Just a week ago, I bought FM2008. I have played the demo and already have choosen to play Newport County,
a team in the BSS, which was told to achieve 4th position. Board expects me to fight for title and
give me 4 years to maintain position at BSP. I always prefer lowest teams and this is not one of them,
but I want to play only with welsh players, and Newport have most youngster from wales.
When board asked me about league objectivs, I was unambitious, because first seasons I use to do it bad.
I chose the same captain and 2nd captain adviced, since are players with moderately maturity and years with
the club. They only have 10 influence, but I haven't any player with more than 14, so these two will do.
i had a look on my players, and they didn't look capable of achieving 4th position, but we will see. I sold
a couple of players with high wages, and bought 5-6 welsh players on free transfer. Only a couple fit directly
on first team,, but another couple played quite while season. Most of my mature players were on the reserves
team and in transfer list; I brought them to first team and told them to tutoring nice youngsters (althought
I have no really nice youngsters).
Pre-season was quite crap. Few players wanted to join my team and I was not capable to win any match, so
morale went down. In the demo I started bad, but I found a good tactic, so I tried it in the full version.
Maybe due to the patch, in full version it was not working properly, but I was 6th-8th, a decent place.
Training was not very effective althought I had bought 3 very nice coaches, maybe due to part time contracts,
but there weren't so many injuries. I was feeder team of ManU, but they won't borrow me any of their players,
neither other teams did. Things were not great, but I wasn't underachieving. And then...
My second captain injured for 3 months. He was not a very important player, but I substituted him with a
wrong player, a DMC instead a better MC. I also have a MC who I was playing with a farrow, and with this DMC
playing as a MC with a barrow I expected to find balance. I chose a huge pitch because I thought I had a
great team and wanted to overhelm lesser teams at home. I used direct passing, wide style and quick tempo but all this
together didn't work. I managed to win some matches, but team fell in a very bad run. So I tried to play with
a TM and use hold up the ball with Fullbacks and MC with farrow (and also the TM when he was strong). It seemed
to work, but early I continue losing. Mature players were quite important, but their condition was nasty
and with my tactics they ended matches always under 70 points of fitnes. I also tried using a playmaker but
I only could stop the bloody run when using a fast TM and playing counters. Also I played a couple of friendlies against my
reserves and won, so the morale recovered a little.
I finished 17th, being 14th in goals against and 17th in goals scored. At home I performed decently, but away
I couldn't do well. I signed lots of my grey players when I was in the bad run in order to find a solution,
and now wages were high and I had crap players. But small cups saved me from being fired, so I have another
opportunity...
At the end of season I didn't renew lots of contracts, so I have more budget for wages. And lots of welsh
players were released! Altought most players don't want to come to Newport County, I managed to sign 8, half
of them quite nice for me. I changed tactics making them more intuituve, without TM, PM and counters. MCs now
play without barrows nor farrows, passing was less direct now, tempo and with at 11. And I change size of
pitch to normal. Then the season started after a weird pre-season (lots of matches against my reserves and
youngers, to test them all). Now, with all my best players from last year and 4 or 5 new stars, I was told
to achieve 15th position!!! So how could they expected me to achieve 4th position last season? Well, less
pressure for me but not less money, and I'm only wasting 7.5k€ wages of a maximum of 10. Season has started
well and now I'm 5th! The key for my run is my defence, I have two young DCs (19 years old!) but they are
very capable. Also my new 2 young strikers are scoring 0.5 goals / game each of them. Things look well now,
with simple tactics... what could newport achieve in the future? We will se...
Doing poorly with newport county 
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