sigh. i was so excited by the possibility of it working as intended. :(ahh, got it. my apologies. :)

It's similar to FM Scout from older versions of the game. It's basically a little 'cheat' program that tells you the current ability and potential ability of every player.

Uhm, I am not saying my physical training programs did not work. I just may not have done them right, or may not have had the correct guys in them. I am far from a top notch trainer in this game. I am still messing with it, I just don't want to put any of my current guys in that training right now.

I too am tempted to purchase via D2D though I have told myself I would only purchase the boxed version this time. Basically I only have a couple of day windows here and there to play the game when I have the itch. Usually since the release I have only had the itch when I new I would purchase and not have time to play when it arrived 4-5 days later so I have not purchased. I am really impressed with the improvements they have made this year over 07 based on what you guys are saying I may finally be able to get into Lower League play rather than only playing with Spurs.

one more silly little things that I feel they have done right, or at least better, in this version. Referees now feel like real people, not some number. You see the name of the referee for your upcoming game, and I even saw one pregame email where it mentionnned the last time that referee did one of our game which prompted me to take a look at how he treated us, cool...

FM

Found out something cool today about my grandfather, thanks to FM2k8.

I know my mom had mentioned in passing that my grandfather loved soccer and had even played in some organized league when he lived in Scotland. So I enquired, wondering if perhaps the team he played for is in FM2k8. My mom showed me a picture of my grandfather and his brother in a team photo, when they were members of the 1923-24 Parkhead F.C. squad, which won the Scottish Junior Cup. Sadly, this club doesn't exist anymore; if they did I would definitely play as them in FM.

Very cool indeed.

I used to be a regular at Scottish Junior games, I worked for my local team doing part-time fundraising when I was in school. The Juniors are great, hundreds of local teams with semi-pro players who generally earn only their travel expenses. Players who play for the love of the game and not for cash.

One thing that confuses people about the Juniors is that they're not youngsters. They are called Juniors to separate themselves from the Seniors (the professional leagues), but the Junior leagues have no age restrictions. Recently the top Junior teams have been stealing away players from the Scottish 2nd and 3rd divisions cos the top Junior teams can afford to pay more than the lower league teams.

If FM had the Scottish Junior Leagues, I'd be more than happy :)

sounds like you need to break out the editor and create them yourself...I'll be happy to help if you need it. We can stick Parkhead in SD3 and you can have a grand old time :)

Grr.

Back to work, can't finish my offseason. People raided poor Notts County, and we've got several holes to still fill.

And those crazy British officials won't grant me my work permits! Bitches!

I heart this game. It just pulls me in to the world so much better than any other sport sim. I love playing in the lower leagues in England, and have forced myself to play with a fictional universe to keep my curious eyes from looking up the best prospects.

I'm currently running Rushden & Diamonds in the Blue Square Premiere, and I've got a striker, Jay Cooper, who epitomizes everythign I enjoy about playing FM. I picked him up on a free transfer, after he had just turned 19, and his attributes are pretty middle of the road, hasn't trained particularly well, and I have half a dozen guys who look much better on paper. If I ask my assistant manager's advice, he doesn't even mention Cooper in his best line-up, and every time I sit down to figure out my starting eleven there's always someone that I'd love to put in front of him.....but the thing Jay Cooper DOES have is SPEED, baby! 20 pace, a 20 acceleration, and a 17 agility make him just a straight-up monster on the pitch (at least in the lower leagues).

In his first year as a Diamond, he crushed the Blue Square Premiere, with 37 goals, 8 assists and an average rating of 7.45 in 42 appearances. not bad for a 19 year old kid....good enough, in fact, to lead us to promotion into League 2. I was worried that the step up, small as it was, would expose him for the one-trick pony he is, and I nabbed another, more talented, young striker from a Championship squad, in the hopes that he could take the reigns from Cooper and lead the squad towards a respectable finish in League 2. Cooper, however, had other plans, and continued to score leaving me with no choice but to keep him in the line-up, as long as the goals kept piling up. Flash forward to the end of the season, and Rushden & Diamonds finished at the top of League 2 with a +34 goal differential, thanks in no small part to Jay Cooper's 33 goals, 17 assists and 14 man-of-match performances in 45 appearances.

It makes me giggle with joy every time I watch this kid take a ball from mid-field and steak all the way to the penalty box, put a deke on some poor keeper and bury the ball in the back of the net. I can't wait to see if he can keep it up in League 1.

And I wept in pain when my now departed uber striker, Francis Doe, couldn't hit a goal on a breakaway to save his soul. :)

Dude could score on headers and volleys at will, but my god he was awful on 1 on 1's.

