Fortuna Aeternitas

Turning moaning into positive energy

2010-11-05T01:11:00.000-07:00

Since the latest patch hit the Live Gameworlds, people have been complaining about the new match engine. Too many injuries, too many red cards, too many yellow cards...

Regardless of the fact wether or not these complaints are actually valid or just the result of poor tactics *cough cough*, these complainers have been rather vocal both inside the Gameworlds, using the discussion mailing list and general mailing list, as well as on the forums, where numerous threads popped up where people either did a rage quit or moaned at the supposedly poor Match Engine.

I'm not a big fan of these negative discussions floating around, as they give off a wrong vibe. It's a very vocal and hardcore minority which finds these changes terribly negative, but the majority of the people will just get on with the game, adapting to the new surroundings and conditions.

FM Live is much like, constantly changing and evolving. Don't resist the changes or try to control every aspect, because that won't work. It will generate stress and anger, which in turn poisons the atmosphere inside a Gameworld. For a game so relient on its community and human interaction, this could be fatal.

Instead, go with the flow and experiment to adapt to the new conditions. Try and see the positive in these new situations. Everyone has to deal with this, so why not ask others how they are handling it and you would be amazed at the amount of tips and pointers you will receive.

In an effort to channel this negative energy into something more positive. People complain about injuries and bookings? So let's give them a challenge where they have to get as many of those as possible, with a competition element added as well.

I've created a sort of CPU challenge, where users take on the environment of the Gameworld, preferably against a side everyone will be able to beat anyway. Instead of focussing on scoring goals, which would favour the stronger sides of the Gameworld, I will let everyone have a go at exactly these points they are complaining about, injuries and bookings.

This is the challenge I have issued to the Gameworld:

MISSION: HIT THEM HARD: your team plays . +1 for every yellow card you get, +2 for a direct red card, +3 for every knock you inflict upon your opponent, +4 for every green injury you inflict upon your opponent and +5 for every red injury you inflict upon your opponent.

Now instead of moaning about the Match Engine, people have banded together and are trying tactics to maximise their amounts of bookings and injuries, in an effort to reach the top score in the Gameworld (which incidentally is 29 points).

This is a two-way street as well. If they know what they have to do to get a lot of cards and injuries, they also know what to do to prevent these things from happening.

Trying to channel moaning and negativity into something more constructive, it really can be this simple.

It's been a while...

2010-11-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

I haven't exactly been a very diligent blogger. In fact, I've been rather inconsistent these past few months. Mostly because of a combination of a severe lack of inspiration and other work taking up all my attention.

To get you guys upto speed on my activities lately... I have resumed my community activities and have in fact been promoted to the Support Moderator team to boost the community activities throughout GameWorlds.

I have also managed to secure a position within the faculty of the school I was working, which means I have to devote more time and effort towards my work compared to last year.

What can you expect the next few weeks? I hope to write several blogs in the next few days. Some will deal with the constant moaning in the Live Worlds about how bad the 1.6 patch was, some will deal with how the ME seems to have changed and some will just deal with the topic I am best at; community activities.

I hope you will all stick and have stuck with me, since I know I've been neglecting this blog severely.

What makes FMLive so great

2010-07-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

My mates sometimes ask me what's so fun about FM Live. It's not always easy to explain. I think it's the fact that you outsmarted another human being and you can actually rub it in a bit.

Incidentally, I just noticed this chat in Butragueño's DFA.

D1: sunderland sharks 2-0 Jazzy Ginners F.C FT
Liam Ferguson says: (14:24:43)
Noor Sabri - legend
Tom "Metgod" Parkin says: (14:24:58)
shit
Liam Ferguson says: (14:25:17)
he got man of the match in our game he cant be shit ^^
Tom "Metgod" Parkin says: (14:25:19)
RAGE QUIT
Tom "Metgod" Parkin has left the chat
Liam Ferguson:user#500766> says: (14:25:25)
lol
Liam Ferguson says: (14:25:34)
owned

Countering the hordes of 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3

2010-07-14T00:05:00.000-07:00

Whether it is the Lobby, the Tactics chat room or the forums, people are always complaining about other users and the supposed successes they are achieving because of their 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3 formations.

Basically, the formations looks a bit like this (image is the courtesy of FML-Tactics):

In some cases, the DM (defensive midfielder) is replaced by a regular MC (midfielder central), but this is pretty much how it looks. Depending on if you're facing a classic tactic or one created with the tactics creator, there will be some differences in the definitive setup, but this is the overal look of the thing.

Instruction-wise, these formations have one thing in common. They are ultra-narrow. I mean really narrow. What they rely on, is dominance in the centre of the pitch. Call it a glitch in the Match Engine or whatever, but playing very narrow upfront and in midfield seems to work wonders.

Your own narrow midfielders are perfectly capable of going wide to track an opposing winger, whereas the same winger or midfielder seems unable to cut inside to mark a run of the narrow player.

This generally leads to the three forwards overloading on the two central defenders, because the opposing wingbacks won't cut inside to help their centre-backs, unless you instruct them to man-mark, which most managers don't do by default (the default setting for most wingbacks is zonal).

When you leave a match versus a team like this to your AI, you're pretty much screwed. Your AI won't make the necessary changes and when it does, the other manager can just change his tactic around again and hammer you anyway.

Should you find yourself in a live match versus a 4-3-3 or 4-1-2-3, don't despair. You can beat them. I won't say it'll be easy and it definitely won't be a pretty match to see, but hey, it's not your fault they're all mindless sheep playing the same generic formation someone posted on the forums, right?

Taking in mind I'm using a 4-2-4 formation (basically a 4-4-2 with advanced wingers), this is how I counter the swarm of mindless sheep using the same formation.

First of all, my DR and DL are set to man marking. That doesn't mean just general man marking, but I assign them to a specific opponent. My DR picks up their FLC, whilst my DL picks up their FRC. That should leave my two centre-backs to deal with their remaining central forward.

That isn't enough ofcourse, as your defence will most likely still be spread wider than their offence, meaning your wingbacks still have to cut inside to mark their target, which they are generally not good at.

So the next thing we do, is change our style of play. I generally opt for a counter-attacking match strategy. This automatically narrows the own formation to match that of your opponent sufficiently to allow those wingbacks of yours to pick on those pesky all-speed winger-attackers.

As I said above, the 4-3-3 / 4-1-2-3 sheep usually employ very fast forwards, who can run at your defenders and skip past them. There's not much you can do about that, but you can limit the effective range of these speed demons.

The best way to do that is to use one of the in-game shouts. Tell the team to drop deeper. By dropping back, you effectively decrease the amount of space a forward can run into. More often than not, if a striker does run through your defence, he will find himself in a difficult angle or even running the ball out for a goal-kick.

Setting up your keeper as a sweeper-keeper also tends to help, as he can help sweep up any through-balls or pesky strikers chasing after such a through-ball.

That pretty much sorted out the defensive part of taking care of the mindless drones, but I'm quite sure none of you are satisfied with just keeping them at bay. No, we wish to punish them for their lack of imagination by actually winning the match or at least putting a few goals past them.

So here's what we do. Again, we look to use the in-game shouts. Since your own formation is by default wider than theirs, as you are using at least two wingers or inside forwards, your opponents weakness lies on his wings, where he basically has no players.

Sure, the central players will drop wide to get at your wingers if needed, but that will take time and we're not going to allow them that time. No, we are taking advantage of their Achilles' heel and we are hitting them where it hurts them the most. We're doing this by using the exploit the flanks shout, which does exactly what it says on the tin.

Next up is the get the ball forward shout. We don't just want to go wide, we want to go there fast, as we don't want to allow their central midfielders to drop wide and pick up on our runners. So get it out there and get it out there fast.

Last up is the pass into space shout. If your wingers start running with the ball in their feet, they're usually a bit slower, so let's not do that. Since the opposition has no-one directly picking up your wingers, they're going to have a fair amount of space, so let's use that to our advantage. Let the wingers chase after a ball that's not played into their feet.

More often than not, this will draw an opposing wing-back out of position as well, as he will try to intercept. When your winger is fast enough, he will usually skip past this wing-back, which leaves your man on the ball, plus your two regular forwards and other inside forward/winger on the other wing versus three defenders.

Sure, that won't always result in a goal, but in the end, you're always going to put a few of those chances away. Oh by the way, this isn't a 100% guaranteed way to success against a 4-1-2-3 or 4-3-3, but I reckon I've won about 80% of my live matches against one this way.

Stepping Down As Quiz Master

2010-07-07T00:52:00.000-07:00

This has probably been a long time coming, but I've decided to stop hosting quizzes in my Live GameWorld, which is currently Nuñez.

The quizzes are supposed to help build community spirit and bring the community together. What I've seen in the last quizzes is something quite the opposite. Several mutes because people wanted to disrupt progress. People ignoring other people's requests and the moderator's requests to play the quiz or leave the chat room.

When you take into account that a sixty minute quiz takes about the same amount of time in terms of preparation, you can see why I'm not in the mood to have it ruined by a few buffoons.

Last night's quiz wasn't even my own, but it was symptomatic to what the community has degenerated into at times. Some random shouts and "humorous" attempts at an answer.

I suppose we have to accept "Abu Hamza" as a valid guess to the question "Who was deemed the Asian Maradonna, before the Iranian government forced him into retirement?"

The same applies to answers regarding Germany, where it's apparently perfectly acceptable to name Hitler or other nazi party members.

Under the new guide-lines, we have to be pretty lenient with that, so we didn't even mute on first offence, but only used this on repeat offenders.

This usually stops the trouble, but the fall-out means we have to deal with adding mod notes to someone's dossier, as well as dealing with the muted user after the quiz.

To be fair here, most acknowledge their mistake and just move on, but there's always one who vehemently protests his treatment and claims victimisation on our part. A bit of a mail contact between me and a user is below:

(User X)

i never swore.. kum is a player ive been offered by jim !!!!!!! i can prove it !!!!! unmute me <:emoticon#67> and i want compensation

--------------------

(Guido)

Mind your language and you wouldn't have been muted in the first place.

--------------------

(User X)

unmute me i was discussing a transfer with jim <:emoticon#3> i dont pay money for you to be an idiot

It's this general shift in attitude that gets to me, as this attitude is becoming more and more common. You know there's a quiz in place.

Picture the situation if you will. You've been asked several times to discuss your transfer outside the Tactics Chat (which makes sense to begin with, quiz or not). You persist anyway. You get muted and then you proceed to call the moderator in charge an idiot, demand compensation and hurl in some abuse in the Lobby as well?

Oh haha, Guido! Grow a sense of humour. The player is called Kum! That is bloody hilarious.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but when it's clearly disrupting an activity which seems to amuse about twenty or so other managers and you are asked to stop it, why do you insist on continuing?

People seem to enjoy challenging the guys with the badges a bit too much for my liking, as well as trying to get others into trouble or disrupt whatever chat is going on in the GameWorld with inane drivel and spam-like comments.

No more of that for me, please. When running a quiz means we have to have a second moderator tag along to clear the debris and fall-out from users going berserk, I feel we've taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line with our community approach.

It's not cheating if SI don't fix the bug, right?

2010-05-18T00:10:00.000-07:00

I think they coded this bug out of existence by now, but the effects can still be noticed in Miller, which is running a follow-up of codes. Basically what happened is this, some users were buying up Returning Stars and waiving them to gain a higher position in next year's draft.

What they did was exploit a small loop-hole in the code. They signed cheap and not very good Returning Stars from teams who were glad to get rid of them for a bit of cash, they kept these players for a few days and they waived them to gain rank in the draft, ending up ahead of genuine new players and the legion of regular restarters we have every season.

This meant for example that a club with a Level 12 reputation was ending up in the list of Reserved Players. These Reserved Players are basically the very best stars returning and they are reserved for a reason. These players are allocated to users who are new to the GameWorld. You could end up with guys like Pato, Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo or Xavi for example.

Our exploiting friend ended up in this list three seasons in a row. Even after the bug was fixed, he still ended up there, presumably because he waived so many Returning Stars before that he lodged himself into the top 20 of the draft for some time to come.

Despite this being an exploit, it isn't entirely a bad thing. After all, the nature of beta is that you try to fix bug like this one and the only way to know that they are there is to try and see if you can bend the system in a way it wasn't designed. Naturally, your obligations as a tester would require you to actually log such attempts if successful, so that the development team can fix it.

For example, about nine months ago, I discovered an exploit where it was possible to invite CPU clubs into competitions with prize money and basically hammer them into oblivion whilst gaining money at the same time. It was basically the ultimate DYM, when properly ran, you could potentially make 450k profit pro half hour by hammering a single CPU club. Not a bad deal I would say.

Naturally, I logged this bug with the development team when I noticed it was working and it is now no longer possible to use this exploit to boost your club's finances. I did what any good beta tester would do when he discovers an exploit, I logged it and provided the developers with a load of evidence of what I did exactly so they could fix it. As a sort of reward, I got to keep the 200k I made with these competitions, as I had ran them in a small scale form

Unfortunately, our exploiting buddy I mentioned earlier did no such thing. He didn't report the bug on the forums, he didn't flag it in-game, he kept it quiet and continued to exploit it for about two to three seasons. By that time, we as a moderator team had noticed him climbing the ranks of the draft in an odd way, but we needed the time to gather evidence of what he had done exactly before we finally logged the bug. At around the same time, a regular user also flagged this on the forums.

So, what do you do as a moderator in such a case after the bug is flagged? We looked into the situation and because the exploit was never flagged by said user, we issued a warning and took his Returning Stars allocation for that season, hoping that would fix the situation.

Next season, he ended up in the top 20 of the draft again, so naturally we repeated the process, which apparently angered said manager. He was furious at the moderator team for taking his Returning Star again, as he failed to see that he was still benefitting from his exploiting efforts several months before.

