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I’m rather new to this forum and don’t know if this is the right to place my contribution. If not please accept my apologies.
Starting up with FM 2008 has been a frustrating experience for me. And no. It’s not because of a missing final patch.
I have played pretty much every single version of game since the early 90’s. And I’ve always been pretty successful at it, winning just about everything worth winning in all the major competitions around Europe. And I’ve spent a lot of time at it too…
Not in resent years though. Due to various things happening in my life I have not really put at lot of time in to the game for the last two or three versions.
With the all new FM 2008 coming out I decided to give it a real go again. Dusted up some of the old tactics and set out with Liverpool – Disaster. It just didn’t work. Scoring was low and I conceded like never before. Not willing to admit to myself that my old tactics didn’t work, and certainly not that I wasn’t a brilliant manager, I quit the game after a couple of months deciding Liverpool was rubbish. The only possible explanation obviously.
So I started up with Atletico Madrid. Adjusted the tactics a little to fit it to the squad and things went better. So my Liverpool conclusion was right. And I was happy. Not for long though. Things started to go wrong again and soon I needed to place Atletico In the same category as Liverpool.Rubbish.
Marseille was next. Progress was made but in the end the same story. And that’s where I concluded that my tactics was simply to advanced for anything but world class. Inter. The magnificent Italian squad would certainly proof my tactics to be as outstanding today as it was a couple of years ago. Wrong.
Not even superstars like Stankovic, Vieira, Zanetti and Ibrahimovic understood the brilliance of their new talented manager.
At this point I perhaps should emphasize that the colossus amount of time I have spent with this game during the last 15 years or so have been spent playing a lot of seasons. Finding players and building great teams (e.g. buying a 27 years old Beckham in the prime of his career at Man U for my Inter-game back in CM Italy – as a backup-player). I have spent a lot of time finding the right tactics as well (never played any custom) but it used to be a question of positions and arrows. By the time the more refined and in-depth aspects of the tactics were introduced to the CM/FM series I made a few quick adjustments and it worked out fine. Until now.
Failing miserably in every game I started I had to start accepting the fact that my tactic wasn’t good enough. A serious blow to my self esteem I must admit .
It was decision time. Accepting the fact that the tactical depth of FM had become too much for me to handle. Or start to actually learn and understand it to become the successful manager I once was...
I started up by reading trough the forums. And the first thing a realized was not the tactical side of my game but the training. This was an aspect of the game that I hadn’t bothered with at all so far in FM 2008. This new aspect of the game needed immediate testing: Tottenham Hotspur.
I joint Spurs and swung the axe right after drinking morning coffee with Mr. Levy. It was a bloodbath and only man left standing by lunch was a Dutch scout promoted to assistant manager.
Next step was to find coaches who could get me my seven stars in all areas of training. Most of them were easy but especially finding one capable of getting the job done on set pieces proofed to be hard (and time consuming). After that I modified a training schedule I found on the net (don’t remember where – wasn’t here) and added a few of my own based on that.
I also decided to set up a better scouting system than I had in my previous games. Again it was a bloodbath but ended up with 5 good scouts of various nationalities.
Finally I got in depth with my tactics. Setting up the individual instructions to balance and supplement the team instructions better. I even designed a new defensive version of my very attacking tactic realizing that I can’t expect Spurs to blow away every opposition playing attacking football. At least not both at home and away.
Most importantly I accepted that It takes time for the players to find themselves and their teammates in a new system.
I spent day (a long one) before I even played my first friendly. And the time and effort on that first gaming week was worth every minute. I rediscovered my love for the game bringing Spurs to 3. place in my first season (lost the Championship on the final day on goal difference). Second season I took them to the League Cup Final, finished second in the Championship (by 3 points) and WON the Champions League.
I did quit the game though. Playing newly promoted and bottom-of-the-table Forrest I got a 75 min penalty leading 3-2. Robbie Keane obviously missed due to the penalty-bug and I wasn’t too annoyed with that until Forrest scored two injury time goals. That was when I decided to wait for the final patch to arrive.
Certainly a rash decision based on momentarily outrage but never the less I have stuck with it for more than a week now.
And is there a point with all this writing then you might ask. Yes there is. A couple actually.
