retired_hope

Hi all,

Started playing a new game as West Ham. I set the active league to include everthing in England above the Conference National.

I noticed that I am a rookie manager in the manager profile screen.

Also I seem to have great trouble motivating the team.

As this is my first taste of Premiership football ever, I was wondering how other cope with this situation (or not) and how long does it take to build up a reasonable repuatation from scratch.

So far I'm still in the friendlies.

retired_FaultyFate

Leroy,

I tend to leave team talks to ass. man for at least a couple months. The reason is that in most cases your players don't have any faith in you, so you team talks don't work anyway.

Take a look at players' profiles and identify those who have high influence and don't believe in you. If you can afford it, don't use them (reserve squad or sell), otherwise either build realtionship with them or just hope that you will have a good start and their concrens vanish.

I have never monitored my reputation closely, but usually once you win a few games, especially against stronger teams or rivals, players concerns about your ability disappear. At this point I take team talks into my hands. Arranging friendly against big clubs may help if you win them.

Your reputation will improve if you win at least something the first season, or finish above expectation.

retired_provrb7

When you start off with no rep at a big club you have to show your worth to the players rather then the other way around. You might have a few problems with a few of them, more recently when I started a new game with Hearts I had a problem with Gordon as it was clear he was not happy with my appointment. It started to show in his performances and I started critising him for them and even fined him a weeks wages when he played a 5.

Now a few months on he's my best performer, saving me tons of points with his octopus type displays. I think it's important to stamp your authority but at the same time don't be too harsh otherwise morale will go down.

retired_hope

Cheers guys,

I after about 3 matches I seem to have won them over.

I drew 0-0 away to Man City
Beat Fulham 1-0 at home
and lost 2-1 to Chelsea at the bridge.

Finally it kicked in and I could motivate players.

4-1 at home againt Spurs, get in.

I even got use to blowing bubbles.

Also as an aside, did anyone notice the pre and post match comments for TV games? It looks like this is one of the modules that has been extended for FM2008.