He failed to see the causality between waiving a bunch of Returning Stars and climbing the ranks when he shouldn't have been able to and him ending up in the top 20 of the draft, above genuine newcomers from Beta Coppell, so he vehemently protested what we were doing, claiming it wasn't a cheat if SI didn't fix the bug.

That brings me to a rather interesting point and a flaw in his logic. How can they even know there's a bug if you didn't report it? You are saying you're not cheating because they never fixed a loophole you didn't report in the first place. Am I the only one who thinks this is weird?

Observations From A Potential Client

2010-04-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

Much like myself, my younger brother has been an avid fan of the Championship Manager series and the subsequent Football Manager series. He has never ever played FM Live though, not until recently anyway, when he spent the at my place and watched me play FM Live for a bit and eventually had a go at playing a few friendlies with my team as well.

Naturally, he had a few things to say about the game and I feel that some of his observations make sense and are worth mentioning in this blog, and probably towards SI as well.

He immensely enjoyed the fantasy football aspect of FM Live. A chance to build a team from scratch and just use your nouse and instinct to work the market and tactics to achieve success. He thoroughly enjoyed browsing the database and checking how the game rated his favorite real-life players.

Whilst he saw the advantages of Returning Stars, especially for newcomers, he wasn't a big fan of this feature. In his opinion (and my own), retired players should stay retired. He proposed offering the Returning Stars system in combination with Youth Academies. All the graduates would be tossed in a large pool, the worse clubs get first pickings.

Youth Academies were a nice idea, or so he thought initially. When browsing the market for free transfer youths, he noticed there were hardly any and the ones that were there had been dumped by the larger clubs. I explained that the great number of academies meant that there were less players generated for the free market. He replied that this would mean that academies were the only viable alternative for long term planning regarding a youth team, in which case academies should be scrapped, since it's basically forcing the users to play the game in a certain way. As an alternative, he mentioned the drafts.

The last of his key issues was related to the time it took to build a successful team. My team is a Level 17 club, so he understood I had a pretty good team going. With him being less patient, he was afraid that if he didn't achieve success within the first three to five seasons, he might lose interest and stop playing.

According to him, (some, if not a majority of) people buy computer games because they want something to win at. He acknowledged that FML has no win button so if there was not enough success, he would quit. We have seen this in the post-reset GameWorlds, where hundreds left because they can't hack it.

So there you have it, the views of someone who never played the game before... Which conclusions should be drawn from this? Maybe I'll get back to you on that a bit later.

Why Can't I Get This Idea To Work?!

2010-04-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm trying something here and I can't get it to work... This is basically what I have in mind, tactically speaking. For the past two seasons, Barcelona have employed a formation where the deepest midfield player (either Yaya Toure or Sergio Busquets) drops into the centre of defence. The two centre-backs, Gerard Pique and Carles Puyol, will spread into extremely wide positions whilst Barcelona are in possession, almost on the touchlines. This spreading allows the wing-backs Dani Alves and Maxwell to bomb forward without fear of leaving the defence completely exposed.

The problem with attacking wing-backs is that they are never completely free to attack, they are always concerned about their defensive responsibilities. When I can create a more reliable and sturdy three-man defence, they could get to the opposition byline without leaving a huge hole at the back.

A big part in these bombing forward runs is the role of the wide players on my team. Rather than stay wide (which would hamper the ability of the wing-backs to get forward), they narrow, drifting into the box and almost a conventional front three with the central forward. This has the effect of narrowing the opposition defence, as their natural markers follow them into the centre.

Basically, I am combining the inside forward idea with more attacking wing-backs, as the inside movement of the wingers opens up a huge amount of space on the flanks, ready for the wing-backs to run into and exploit.

Apart from the regular problems the inside forwards present to any defence, the opponents wide midfield players are suddenly charged with an almost solely defensive job. When my wing-backs get to the byline and the opposing wide midfielders track them all the way, my opponent will end up with something approaching a flat back six, which means there is now space in midfield to exploit.

Intelligent movement as the key to unlocking an opponents defences. Intelligent movement, as stated earlier, implies position switching, which in turn means that players will often end up finishing an attacking move in a different position to which they started this attacking move, in an effort to exploit the gaps in defence created by other people's movement.

The only problem is that I can't get the bloody defensive midfielder to drop into or even right in front of defence. It keeps looking like a fucking pyramid with two at the back in a narrowish formation and one in front of those two.

This is a problem because the defence is too narrow, particularly if the opposing striker is or opposing strikers are faster than the defenders and able to move wide before outpacing tjheir marker to the ball. Add to that the fact that every team has at least one of these speedfreak forwards, and you can see the problem I am faced with.

Soooo... to cut a long story short, any ideas on how to bloody fix this?

The Come-Back Of The Inside Forward

2010-04-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

This season in real life could very well mark the end of the traditional centre forward as we know him from the past as a traditional goal-scorer, as this central forward is being replaced by a new role, that of the old inside forward.

The winger as an inside forward, drifting into the penalty area from the wing to provide assists or score goals. It is a role which is becoming more and more popular in modern football. Just look at some of the teams in the semi-finals of this year’s Champions League. Lionel Messi and Arjen Robben are prime examples, whereas Cristiano Ronaldo holds a similar role at Madrid and used to hold this role for Man Utd.

Sir Alex Ferguson was last season quoted saying: "When forwards attack from wide to inside, they are far more dangerous," Ferguson explained. "It's funny when I see centre-forwards starting off in the middle against their markers and then going away from goal. Strikers going inside are far more dangerous, I think. When Henry played as a striker, and sometimes when Wayne does, they try to escape and create space by drifting from the centre to wide positions, when that actually makes them less dangerous." (source: The Guardian)

We’re basically noticing a shift away from central forwards who are supposed to score the goals. The stereotypical strikers such as Gabriel Batistuta and Ronaldo are being replaced by a new breed of goal-scorer. When we look at the last two World Footballers of the Year, we notice these have been primarily wide players who cut inside and score many goals, exploiting the space made by the central forwards moving around and luring defenders away as well.

Intelligent movement upfront has become the key to unlocking an opponents defences. Intelligent movement implies position switching, which in turn means that players will often end up finishing an attacking move in a different position to which they started this attacking move, in an effort to exploit the gaps in defence created by other people's movement.

These movements cause problems for a defence because the responsibility for marking the runner shifts between players. When a winger drifts into the centre of the pitch, the wingback is forced to make a choice. If he leaves his position to follow his marker, he leaves a lot of space on the wing, which happened to Lyon against Bayern.

With Ribéry (initially anyway) and Robben drifting into the centre, their opponents were forced to follow, leaving the Bayern wingbacks Contento and Lahm with a lot of space in the backs of the Lyon midfielders Delgado and Ederson. Philipp Lahm especially excelled in this role, as Lyon chose to focus on Arjen Robben, leaving Lahm with a lot of space to run into, which he frequently did.

Should the wingback decide to remain in his position, he creates a new problem, as the centre-backs run the risk of being out-numbered. In sticking to the Bayern vs Lyon game, I am going to sketch a possible scenario now.

If Cissokho and Reveillere had decided to remain stationary instead of following their markers, the Lyon centre-backs Cris and Toulalan would have to face not only Olic and Müller, but potentially one or two of the wingers as well, creating a numerical advantage for the forwards.

Thus, if the defensive responsibilities for picking up on moving forwards are not managed properly, the inside forward will find himself in acres of space, which leaves him more opportunity to assist the strikers or score himself.

So basically, when an inside forward such as Robben or Messi drifts inside, he creates confusion as the responsibility for marking him shifts from the full back or the side midfielder to the centre back. Not only does this create space in the “hole”, it also creates space in the “channel” between wing back and centre-back. With much more communication needed in the opposition defence, a good inside forward on the wing can create so much space for his team mates as he drags players out of position from all over the field.

The inside forward often starts wide, meaning the opposing team's wingback assumes he is the player he should be picking up. But then, the winger starts drifting inside, which means the opposing teams wing-back usually tracks him into the centre, which in turn opens up space for a deep-lying forward (such as for example Thomas Müller or Zlatan Ibrahimovic) on the flank to exploit with either a cross or a through ball.

In other variations, we have seen the deep-lying forward (again, Ibrahimovic or Müller for example) dropping into the gap between defence and midfield, luring his defender along, which leaves a gap in the centre of defence. A well placed through ball means either space for the second striker or for the inside forward drifting inside to pounce upon, as Arsenal fans can probably remember when Vermaelen was lured out of position as few times.

It’s not just in the Champions League where these inside forwards are gaining in popularity and impact. In Italy for example, Antonio di Natale is topping the goal-scoring chart, whereas in Holland, Bryan Ruiz and Luis Suarez are fighting for the top goal-scorer crown. All these players are mostly forwards who start on the flank and drift inside.

It should be very interesting indeed to see if the World Cup this summer catches up with this trend from club football and if this trend continues into next season. That the inside forward is highly effective in FM and FM Live is something I have been well aware of for a while now.

Guest Entry; A game world is more than just a collection of teams and FAs

2010-04-20T22:07:00.000-07:00

Not my own work this time but something another manager and regular reader of my blog wrote. I like it, so it's getting its own spot on here, because D. doesn't have her own blog.

Well it deserves the name "world". It is full of personalities, has its own economy with booms and recessions, and has its own evolutionary trends. By this I am of course referring to tactics.

A man who started his career as a clerk in a patent office went on to theorize, "For every action, there is an opposite and equal re-action". He later went on to patent Einstein's theory of relativity. I would like to suggest that "For every tactic, there is an opposite and equal counter-tactic". In application of such a theory you will elicit far more benefits than you first imagine. It is about more than simply defeating the latest "super-tactic" or countering the latest corner "exploit". Let me explain what I have been noticing...

The latest "super-tactic" is the narrow 4-3-3. It is tantamount to what I've heard is known as "Kevin Keegen soccer". You score, 3, we'll score 4. And it works. The working of such a tactic is beyond the scope of this blog, but there are plenty of posts out there explaining how it works. People have been embracing this religion of narrow 4-3-3 and dumping world class wingers onto the market place as they have no need for them, often going for half MV! Whilst pacey strikers (as called for by the use of 4-3-3 narrow) have seen their MVs rocket up!

So, what did I do? I decided to develop a counter tactic for this 4-3-3 narrow formation employing wingers to specifically mark the opposing FBs, and using a single big TM up front and flood the midfield a DM/CM and two supporting AMC's for the TM. And my tactic works. I came from mid table obscurity in my league which I had just been newly promoted to, to winning it in the last third of the season. I made a ton of cash selling a pacey striker, and paid peanuts for a couple of wingers as the MP was flooded with them. And the best bit was, as popularity in narrow 4-3-3 grew, my advantage grew further as I came up against more 4-3-3 narrow teams and turned what might have been draws against higher rep stronger opposition teams into wins and took the title.

Investing time alone into FML by searching out the latest super tactic or corner exploit and applying it correctly will bring you some short term success against teams with managers who are less active and don't keep up with the tactical trends. You're 1 or 2 steps ahead of them and you will bag the points. However, it is not a recipe for long term success. Especially if you end up reshaping your squad each time you change your tactics. You sell your unwanted players at below MV, and pay way over the odds for the required players. Supply and demand. It's simple economics and you don't have to be Adam Smith to work that one out. So you are left with no money to invest in infrastructure which is key to the long term success in FML.

I prefer to take a leaf from Darwin's book. He theorized that "It is not the strongest who survive, but those with the ability to best adapt to change in their environment". Evolution. Our environment is our game world. To be the strongest and survive using narrow 4-3-3 you have to buy the best 3 pacey strikers and best 3 ball playing MCs. In other words, be better than the other 4-3-3 narrow teams out there by having better players! That will not be cheap! You are fighting for the same limited resources everyone else is. Instead, adapt to your environment, don't join the flock in going narrow 4-3-3, find the equal and opposite counter-tactic. Do this by finding a CPU team that plays this way and practicing against them and gradually over the course of maybe 15 - 20 games develop a tactic. Whilst developing it, look at the changing trends in the MP and see what you notice. In the case of narrow 4-3-3, all the wingers going for half MV... could you somehow employ these guys in your counter tactics to your advantage? (remember the specific marking of the opposing 4-3-3 fullbacks whilst running rampage down the wing using "hug the line" instruction?)...

My results speak for themselves. I have been in Miller for three seasons, won three consecutive promotions, two of those as league champions. Cup semi finalist on two occasions where I dumped out much higher rep teams along the way and last week i won the most recent CPU vs Human tournament. I have a very healthy 28 day financial projection, great youthful players with huge potential as well as current ability, and a stadium with 4 two tier Opstilla II stands with exclisiff boxes raking in the money. All in 3 seasons by adapting to my environment.

In conclusion, monitor and adapt to your FML environment, and you will not only win on the pitch, but you will conquer the transfer market, be financially sound as this will allow you to invest in the long term future of your club with infrastructure, and you will have money to pay for higher wages and buy better players. In short, whilst the other clubs that followed the latest super tactic pay over the odds for players in short supply and offer ridiculous wages for them in auctions, and eventually go into administration and start again... you will not only survive, you will grow and prosper in your FML game world.

There Is A Reason Default Tactics Are Not Flawless...

2010-04-13T03:49:00.000-07:00

Call it repetitive if you will, but lately I've noticed a lot of people are complaining about the tactical aspect of FM Live. On the one hand, people want to stop so-called supertactics, the very effective tactics which use and abuse the weaknesses in the Match Engine to get good results and require very little editing pro match. On the other hand however, they are asking SI to upgrade the default tactics. That seems a bit odd to me.

