firefighterhilf

I wrote the following for the GQ forum a few weeks ago but thought I might post it here as well to help those struggling to have success, in the lower leagues, but most of the advice here can be used for any club.

I know a lot of people are struggling and tearing their hair out in frustration with FM08, particularly with the 8.0.1 patch. But not me. Since starting my Gateshead save I've enjoyed it a lot, and picked up a lot of useful knowledge (hopefully) along the way. So I thought I'd try and write a step by step guide to how I got to the point where I use one tactic with no tweaking, where the quality of the players in my team is the most important thing, and where I don't seem to suffer from the shots/goals ratio or any other bugs that are apparent enough to annoy me in any way.

This 'guide' will cover everything from the tactic I use, the way I incorporate opposition instructions, team talks, transfer tips, finances and hopefully much more. Some of this will have been covered before perhaps but hopefully there will be something useful for someone. And while it may have been covered before what I'm hoping will make this different is that I'll be outlining exactly what I've done so far to take Gateshead from the Blue Square North to the Premiership.

*Disclaimer. I never cheat and have never replayed any match or anything like that to get results. With that in mind I believe I've developed a series of techniques that help maximise success. But that being said there is no easy way to win in FM. I hope to outline everything I do in the hope that following all instructions will allow people to have similar success to me with minimum effort. But I've always still had periods where my teams not performed as well as I would have liked and I've got frustrated. But I've found that sticking with the same tactic was the better option in the long run and that judging the performance at the end of the season was a much better indicator than judging the performance game to game.
So with this in mind I'll begin.....

firefighterhilf

Tactics

Firstly, and probably most importantly is the tactic I use.
The tactic can be found here:

Choppers 4-1-2-2-1 tactic

It's Version 3 of this tactic that you want and it can be found at the bottom of the second page. This tactic is very balanced so don't expect loads of full on attacking football but what it does mean is that because it's a balanced tactic you don't need to tweak from game to game. Saying that I have developed a defensive version of this tactic to be used in some of the harder away games I'm now having in the Championship. I'll be uploading this tonight when I get home from work if you feel you need it. However, in the lower leagues I find that just using V3 is good enough.

Players

If you find the tactic is not working for you then it's almost definitely down to the players you're using (particularly if you're also following all of the other things I do which we'll go into later). This has definitely been the case for me. As I managed to get better players my results improved dramatically.

But this is not always easy in the lower leagues and after a few seasons of struggling to find even a half decent player I stumbled upon something that helped me get promoted the next three seasons in a row. And that was not to listen to my assistant in regards to what players would be interested in coming to my team on loan. When asked to filter out unrealistic targets he gave me a list of absolutely useless players, all worth less than £90k. In the end I got fed up and just listed all the players listed for loan that were valued at £1m or less. I then literally made offers to loan all of them (or only the good ones once their values got down to less than £400k). What I found was that the majority of these players will say they're not interested but some will come to you, particularly players from teams close by, so in my case Sunderland, Newcastle etc.

Now, if you're playing in England the rules are that you can have 4 long term loans per season. So if you're lucky you should get 4 players that are better than the players you already have agreeing to come on loan to you. If you're very lucky then you might get 5 or 6 of these players agreeing and you can choose the best 4. To ensure that you don't just take the first 4 that agree just to find out that two better players have agreed to come on loan to you but are no longer allowed as you've used up your allocation, delay any that you're not 100% convinced about for a week until you know if those better players are going to agree to come to you or not.

You then have the option to bring in some short term loans. In England you can have 5 loan players in the match day squad so I always try to bring a couple more players in on 3 month loans. When their 3 months are up you can't extend them as there's a rule that you can only have youngsters on short term loans for 3 months at the most. So once those two players are coming up to the end of their loan deals I try and find two more. By doing this I try to ensure I always have 6 loan players at my club, 5 which I can always play and 1 for cover. I've found this to work brilliantly as the players you can manage to bring in on loan are usually always better than your useless lower league players. It takes a while to make loan offers for so many players but it's definitely been worth it.

Another tip is to never offer 100% wages to try and keep your outgoings to a minimum. Offer 60% at the most at first, if the loan offer is refused then up it if the player's worth it. Not wasting money is massively important at lower league level, more about that later.

The other thing you need to spend time doing is trawl through the free transfers. At lower league level you only need to concentrate on certain attributes for each position. As there are going to be a lot of free players to trawl through it's much better to sort the decent from the dire in some way. If you have attribute masking enabled this will involve scouting as many free players as possible to reveal all their attributes before taking the next step.

Once you've done enough scouting of free players (or you never had their attributes masked in the first place) then it's time to start looking for the kind of players that will give maximum benefit to the team. The first thing I'd do is to filter all free players that have pace and acceleration of 15 and above. Pace is massively important at lower league level and if you can get a pacey striker and 2 pacey wingers then it will make a big difference.

