Girl vs Football Manager 13

by Nicole  18/08/2013 | 4:01 10 Posted in Football Manager 13, Other Stuff, Tactics 

Football is a boys game. No, really, it is. Sure, girls play football in school and there are womens’ leagues all over the world. But there’s a reason we talk about football WAGs and not HABs, why a large proportion of women complain about their boyfriends/husbands dropping everything for the sports channel when a good match comes on, why in school young boys are encouraged to go out and play football during breaks while girls are left to chat on the bleachers. Of course there are female fans, of the die-hard and more casual variety, but most of us are happy to watch or not watch, it doesn’t really matter.  Similarly, Football Manager is mostly played by guys.

Until now.

Or, well, I suppose in the rest of the world it is. But I’m most decidedly not a guy, and I’ve become sucked into FM13. Having owned the game for about six months now, I’ve played through a few times…and I fail pretty dismally. I have a tendency to lose more matches than I win in particular, which I blame on FM13 being very complicated and my lack of understanding about football tactics (and football in general). Hardly surprising when you consider that I only got into football about six months ago, and that was because of FM. So I’d like to ask for help from all of you, to help me make it to the end of a season without losing more games than I win… and to keep me from being fired within the first two seasons! It’d be a first for me! Comment below and help me out, I need it!

I’ve just started a new career using the 13.3.3 database, and working at Fulham in the English Premier League.

First thing to do in a new club is to go look at the squad (after the obligatory meetings and before the press conference).  It looks like I’ve got a strong striker, attacking midfield left, attacking midfield right and centre defender. So my tactic is going to have to be fairly attacking then, using wingers or inside forwards.

My senior team also seems to have a couple of still developing and very promising players: Kerim Frei and Alexander Kacniklic (both AMRs) and Emmanuel Frimpong (a DM/CM on loan from Arsenal).

In the reserve and youth teams, there are a couple of promising players. By far, the kid with the most promise is my 15 year old goal keeper from Swaziland. Other than him, there’s Mousa Dembele (15 year old striker) and Cauley Woodrow (17 year old striker). There’s a few others showing 3.5 stars in my reserve team, but these are the three to watch.

Question number one for you guys then: how do you decide who to keep in a reserve/U18 team? I’m tempted to go through and just cull anyone with a potential of less than 2.5 stars, maybe even 3. Is that a bad idea, even when I’m working off a decent AM with 17 in JP?

So the board offered me a budget of 778 000 for wages, and 4 million for transfers. 5 million isn’t going to get me anywhere on the transfer market, I have to say. Not when it looks like I’ll need at least one back-up poacher and two decent midfielders since Steve Sidwell has prefered player moves that kind of screw up his BWM/DLP stats and Giorgas Kangounis (my AP) has PPMs that are awkward to say the least (dwells on ball and argues with referee). Question number 2, then: how important are the PPMs? Would you run Steve Sidwell as a BWM/DLP, even when he has the PPMs of an AP? Or should I sell him on and look for someone better?

But before I start fiddling with the transfer market, let’s take a look at the rest of the set up. First step, to completely revamp the staff. Every time I open a FM13 game, I’m appalled at the level of the staff there. I hope it’s not a real life reflection of the people who are working in these clubs…

So, first up is a new Assistant Manager. Although Michael Lindeman is a pretty good AM, I don’t like him because he has pretty crap JA and JP stats and some shaky man management skills. Also, as a fitness trainer, he’s just rendering my second fitness coach useless to the Senior and Reserve teams. Although given who I eventually decide to go with, that last one is a bit of a moot point.

Tord Grip is a great AM with one glaring weakness…he is a crap coach. Seriously. I can get 3.5 stars out of him in Tactics, and that’s it.  But he fits the bill for everything else except motivating (but by all accounts, no AM ever gets the motivating talks right anyway…). What do you look for in an AM?

I changed every other staff member, except for my Chief Scout (who is vastly overpaid but I’m struggling to find decent scouts so I can’t afford to release him) and one of the Goalkeeping coaches. All I’m finding, incidentally, is English scouts, mostly with poor adaptability. There’s only one or two non-English scouts with JP/JA stats above 15, and I have to pay through the nose for them. Plus, I simply cannot find a decent tactical coach willing to talk to me. My best find is a 3.5 star guy for my main team and a 4 star for my youth team. I guess I’ll have to send him on a coaching course asap…  With all the shuffling, I still managed to reduce my staff budget by about £4000 p/w, which will reduce the drain on finances.

Right, that’s about long enough for the opening set up, I think. Next time I’ll look at the transfer window, although any suggestions you’d like to make now will surely be of great help!!!

I’ve got £ 5.1m to spend, plus whatever I can get for Simon Davies (£1 mil) and maybe Hugo Rodellega (£3.4 mil) (so about £ 9.5 mil in total), and I need four players: two in midfield to cover D.L.P/A.P/BWM roles and a striker to cover the Poacher role (and a second to cover D.L.F if I sell on Rodellega). Alternatively, since of my three tactics only one calls for 2 strikers and my top two strikers can work in a Complete Forward role), do you think I need to have two back-ups or can I get away with one?

I’ve got one last questions before I sign off…. Was anyone else having the same problems as me with finding appropriate tutors. It seems like every club I load has all its best players with inappropriate PPM’s for the role, rendering them all but useless as tutors out of fear they’ll pass on the PPM (and because they’re getting on in age, they’re really reluctant to unlearn something).

Thanks for the help!