This isn't going to be a very long post, just one where I wonder where this contradiction in terms comes from. On the one hand, people want to stop the supertactics to create a more level playing field. Certain formations were supposedly overpowered (remember the big 4-6-0 drama and in Beta, similar discussions were had about the 4-3-3 with 3 central forwards formation) and people were branded as exploiters or even cheaters. On the other hand, the default tactics should be better to counter these so-called ME exploits or super tactics.

These requests seem contradictory to each other. Either you want total freedom, which means very basic default tactics in which people have to think for themselves and edit it, or you want a totally restricted tactical system, where everyone who creates a tactic that requires an opponent to switch things around and actually think about what to do next (GOOD HEAVENS!!!) is branded an exploiter.

Can you tell I'm trying to take the piss? Seriously, are we going to remove all tactical freedom from the game because a few muppets are too stupid to counter specific formations? Surely not?

We're Catering For Idiots...

2010-04-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

Honestly, we really are listening too much to some of the idiots that populate the forums. I know, that's not a nice thing to say about people who are paying customers of the company that asks me to moderate one of its GameWorlds, but it's a fact, it really is.

Take this specific thread for instance. People are, as always, bitching about Set Pieces. Some guy had a player who scored 3 past them. Now instead of looking as to why this may have happened, they rush off to the forums to have a whinge. In the most positive circumstances, they try again a few times before running off to the forums, but they always end up on the forums, complaining about the state of the Match Engine and how badly designed the game is, not to mention the fact that this "bug" is totally ruining their experience and they are considering cancelling their subscription.

Did I miss anything there? Does that summarise the thread accurately? I think I got it pretty much right there... It's this attitude that has been the downfall of the previous GameWorlds (pre-Reset) and if we're not careful, it will be the downfall of the new series of GameWorlds, which could usher in the end of the game itsself.

I mean seriously, before you point the finger towards the Match Engine, have you ever stood still to consider that maybe, just maybe, you, the human manager, have made a mistake? Poor tactics perhaps? If you know someone is having their strong headers attack the far post, it may just be a good idea to put your best headers on the far post as well...

Alternatively, when they actually do this, they are expecting their 15 jumping, 15 heading, 1.80 tall defenders to beat a 1.85 tall forward with 18 for jumping and 18 for heading. Granted, the defender will win some duels in the air because of better positioning or maybe a poor cross, but he is bound to lose a fair few as well, which could just lead to goals being conceded.

Bug in the match engine, or unrealistic expectations from the human manager? According to some of the forum members whose posts I've recently had the "pleasure" of trawling through, that's a bug. Then again, their supposedly superior team not winning every match is a bug according to them, so I guess there's just no pleasing some people.

Still, if these whingers and complainers have it their way, the games default tactics should be enough to be successful (in their minds anyway...), but is this not punishing the managers who actually think their tactics through? People who are thinking outside the box in an effort to create new opportunities for themselves. Do we really want to punish these people for being creative by taking away every new option they find?

Making good tactics which people cannot counter immediately is an exploit or bug? Making people actually think about their tactics and not just going with some default system is an exploit or bug?

Surely people can ask in the Tactics Chat or on the forum how to combat this specific setup if they're too lazy to use their own mind or simply lack the know-how regarding the FML engine?

Those who cannot counter a specific setup or tactic should not immediately cry out that it is overpowered, a bug or an exploit, but they should lower their expectations a bit, look at themselves properly and ask around on how to combat a certain setup, before they go off on a rant.

It's these complainers who are giving the game a bad name, not to mention the fact that their "toys-out-of-the-pram" approach to matters actually seems to be successful. If you're vocal enough about your complaints, even if they really aren't that valid, you are listened to and sometimes, if enough people complain about something they are too lazy to change (read: not divert from default settings), it gets changed for them.

Honestly, that's plain wrong. This is a game for managers, not click and drag monkeys who are not capable of analysing a game and trying to learn from their mistakes. Make a new game for these people, called Football Win Live. They get a chat room, a team and one button. Press the button and you win, regardless of who you're playing. That should keep these guys happy for a while...

I do realise that I am generalising and maybe portraying certain things a bit extreme, but I have noticed a tendency to give in to people who are complaining about little things that are not the games fault, but their own. As stated before, that's just wrong. I do realise that I am what you might call a hardcore gamer and that the game should cater for the more casual gamers as well, but surely it shouldn't be pampering them upto a point where it no longer pays off to invest a lot of time into the game?

They Said It Never Happens In Real Life

2010-04-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

I know this game is more static than real life and poor settings are not always easily repaired within a match, but was the outside area corner routine really that unrealistic. You all seemed to think so. I disagree, and so does a certain mister Arjen Robben.

Yes, this post is all about shameless gloating and telling you I was right. It isn't unrealistic at all and it can be done. Ha!

Why I Dislike Returning Stars

2010-04-08T09:14:00.001-07:00

Honestly, I know it will sound like I am whinging and complaining, and maybe I am a bit, but I'm just not a fan of the Returning Stars concept. The reason behind this is simple, I prefer players to stay retired. I have sort of emotional connections with certain players, some of which I have have had in my team for most of their career. I feel connected to these players and it hurts me to see them with another manager, especially if he's some inactive AI drone sitting in a bottom tier of the CFA someplace.

Incidentally, I do understand the concept of these Returning Stars and the reasoning behind the draft system. I even agree that the less fortunate managers in a GameWorld should receive some sort of seasonal boost, to try and close the gap a bit. The point is, I just don't like the fact that formerly retired players are used for this.

I would like to propose an alternative to the Returning Stars draft at the end of a season. Instead of making it a draft of returning formerly retired players, make it more like the MLS drafts, where young players, upcoming talents are drafted into the squads. The teams that have performed the worst are allocated the best youths, whereas the better teams get the worse youths.

The benefit of this system is, in my eyes anyway, that retired players stay retired. If you don't like the concept of players retiring and being removed from your game, don't play games such as FM 2010 or FM Live. Players retire, deal with it. Don't bring them back to have them sit at some AI drone and smudge their reputation they have built up within a GameWorld.

Seriously, sometimes it pains me to see which kind of players are wasting away at the AI drones in CFA and CIFA in Miller. Just a quick look at the players wasting away at AI drones. Michael Ballack, Thomas Kahlenberg, Carlos Vela, Marek Hamsik, Serdar Tasci, Younes Kaboul, André-Pierre Gignac, Arjen Robben, Edu, Raul Garcia and many, many more.

Replace these big names with young talents and at least you won't be tarnishing the players reputation and you won't reward these managers for being crap AI drones. In order to make something of these youths, they will have to actively develop them or if they're looking for a quick fix, they can sell them.

Pretty please, can you make it so SI?

Height Is No Longer Cosmetic

2010-04-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

FM has for many years taken the approach that the Jumping attribute was based on HEIGHT + JUMPING. Beyond this Height had ZERO bearing on anything whatsoever. The leaden footed Peter Crouch has Jumping ~20 because of his tallness, the much springier Michael Owen has Jumping ~10 because of his shortness. Crouch wins the header of course.

The Jumping attribute was how high a player's HEAD gets. The Match Engine compared the two Jumping attributes and job done.

Hidden away in the release notes for the Match Engine upgrade it now says that the Jumping attribute is based solely on JUMPING. The leaden footed Peter Crouch would have Jumping ~5, the much springier Michael Owen would have Jumping ~15. Crouch still wins the header though because his Height is factored in by the ME.

As the stated above, and I am now quoting Marc Vaughan, jumping does NOT mean physically how many inches a player can jump - it is an indication of the height a player can reach while jumping, hence height is a large factor in this.

If you doubt this then consider the following - you're 1.60 tall, I'm 2 metres tall ... chances of you being able to jump heigher than me are pretty darn slim.

Even if I have absolutely NO jumping ability and can get barely 10 centimetres off the floor you'd still have to jump 40 centimetres in order to match my natural height advantage.

As such considering that 'jumping' is an indication of how high a player can jump in the game and as such has a factor of height in it I don't think its unreasonable to indicate what I did.

Obviously you can get short players in the game with reasonable jumping (ie. Mr. Owen - 1.80 & 9 jumping) and tall players who can't jump (ie. me in a previous game - 2 metres & 9 jumping ). But if both players are good jumpers than obviously the taller one will have a natural advantage (hence 20 jumping isn't likely to be held by a 1.60 tall player).

So in short, the Jumping attribute is now how high a player's FEET get. The ME combines the Jumping attribute with the player's Height and compares the two results, which is a significant change! As people have questionned earlier, how is this going to be reflected in the Jumping attributes of existing players? To reflect the new ME Crouch should have his Jumping adjusted down to ~5 (well, a fairly low figure - certainly not 20) and Owen should have his adjusted up.

Basically, if a ball is played to your 1.95 tall striker that is 1.90 off the ground then the striker can head the ball without jumping. The 1.85 defender will need to jump to reach this ball so his jumping skill comes into play. The player that does not need to jump will have the advantage in this case as he will not be affected by penalties to strength, agility etc.

If the ball is played higher than 1.95 off the ground then they both need to jump. In this case the player with the highest jumping would have advange (other secondary skills used in the calculation would include strength, determination, agility, positioning etc)

In short, your small DC with high jumping would generally be okay unless he comes up against a giant with good aerial and secondary skills.

My 4-4-2 / 4-2-4 Hybrid; An Alternative To The Ultra-Narrow Formations

2010-04-07T00:59:00.000-07:00

The last week or so, I have been trying to come up with a way to counter the ultra-narrow formations dominating the GameWorld, without backing away from the formations and style of play I have been using since day 1. After an initial dramatic dip in form, I think I have now found a way to deal with the ultra-narrow formations, without abandoning my traditions.

These ultra-narrow formations rely on the fact that their central midfielders will drop wide to mark your own wide players, whilst forming a compact block defensively. Alternatively, when such a narrow formation attacks, the wide players of your own team seem very inept at picking up the narrow players moving out to the flanks from the middle on.

I have now found a way to make my 4-2-4 work against these narrow formations. Yes, I admit I have narrowed my formation a bit to bolster my defence, but I also re-distributed the roles within the team. Instead of two inside forwards, I am now only using an inside forward on the right and an actual winger on the left. Upfront, I am using a Trequartista on the right and a Targetman in the centre. In midfield, I am using an attacking deep-lying playmaker and a defensive ball-winning midfielders. At the back, there are two man-markers and two wing-backs in front of a sweeper keeper.

It works like this. At both ends of the pitch, the team’s shape adapts and evolves when in possession to expand the pitch and to create space for their flair players. In defence, the defensive midfielder Cleverley drops in as a centre-half to allow the actual centre-backs Miguel Ferreira and Samba Sylla to spread the width of the pitch, allowing Claudino and Jovanovic as wing-backs to venture forward.

The main effect of this is that is suddenly transfers a huge defensive responsibility onto the two opposition wide midfielders. When you're fielding a narrow formation, your main attacking threat was coming from the wings. My strategy meant it was very difficult for the opposition's wide players to track my wing-backs and then have the energy to attack them at pace. Many opposing wingers looked exhausted by the end of a game.

Upfront, the main movement was the combination of right winger David Hall and trequartista Ivan on the right-hand side. Hall starts wide, meaning the opposing team's wingback assumes he is the player he should be picking up. But then Hall starts drifting inside, which means the opposing teams wing-back usually tracks him into the centre, which in turn opens up space for Ivan on the right-hand flank.

Why Pace Is Such An Important Factor In Youth Development

2010-04-07T00:27:00.000-07:00

In the past ten years, pace has become arguably the most important quality for young footballers in real life. FM Live tends to mimic this development, as pace is becoming more and more important. In fact, it's one of the key attributes the best teams scout for.

The reason for this probably lies in the increasing tendency for teams to play on the counter-attack, which means a fair amount of pace if a necessity to exploit the space the other teams are leaving going forward. It makes sense too, when you draw the opposition onto you, space opens up at their back for you to exploit, which works best if your players are fast and able to break away quickly.

The nature of modern football has meant that counter-attacking has become a major feature of almost every top club in Europe, and pace obviously plays a key role in this. The players on the pitch are more technically gifted players, matches are played on mostly pristine pitches perfect for passing on, and defenders are less able to escape bookings for cynical fouls. It even makes sense that teams are utilising a more conservative approach.

I picked up a nice comparison in regards to this topic on Zonal Marking, which I have quoted below.

The Arsenal side of seventy years later offers a good comparison. Theo Walcott versus Sebastian Larsson. Who is the better player on the ball? Walcott is a good dribbler; Larsson is more able to pick out an intelligent pass. But because Theo Walcott can sprint 100m in eleven seconds, and Larsson is quite sluggish (by Premiership standards), Walcott has been given four seasons’ worth of opportunities to impressin the Arsenal first team, whilst Larsson was discarded after only three league appearances, with an Arsenal coach hinting at the time that Larsson’s lack of pace made him incompatible with Arsenal’s system.

Take away the issue of pace, and there’s not that much difference in ability between the two. Indeed, it could be said that Walcott relies on his pace as much as any Premiership footballer today – Pete Gill at Football365 (perhaps slightly harshly) commented in the wake of Arsenal’s 0-3 defeat to Chelsea, ‘It’s just incredible that a football player of Theo Walcott’s stature has so little football talent. But for his pace he wouldn’t be a professional player. He has nothing else.’ Walcott’s own father puts it more politely, saying that ‘pace has been his killer edge over others’. But of course, you can’t take away the issue of pace, which is why Larsson is now at a mid-table club, and Walcott remains challenging at the top of the league.

Basically, for those of you complaining that it is not realistic that pace is so important in a player, give your head a wobble and try to actually watch real life football once in a while. Pace may not be the most important asset a youngster can have, but it certainly helps if you manage to snap up some pacey players to nurture and develop.

