Much ADO About Everything – Forwards and Backwards

In the first blog, I was very complimentary of our defensive solidity – praising a system that had conceded less than a goal a game on the way to a 6th placed finish. We needed only to improve the offence and we’d be well on our way to serious success…

Settled tactic, now what?

Anyone who has read my previous blog articles will know that I spend quite a bit of my time in FM trying to perfect the tactics. Tactics, the system, the philosophy, the approach… whatever you want to call it, it’s vital for success in Football Manager.

But tactics are only half the battle. At the end of the day, it’s the players that will dictate whether your tactics are successful. You can have the most revolutionary, awe-inspiring and unrivalled genius of a tactic but if you try to use Adel Taarabt as your midfield enforcer then you’re going to struggle.

So what I aim to do with this article is run through my approach to identifying the right player for the right role – which attributes are important, what PPM’s does a player need, would they benefit from any personal instructions?

And to do so, we’ll use the 4-1-4-1 I’ve been developing with Rapid Wien and Austria as a case study.

A Guide to Scouting and Transfers – a.k.a. How to make a simple process as complicated as possible

Scouting and signings

So I’ve been requested to write a bit on my approach to scouting. As I don’t feel that scouting itself is terribly exciting, I’ve morphed this request a little into covering more on the process of the entire transfer.

I guess that there’s an opinion amongst some of my readers that I am more thorough than some FM-ers in my transfer policy. I say “thorough” but that’s really a polite way of saying it. Pernickity, overly analytical, obsessive or borderline anal might be more accurate descriptions of my transfer policy.

I really enjoy the transfer dealings within FM and I tend to spend an awful lot of time considering my moves, at least whilst I’m managing small clubs (which is 99% of the time).

For me then, there’s a very logical process which culminates in a player signing on the dotted line…

Feralpi Salò – In the hunt…

I’m feeling good about this season. We’ve reached the winter break, just a little before the halfway point in the league, and things are going pretty well. We’re embroiled in a very interesting title challenge and surpassed all my expectations in the Champions League despite a sticky start.

More importantly than that, though, is that the team feels like it’s performing really well. I feel like I have options all over the park and there aren’t many players who I feel have let me down on a regular basis, indeed I’ve been pleasantly surprised by some.

Normally I would wait until the end of the season and do a big update then but Thomas Levin (worth a follow on twitter by the way) suggested that I provide a little bit of information on my scouting techniques. I guess that I am more thorough than a lot of FM-ers… well “thorough” is the polite way of putting it. Others might describe it as indecisive, un-necessarily picky and borderline anal.

This was the case but the scouting section has become so big (waffle) that I’ve decided to issue it as a standalone article. Therefore this update will simply be that – an update on the fortunes of Feralpi Salò. I hope you still find it interesting.