid of.

[Norgy]

I restarted after my Fiorentina game got ridiculously easy.

I also seem to manage to transform my own tactical ideas better into FM tactics in this version than ever before. Which is nice, and makes managing even Accrington Stanley fun.

[Saladin]

I'm trying to resist this game.. Got enough to do already...  :'(

[bogh]

I'm trying to resist this game.. Got enough to do already...  :'(

It certainly is a massive time-sink.

I restarted my Lyngby-game and applied the lessons I learned in the first one. In the final game of the first season, we managed to secure second place in the first division via a superior goal score and was promoted. Now it's near the end of the second season and I am two places and nine points above relegation, but with six very hard games ahead of me.

Pretty much every other team in the Super League has a couple of players that are worth more than my entire team combined. My stingy management has lifted us out of the financial hole, however and I've signed three talented (but so far somewhat underperforming) Brazilian kids via free transfer. I am betting that they will become very strong players as they adapt and learn the lingo. Depending on the overall situation, I'll probably sell one or two or keep them all if they perform and I've got a solid result in sight (cup trophy or similar).

[katmai]

yeah Sallie, these guys are making me tempted to pick it up..quick question is next edition not slated till Oct or so?

[Saladin]

I'm trying to resist this game.. Got enough to do already...  :'(

*snip*

See if you can pick up some players from the Allsvenskan or Superettan in Sweden, I've managed to sign players from there in the 2008 for free & very modest fees. Players that could hold their own in the English League One.

[Pedrito]

yeah Sallie, these guys are making me tempted to pick it up..quick question is next edition not slated till Oct or so?

They usually release the new version in October or November. But stay away if you don't want to gain a very bad habit: i'm playing the game's various iterations since February 1996, CM2, the first game I've ever bought on CD-ROM format.
Aaahhh, memories.... 

L.

[katmai]

They usually release the new version in October or November. But stay away if you don't want to gain a very bad habit: i'm playing the game's various iterations since February 1996, CM2, the first game I've ever bought on CD-ROM format.
Aaahhh, memories.... 

L.

Oh i've been playing since CM2 as well, haven't bought this edition  yet is all.