Sun Tzu's Art of (Football) War

2010-03-26T00:56:00.001-07:00

Twenty-five centuries ago an extraordinary Chinese philosopher and general named Sun Tzu wrote a short work regarding his strategies regarding matters such as tactics, terrain, and manoeuvring. The work was aptly dubbed The Art of War.

Observing the precepts of this great work Sun Tzu and the armies he commanded prevailed for decades over their ancestral enemies. More than two millennia later, another famous general reportedly also used the principles described in the book. Napoleon is reputed to have waged his successful campaigns in Europe with Sun Tzu’s book in hand, only to fall to defeat when he failed to follow the principles of The Art of War.

Even in these modern days, the book remains the object of study by military commanders world-wide. For example, the American general Schwarzkopf may not acknowledge Sun Tzu as the inspiration behind the military operation he led during the First Gulf War; however the tactics he employed, which so emphasized surveillance, communications, mobility, and deception, appear directly drawn from The Art of War.

The Art of War has been applied to many fields well outside of the military. Much of the text is about how to fight wars without actually having to do battle: it gives tips on how to outsmart one's opponent so that physical battle is not necessary. As such, it has found application as a training guide for many competitive endeavors that do not involve actual combat.

The book highlights the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. Sun Tzu thought that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through an established list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a changing environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.

If this is all sounded way too abstract for your liking and you do not recognise managerial schemes in the competing plans and the changing environment does not equal a football match for you, maybe the next quote will help. Dutch manager Rinus Michels was once quoted saying something which roughly translates as: “Professional football is something like war. Whoever behaves too properly is lost.”

So if football is a bit like war, the principles of war could apply to it. And if you take a football management simulation, which is supposed to simulate actual football, surely you can use these principles here in two-fold? For starters, because the concepts can apply directly to football and secondly, because these concepts are used by all sorts of managers and generals, so why not a football (simulation) manager?

New FA's Post Reset; A Sceptical Note

2010-03-18T01:45:00.002-07:00

In Miller, we're currently working with the guide-lines for post-reset FA organising. We're not running all the FA's the Live worlds will get to see, but we're seeing enough of it to base an opinion plus we get the chance to test the new organising guide-lines. I have to say, I am a bit skeptical regarding some points.

The first point is league size, which is now becoming fluent instead of static. This basically means that if teams are moved INTO an FA, the tiers are expanded if necessary to accommodate them at the correct level. Promotions and relegations will be adjusted for the following season to compensate. Alternatively, it also means that if teams are removed due to inactivity or violating AI rules, no extra teams are going up.

I can definitely see the aims of this particular rule. If you don't deserve promotion, you are not forced to punch above your weight in a higher tier, simply because the FA has to make up the numbers. It also means that FA hoppers do not get an easy ride for the first (few) season(s) because they have to start at the bottom.

It also means that in some tiers in particular FA's, problems are arising. In one particular tier, 15 out of the 20 teams in tier had to be removed due to various reasons (forced de-activation, quitting beta, not enough players, inactivity, breach of AI rules).

Normally, I would just send these teams a tier up, merging two tiers to compensate for the loss of so many teams. In this case, I am still allowed to do this, but in the future, the open numbers will be replaced by CPU teams. I'm not entirely sure a tier with 5 live teams and 15 CPU teams will be all that appealing.

Second point is the use of play-offs in some FA's. I've never been a big fan of those, since they cannot be incorporated properly into the league structure and should thus be ran during the off-season. Teams above the AI limit are not allowed to compete for promotion, which sometimes leaves us with odd play-offs.

As it happens, we are supposed to run them English style, so with a double semi-final and single final match. So what happens when we only get 3 teams? One team gets a free ride into the final, with basically less chance of injuries or suspensions? I'd be pretty pissed if I were in the play-off final with several players injured or suspended and my opponent had a fresh squad because there were no semi's for him.

Adding the play-offs into the league structure could be an answer. With seasons taking 23 days instead of 21 soon, the extra two days could be used to automatically run the play-offs in the off-season, coding them into the leagues.

The only problem with that rule is that it won't weed out AI-teams. If a team exceeds an FA's AI rule, it is denied promotion so it becomes useless to make them compete in a play-off. By hard-coding the play-offs into the leagues, we run a risk of ending up with a play-off winner who can;t go up due to AI.

These are just two sceptical notes I have when I work at getting Miller ready for the next season start coming Saturday. Here's to hoping I was too negative in my initial thoughts and everything will work out just fine.

Creating Your Own Effective Scouting Filters; An Introduction

2010-03-10T23:11:00.000-08:00

I recently read a column by Gabriele Marcotti about how statistics are becoming more and more important in sports.

Marcotti mentioned a book called Moneyball in his column. This book focussed on the Oakland A's, an American baseball team, and how this team managed to compete with bigger and more wealthy clubs by means of innovative statistical analysis.

The central premise of Moneyball is that the collected wisdom of baseball insiders (including players, managers, coaches, scouts, and the front office) over the past century is subjective and often flawed. Statistics such as stolen bases, runs batted in, and batting average, typically used to gauge players, are relics of a 19th century view of the game and the statistics that were available at the time. The book argues that the Oakland A's' front office took advantage of more empirical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors in Major League Baseball.

Rigorous statistical analysis had demonstrated that on-base percentage and slugging percentage are better indicators of offensive success, and the A's became convinced that these qualities were cheaper to obtain on the open market than more historically valued qualities such as speed and contact. These observations often flew in the face of conventional baseball wisdom and the beliefs of many baseball scouts and executives.

By re-evaluating the strategies that produce wins on the field, the 2002 Athletics, with approximately $41 million in salary, are competitive with larger market teams such as the New York Yankees, who spend over $200 million in payroll. Because of the team's smaller revenues, Oakland is forced to find players undervalued by the market, and their system for finding value in undervalued players has proven itself thus far.

Basically, the author claims that teams have finite resources (read: money) and are therefore forever looking for value. Value used to be assessed by evaluating traditional parameters. Most of these parameters were subjective, such as for example pace, strength and character. The author claims that one could identify value more efficiently by analysing certain previously obscure statistics.

According to Marcotti, finding a way to apply these principles to football has been something of a holy grail. The most obvious obstacle is that while baseball has easy-to-measure individual match-ups, football is a free-flowing game.

Fortunately, FM Live makes this measuring aspect a bit easier for us, since the game is all about statistics. The attributes of players are displayed in ratings between one and twenty and the game logs pretty much every statistic you would ever want to know.

This means one could apply the aforementioned principles to FM Live. Re-assessing value is becoming more and more important, since your budget is limited and there will be more teams fighting over the same players.

As a result, setting your scouting filters is getting more and more important if you want to end up with proper value for your money. In this article and several follow-up articles, I am going to describe how I set up my scouting filters. In this article, I will describe the general approach I take.

First off, let me tell you that I know what kind of players I am looking for exactly. The game offers various roles for players, even within positions on the pitch. For example, there are five or so roles you can select for your forward, but I know exactly that I only need Target Men or Trequartista's upfront.

Once you know which role or roles your players should cover, you can start by creating your own search template. The basic templates provided by SI give you a nice start to work with. However, following these templates will mean you end up with very broad and generic search results. Basically, you have to narrow the search results down further.

This can be achieved by adding extra parameters to the search. However, how do you know which parameters to add for your role? This is where a combination of common sense and being smart should be applied by a manager. Either read up on forums which attributes to use for which role or look at successful players within the GameWorld and look for common attributes in all of them.

Once you have added these parameters, you will have narrowed down the amount of players you are getting. Now look at the financial means at your disposal. If the listed players are all outside your reach, lower the standards a bit in the search parameters. Ideally, you want to end up with four or five candidates.

Now you can examine these candidates further. How have they performed in the past? What are their statistics like for pass completion or crucial errors? Look at those statistics that are crucial for the role the player should fulfill in your team.

Basically, this is a very generic approach to setting up your scouting filters. In the next few days, I will provide a number of examples of how I scout exactly for players within a specific role.

How I Love The Trequartista

2010-03-10T01:55:00.000-08:00

It's an underrated role really. Most people back away from it, mostly because they don't really know what to expect. Now in my eyes, the Trequartista is a classic Number 10 in Dutch football terminology.

The word trequartista is derived from the Italian language, where it literally means "three quarters", as he plays 3/4 of the way up the field. This player basically has a free role and is allowed quite a bit of freedom to roam the pitch and cause mayhem for the opposing side.

Typically, your Trequartista or Treq as I lovingly call him, is the best or one of the better players on the team. The offense tends to flow through the player, as he either drops deep to collect the ball and distribute it further forward or he stays forward to be on the receiving end of a pass.

Basically, the guy is the pivotting point for your entire offensive gameplay. If the Trequartista has a good day, your team will prosper. He will score or assist seemingly for fun, like for example
Ronaldinho at Milan, Messi in many Barca matches, Totti at Roma, Diego at Juventus, Bergkamp at Arsenal and Ajax and there are many more examples.

So why do I love this player role? These players are generally a nuisance to mark, because their movement between forward and deep positions can drag defenders out of position, allowing my team to capitalise with a cutting pass. The Treq's forward movement also allows them to catch the back line off guard by arriving from deep, after setting up the attack himself most of the time.

All in all, it's a highly unpredictable role for an opponent, as you never really know what this forward is going to do exactly. Basically, the Trequartista acts as a hybrid between a traditional playmaker and a striker, making them extremely difficult to find, but very rewarding when used properly.

I tend to use the Trequartista as the second forward in a two-forward formation, where the second forward plays a set up role for the Trequartista and the wingers, who often act as inside forwards. If needed, the fullbacks provide the offensive width.

Over the past seasons, I have had a few highly successful Trequartista's in my team. Guys like Takayuki Morimoto, Lulinha and more recently Donati Signani have been instrumental in the successes I have achieved in GW Miller so far. So yeah, Treq's, I love you!

How To Do An Outside Area Corner Properly

2010-03-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

Love it or hate it, until they code this corner out of existence, it's here to stay because of it's tremendous effectiveness. As I promised yesterday, I would details my settings and those of others on how to use the corner.

As you will have deduced by now, there are more ways to actually set up this set piece routine. The first one I will mention is one I plucked off the beta forums, mentioned first by Paul Collyer himself.

Two players - Near post flick
Two players - Challenge Keeper
Two players - Wait on the Far Post
Two players - Lurk (one of them is corner taker)
Two players - Stay Back

Corners are set to penalty area.

That's just one setup, and in my opinion the most basic one which is easy to defend with just zonal marking. There's a number of variations to this setup flying around, including my own, which looks more like this.

Three players - Stay Back

One player - Designated corner taker

One player - Lurk

One player - Short option

One player - Challenge Keeper

One player - Attack Far Post

One player - Attack Near Post

One player - Wait at Far Post

Corner distribution is again set to Penalty Area.

The concept of the changes is provide some form of automated cover in case an opponent tries to mark out your lurker. Often, the markers will choose to follow the players attacking the posts, so the runners are providing some distraction inside the box. The short option player seems to guarantee a better distribution of the corner somehow. I have not quite figured out how and why, but the delivery seems to be far more accurate with this guy standing around.

Exploit Or Evolution?

2010-03-08T23:43:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are active in the beta worlds have surely seen, experienced or even used this specific corner setup.

The corner swings out to the edge of the box, where a seemingly unmarked player gets a free crack at goal, more often than not resulting in a goal.

Now, the fact of the matter is that the default corner defence many teams are using is completely inept at defending these kind of corners. As one might expect, there is an outcry on the beta forums to have this kind of corner banned/binned.

My ideas regarding the matter are bit more controversial. Bug or not, loophole or not, it's tactical ingenuity by the managers who come up with this. They are thinking outside the box in an effort to create new opportunities for themselves. Do we really want to punish people for being creative by taking away every new option they find?

Making good tactics which people cannot counter immediately is an exploit? Making people actually think about their tactics and not just going with some default system is an exploit?Surely people can ask in the Tactics Chat or on the forum how to combat this specific setup if they're too lazy to use their own mind or simply lack the know-how regarding the FML engine?

When a setup can be countered with new default settings (and this setup CAN be countered with relative ease), does this not make it just another valid choice by the manager to use it and defend against it? Not every unusual and unorthodox piece of gameplay should be branded as an exploit just because people can't figure out how to counter it in under a minute.

If you want to talk proper exploits, take the old "Challenge Goalkeeper" setup of the 1.3 engine. It's much harder to mount an effective defence against these type of corners. It didn't matter how good your set piece defence was, if the opposing team had someone who was better in the air (someone like Neretljak, Zigic or Onyewu), they would score anyway, regardless of how your defence was setup.

Loophole or not, the "Outside Area" setup adds some extra depth to the tactical aspect of FML and its set pieces. It's no longer "lump the ball into the box and hope someone manages to head it in" combined with buying some header beast like Neretljak, Zigic or Onyewu to ram the ball home. A bit of variation is not that bad...

Also, in due time, when people get acquinted with this corner strategy, they will setup their defence to counter it and it will die out anyway. It's now only effective against teams who refuse to tinker with their set piece instructions, most people who want to take the effort to counter it have managed to do so (at least, the ones I am playing...).

We shouldn't have to cater for the people who are too lazy or too casual to change things around, as this is punishing the actually active managers who try to find new ways to score goals by being creative with the options the game is giving them.

People who cannot counter this setup immediately cry "exploit" but is it really that or is it just some form of evolution? Fourty years ago, the off-side trap was starting to be developed. Teams had to re-invent their ideas about attacking. Exploit or good tactics?