Next filter by tackling of 14 or more to see if there's any decent free defenders or defensive midfielders out there. At this stage the standard of player that you'll actually be able to sign will be very low so it's mainly just a case of trying to get a few players that are better than the ones in your current squad at this stage. The main thing is to try and get some pace throughout the team, the loan players you hopefully manage to bring in will be the most important ones.

*Disclaimer 2 - This method is not entirely in keeping with the strict rules used in the LLM forum. But if you do want to keep to those rules you just need to only rely on players found by your scouts etc and try and stay away from the player search screen. I however don't strictly follow the LLM rules as I find I don't enjoy it as much. Each to their own.

firefighterhilf

Finances

One of the difficult things about lower league management is keeping the finances in the green. I've managed to do this quite comfortably by doing the following.

As soon as you take over your new club get rid of any player or staff member who is not needed to save on wages. I get rid of all youth players that don't require a compensation payout (if they do need compensation I'll use mutual termination and try and sack them on the cheap). I also get rid of any reserve team players. Money will be very tight so I only want enough players for my first team squad, anyone else is just a drain on the finances.

The same goes for the staff. Because of the poor level of facilities and coaches your players are not going to improve. So trying to bring in more coaches is completely pointless. Stick to one assistant and one coach at the most. Same goes for physios, one is enough. You may want to allow yourself 2 or 3 scouts if you have attribute masking on and need to scout players often.
But that's it. Make sure you don't have anyone you don't need and your finances will slowly grow.

Another well known way to inject a bit of cash into the club is to arrange friendlies at your ground with Premier League teams. This could involve approaching all the prem teams as most of them will say no. But hopefully you'll manage to get 3 or 4 to agree. Do this every season to bring in much needed cash.

Training

At this stage the training that you use doesn't really matter. All your players and staff will only be part time, your facilities and coaches will be awful and your players are not going to improve anyway. So it's fine to just stick with the general schedule. I did decide to make my own in part time schedules in the second season. If anyone wants then just ask and I'll upload screenies but to be honest I don't think they made any difference. Not until you're full time and have better facilities and coaches will training actually have much of an effect.

firefighterhilf

Right, I think that's everything set for the start of your first actual match. You've got your tactics, you've got your players on the way, you've got your training and hopefully you've trimmed down the playing and backroom staff as much as possible to save money.

Now we move onto what I do from game to game in order to try and keep winning.

Media Interaction

This is quite simple for me, I ignore it. Responding to pre or post match comments seems to have more of a negative than positive effect on players in my opinion, or at least it has a negative effect more often. I've been ignoring most media comments since FM07 and found this to be the steadiest way to not get fluctuations in moral.

The only media comments are do respond to are the following:
When a player gets injured and you get the media comment afterwards about how much will they be missed. In this instance I always respond with 'Well miss player x but I feel we have adequate cover'.
This causes player x to be happy that he will be missed and any other players who play in his position to be pleased that you feel they're good enough to cover. I never bother with any of the other responses here.

Moral is very important in the game. Keeping it as high as possible is essential if you want to avoid slumps.

Team Talks

Massively important when it comes to keeping moral up, especially after a loss. Can also effectively be used to turn a 2-0 half time deficit into a win. The main thing I try and do is to never get angry with my team for losing, even if I really want to. I always sympathise or tell them it was a good effort when they lose. Full details of team talks here:

At the start of a match:-

If I'm at home and anything other than massive favourite I'll use 'For the fans'.

If I'm at home and i'm the massive favourite I'll use 'I expect a win'.

If I'm away and I'm the favourite or it's pretty even I'll use 'Good luck for the match ahead'

If I'm away and not favourite I'll use 'You can win tonight'

At half time:-

If I'm 2 or more goals up I'll use 'Pleased'

If I'm 1 goal ahead I'll use whatever version of encourage is shown. This will be the third option and usually says simply 'Encourage' or 'Show Encouragement'. To me this is encouraging the players to go on and finish the game off and this has worked very well for me since FM07.

If I'm drawing at half time then I'll use the same as above although in this instance the option may say 'Tell the players they can win this'.

If I'm 1 goal behind I'll use the same as the above.

If I'm 2 or more goals behind, or I'm 1 goal behind but the team have been playing particularly badly, I'll use 'I want to see more from you'. This will often spur the team on to attempt a come-back.

End of the game:-

If I've won I use the team option of 'Pleased' and the individually tell any player who got a rating of 8 or more that I'm 'Delighted' with them. Giving some individual team talks seems to have a very positive effect on players and I do this after every win.

If we've drawn I'll generally 'Sympathise' unless we were big underdogs in which case I'll use the same as above.

