Football manager 2015

[Norgy]

I'm on my third season in Norway, and miracles are still happening. After winning the double after promotion with Fredrikstad, the team managed, even after hemorraging players to bigger clubs abroad, to get past the hurdles of Legia Warszawa, Sheriff Tiraspol and Red Bull Salzburg to land a place in the Champions League group stage. This should shore up the finances for next season. I am currently on the way to another double, mostly because all the competitors in the top in the league don't get results in the final 10 games, while I have some uninspiring wins. With 4 games to go, Fredrikstad are crowned champions and have a cup final waiting.

The group stage in the Champions League was tough so far.
A wholly undeserved 2-1 win at home against Juventus (thanks to set piece marvels and a sainted goalkeeper), a 0-1 defeat at Dortmund (should've been 0-7 or so) and an unlucky 1-1 away at Galatasaray. I am mainly just concerned with not ending last. I've sold almost an entire team in the interval of two seasons. Granted, I have bought a few players too, but I try to bring through more players from the youth team. The club is running at a healthy profit, and I just turned down a job at AS Roma.

After much trial and error, I've found a good formation and a tactic flexible enough to cope against better teams and worse teams. I play very much the possession football now. I played more direct in my first two seasons, as I had more pace for the final third. Now I have few pacy players, but lots of good passers and some creative players and a penalty box striker who scores frequently. So I switched. We play short passes, work the ball into the box, exploit the flanks and look for overlaps. And turn up the tempo and put pressure on the opponents. I start with the mentality "standard" or "control" against Norwegian teams, "counter" or "defensive" against teams like Dortmund and Juventus. What may seem odd, is that I instruct the team to play narrower, given that they are expected to exploit the flanks. That's where the short passing and overlaps come in. Full backs bomb forward and have more assists than my wingers. The formation is simple. A wide 4-1-2-3 with wingers. I find that the defensive midfielder balances things, but needs to be a hard worker and with good pace and strength. It's not a "win everything" tactic for any team, but it works for the players I have at my disposal, and I don't think I have seen many tactics being this efficient at grinding out a result even against teams just defending for their lives.

[The Larch]

For the ones interested, MP mode for FM works reasonably well. We've already played two sessions and tomorrow is our third, although we had to start over last week because our first session crashed and we had not saved it, which was a pity because I gave Arsenal and Chelsea two supreme rodgerings in the first two games (7-3 against Arsenal in the Charity Shield and 5 -3 against Chelsea in the season opener. Yes, my team concedes a lot but it's a bloody sledgehammer in attack, Agüero is a demi god in this version of the game).

The MP mechanics are fairly easy. Each player plays on his own, but a couple of tweaks must be made to make the experience fun for everyone. For instance, a timer has to be set to make the turns advance when all but one or two players are done, to avoid having somebody manually scouting the Brazilian third division and holding the game back for everybody else, and an option must be chosen so all games in the same day are played simultaneously, to avoid making some people wait too long until it's their turn. All in all, it's very enjoyable.

[Norgy]

Colour me interested.

[The Larch]

Also, the Classic Mode in FM2015 is the best suited for MP, it simplifies lots of stuff and makes the game much swifter.

[Norgy]

Classic mode? 

I need my theories and deep (and usually seriously flawed) tactics to work wonders.

[The Larch]

Classic mode? 

I need my theories and deep (and usually seriously flawed) tactics to work wonders.

Classic mode is a toned down version of the full game, simplifying lots of the micro management aspects. No locker room speeches, no hiring of single scouts and coaches (you have a head scout in charge of all the scouting, the assistant manager deals with the training, and so on), much less press interaction, no need to train specific formations, etc. It makes for a much smoother MP play, as there's less stuff to worry about between matches, while keeping the essentials.

[Josephus]

Sunderland needs Defoe

[The Larch]

We just had the third MP session. My City squad keeps steamrolling all oposition, next session we'll begin with the Champions League's group stage, I will have to play Benfica, Monaco and some other team I can't remember. The only glitch is that there was a weird CTD when I was preparing the last game before we'd finish the session (against Newcastle) and, when I was preparing the starting XI (I was doing some rotations to save some starters for the mid week European game) and giving the players specific instructions, it crashed. I had to re-start the game and, when I rejoined it and went back to the Newcastle game the starting XI was a mess (players out of position, players in the field that were not supposed to be playing...), I couldn't give any orders to the players, change their positions or make substitutions, I was watching the game as an spectator without being able to intervene. Luckily I still won, but it could have been frustrating.

Regarding the other players, the one handling Man Utd is suffering a horrendous injury plague, his defence is a mess and his strikers seem to have been cursed by a gipsy witch, as he has only scored one goal in like 4 matches so far. The Arsenal player has been the most active one, dealing away with plenty of players he disliked, signing a lot of new players, mostly central defenders, and establishing a radical 3 man defence (with no holding midfielder whatsoever) that I fear is going to be his downfall. Today the Chelsea player joined the game, but only after ousting Mourinho once he had depleted his transfer funds by signing Khedira and Cuadrado (life imitates art?).

[Josquius]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu. I just won 4-1 in a important game.....and then it crashed before the next one

[Josquius]

I hope there's a patch soon.
Too much woodwork hitting and way too much instances of players whacking the ball into each other

[Josephus]

I just started a game with new update.

I lost 5 players to injuries in first two friendlies.

[Norgy]

I find that the game's working as it should. Yes, I lose players to injuries when I over-train them, and you'll end up with lots of deflections playing teams sitting back. Get your set-pieces in order, and you'll score anyway.

[katmai]

I'm always looking for best set piece setup, any suggestions norgy Von norgemeister?

[Norgy]

I'm always looking for best set piece setup, any suggestions norgy Von norgemeister?

Strikerless has some ideas about how to prevent conceding silly goals from set pieces and how to make the most of your own. I'd recommend reading other articles there as well, as this guy really does his homework when it comes to FM. His strikerless formation is a life-saver when all you have with any attacking skills are attacking midfielders.

http://strikerless.com/2014/12/07/using-set-pieces-to-break-open-a-match-and-preventing-your-opponent-from-doing-so/#more-1044

[Josephus]

Bookmarked. Thanks