Total Football as played by Ajax, The Netherlands, Bayern Munich and the German national team of '74 (yes, they played their own form of total football...) was a completely new concept with players moving all over the pitch and switching positions, making the game a lot faster. Teams had to re-invent their tactics to cope with this. Exploit or good tactics?

I know this game is more static than real life and poor settings are not always easily repaired within a match, but is it really a serious bug that cannot be countered or is it a new step in the evolution of set pieces within FMLive?

PS. for those of you interested in the actual setup both offensively and defensively, keep watching this blog the next few days

Set Pieces; A Suggestion

2010-03-08T23:39:00.000-08:00

I've always been rather active with the set pieces. In real life, they are becoming formidable weapons you can use to score a goal with even though you're not really playing all that well.In FMLive, you have various routines that work pretty effectively, but if you want to change your routines mid-way during a match, you have to have them either saved in seperate tactics you can switch between or you have to manually alter the individual settings of the players involved.

I propose something different. Whenever you get a corner or a free kick within 30 yards of the opposing goal, the game times out for ten to fifteen seconds and a pop-up appears which allows you to choose between three different scenario's for the free-kick (for example "Outside Area" , "Challenge Goalkeeper" and "Far Post"). Likewise, the defending party gets three options to select a method of defence. Both parties are ofcourse unable to see each others choice until the match actually continues after this short interruption.

Naturally, you should be able to edit existing scenario's and create new ones, both for offence and defence. This gives the tacticians something nice to play with, as they can vary between their various set piece setups. You could even include this into match plans, create conditions during which a team will switch to a new set piece routine.

Ofcourse, if a team does not want to use this option, the game should just select the default set piece routine. Also, I would not like to see this option being used in AI matches unless he has a match plan that allows for these switches, as that gives you too big of an advantage over an off-line opponent. Preferably though, just use it in the actual human vs human matches, to add some extra depth to these matches.

Any thoughts on this? Please let me know in your comments.

Going Old Skool; WW-Formation Remixed

2009-08-26T00:22:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been feeling a bit silly. I was in the mood to experiment, so I figured I might as well go totally old skool and revamp an old tactic into something new for usage within Altobelli. The concept of that is not entirely new, as we did this before in Miller under the inspiring leadership of Richard Claydon, who is known to most under his forum-guise as WWFan.

I've opted for the re-creation of the classic WW formation, but with a twist. The WW was a development of the WM created by the Hungarian coach Marton Bukovi, who turned the 3-2-5 WM, as designed by Herbert Chapman, upside down. The lack of an effective centre-forward in his team necessitated moving this player back to midfield to create a playmaker, with a midfielder instructed to focus on defence. This created a 3-2-1-4 which morphed into a 3-2-3-2 when the team lost possession, and was described by some as a kind of genetic link between the WM and the 4-2-4. This formation was successfully used by fellow countryman Gusztav Sebes in the Hungarian national team of the early 1950s.

That's pretty much what it looks like. I'm still tweaking the player roles and team instructions, but the basic formation gets you the same effects as the basic 4-6-0. You're flooding the centre of midfield with players and ensuring a lot of high-paced short passing. It's generally enough to drive most opponents mad. I'll get back to this with more detailed stuff as soon as I have more.

Youth Development; An Exploit

2009-08-17T01:54:00.000-07:00

I've seen people talk about this on the forums and naturally, it wasn't long before some of our more cheeky managers had a chat with us regarding the possibilities in Altobelli. I'm talking about Senior ranked competitions, set up as private competitions which only allow U17 teams to enter.

This is, in my eyes, an exploit because the system is designed so that players ratings are an indication that you are playing them at a level that they can cope with. The higher level means better progression but only if they perform well. By limiting the quality of the opposition and thus ensuring decent ratings, people are exploiting the youth development system.

Don't get me wrong here, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a manager playing their entire youth team in a Senior Ranked competition, as long as other managers are allowed to use their Senior teams in these competitions as well.

In most cases, a youth team entering the fray against senior teams will lose and get bad average ratings so there is no gain and no exploit. If the Youth players are good enough to play well against Seniors (like Arsenal's youths in for example the Carling Cup) then that is fine, but by limiting entries into private competitions to U17's alone, people have found and are exploiting a backdoor of the system.

The issue here is not Youth teams playing in Senior competitions versus senior opponents, but Youth teams getting a good rating in a Senior rank comp because they ONLY play other youth teams. If you are intent on fielding Youth teams in a private competition versus other Youth teams, make the competition reflect the strength of its members by setting it to U21 or U19. These competitions should be YOUTH competitions, not SENIOR ones.

I mentioned this earlier but this acceleration of youth players attributes (and the fact they are playing in "senior" games) clearly affects their Acquisition Fees and as a result their Market Values as well. If their stats go up faster due to them performing well in "senior" games, their ACQ and MV are bound to follow.

It's a way to make youth trading an even more lucrative business. So far, we've already seen multi-million offers for youths and with this stat boosting going on, the prices for youths will become more inflated. This could literally kill off the whole economy.

Imagine if you will the following situation. Spanish midfield maestro Jose Manuel Jurado happens to be one of my players. Valued at 1.4 million, on a 20k a day wage and at only 24, he's a talented and world class midfielder. However, when I see 16 and 17 year olds with an MV of 400k exchange hands for over nearly 2 million, why would I settle for anything less than such a sum for Jurado?

He's obviously five times the player these newgens are, as he is much older, can be fitted into first team instantly and generally has the same wages as these super newgens. If a 400k player can go for 2 million, thus five times his MV, why should I settle for anything under 10 million for Jurado?

Just hypothetically speaking ofcourse. There is no way on this planet that I am selling Jurado, especially not with these inflated prices. Either way, it shows the long term difficulties this exploit might bring.

I've strayed a bit off-topic though and I would like to get back to the original exploit. When I first noticed these competitions popping up, I immediately edited or removed them entirely, whilst asking for an official stance on this subject. Well, I got my official stance for now. Allow me quote a mailing I sent out in Altobelli after receiving word on our official stance.

If it's a senior ranked competition then any team can play in that providing it's not been set to stat pad. If we have proof that it was set for this reason then action can be taken - if we don't have proof but when checking results we see it has happened then we send a written warning saying don't do it again.

It's a grey area with many different parts to it, but playing youths in senior games is not against the rules.

There is a discussion going on about these competitions, as technically they are exploiting the game engine, but until there is no official ruling in place, we have to wait and allow these competitions.

So here's to hoping there's a speedy resolution, either SI coding something new or creating a rule which shows what we are and what we aren't allowed to do.

Combatting A 4-6-0 Formation

2009-08-15T13:22:00.000-07:00

As a manager who actually used the dreaded 4-6-0, I also know how to counter it. It really isn't that dangerous as people seem to think and countering it doesn't take that much effort. I usually do the following things when I play against a 4-6-0 formation.

1. Employ a defensive midfielder

I mean a real defensive midfielder, a link between the midfield and defence. This guy is going to man-mark the opposing main AMC and play him out of the match. Or try to anyway. He's supposed to disrupt the attacking build-up from the opposition.

2. Remove all closing down from the centre-backs

The centre-backs are often drawn out of position because they close down an opposing midfielder, leaving the defence prone to a through-ball through the centre. Just have the defenders stand off, the opposing players will run at them and are usually easily muscled off the ball in such cases.

3. Push up the defensive line

Limit the time and space for their AMC's to move in. Basically make it harder for these guys to play their beloved counter-play by either catching them off-side or limiting their passing options by clogging up the centre of the pitch.

4. Harass their defence

When the centre of the pitch is congested, these AMC's rely on a a proper build-up from the back. When you pressure their defenders and mostly their wingbacks into lumping the ball forward, your defenders usually beat their AMC's in the air and win the ball back for you.

Now please note that these tips are not a sure-fire way to beat a 4-6-0. You obviously need a decent tactic of your own and the right players to execute it, but it should help you to get an edge over the opposition. I actually win 80%of my encounters with a 4-6-0 these days.

I Love 1.3

2009-08-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

Having been a long term beta tester of FM Live, I've had some time to work with the wizard and the whole system of in-game shouting it brings along. Now initially, I shared your sentiments. I felt that the wizard was unnatural and made FM too easy with all its preset modes. In a way, I even considered they were dumbing the game down for people who didn’t understand the sliders.

After my initial skeptical reaction, I realized I was there to beta test though and I gave the system a chance. It has to be said, it took me a while to get used to it. You have to let go of the slider mentality and various other ideas you’ve been accustomed to using whilst playing FM.

This takes effort, especially when you’re a long-term fan of the series. Once you manage to let go of your old mindset and embrace the new one, you will never want to go back… I’ve always found that the old FM slider-based tactics were understandable but not intuitive. I knew how to set the thing to achieve what I wanted to see, but my intuition always said it should be different.

The wizard offers a more intuitive style of play. It’s not just the creator which does this, but also the system of in-game shouts. No need to tweak sliders, just use the shout that’s available and the game does that for you. It creates more dynamic and intuitive play, in which you don’t have to pause the game for five to ten minutes to think which slider you have to move to where to get the desired effect.

I really think that the shouts like I have seen them in the 1.3 version of FM Live could make the whole game of FM a far better game than it is now, because it actually allows you to translate your real-life views on football to a match without the understanding of theories and translating your ideas into a slider-based approach.

And for those who can’t miss their beloved sliders, you can always overrule the wizard and open the sliders up to manually adjust certain settings, so you really get the best of both worlds. You get a new and intuitive style of play but when needed, you can return to the old-school style to adjust things.

And They Say We Never Do Anything...

2009-08-10T22:45:00.000-07:00

Some people I talk to in the Live GameWorlds always wonder what it is we do in the Beta Worlds. They presume I am just in there to learn more about 1.3 so I can rule the Live GameWorld as soon as the new update comes out. That's a nice bonus, but our main objective in Beta is to find bugs and exploits in the new 1.3 patch.

Today's blog covers a nifty but serious bug we found out and had fixed. Since the coding has already changed, I can pretty safely mention it now. There's no longer any risk of people exploiting it and it provides a nice insight into what Beta Testers do (or should be doing anyway...).

In one of the latest builds, SI included the AI teams. Basically, these are bot teams. When there are no human opponents available, you can challenge a bot team, which is always available and will never reject a challenge. This way, you can keep the players fit, try out tactics, give trial players a go and more.

The matches you play don't count towards a players history and injuries don't stick, so they turned out to be ideal sparring partners. Later on, we discovered we could add them to the line-up of our friendly competitions as well. This was pretty nice, as you could add a few weak AI teams to the line-up to ensure everyone got a few easy wins.

This led me to experiment. If I could add them into a normal friendly, what would happen if I would add them into the line-up of a DYM? Would they pay their entry fee like the other teams? Would I be able to make a profit really easy this way?

It turns out I was... With some tweaking, I could make competitions with a 50k entry fee and after playing one match, I could earn upto 250k. That's 200k profit for twenty minutes of work. Ten minutes for setting up the competition, ten minutes for manually playing the game. Not a bad deal eh? Basically free money, as no-one got hurt.

Naturally, I didn't milk this exploit. I ran a few competitions and logged them all with the other moderators, so they could keep an eye on me in case I did decide to milk this little trick. After logging it with the other moderators in the GameWorld, I logged this with the development team.

With the whole logging post, you provide as much details as possible. For instance, how did I find this loophole, which different styles of competitions worked, how bad was the maximum damage it could do, would it be a lucrative exploit, how hard would it be to police this exploit and more things.

It turned out it was a pretty difficult exploit to police, as the Miller GameWorld has over 20 pages of friendly competitions and even when you filter out the free ones, you have 3 pages of money competitions left. Checking all of these competitions for the presence of AI teams is a pretty arduous task, especially in the larger competitions.

Anyway, after two days of policing the friendly competitions, the coding was changed so it's now impossible to start a competition for money when there are AI teams in the line-up. A pretty nice idea basically, you can still spend 10 minutes to set the whole thing up, but you just can't start it anymore.

So yeah, that's the kind of stuff we do in Beta Testing. Remember this next time you slag anyone off for doing testing work. We are helping the development team to make a better game, because I couldn't even begin to imagine the carnage of what would happen if an exploit like this ever came out in a live world.

Class Forum Post

2009-08-10T14:06:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across a lovely post on the forums right here. This post should be taken with a grain of salt, but it does show the trouble we have in the new GameWorld of Altobelli. It's not my text, but I do realise many of the issues, as we have some real people complaining about them.

1 - I don't win every game

Im seriously getting annoyed with this, personally I feel my team isn't the best team in the league but really I should be winning all my games. I hate it when we batter a team with long shots and none of them go in, I mean why does the opponents goal keeper suddenly become good, doesn't he know how good my team are???? He should roll over as soon as we shoot! Damn him! Also isn't annoying when the opponent scores? I mean come on my defence is rock solid and I spent ages tinkering with it only to have someone break through and score a goal! He only had chance! OMG!!!111 this never happens in real life.

2 - The transfer markets screwed

Whats going on with the transfer market, we spent the first 3 seasons buying and selling players like there is no tomorrow and now no one is buying, they all want to just better their squads??? Whats up with that? I was quite happy at the start, I managed to get 4 quality players (shame I had to bump their wages so high to get em) but couldnt afford them and had to release them. Now I look in the free agents and theres loads of quality players but with ridiculous wages??? I mean come on why do people ruin the best players by paying them high wages and making them impossible for anyone to afford? I did it for mine but surely not everyone is as stupid as me????