If we've lost the game, no matter how badly, I'll always use sympathise. I do this no matter how annoyed I am with my players as I've found that getting angry or disappointed with them in the pre match team talk can damage moral to the point where the team goes on a losing streak.

The only exception to the above is if we've lost narrowly, particularly to a better team. In this case I'll use 'Good Effort'.

I've found the above to work very well for me since FM07 and I've found that keeping moral up has a massive effect on team performances over the season.

firefighterhilf

Opposition Instructions

Another tool that I find very useful, and use at the start of every game is opposition instructions.

The players I look at first are the strikers and the two wingers of the opposition. And this is what I'm looking for:-

Which foot is there strongest. Whichever it is I'll show them onto their weaker foot. I.e if their right footed I'll choose 'Show onto foot -left' from the opposition instructions.
If a striker is either footed I don't bother with the show onto foot option as there's no point. If a winger is either footed I'll still choose to show them inside as my tactic is quite narrow and showing them inside means they'll be more likely to be tackled. So basically I always show right wingers onto their left foot and vice versa.

The next thing I'm looking at on these players is their bravery. If it's 11 or less I select 'Tackling - Hard' from the opposition instructions in the hope of shaking them up a bit. Anything above 11 and I just leave it as is.

Finally I'll look at their pace an acceleration. If both these attributes are under 10 then I'll select 'Closing Down - Always' from the opposition instructions. This means slower players can be closed down quickly and because they're slow you don’t have to worry about them racing past the advancing defender/midfielder.

Now that I've got the strikers and wingers covered there's something else I do every game. I select each centre back (there could be 2 or 3 of these depending on the opponent’s formation) and the Keeper and select 'Closing Down - Always from the opposition instructions. This encourages my forward players to put more pressure on the opposition defence when they have the ball and has so far been quite effective.

There are then a couple of final things I'll look at when setting up my opposition instructions. The first thing I'll do is look at any central midfielders, attacking midfielders, or defensive midfielders. What I'm looking for here is whether any of them have a particularly high number of assists or goals. This tells me they're influential, perhaps a playmaker. If this is the case I'll close this player down often, show them onto their weaker foot and tackle them hard if they're not very brave. This will hopefully nullify the threat from this player.

The final thing I'll look at is the condition of each opposition player. If they happen to be playing a player who's condition is quite low, say below 90%, I'll set 'Tackling - Hard' from the opposition instructions for this player in the hope of injuring him. This has worked for me on some occasions.

Summery

Well I think that's it. That's everything I've done to ensure that I could have success without worrying about tweaking my tactics at all. On that subject I'd just like to point out that if I'm behind or ahead in a game I also don't change or tweak my tactics. I trust it to either protect the lead I have or get the goal I need. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but hey, you can't win 'em all. The fact is at the end of the season I've managed to finish where I wanted to finish without tweaking but by following the methods outlined above.

Hopefully this will be of help to someone. I'd like to say that if you follow everything I've done here to the letter you'll have success. Hopefully that will be the case, I've used most of this stuff since FM07 and it's always worked for me. But there are no guarantees of success in FM08. What I will say is that the above should allow you to concentrate on just improving the players at your club. With these methods better players should equal success.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask.

retired_elpata

An excellent thread :thup:

Added to the tactics bible too

retired_staceeh

Chopper99 You use the same Opposition Instructions if you are in a higher level team?

firefighterhilf

Cool, thanks very much :thup:

firefighterhilf

Yep, when it comes to the opposition instructions I'm still using them in the exaxt same way in the Premiership with Gateshead. I also used them in the same way when in my first '08 game as Man Utd.

retired_FaultyFate

chopper99,

Excellent post!

Actually my approach is very similar: same formation, exactly the same opposition instructions for wingers (though I don't bother to check their pace - just close them down, in Championship it works fine). I also try to identify opposition playmaker (either from scout report, or by checking pass attempts) and close him down as well. I use very similar teamtalk choice logic and exactly the same media interactons. Team /players instructions are slightly different since I use global sliders mainly, but it's not so important because they depend on players anyway.
I can vouch - this approach works great in Championship. I am Crystal Palace (predicted 10th), after 18 games I am 2nd with 13W-2D-3L, all three losses to clear favorites in the first 6 games, when I was not 100% sure about my 1st team + my players did not know each other very well. Despite the losses fans were still pleased as it appears to them I controlled those games.

Started wondering though that it's too early for my team to get promotion this season. Both my best DCs are on loan, FBs are definitely not of Premiership quality, left winger nowhere near Premiership, and I need much better DM. Plus I have ST and AMC on loan, though they are not too superior relative to my own players. Of course, I can try to loan some players again, but that would mean longer adaptation period, which may cost me. So, I guess "loan as many as you could" approach may backfire if you earn promotion too fast.