I'm slowly driving Exeter into the ground. Again. Every year, every version of this game, I drive Exeter into the ground. We're not even to Christmas yet, and I've got us about 8 spots down in the standings from where we should be, and we're out of the FA Cup after failing in the damn 4th qualifying round. In order to improve our defense, I signed a full back on a free transfer. It put us over our wage budget. After a few games, the fans hate him. In order to get back under the wage budget, I had to give our captain away. When the transfer window reopens, the captain is gone. The fans and the players will probably hate me after that.

All in all, I will feel very fortunate if I even finish my first season at Exeter. Ah, it's so familiar.

I'm gambling a bit right now on my current team. I'm now coaching Giugiano (sp?) in the C2/B league in Italy. I've picked up 4 players for 1,200/week salaries. This has put me 4K over my salary budget of 14K for the team. Currently, the gamble appears to be paying off. While the board is not too happy about the financial debt, my team is leading the league at the halfway point of the season, which they are very excited about. Overall, my feedback level is 'satisfied'. My performance in the Italy cup also drew rave reviews, as my team managed to advance out of the group stage and make the 1st round, before losing on away goals on a tiebreaker.

My hope at this point is that my team can win the division and advance to the next level, which should help the financial situation. If not, I'll likely end up as one of the best coaches from a W/L perspective with a horrible rating for my financial dealings as a coach. Pray for me. :)

You're FIRED!!!!!! :D

I wish I could do a dynasty for Notts County, but I always find I play this game in massive spurts, and would not wanna stop to update the dynasty. :)

I came to understand the some of the intricacies of the English leagues (and the lower leagues in particular) ages ago....but I'm still pretty much a ham-handed mess when it comes to finances. I'll usually start out by releasing 3/4 of the team, going $1MM in debt (which is a lot of cash when you're only bringing in like 3500 fans a game), in the hopes that bringing in low-salaried, quality players will pay off in the long run....and I can usually work this strategy with some degree of success, but surely there has to be a more graceful way to go about things?

How do you all handle clearing out your rosters of unwanted/high priced talent? It's very rare that I can find another team with any interest in one of my crappy players, and it sure seems like there should be a better way to go about things than my simple cut & burn approach.

wait out the first season with the crappy players that the game dealt you, then clean house after season 1 ends and most of their contracts run out.

And offer them to clubs for ultra cheap/free. Usually at least a couple will be taken.

Well, that seems smart.....but I'll be DAMNED if I'm going to wait a year watching those scraps hump around on my pitch!
:p

Agreed. You have to play through and let some of those players fall off the squad when their contracts expire. Especially in this version of the game, whacking players through paid releases is a VERY bad idea. It leads to major debt, fan unrest, and a total lack of cohesion on the team. Even if you do manage to bring in the right players when you rebuild the squad, you'll likely be fired before your team even reaches the point of being a competitive team. It's always better to struggle through a couple of seasons with the old players and slowly bring in some better players than to cut the fat immediately. It often produces disasterous results.

Or try to loan them out, but only take deals where the other team pays 100% of the wages. That will keep them off your books for the time until you can just let their contract lapse.

Does anyone think parent clubs are a bit too powerful? I've started my first career in England, as Worcester in Conference North, and the first thing I did was request a parent club. The board hooked me up with Birmingham, and I've got half their reserve team playing for me -- and I'm not done, since I'm loaning in one player at a time. It's early, but we've won 4 out of our first 5, with the only loss being 1-2 on the road to the team at the top of the table, Tamworth (who is really just tied with me, only beating me on goal differential). It seems like I've brought in a ton of talent, and we should only get better as the Birmingham guys learn to play with my Worcester guys, and as I bring in more Birmingham guys. Anyone else found this to be true, or am I just getting lucky?

I haven't had much luck at all with what my parent clubs have offered me thus far. I have 2 parent clubs right now and neither has offered me much to get excited about. The one that I did take is causing me problems because the fan base and board think he's worthless. I wish I wouldn't have bothered. Judging from my experiences, you should count your blessings.

Have you tried making offers to players on the reserve team of your parent club? When I formed the relationship, they sent me 2 players who were pretty good, but then I went through the roster and offered to loan more of the players. I guess most of my loans weren't a direct result of the parent-feeder relationship, but maybe the players on that reserve team were more willing to play for my club because of it?

I can't speak from experience but I read something similar on the SI boards.

Basically, you'll reap the rewards from this approach in non-league football but I believe you'll have to deal with restrictions on the amount of players you can bring in through loans once you hit league football (ie: league two and above). I think you can only have four guys or so brought in via loan at that level.

Once you get there, you'll have major cohesion problems since your whole squad is new and haven't played together and you'll have trouble getting results to stay above the relegation line.

This is something I've been trying to avoid. Bringing in too many loan players can cause some major cohesion problems down the road.