3 - Youth Squads

I wanted to start a youth squad (in the 7th seasons) and i'll be damned all the best players as gone?? How selfish is everyone that they took all the best players?? And when I check the daily influx of new youngsters they arnt all 5 star potential?? OMG SI!!!11 WTF! I finally got a squad together and suffered bad flaw in the ME (see point 1)

4 - Everyone is leaving/the GW is dying

So this guy joined our GW and he was a total noob, but I noticed he had a few quality players, knowing he was a noobie I decided to talk him into taking a few of my crap youngsters off me (I told him they were 5 star potential) in trade for his quality players. While I was chatting to him I also suggested a few DYM comps I was running at the time cause I know easy cash when I saw some. So he found out about this youngsters and was pretty ****ed, I told him to go **** himself and that he shouldn't be so stupid!! He told a mod but I knew they were powerless to stop me ha ha.
So anyway, why are all the teams leaving my GW?? Its stupid!

So what did I do after all this? Of course I did what any normal person would do, I Jumped GW to a newer one.

I quickly got my team together, played a nice 4-6-0 formation and got 2 DC with damn good Jumping/heading. First game I had was against another newbie, we start the game he says "GL have fun" this really ****ed me off! But with my experiance I managed to beat him 4-0 with one of my DC getting a hat trick. He said my formation and tactics were cheating but I explained him they weren't, I pointed him in the direction of a jounalists artical about 4-6-0 and said this proves its not a ME flaw. He soon shut up!

I know unless you sort out all these problems i'm gonna have to jump GW again and again just get some satiffaction from this game!

Come on SI sort it out, its your game and your the one thats made all these mistakes NOT ME!!

So yeah, a good post. The guy was obviously not serious in the issues he raised, as he was obviously taking the piss. He does mention a few serious points though, as these are the main complaints we have been dealing with in-game.

A Change In Strategy

2009-08-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

We discussed the hyper inflation within the GameWorld before in an earlier post. To summarize it, wages will explode even further, leading to even more inflation. Your money becomes worthless. The few remaining players on normal wages will be highly sought after because now everyone will try to slash their wages.

This means that the end-of-contract wage auctions are even more critical these days. Players with normal wages will be attracting lots of interest and the desperate managers after them are willing to pay a high wage to get them because of their normal wages. You have to admire the absurdity of that. They are willing to pay a wage five times higher than the current one, because it would still be lower than the wages of some of the players in their team.

Either way, since you can only protect five players with senior contract locks, this means there's roughly six to ten others running around you cannot protect. So basically anyone outside your 5 senior locks and your youth locks goes to a wage auction 24 hours before the end of their contract. This means the highest bidder wins the player, and as compensation you receive their Acquisition Fee (AF) - which is somewhat below the market rate you could get for the player by selling him.

Wage auctions are a thing you want to prevent. You don't want your player to go into a wage auction, because this will most likely drive his price up. To prevent this from happening, you forge an alliance to circumvent this whole problem. There are other managers out there with a similar problem to your own. Their squads might get ravaged by the wage auctions as well. Use that knowledge.

Offer these managers a sort of partnership. Swap players. For example, you could swap your centre-back with an expiring contract for theirs, who is in a similar situation, possibly with some money to make up for the difference in Market Value. This way, both of you keep a good defender on decent wages, without the hassle of a wage auction.

A Throw-In Tip

2009-08-05T13:40:00.001-07:00

I received a little in-game message through the mailing lists which I think everyone who reads this blog might appreciate. I'm not going to hog the credit on this one, so honourable mentions for Rui Pintos Xutos and Diogo Martins for their initiative of sharing this.

It's basically a sort of Rory Delap style of tactic, where you have one long throw cannon and a lot of movement around the box. Works a treat if you have the players for it.

Anyway, under Team Instructions, put Throw Ins on Long for both the right and the left side. The individual instructions (based on a 4-5-1, alter according to your own formation...) look like this...

WBR - Default in both

DC - Stay Back in both

WBR - Default in both

DM - Go Forward in both

MRC - Right near post Left go forward

MLC - Left near post right go forwrd

AMR - Go forward both

AML - Go forward both

SC - Go forward

If it all works, it looks a little something like this.

As you can see, this leads to one player being isolated in the box, with plenty of time to control the ball and get a good shot or header off.

A 4-6-0 Template

2009-07-29T01:39:00.000-07:00

As I promised in the Altobelli Tactics Room, I’d show you all a template of the 4-6-0 I am using. The formation and team instructions are basically enough, since all the rest is down to your players and what you want them to achieve. I’ll do this the easy way by just giving you two screenshots.

The Exodus Is Upon Us As The First Sign Of The Apocalypse

2009-07-26T23:53:00.000-07:00

For the illiterates amongst you (you have to appreciate the irony of me addressing illiterates on a blog, really...), an exodus means a departure or emigration, usually of a large number of people. It's named after the biblical exodus.

The book tells how Moses leads the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the wilderness to the Mountain of God Sinai. Thus, an exodus is the emigration of a large amount of people.In the glorious Altobelli Game World, I have noticed the first exodus of players. With the pre-sale taxes on most players being reduced to about 35% to 30%, people have started to put some of their better players in auctions lasting for 7 days. Odd you say? No, strategic planning...

You see, in 7 days time the pre-sale taxes will have vanished completely, which means these guys get the full profits over the players they sell. It has to be said, most of the guys on auction are actually quite good, so it's a strategy that could have well paid off.

Did you note I used "could have paid off" instead of "will pay off"? Good... I'm pretty sure it won't really pay off and cause a massive inflation of wages and player values, as too many managers are using this strategy right about now.

The managers who were late into the Game World now see a chance to get good players or at least better ones than they currently have. The pre-sale taxes have pretty much stopped insane bids upto now, so most managers have a nice wad of cash saved up. This money is now used to make insane bids in the auctions.

For instance... Let's have a look at Jozsef Kanta. In real life, the lad plays for MTK Budapest and has won two caps. This means he's a decent but not spectacular player in FM Live. With an acquisition fee of 70,000 quid, he's not exactly cheap, but he's not a world class star either.

His manager managed to get the most out of him by fielding him as the main forward midfielder in a 4-6-0 formation. Jozsef bagged 171 goals in 169 appearances and has drawn some attention with this. As soon as he was placed in an auction, bids started pouring him, driving the value upto 450k. That's more than 6 times his market value...

This form of hyperinflation is happening all over the Game World in dozens of auctions. With most managers being smart enough to wait until pre-sale taxes vanished, this will mean a few guys will have a lot of cash to spend come the first series of wage auctions.

Now what do you think will happen? These guys have a lot of money, so they can pretty much afford high wages for the players they really want. The other managers will try to compete ofcourse. Nobody is going to back down to see their best players taken away. This means they will up their own bids for players to match what they think the rich managers are bidding.

This is where things start to become really critical. The concept of a normal auction is that you pay +1 on the second highest bid of a player. Wage auctions don't quite work that way... In a end-of-contract wage auction, what you bid is what you pay, even if the second highest bid was 10k lower than yours (Note: this doesn't apply when you actually OWN said player...).

I can pretty safely predict that the wages will explode even further, leading to even more inflation. Your money becomes worthless. The few remaining players on normal wages will be highly sought after because now everyone will try to slash their wages, thus leading not helping the situation... It may very well be the beginning of the end for the transfer market as we have known it upto now.

Errare Humanum Est

2009-07-25T00:50:00.000-07:00

To err is human. Everybody makes mistakes, even moderators. So yeah, I'd like to use this blog to show you a mistake I made. Honesty goes a long way in my humble opinion, so might as well show you this as it gives you an insight in the job of being a moderator in an FML Game World.

The situation was the following. At around 8.00 in the morning, I received a transfer mailing list message from a manager saying he was bored with the game and he was selling his players. I figured he wanted to build a new squad and I signed his keeper Benoît Costil and his midfielder Egidio Arevalo Rios.

A few minutes after confirming the deal, the guy announced he was leaving the Game World... Yup, you can pretty much predict what is going to happen next. I mention this in the Mod Chat and we all discuss what might happen. I end up embargoed, the same as all other users involved in this deal, as this case was forwarded to Richard (the main support mod, the mod leader in a way).

In the end, the decision was made that everyone but me could keep their players. That makes sense, in a bent way. You see, as a moderator, you need to have a whiter than white image (sounds like the advertisement for a cleaning detergent...), which means no-one should have grounds to complain about mods exploiting rules, bending rules or taking advantage.

Thus, my players were released (with a refund) and I was asked to send out a Game World wide apology to all users, to apologise for any inconvenience my actions may have caused. I've also added the apology to my blog.

Hi good people of GW Altobelli,

You may or may not be aware that we have been investigating the fire sale from [TEAM NAME] yesterday.

A number of users, including myself, purchased players from this team before it became apparent that this was a firesale.

Since all deals were at MV, all teams were allowed to keep their players, except for me. The reason for this is simple. Any transfer which could possibly be seen as even slightly dodgy must not be done by a mod.

As a mod, I should have known better and despite the transfers being around MV, my players were released so no-one can accuse me of cheating, taking advantage or bending the rules.

I would also like to apologize to anyone who may have found wrong or not mod-like. My intentions were pure and I just thought I had struck a bargain deal. I had no intention of breaking any rules or gaining an unfair advantage.

As a reminder to myself and others, a last word of advice. Please be very careful in future and remember that purchases from teams leaving the game MUST be for a realistic transfer value. In future please ask a Moderator (not me, hehe) if a deal looks too good to be true (as they usually are).

I do hope this incident will not affect the way you see as a moderator, so things can continue as before.

With regards,

Guido
Altobelli Mod Team

So yeah, that was the end of that. Sort of. Not really though. As I feared, someone used this situation to throw a tantrum as soon as the opportunity arose. Which happened to be not too long ago, as I embargoed his team for a potential dodgy deal. In a private chat, I was told "I was a cheating c*nt" and "handing out embargoes because I had one for being a cheat."

Lovely that was... We had to call in Support to explain this to the fellow. To prevent any such things from happening again, I reckon this is the best way. Just come out into the open with it. My deals were not illegal, but I have to maintain a whiter than white image, hence this decision and hence this blog post and hence the above apology mail.

Old Players; The Concept Needs To Be Re-Vamped

2009-07-21T02:49:00.000-07:00

In the Netherlands, you usually retire from work at around 65 years of age to enjoy your pension and do whatever these people do. Play shuffle-board, visit their grand-children and what-not... I am also aware that a footballers active career is generally over as he passes the big 35... There are exceptions to that rule ofcourse, but most players end their active career at 35 or so.

In FM Live, a players date of retirement seems to be even sooner. At around 30, even the best of players are being discarded since they represent no real transfer value after this date. Their wages are generally high, as is their acquisition fee, due to their high reputation.

I do believe these players can be of value though. For starters, they possess brilliant mental and hidden stats, meaning they bring experience to a team, a much needed factor that is often underrated. These guys can captain a side through a rough period in a match without panicking.

The main problem however lies with their high wages and high acquisition fee. Well, and their declining physique... But the monetary issue is the main gripe most people have with older players. Now in my eyes, a combination of two ideas can solve this problem.

The first idea wasn't mine, it was Andy Potter's, who posted it on the SI fora.

Can we please have the option to sign a player on a contract only until the end of the current season, effectively a 0 season contract? I've a few veterans I'm interested in, but I'd only want them for a couple of weeks to get me through the rest of my league season - I definitely wouldn't want them beyond that. A "0 season contract" option would allow for emergency signings for a couple of weeks, without requiring a massive commitment beyond that in terms of wage or release fee.

The second idea was mentioned in the very same thread but has been an idea I discussed with Andy before. As soon as a player (of any age!) is without a club, his wage demand and acquisition fee should start to drop with say, 2% a day, dropping to a minimum of 50% of the original value.

These two ideas would make older players rather attractive as short term solutions too many teams, instead of meaning older players rot away on a free transfer for several seasons.

Wikipedia and Google Scouting

2009-07-21T00:10:00.000-07:00

One of the more intriguing aspects of FM Live is the starting squad and the high probability it will be full of unknown players. I'm always fascinated by these unknown names, they give the first few seasons an LLM feeling for me. Plunging myself into the unknown, discovering new names and abilities...

The first thing I do when I sign a new player who isn't very well known, as in not active in the highest division from a top nation, is look up his name in Wikipedia or Google to find more background information and possible footballing relatives and such. I actually do the same for all potential signings (not including newgens...).

An unorthodox method of scouting, I must admit, but not entirely weird. It usually tells you something about a players personality, as those hidden stats are not visible in FM Live and I don't have the need to boot up the FM Scout everytime I want to know such details.

Oh and before I forget, this method is actually used by real-life clubs as well. The tale of Dutch winger Istvan Bakx is one of the more obvious cases where a club used the internet and its capabilities to find and scout a potential signing.

Bakx gained some notability in Belgium with his transfer from the Dutch amateurs of Hoek to Belgian second division side Kortrijk. Manager Hein Vanhaezebrouck was searching for a left winger and he typed the Dutch word for that (linkeraanvaller) into Google. The search results showed a positive report on Bakx. Vanhaezebrouck sent out Kortrijk's head scout who confirmed these reports and Istvan Bakx' transfer to Kortrijk became reality.

As a result of this unorthodox scouting method, Belgian and Dutch media dubbed Bakx "the Google striker." For those wondering if he actually performed well, Bakx impressed during his first two seasons at Kortrijk, earning him a transfer to top-side Racing Genk.

So is there any point in this blog? No, not particularly, besides the fact that I enjoy typing the names of my squad members into Google and Wikipedia to find out more about their careers and personal lives.

Overpaid Youths

2009-07-15T02:13:00.000-07:00

Yup, one of my favorite topics to rant about. This generally only seems to happen as soon as people unlock the Judging Potential Ability skill, but in Altobelli, it has struck in week 1. Oddly enough I might add, since technically we are a beginner Game World. Then again, we already established the Game World isn't exactly full of beginners anyway...

