Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 3 – Tactics and Pre-season

Posted on by Alex

Last time, I showed you the players chosen to kick this club off and now we’re going to see how I’ve arranged them and what I’m telling them to do (formation and tactics).

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So I ask, what’s wrong with the good old 4-4-2? Personally I think nothing. Generally I think its a great formation, especially if you have the right players with the right strengths.

And in the lower leagues, and they don’t get lower than this one, it just keeps things relatively simple and doesn’t risk weaknesses and failings due to players not having great positioning or not being able to perform more complicated roles. It is also a balanced formation and as we are not yet sure how we measure up compared to the teams in our league and our players have never played together before so they have no cohesion or understanding as yet, things are complicated enough already.

Also, I had a rough idea of how I wanted to play (for the first few seasons anyway) and so the players that I signed were selected to play in this formation.

So the style revolves around direct football aimed to try to get the job done in matches and not risk stagnating and getting stuck in any of the lower leagues because of cautious football. But in order to keep things slightly sophisticated, the directness is mainly focused around a crossing game. So the instructions are… Continue reading Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 3 – Tactics and Pre-season

Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 2 -Fresh Faces

Posted on by Alex

After finally employing a scout who was actually trained as a coach, badly trained as a coach, I started to bring in some players capable of kicking off our ascent of the leagues.

Signing a whole team means a lot of transfers and here’s what it looks like…

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And as you can see, there’s a scroll bar on side so that’s not even a comprehensive list of all the players. But I won’t Bore you describing every single player, I’ll describe a few players I believe (and hope) to be important players. Continue reading Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 2 -Fresh Faces

Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Part 1 – Pitch? Yes. Anything else? erm…

Posted on by Alex

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So we have no coaching badges but plenty of Sunday league football experience, ambition and passion.

And that must be what they were looking for so we’re in, we got the job!

The board of three of the old team’s players is headed by Chairman Danny Dodd (Randomly generated and slightly scary looking) who is now paying me the colossal wage of…

…wait for it…

…£0 p/w (I suppose we’re going to have to make money for living on some other way, or get those promotions coming thick and fast). But we are an amateur team so that’s fine.

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I told you he was quite scary looking

And on that amateur note, we have a stadium called Adastra Park which if we’re honest is just a pitch. It has a capacity of 1,000, which I think means that there’s space for 1,000 people to stand on the remaining grass around the pit

ch. But we have the lowest rated training and youth facilities, limited youth recruitment (at least there is some), about £2,000 in the bank, oh yeah and NO PLAYERS.

Of course we’re building the club from the ground up, quite literally, so that’s how it should be but now we have a whole load of browsing and scouting to do….. ahhhhhh yeah forgot to mention, no scouts either.

But no bother (sort of) as we can just hire one for free as with all amateur contracts. Or the only scout available to us and our meager reputation can reject us before even negotiating because he wants a paid contract which we aren’t allowed to offer. Anyway, we eventually hire a coach with decent judging ability and potential stats and begin to go about our business.

The (hopefully) more interesting events of which and the chosen players to pioneer this fresh faced club are coming up next time…

I hope you join me

Pub Team to Manager’s Dream Introduction – Keymer & Hassocks FC

Posted on by Alex

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With the help of a custom league database available on the internet, this is perhaps the ultimate football manager journey to the top as Keymer and Hassocks FC are the lowest playable team in the largest one country database. They play their football all the way down in the Mid Sussex Football League Division 10, that’s level 23 of the English league system.

And yes that is the actual badge of an actual football team albeit an amateur one, a very amateur one.

I won’t bore you with their club history…   …because they don’t have any. Nothing that is publicly available or of any significance anyway. This is because they are a pub team (clue’s in the title).

On the badge you can see the real life established date of 2003, but in the game database their date founded is 2015 so from here the idea spawned.

The pub team has folded  due to lack of funding. However a few ambitious former members of the pub team have noticed a lack of youth activities in the area and lack of money flow into the area. So teamed with their love of football, they set out to build the  club that the area needs and their passion for the game desires, always remembering the community spirit of their pub team roots.

Also check out Haighyorkie’s great youtube series that gave me the initial idea to use this team if you’d like:  https://www.youtube.com/user/haighyorkie/videos

English Lower League to Level 23 database can be found at:

http://www.passion4fm.com/fm16-english-lower-leagues-level-23-database/

Through the Youth Academy, First Steps in the Senior Team

Posted on by Alex

Firstly, an explanation of the post title…

I have been an avid player of the football manager series since the 2012 iteration and of sports gaming since I was still in short trousers but this is the first blog I have done on the subject. The enjoyment in football manager, for me, comes mainly in the incredible stories and journeys that can be made and also in the realism of tweaking and managing systems on and off the pitch.

In this blog, I will mainly follow the careers of me and the managers in my saves. Some will be amazing journeys, be it journeys up the leagues and up the reputation standings or across the footballing globe. Some will involve dedication to a club, in a mission to bring them as much success as possible and to create as much affinity and attachment between readers and the whole club through great characters, crucial & tense moments and lively reporting on the general ups and downs of a virtual football club.

And any tips, tricks, tactics and theories discovered along the way will of course be imparted in posts as well.

I hope you ‘buy a season ticket’ (although it’s free obviously) and keep checking in to enjoy the content.