retired_altayeb

I know what you're getting at, Ian, but there are a couple of interesting points.

How do loan deals happen? Worthington is aways banging on to the press after our latest abject failure that he's been calling loads of managers and none of them are willing to let prospective targets out as they've got an injury crisis/know he'd just get injured at Norwich. I think managers do talk, but until any of us actually do the job we'll never know, which is why we should err on the side of caution and why the guidelines are what they are.

That said, I go with Michal's answer. The best way to work this is to scout the division. It's safe, realistic and doesn't put you in any grey areas.

The only major issue I'd really have with the original post is that any players, however identified, *must* be scouted before buying. It's then covered by the clause in the guidelines that wewak pointed out, if you ask me. </BLOCKQUOTE>

I don't think that managers just pick up the phone and call to ask if there is any player available for loan or transfer. They may phone to each other but they would be asking about specific players. They would be asking about players that they saw either at the League or at reserve games or at U18 games.
Unfortunately we are not allowed to scout those games in FM2006.

retired_marcias

There's a "big" difference between LlaMa realism and real world realism, most of it coming about from the obvious differences between the real world and the game world.

Imo, no-one should ever seek acceptance from others about their style of play in a single player game. I use my own guidelines for realism, using the LlaMa guidelines as an important starting point.

Having never been a real world manager, I wouldn't care to comment on what is realistic or not, I'll leave that to others who apparently have such knowledge :p

retired_babyroo

I generally look at clubs in my area if I am trying to fill a position and I always send a scout to look at anyone available for loan or who I think the club might loan out.

I know I will get bashed for this, but in some games I will use the search engine pre-season to look for unnatached or released younsgters to offer trials to.

BTW, there are lists of available players, the PFA do one.

PFA

You have to register to view the lists.

retired_babyroo

oops, correct link PFA

retired_mrsjb

Bloody Hell. Gandalf's Sword Bloke is back!

To clarify: I know only what gets reported in interviews in the press, re the idiot in charge at Norwich, but it sounds very much to me like the Norwich policy is thus:
1.. Scouts find potential players (no midfielders of xure)
2. NW gets on the phone to his counterpart at club a and says "how about you let us give player x some first team football?"
3. Boss of club a twiddles his thumbs a bit because he's not sure if he has enough right backs
4. NW whines to the press that it isn't his fault we've not had a right winger in two years, managers just don't want to lend/sell us one, and he's been whispering sweet nothings in boss a's phone all night.

May be misrepresented by the press, but it should be clear "cold-calling" isn't implied. The club has a target in mind before he calls as far as I can tell, which some seem to think isn't the case.

Just goes to show how good our guidelines are if you ask me :cool:

retired_marcias

jcb23 -&gt; That's all well and good, but Norwich were in the Premiership last season and (despite league position) are one of the major clubs in the Championship now so they are hardly representative. I don't know how many scouts and various other staff that have, but I'd imagine it's a fair few more than your average Conference North side, whose manager, I'd imagine, has to do a lot more "hands-on" work himself because the club can't afford many staff.

I may be wrong, but I've heard numerous tales of clubs whose manager is having to do 4 or 5 jobs at once because the club can't afford any extra staff. Obviously as you go higher up the league structure, bigger clubs have more staff meaning the manager either does less and less or can focus his time more effectively on his own specific jobs.

And that isn't an argument for or against the scouting point in question at the top of the thread, just a general point!

KingsbayYHPE

Steve, we know about the PFA list, we know about websites where players are advertised, we know that a phone call will get all kinds of results, but LLM doesn't afford us the facility of doing any within the game.

The way we've kept LLM clean and on a level field for years, not a couple of days, every guideline is tried, tested and trusted by all, is by implementing the aforementioned guidelines after many guys have used them.

It all goes down to the "It's your game, play it as you will" adage, but we don't want to hear about it in here.

Don't look upon this as a rebuke, btw...it's merely a reminder of how guidelines come to be.

retired_mrsjb

I'm just clarifying an earlier point with an example. Yes, you're quite right that Norwich are in LLM terms a huge club, but people seemed to think I was implying that the boss cold-calls other managers for a chat, and I simply don't know what the case is so laid out what I can deduce from reports.

Fact is, as Ian has already stated, we don't have a way to simulate the discussion down the local park or whatever method real LLMs use to fill in gaps in scouting, so we have to use the "big club" use the scouts way as it's still the most realistic simulation of that world available to us in the game.

Reading this back, I'm not sure if I'm making my point clear or not, but I can't think of a better way of putting it at this second, so it'll have to do.

KingsbayYHPE

Clear as day to me, Julian :thup:

retired_marcias

True, although since many versions of CM (I haven't really looked too closely in FM 2005) apparently overlooked the issue of including staff salaries in the balance sheet, it is quite possible to have 5 or 6 scouts at your club. As far as realism goes, having multiple scouts is pushing it well outside the window of realism, but if you only have one you'll never get anything done since FM doesn't allow multi-tasking for a scout to watch next opposition as well as trying to spot a few decent players around and about inbetween times!