Anyway, right now the youth wages are okay in most cases, but the highly rated ones are already a disaster-area. Every newgen that has appeared over the last month with an expected four star or more Potential Ability, is now earning at least 10k a day, if not more. I've seen 15 and 16 year olds with 19k wages. All of this within the first weeks of the Game World launching...

People fail to realise how much money this is costing them in the long run. 10k a day means 70k a week, 280k a season... For a 15 or 16 year old player, whose future is highly uncertain, as you need to nurture and develop this youngster. He won't be ready for regular first team football before he hits the age 20, so you're paying 1,12 to 1,4 million for this youth.

And let's not forget we're still not sure if the youngster can actually live up the high expectations. You're taking a huge, huge gamble when you pay wages like that to such young players. If he fails to develop into a class act, there's no way you'll be able to sell him for the amount of cash you have invested in him.

Last but not least, there's the time of this hyperinflation... The FA's started on Monday, two days ago. That means that most teams barely have any money to spend, yet some are investing heavily into players... Let's not forget you have to pay a signing-on-fee of ten times a players wage as well... That's 50k for a 5k wage, on top of the acquisition fee. For starting teams, 50k is a lot of money...

I'm not sure how this situation will develop, but I can say it's not looking good. If people are investing this heavily in youths without having Judging Potential as a skill, imagine the carnage as soon as JP actually becomes available... I'm not sure I like the prospect of that... Hyperinflation galore and the youth wages might go completely insane...

The Real World Cup

2009-07-13T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to take credit for the idea, as it wasn't mine but Nathan Pollard's, but I would like to advocate the introduction of a Pollard-style World Cup in every Game World as a community building tool.

The setup of the tournament is fairly basic, so there's not really a lot of hassle organising the tournament. Whoever is online on every fourth Sunday morning gets to pick a nation and select a squad of trialists, all from the same nation. The maximum acq. value of an individual player is 30k, but you are allowed two dispensation players with a max total acq. value of upto 750k.

This means you are allowed to sign these players on more permanent deals if you want or even use one of your already contracted players as dispensation players in the tournament. Either way, the total cost of participating in a World Cup tournament in Miller are around 40k in trialist wages, which isn't that much considering the fun that can be had.

Now on the forums, I participated in a discussion about this subject and people were advocating the use of full international squads, no restrictions at all. There are a number of reasons why I disagree with such a concept.

For starters, FM Live is not a realistic football management simulation, it's a form of fantasy management game. The game is designed to be accessible to a broad public, so why limit the opportunities in such a tournament? The restrictions mean it's not just a matter of who gets Brazil or Argentina and can then dominate the World Cup.

It even means it's not necessarily one of the big nations who wins. Muqqy surprised us all with his El Salvador team and we've had other minnow nations causing upsets before. I feel the restrictions and the equality they offer are fairer to FML and the community, as it means that more teams are able to compete for the tournament win and not just those managing the big nations.

Secondly, there's the matter of deciding who gets which team. In Miller, we just let people call their team as they come online, first come first served. Since the restrictions limit the managers, it means it's okay to come online as the 16th or 30th manager, as there are still plenty of nations available with a decent array of available trialists to compete in the tournament.

Remove these restrictions and it becomes a race to get online faster and call the use of Argentina, Italy, Brazil or Spain, which sort of removes the desire of others to play, since they would primarily act as cannon fodder for the big(ger) nations. Why would anyone play if they stand no realistic or even remote chance of winning?

Someone even said that teams should be assigned based on the Game World Rankings. That's quite possibly the worst idea I have ever heard with regards to a World Cup. As the name implies, the World Cup is there for the entire Game World. By basing it on the Rankings, you are creating an elitist competition for the select few dominating the Game World, not to mention the fact that you may end up with people from various time-zones, making it rather hard to actually get them all online at the same time.

The tournament should be accessible for all and then the quality of the manager should make the difference, not the quality of the players at his disposal, because he or she managed to get online faster or because he or she has been #1 for several weeks.

My third and final reason for advocating a Miller style World Cup is easy. Fun and gameplay, adding a sense of community to the Game World. Everytime we ran the World Cup, it was ran by teams online at the time, thus ensuring LIVE matches were played. Other managers joined matches to watch who would win, or they joined the World Cup banter in the Lobby. Either way, it was a busy and active competition, showing to all how good FM Live can be in all it's magnificent glory.

This is the kind of image you want to put in people's heads. This is the positive association people should have when they think of FM Live. They shouldn't be thinking about massive AI lists, players exploiting the system or dodgy same IP-transfers, they should be thinking of fast, competitive matches between evenly matches teams, with some banter on the sides.

So all in all, these are my reasons for going with Nathan's idea, maybe with a raised acq. value of 50k. Implementing a World Cup like this in every Game World will work wonders for the communities.

Beginner Game World? Surely Not...

2009-07-12T00:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so officially Altobelli is classified as a "beginner game world," which basically means that users have to have a brand new account to enter. Ideally, this means we see a game world full of real beginners, who can get used to the game without the hassle of dubious transfers, double your money competitions and veteran managers hammering them mercilessly.

In reality, I see a Lobby chat full of managers reminiscing good times in other Game Worlds, openly discussing Double Your Money competitions and slating people using 4-5-1 tactics. Sure, we have a bunch of genuine new users, but they are being thrown off by the amount of dodgy deals going on.

Apparently, lots of people seem to think that in a beginner Game World, SI and SEGA have appointed beginner moderators, so we're seeing all the dirty tricks in the book. Same IP deals all over the place, deliberately ignoring requests to have transfers validated and genuinely thinking us mods are retarded. I mean, who in their right mind would swap Luca Toni for Kevin Kyle? Who would? Exactly, no-one...

So yeah, not exactly a Game World full of beginners... Within a week of starting, there are already offers for the likes of Ballotelli, who has an 850k acquisition fee, or Miralem Pjanic, on a similar fee. Doesn't really sound like anything a beginner would do, wouldn't you agree?

Regarding youths, things aren't much better... All the 300 quid wage youngsters were gone within hours, as obviously these are the guys who probably have the best chance of being high potential youngsters. Yesterday, I saw newgen players go for over 10k wages... Within the first week of a Game World...

To be fair, I am being a bit of a hypocrit here... I myself am not really a beginner, with over 12 seasons of experience in Miller under my belt... On the other hand, moderators are prohibited from signing any players within the first 24 hours of a Game World opening and I am actively going down the youth path, so I'm hardly doing anything with my knowledge in terms of exploiting others or dominating the rankings.

The point I want to make is this. Don't call these Game Worlds beginner worlds, because they clearly aren't. Half of the guys in the world are clearly not beginners, but experienced or even veteran managers taking a new subscription out to try and dominate the Game World with their already acquired skills.

Altobelli; A New Saga Begins

2009-07-08T23:54:00.000-07:00

So yeah, a new saga looks like it's beginning. I haven't really had the time to update my blog, as Altobelli is sucking up most of my available time. Still, it's a whole new experience. In three days of modding Altobelli, I've had more work than in four to five seasons in Miller. Mutes, yellow cards, transfer frauds, match fixing, the works...

Still, I relish the challenge and look forward to the first season starting. Since I'm focussing on youths rather than seniors, my team isn't that good in comparison to the Miller version, which was usually in the top 30 of the GW. Still, my knowledge of the mechanics of 1.2 ensure that even my minnows aren't being disgraced in every game we play, which is good enough as it is.

Regarding the name of the new Altobelli world, some guys in Miller have been asking me about this. Especially for them:

Alessandro Altobelli (born 28 November 1955 in Sonnino, Latina) is an Italian former football player. Nicknamed Spillo ("Needle") for his slender build, Altobelli was one of the most effective Italian forwards of the late 1970s and 1980s. Following spells at Latina (Serie C) and Brescia (Serie B), he was signed by Internazionale, for whom he played 466 times, scoring 209 goals (128 in Serie A) and massively contributing to his team's scudetto of 1980. For Italy he was capped 61 times, scoring 25 goals: the most notable of which is the third goal in the 1982 FIFA World Cup final, won by Italy against West Germany. He became the first ever substitute to score in a FIFA World Cup final (with Rudi Völler being the only one to repeat this feat ever since in 1986). Altobelli also played at Euro 80, the 1986 FIFA World Cup, and Euro 88, where he played as team's captain. He made 4 sub appearances scoring just after coming on in a 2-0 win over Denmark in the group stages. He is currently a sports analyst for the Al Jazeera sports channel, with Cesare Maldini.

So yeah, for so far history.

I'm also looking at introducing my community-building football quizzes. They are received very well so far, but I am worried the questions I have might be too hard for most of the guys in there. Miller has an older crowd, whereas many of the guys in Altobelli are very young.

Saving the worst for last, I am now apparently a racist as well. When we confronted a guy on match fixing, losing a game by fourteen goals because he had no keeper, he claimed to not know teams required a keeper to operate. This was coming from a 16 year old European lad who has subscriptions in several other Game Worlds...

I jokingly remarked that you had to be an American (or someone else with no footballing background) to make a mistake like that, so it sounded like match fixing to me. Having strong American roots within my own family, that remark seemed perfectly valid, but all of a sudden I am a racist and should be taken too court. Ludicrous.

Fortunately, incidents like that one are scarce, but they are annoying anyway, especially when they get plastered on your feedback screen whilst your off-line. Still, despite incidents like this, I have full faith we can make Altobelli into a top GW.

The Catch-22 Of Youth Development

2009-06-26T07:19:00.000-07:00

As I have said before, I am quite devoted to developing my own youths, but I have stumbled across an almost impossible situation and rather annoying problem regarding the development of my youths. The developing of stats is becoming harder and harder, to a point where it is turning into a laughable Catch-22 situation.

Now for those who haven't read the novel by Joseph Heller, Catch-22 is a law defined in various ways throughout the novel Catch-22. First, the main protagonist Yossarian discovers that it is possible to be discharged from military service because of insanity. Always looking for a way out, he claims that he is insane, only to find out that by claiming that he is insane he has proved that he is obviously sane — since any sane person would claim that he or she is insane in order to avoid flying bombing missions.

Elsewhere, Catch-22 is defined as a law that is illegal to read. Ironically, the place where it is written that it is illegal is in Catch-22 itself. It is yet again defined as the law that the enemy is allowed to do anything that one can't keep him from doing. In short, then, Catch-22 is any paradoxical, circular reasoning that catches its victim in its illogic and serves those who have made the law.

Breaking this down into smaller portions and translating it to the youth development, you would get a situation like this.

1. Premise: If a youth player is to develop his stats in a decent tempo, he must get decent average ratings in the matches he plays.

2. Premise: If a youth player has decent stats, he will more easily achieve these higher average ratings,

3. Definition of implication: since a youth player who wants to develop further in a decent tempo does not already have decent enough stats, it follows that he will not play to his full potential for quite a while.

4. De Morgan: since this player cannot play to his full potential for quite a while, his performances are lacklustre and will result in decent but not spectacular average ratings.

5. Modus Tollens: since a players average rating is not very spectacular, his stats will not rise very much during the course of a season, causing his average ratings to stay the same, et cetera...

Surely you can appreciate the wonderful circular logic behind this... A player needs a high average rating to develop at a decent pace, yet he can only obtain or achieve this rating by developing into a better player first... By decent tempo, I mean that a player should be ready for first team in his early 20's. Anyway, this dilemma, gentlemen, is Catch-22.

Now of course there are ways around this. You can re-invent your tactics to actually suit a players strenghts more and compensate for their weaknesses a bit, but in general I believe the coaching skills are a bit underpowered.

You see, the coaching skills will boost the rate at which a player improves. This means they boost both attributes and Current Ability (CA). CA is just a reflection of a player's attributes, or vice versa, they aren't really seperate entities as the match engine for example doesn't know about CA at all, it only cares about attributes, which are in turn set according to CA.

Regardless of coaching skills, a player won't improve beyond his Potential Ability (PA), however he is more likely to reach his potential. A 2.5* potential player can only ever become a 2.5* player, no better, however a 3.5* potential player at another club may never reach that level. In that sense it is possible for a player with a lower potential to become better than a player with higher potential. This, of course, is true regardless of skills, but increased coaching skills allow you to get the most out of your players.

The problem is that the coaching skills really only kick in when the average rating is decent as well. So how can we make a youth really live up to his potential? A bit of luck that he faces weak opponents? Or just lots of tactical tinkering until we find a formation to play him in…

What Goes Around Comes Around

2009-06-24T23:43:00.000-07:00

Besides this phrase being used in a tacky song by Justin Timberlake, it's also one of the fundamental principles of karma. As you sow, so shall ye reap. What you do to others, you are really doing to yourself for when it comes back to you.

I believe this principle can also be used in FM Live. Over the past few weeks or maybe even months, I have heard people complaining about the Game World Economy, its inflated prices and the reduced chances of selling players to anyone.

When you apply the idea of what goes around, comes around to FM Live, you would see less of this nonsense. If nobody overcharges, the inflation will not be as severe. If you sell for fair prices, people are also inclined to sell players to you at fair prices. Oh yeah, with fair prices I mean a maximum of double MV...

Anyway, the people moaning should also look at themselves. If you don't sell at prices based around MV, why should anyone else be inclined to return the favour? It does work the other way around, as I myself have experienced on several occassions.

When you sell for prices based around MV, you are far more likely to get the same courtesy from another manager when you negotiate for his player. In time, you will establish a network of managers who are all inclined to do the same, which basically makes transfer dealings easy and pleasant for all involved.

People should keep this in mind, next time they start moaning about how bad the Game World economy is. Chances are they themselves have contributed to its present state with their own actions.

A New Style Of Advertising; Endorsement

2009-06-21T05:39:00.000-07:00

After my guerrilla advertising, trying sympathy stories, I am trying a new approach to selling players. Linking players to real-life legends seems to work as well, especially if there's any reality in the link. Everybody likes to own the new Ronaldo, Messi, Pirlo or Villa.