First of all: In my experience the game works fine as it is. It punishes bad managers and rewards the good ones. Having been both I dare say so.
Second: The bugs are annoying and I ended up quitting my game because of one. But as mentioned above it was an irrational decision since the penalty bug works both ways. For those bugs that don’t share good and bad evenly between man and AI, you can work around them with effort and skill. So don’t blame the bugs for not winning.
Finally for those of you who spend most of creativity on moaning and blaming SI for all your misfortunes: Try spending some time reading all the fantastic work of writing in these forums instead. You might even pick up something that will make you a better manager once the patch is finally released.
The breathtaking saga of the Bandits provided by Kipfizh deserves special mentioning.
Thank you for your patience while reading this and a “keep up the good work” to the team at SI.
Good Post Jaffas, it really is down to tactics and traning on this version of the game.
The verona team I took over in my game were going nowhere until I took them over.
I have only bought in about 3 new players but have been unbeaten since day 1.
I find it interesting to read that a seasoned player has put the game aside for the same reason I did: penalties.
I have been playing CM since the early 80's too. IT's funny because I am not that much of a videogamer, I have have every single cm/fm since 93 and.. a couple more games.
Most of the bugs are related to features that do not affect the game (stadium expansion, I don't expand the stadium...). Media interaction, I avoid it. And so on.
Some bugs just don't exist (I have tracked the goals vs shots % for me and the AI over a season... and I have an advantage...).
As far the "last minute" goals, that affected badly the first half of my first season (I quit after the second season, after winning pretty much everything)... I think that is about tactics.
The IA does something similar to what a human player would do, all out attack, close down everywhere, all arrows up and so on.
In the previous versions of the game there was no point in reacting.
In this one, if you don't you leak goals.
Here's what I do.
I max out time wasting.
I tick counterattack.
I bring all players back in free kicks and corners.
I play more defensive (if I was playing at 10/20, I got to 5 on 20).
I unclick offside.
I defend deeper.
I put 5 players closing down in the area and 5 in my own midfield.
If i still can, I bring in subs (possibly defs instead of mids, mids instead of atts).
I switch to a slightly more direct style to take advantage of counterattack.
I put three players to keep up ball.
No forward runs, except for a couple of players (one mid, one att)
99% of the times that is enough to freeze the opponents attempts.
Hope that helps, and that the patch fixes the penalties bug.
Yeah a good honest post Juffas. No-one can argue with that. Very similar to my experience too. Been playing since CM2, every year, religiously and sometimes obsessively.
I've greatly welcomed the gradual increase in difficulty of each version of FM and it's interesting to here about tactics to close down a game and prevent "last minute goals". Like them.
I have also put the game on hold till the patch. For me, it's the moral bug mainly. But also, a pathetic and niggling fear that the "FM08 universe" isn't quite how SI want it to be.
But it will be.
I've not stopped playing a game of FM due to bugs since CM4, which is silly, because I would maintain (out of the box) FM08 is infinitely more playable than (out of the box) CM4. In fact, FM08 is very enjoyable and addictive as it is now. It's just that I know it's about to get a whole lot better.
Tomorrow evening when England score the winning goal against Croatia, Marc Vaughan will click his mouse and the patch will go live. And the world can rest in peace again. For a bit.
Here's what I do.
I max out time wasting.
I tick counterattack.
I bring all players back in free kicks and corners.
I play more defensive (if I was playing at 10/20, I got to 5 on 20).
I unclick offside.
I defend deeper.
I put 5 players closing down in the area and 5 in my own midfield.
If i still can, I bring in subs (possibly defs instead of mids, mids instead of atts).
I switch to a slightly more direct style to take advantage of counterattack.
I put three players to keep up ball.
No forward runs, except for a couple of players (one mid, one att)
99% of the times that is enough to freeze the opponents attempts.
Hope that helps, and that the patch fixes the penalties bug.
Thanks for the that.
I have never really work with any last 5 or 10 minutes tactics to defend a lead. I will be looking into that once I start up again.
I see a lot of myself in that post, but only "pre win" unfortunately. Hopefully I'll be able to find my way through the tactical quagmire (sp) and enjoy the game again. I know I'll put in the effort, and have succeeded in adapting to previous versions so fingers crossed it'll happen again.
While we're waiting 
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Linear Mode
