As promised...season update (even though I may be the only one who cares):

May 18th 2009

Serie A Final Standings

AC Milan (79)
Roma (78)
Inter (75)
JUVENTUS (71)

Champions League football for me next year!!

Overall for the year (all competitions)

Leading Goalscorers:
Rolando Bianchi (21 in 43 appearances)
Vincenco Iaquinta (20 in 36 appearances)
Trezeguet (10 in 24 appearances)

Key Additions (by DT):
Rolando Bianchi ST: ($33M from Man City)
Andres D'Alessandro AM RLC: ($26M from Zaragoza)
Steve Sidwell MC : ($7.5M from Chelsea)
Cristian Zaccardo D RC: (Free from Palermo)
Fabio Aurelio D L: ($3.8M from Liverpool)
Aythami D M C: (Free from Deportivo)
Felipe D C: ($14M from Udinese)

It's not all smooth-sailing for me though, as I did waste around $17M on Jean Makoun who made 15 appearances over 2 years for me before being sold on to Newcastle for 1/2 that amount, and ATM due to the continued presence of Chiellini (who I should sell on for big bucks), youngster Domenico Criscito is blocked from D L and forced to play D C along with Jorge Andrade (who I could also sell off) so Felipe is blocked from playing D C and is an expensive bench player. I also need to search for a M R to replace the ageing Mauro Camoranesi.

Oops - you need to extract it to *your* data directory - which in this case would be the one under My Documents. Then, when you fire the game up and start a new game, the PLA2008 db should be chooseable.

If not, send me an email ptakers(at)gmail(dot)com and I'll help walk you through it.

Thanks! Of course, I see this once I'm at work! :P I'll try that when I get home.

Thanks for all the work on the PLA, TZ. I am looking forward to checking it out when I get the game here... hopefully today.

When we blow our winning streaks, we do it in spectacular fashion.

Gave my backup keeper a start, he proceeded to "lead" us to a lovely 3-0 defeat to snap our 11 game undefeated run, including 6 straight wins.

cut the dude some slack, he was probably "severely lacking in match practice" :)

Fell just short of the Premiership losing 3-1 in the 2nd leg and 4-3 on aggregate in the semi=final. The vultures struck in the offseason, I lost about 8 players, so I'll definitely have some team building to do.

Only lacking match practice. Not severely, though he coulda fooled me. :)

For good reason. Every time I play him in a league game he gets mauled.

Horrible signing, really. I was scrambling for a keeper in the offseason, and went after 2. He agreed to a contract 24 hours before someone MUCH better (and someone who I didn't think would sign) agreed. So I got stuck with both of them. It's not that he's god awful, he's just....not all that good.

For all the Euros still without the game: check out Play.com, they're running a great € 23,49 deal. I don't know if this is limited or not, the only thing I know is that I wasn't planning on buying, but now I'm tempted...

Seems to be working perfectly now! Watch out for Grand Rapids!

I have no idea what team I want to start with.

I know I want a nation that has at least 3 or 4 divisions to have to fight your way through, with Conference North/South or lower level quality talent in general for the division.

Scottish 3rd Division is the rockinest I tell you.

I know a guy who played a handful of games in the Scottish 3rd Division as his dad was a butcher who provided cheap meat pies to the club on the condition they'd give him a chance.

That's how high level the 3rd division is.

I figure the lowest level division has to be in Northern Ireland. It seems crazy to have three playable leagues for a country so small.

I may have to try the Scottish 3rd level division then. :)

Has anybody found success using some less traditional formations now that we're all beta-patched up? I haven't been experimenting much, just playing 4-4-2 like I almost always do and it's doing pretty well but I'd like to create more scoring opportunities.

I've been using a variation of the 4-1-2-1-2 (442 diamond) tactic I used in '06.

Fast paced, counterattacking game. Focused primary on getting the ball out to the wings and hitting the front 3 in stride. Has worked pretty well for me.

I may try that again. I had good success with that before on the lower levels like I am playing now. I tried it early on with my Albion Rovers in year one but the whole team was stinkin' so I scrapped it. Now with some more talented guys coming in for my second year I may give it a try.

Is the SIgames.com site down? I decided this afternoon that I would download and buy this year's version, but it now seems my the internet is not cooperating. Can anyone link me directly to the "store" of whichever online distribution vender they are using?

Thanks!

http://www.direct2drive.com/1/5182/p...-2008-Download

Many thanks! Now, does anyone know if there are any off-SI mirrors for this much discussed beta patch?

THANKS! And now, you probably won't see me for a while! ;)

Just won promotion to Serie B, now it's time to make some tough decisions on who to keep and who to replace. Hopefully I get a bit of cash to spend in the offseason or this team will struggle to servive next year.

I'm playing as Hampton & Richmond in Blue Square South and have made a living off of low expectations.

I was expected to fight for relegation in my first season in BSS, but proceeded to win the entire thing, earning promotion to the Blue Square Premier. Again, I was expected to battle for relegation and currently am sitting in 8th and have allowed eight goals in 15 games.