I have not tried much of that. I'll give it a whirl and see what happens.

Very cool -- that will be a fun challenge. I don't think I've ever got past League Two whenever I've started as a Conference North/South team.

I was wondering about loan limitations. In past versions, in England, you were limited to four long-term, eight short-term for the season, and four short-term at any given time. Is that how it is once you get to League Two?

I'm thinking now that I should feel lucky. I started with a Conf. North team in the 2006 game and won the Premier League in roughly 20 years game time.

Well, I've probably also never gone more than 4 seasons into a career.

I believe it is supposed to happen how you said. WHat I mean is that even if a player from a parent club is not offered to you, that player will be more acceptable to going on loan with you. It is not a sure fire thing though. I have asked for a guy to come on loan with me from a parent club and he didn't want to. The other two times I did that they did. One is a major player for me right now. I haven't done it enough to say which happens more often though.

Yeah -- I've had guys refuse, too. But I think in the short time I've had a parent club, something like 4 out of 5 have agreed.

I formed a relationship with Coventry, and they immediately sent two players down to Exeter to play for me. One of them is doing fairly well. The other got seriously injured after only a couple of matches. He's been out for a couple of months, and we're still not sure when he's coming back. At least I don't have to pay him.

On the other(big club) side of things, I wish I had known to activate the leagues in the countries where I had pre-established feeder clubs (eg. Belgium). I can send players to the feeder club, but since they aren't playing anything except friendlies I don't think they can get much out of it. I'm trying to get another feeder club, but haven't been successful yet.

Still loving this game!

You really ought to be able to activate leagues in the middle of your career -- maybe only once per year or something?

They'll have stats simulated for them for the season. If you go through the course of the season and aren't seeing any stats, it's not because games weren't "played" it's because the player was not good enough to play.

I play as Galway United in the Irish Premier League in WWSM2007. We have Aston Villa as a parent club and are able to take players on loan but every time I try to loan players, they always refuse to report to us.

You might have to go after players whose reputation isn't as high as those are...

I'm still not quite grasping how mentoring works, although daedalus has tried to explain it to me, so let me try approaching it from another tack.

I suggested to two players that they might benefit from studying under a couple of my veterans. Both of the vets were 'delighted' to teach the kids. One of the kids responded in kind, while the other was 'unsure' as to any potential benefit.

Is their response an indication of whether the tutoring will do them any good?

Wow. I just got the result of one of my new kids (June 19th) crop and he's listed as one of the best players of his generations. Woohoo! At age 16 he already has 17 listed for pace, 18 for agility, and 19 for accerlation. 14 for passing and 13 for technique! :)

I play with Luton Town (League One in England) and have Arsenal has my parent club and the same thing is happening to me. Thing is if I go to lower reputation players, they are simply just of no use to me. For example, got a striker to accept but my coaches are saying he is like the 5th striker on the squad or so, assessment with which I agree, so I'm not gonna give him playing time ahead of my top 3.

FM

yea, generally the better the youth responds the better his learing experience will be. most of the veterans are pleased to be mentoring, but for youth its more of a crap shoot. sometimes they are delighted, other times unsure and occasionally refuse to be mentored by a certain player. if your youth is similar to a type of player (mentioned in his personel screen) he might take to mentoring from that player better. i have a wonderkid right now, who refused 2 times to be mentored by different people, but the 3rd time i tried with another player and he accepted it


dola.
just because a youth is unsure as to a mentors benifit wont mean it wont be of any good to him. he still might learn a few of the old guys prefered moves ect. but also he might stop the mentorship a month into it saying he cant learn from someone so different from him and both the guys can take a moral hit

*cums* wow he sounds awsome, bet his future ability is around 190. in a year or 2 all the top teams will be trying to get him

Ever realize too late you've gone batshit insane in the offseason and realize you're fielding damn near a whole new team?

Got partway through the Conference Premier in second season before realizing I'd screwed things up badly in the offseason.

So it looks like I'll be quitting my Thurrock game and starting up with someone new at another time.

dude...

Try January of the 1st Season for me...I don't recognize half the squad! I don't know how it got so out of control...

I always seem to end up with 2 keepers, 4 defenders, 2 strikers, a couple of wingers and 15 central midfielders in my squads.

Can't resist a central midfield bargain.

Well, in both cases the players recommended were the ones I suggested do the mentoring.

Do languages spoken have an effect on the kid's response? The one who was delighted spoke English, same as his mentor, but the one who was less sure didn't have a language in common with his.

Thanks a ton Frog Man.

I guess I never posted my original thank you note, because I was too busy trying to keep Dag and Red in the second division.

Oh yeah, and I've always struggled with the si site. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. I'd think web design thoughts would be the same on both sides of the pond, but it appears that some things just just don't translate.