I don't expect to get promoted to League 2 for a while as I'm having a heck of a time to get a transfer budget so I have to settle for season-long loans and go at it season-to-season.

What the hell, I've ordered it! More than 50% off the regular price is too much to keeping me from checking out the game...:D

Lol, then you can be called Italian again, you were going to lost your nationality because not owning a soccer game.

Btw, mate, long time no see you online in AIM/ICQ, the price to pay for your girlfriend living with you now? :D

:D

Ah ah, you're absolutely right. Not owning PES 2008 (or whatever is called) is already a crime here, but not owning even FM, man, you're convicted!


Nah, she doesn't live with me yet. We're getting close, though... The real reason for not seeing me is that I've been CRAZY busy with work and study in September and October, and I had very very little free time. Now that things are more relaxed, you'll see me again, no worries. I can't wait to talk to you, got a lot of things to say.

Oops, I changed both my Captains heading into year two. Precisely right after I did that the little helpful hint the game gave me while simming to the next day was that you should be careful about changing captains to quickly, it may upset people. My whole team's morale went to the crapper except for the new captains. Lesson learned. Atleast it was still before the regular season.

I'm finally about to dive into the PLA. Have no idea where I'll start this year, but...should be a good time!

What type of tactic are you using?

The closing down and morale issues are still a thorn for me after the beta patch. Especially closing down as it is a big part of my tactic. I am playing Millwall in L1 and started unbeaten in 13 last Season, installed the patch and finished 11th.

I went and spent every penny I had to get the right fit of players for my style and currently sit 1W 1D 2L (both away) after 4. I am hoping it just takes time for the new players to gel, as I play a high risk style and I need to score 2-3 goals a game as I get few clean sheets.

I've had pretty good success using the game's default 5-3-2 Attacking formation (mostly because the best player on my Conference North squad is a WBR/DR) and this formation gives your WBR/L (or DR/L) more of a role.

I've also noticed a lot of other computer controlled teams using this formation.

I need to visit a Tactics primer somewhere.

I've messed around with a couple games in the full version, but none of the teams are clicking with me yet.

Anyone heard of guys running WWSM with the beta patch having problems with a blue screen of death? My computer has been fine since I have had the beta patch going, but all of the sudden it has gone crazy on me. I was playing some last night, saved it, and this morning when I went to load it my computer rebooted on me. The it rebooted right away again. The thing has locked up or rebooted about 50 times today now. I thought I was in the clear early and then I tried to play WWSM again. The game loaded, and about 3-4 minutes later I got the reboot again.

I hate the beta patch. Before it, I was winning some games and doing pretty decently.

Now I keep losing by scores like 11-0, 7-1, 8-0, etc.

It's irritating, since I'm not trying anything advanced or anything, just the basic 4-4-2 and it happens no matter what team I pick.

I didn't have blue screens, but I had other issues. I had to completely uninstall the game and reinstall it with the beta patch to clear up my issues.

if your loosing by those huge margins i dont think you can blame the patch :rolleyes:

Just want to say I am about 99% sure now that my problem is NOT being caused from WWSM and the beta patch. I have had problems just being on the web or even doing nothing at all, in fact this is my second attempt at posting this.

I think my problem is from my hinges being broken on my laptop monitor and the wires running from laptop to monitor are getting messed up. Called tech support this morning and it will be shipped off soon to be repaired. Just didn't want to leave the blame on WWSM.

I started off with a normal 4-4-2 but then switched to the 4-5-1 defensive. It works quite a bit defensively. I think it also helps that most of my back-line are loans from the parent club.

I don't know.. BYU 14 started off an 13 game win streak then installed the patch and ended up in 11th place...

Clearly the patch is affecting something somewhere. *shrugs*

Maybe the problem was pre-patch?

Oh, it was, I'm sure.

I just liked actually winning. :D

I figured it out.

After the latest 7-2 drubbing, I realized what's wrong with the beta patch.

They KILLED the goalies.

Anywhere from 2-5 times a game, I'm seeing 30 and 35 yard shots go in and goalies have not stopped the ball once on either side.

NO GOALIE STOPS.

So yeah, the game's on the shelf until a finalized patch gets out.

Yep. There's a known bug with long shots just being utterly insane, especially vs lower league teams.

Which is precisely what I play with.

I feel a lot better now knowing that it's not me.

It's still disappointing to say the least.

I was going to say I haven't noticed anything at all, but I've been playing with Arsenal. In my new career I just started I've played 10 games, scored 2.1 a game and given up .7 a game.

Game would be on the shelf for me if that were happening.

I think this is the worst FM release ever. I'm really not that happy with the state of the game. I know it will get fixed and patched, but more and more FM is not an instant buy for me anymore. I'll definately wait next year to patch 1 or 2 before I purchase it.

I was actually fine with it, had a blast with the demo etc, until the bug that broke LLM happened.

Maybe next year, instead of releasing the game at the end of October and then releasing a patch towards the end of November, they will keep it for the extra month and make sure the bugs are worked out before release.

*shrug* Even if it's true, it's not bothering me too much. I've only conceded 38 goals through 35 games.