Technically, it's not really an endorsement, but it's close enough and since I can't come up with any better terms for it, this is what I'm calling it for now. Point is, I am pretty confident it will work.

Here's my first attempt at it.

Gentlemen, allow me to introducé you to the new Recoba, Aníbal Morales. The boy has a lot in common with the real Recoba, as his strengths are his dribbling, technique, pace and a strong, accurate left-foot shot. He is a free-kick specialist, and has scored goals of great quality before.

His left foot does not only pack amazing power and precision, it possesses an exquisite touch as well. Beautifully balanced and deceptively fast, he can be a classic winger on the dribble, lethal on the turn inside the box or he can be a gifted play-maker in the centre of the pitch, feeding the forwards superb through balls.

Basically, the boy is a talented and fabulously gifted all-rounder, elegant and tough, who can score with his head and left foot. Aníbal Morales is a talented youth, whose attributes are already on par with those of players three or four years older.

Also take in consideration that his wages are relatively cheap. In a day where top youths go for 10k or more, this talented youth has 4k wages and can be youth locked until he’s 22 when you sign him now. I would also like to point out that he’s in an auction starting at a mere 1 quid, so you may be able to get him cheap.

Now you’re probably wondering, what’s the catch Guido? Why are you selling him if he’s this good? Well, I’ll be frank. My reasons to sell him are two-fold. I have too many players, so I need to sell someone anyway. I also want to fill up a new three-tier stand with seating blocks, so I need the cash. Morales should fetch a handsome price, so get your bids in people.

I'm hoping to fetch 300k for the kid, so let's see what happens here.

Work In Progress; My Own 4-6-0 Part Deux

2009-06-21T02:35:00.000-07:00

So far, I have basically set up three different formations, all using the “no striker” idea. The first one is the standard one I see most of the times when my opponent plays a 4-6-0. I have dubbed it the normal or standard version. It looks like this.

A solid back-four, complemented by a sort of pyramid-shaped midfield. The three attacking midfielders are the ones generally causing trouble for the defence, whereas the central midfielder is the one starting most attacks, whilst maintaining the defensive balance of the team.

The more defensive version I have seen features a real defensive midfielder and only one real attacking midfielder. It's a more conservative approach to the whole concept, aimed more at people looking to play a counter-attacking style.

This version offers more defensive stability, as there is less chance of players being caught out of position defensively. On the other hand, it's also a formation which has seen me draw a lot, as the offensive potency is somewhat limited.

Last but not least, there's my favourite formation, the most attacking formation of the whole bunch. This version offers nice matches to watch, whilst also ensuring I actually win most of them because my opponent is clueless how to counter it effectively.

With this version, you sort of have a 4-3-3 formation with wingers, just not with a real striker. The forward either runs onto crosses and through balls or lays the ball off for one of the midfielders to try his luck.

Next up, we're tweaking team instructions...

Work In Progress; My Own 4-6-0

2009-06-21T02:26:00.000-07:00

Over the past few months, I have heard quite a few people moaning about the 4-6-0 and this tactic being an exploit of the match engine, since it overcrowds the midfield and uses no real striker. The main reason I have heard is that “using a tactic with no strikers just isn’t realistic as no real life team does this.”

I have read this excellent article on the development of tactics throughout history and the 4-6-0 in particular. Apparently it can be done and is done in real life, most notably by AS Roma two seasons ago, as they fielded Francesco Totti to operate in the hole between attack and defence, with no-one upfront.

Operating as a focal point as for example Didier Drogba was for Chelsea, he held up the ball, drifted, and created space for his team-mates to break into. Roma's 4-1-4-1 formation frequently became 4-1-5-0, a formation with no real striker, which resembles the 4-6-0 idea we encounter in FM Live.

Reading the information I have found, I decided to give this a go myself. After all, it’s all about learning new tricks and the concept sounds pretty solid in theory. As was stated in the article, the history of tactics is the story of the attempt to achieve the greatest balance of attacking fluidity and defensive solidity, which is pretty much what FM and FM Live are all about.

With all of this in mind, I started reading up on what others had achieved working with the 4-6-0. There’s no need to invent everything all over again, especially when others have left well documented settings. Threads I found particularly useful were this one and this one, as they provided me with some settings and tips.

As I started experimenting, I quickly noticed that a system with no forwards places a premium on fast, accurate passing through the midfield, which is fine on a good day. However, there will always be days when the passing fails to click, or when a team is forced on to the back foot and needs an outlet for holding the ball and relieving the pressure.

This is where your AMC becomes important. As general fitness improves, so the demands on attacking midfielders and forwards change, not least because defences cannot be relied upon to lose shape as they become exhausted. The AMC in this formation must be a universalist, a hybrid of the old strike-partnerships. He must be quick and strong, as he has to hold up the ball but he must also be able to chase after a through ball.

Ideally, you’re looking for an AM/FC in FM-terms. Players like Stevan Jovetic, Giuseppe Rossi, Antonio Cassano and Goran Pandev are ideally suited for this role. They are hybrids. A combination of the playmaker and the forward. They have the skill and technique to hold up the ball yet they are also blessed with stamina and the running power to move forward to pounce on loose balls.

From what I’ve seen so far, this formation works well enough. Defenders are having difficulties realizing who to pick up, as the running midfielders seem to catch the defenders off guard quite a bit. I will elaborate on settings and formations later on, as this is all work in progress at the moment.

Fifty Player Squad Restriction Is Unfair

2009-06-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

Seriously, I can understand the need to limit the amount of players in a squad, as it will lead to hoarding and people trying to corner the market early on. I have no gripe with the rule as such, as I can fully understand why it was implemented. I do have a problem with the number of fifty players.

As it stands, a player is currently capable to create five squad. This generally means one senior squad and various youth squads or maybe even a reserve squad. Generally, the setup looks like this:

Senior Squad
Reserve Squad
U21 Squad
U19 Squad
U17 Squad

Given that the minimum size of a healthy squad would be around 16 players, that means you have 80 players running around the club.

I have neglected the fact that players can feature in more than one team though. A very good youth player might feature in more than one youth team and maybe even in the senior team as well.

Still, as you can see it takes considerably more than 50 players to run a team with a full on youth academy effectively. Please SI, can't you raise the limit, so we don't get punished by poor morale and players rejecting their auto extends, whilst they actually do play enough games and have no realistic reason to complain?

Another Quiz

2009-06-09T13:40:00.000-07:00

Another Quiz was organised tonight and we had a record number of participants. This was the final score.

Abdul Muqsit 17
William Hall 11
Neill Smith 9
Tom Delgado 8
Nabz Khan 7
Paul Hills, Padraig Doherty 5
Bernard Tapie 4
Mike DiAmore, Sune Nielsen, Juan Manuel Cobos 2
Rafael Affonso, Dan Hyde 1

More Crazy Advertising

2009-06-08T07:38:00.001-07:00

This stuff never get's old... Another one...

Won’t you let your heart speak and help fulfill a young boy’s dreams?

This is Andreas Weiß, a young German boy. Despite having a German last name, young Andreas has a British heritage. He is the illegitimate son of a British airman who was posted in Germany.

From his father, young Andreas got a great passion for football and for the English Premiership. Since the father didn’t become a professional football player, he hoped his son would be and he infused the boy with his passion for the game and for England. The boy dreamt of playing at Old Trafford, Anfield and Stamford Bridge, he was obsessed with becoming a professional football player.

Like any real father, Andreas’ father was his biggest fan, despite him not being able to acknowledge his son due to his family back home. During the long period he was stationed in Germany, his father barely missed a game young Andreas was playing in. Now if that isn’t true love…

Anyway, when a tragic accident caused the death of Andreas’ father, he vowed he would try to become a professional football player in England. Young Andreas is already halfway there. He is currently a professional football player, active in the Fortuna Aeternitas academy. Will you help him make the final step and fulfill a life long wish?

Andreas Weiß is a tenacious young midfielder, gifted with a strong physique for a lad of his age, an excellent professional attitude and very decent passing skills. Won’t you help this lad get a transfer?

For those wondering if my advertising works, this player was sold a few minutes after the advertisement was sent out.

Tom Delgado: I Salute You

2009-06-07T23:45:00.001-07:00

For those of you who were never in Game World Miller, allow me to introduce Tom Delgado and his enigmatic Red Devils USA. In Miller, we have a bit of a running gag that involves Tom and his team's rather poor performances. When people think they have hit rock bottom, we point towards Tom, who has been struggling far worse over an extended period of time. A very extended period of time. Like five seasons.

Ever since winning some Manager of the Season award in season 1 (God knows which bug/fluke caused this ;-) hehe...), Tom and his team have been unable to perform decent in any official competition. His team have shown consistency though, but mostly in crumbling horribly and getting hammered by their opponents.

As you can imagine, this was a cause of great frustration for poor Tom and a source of great amusement for the rest of us. Bad luck for someone else is always a good form of entertainment, especially when that someone goes off on long rants in the Lobby of the Game World.

Despite all of his bad luck and our constant taunting, Tom has stuck to the game though. Many others would have given up, had they performed as bad as the Red Devils USA over the course of five full seasons. Tom hasn't and I respect him for that, it shows determination and courage.

Over time, several managers, including myself, have tried to help Tom. We gave him advice, we helped him with his tactics, we loaned him players and we pointed out bargain deals for him. Not that he wasn't capable of doing that himself, but I felt genuinely sorry for his bad luck and what can I say, I have grown to like the bugger...

Anyway, despite our best efforts, his team remained unable to win anything decent. In fact, the Red Devils USA trophy cabinet was still empty, despite the fact that he had actively played in six seasons. We even set up a non-ranked tournament he could win, as we all promised to field weak(ish) teams. He wouldn't participate, which was probably the honourable thing to do.

I realise now that, despite our good intentions, this offer was quite degrading. We probably insulted his honour as we sort of implied he wasn't good enough to win a tournament on his own. For this unintentional insult, I offer my most sincere apologies to Tom, since I know he actually reads this blog.

Last season however, things looked like they were changing for Tom's Devils, as the team actually won a trophy. They won the OFA Youth Cup over two games, beating Vulcan Lee's BB City with a 2-1 aggregate.

I can honestly say that this was one of the happiest moments I have had since playing FM Live. I think that there was probably no-one in the Game World who wasn't rooting for Tom to break his long spell of bad luck and unlucky defeats. So yeah, this post is a bit of a tribute to Tom and his endurace. Chapeau old boy, you deserve that trophy.

I Think I'm Hooked

2009-06-06T22:18:00.000-07:00

I am actually pretty sure of that... I am hooked to FM Live. Last week, my laptop blew up on me. Not quite literally, but the darn thing refused to start. In the week it took me to fix the bloody thing, I was unable to play FM Live and I was starting to show signs of withdrawal.

At least several times an hour, I started wondering how my team were doing in their respective leagues and cups. I was wondering which players I was going to lose in an auction because I would be unable to protect their contracts. I even bothered to log in at the SI fora at work and ask one of the other mods in my Game World for a status report on my team.

Quite literally, I was obsessing over my game. I think that's good news for SI and the community of the Miller Game World, but it's not so good news for me and my girlfriend, as she won't be seeing a lot of me the next week or so, as I try to repair the damages done to my team by the evil wage auctions (I lost two first teamers, [/whine mode] ).

It also makes me wonder what will happen should I ever decide to quit FM Live... Is there some sort of rehabilitation program to prepare us addicts for the real world? Going "cold turkey" obviously didn't work for me...

Dictum Meum Pactum

2009-05-28T23:37:00.000-07:00

My word is my bond. I'm a firm believer of the so-called gentleman's agreement. When I orally agree to a certain deal, I live up to said deal because I feel my reputation is at stake when I don't. In a community-based game like FM Live, your reputation is all you have, so therefore crucial to your success in the game. Managers deemed unreliable or not trustworthy will have difficulties signing players or getting bargain deals done.

Still, whenever I strike an agreement which revolves around trust, people seem genuinely surprised that I actually live up to my end of the deal. This means there's something fundamentally wrong with the community, when you're not able to trust another manager on his (or her, I'm not biased) word. It might even be a reason why the transfer market is not always going as smooth as it could be, some people do not live up to their promises and others become reluctant to make deals because of previous bad experiences.

The gentleman's agreement really helps when making deals. Only yesterday, I struck a deal for a Mexican wingback for 1.4 million. In exchange, two of my youths were loaned to the other side to cover for his loss of a first teamer. The guy seemed genuinely surprised when I actually accepted the first offer and promised him he could loan the second youth next season, because the auto extension of his contract was within the next 7 days.

Since the gentleman's agreement seems to be failing, I feel that either the First Option or Future Transfer clauses from FM should be imported to FM Live. Some managers are reluctant to sell during the season, but they would be willing to settle a deal once the season ends. A Future Transfer option might liven things up, as managers could really start their long term planning this way.

Google Quizzy?

2009-05-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

Despite several people's accusations of googling answers, loads of fun were had by all involved whilst playing. In response to the googling, the average response time is below 10 seconds, which makes it almost impossible to accurately google for an answer.

Anyway, last nights final score...

1 - Nathan Pollard 30
2 - Tom Delgado 18
3 - Nick Megarity 15
4 - Alec Sora 7
5 - Abe Roddney 4
6 - Glen Fyrth 2
7 - Jocke Grundberg 1

Also, feel free to respond to the blogposts more often, possibly with new quiz questions...

Patience Is A Virtue

2009-05-27T23:49:00.000-07:00

FM Live resembles real life in many way, even more than we realise. In real life, patience is a virtue because it makes us better people in general. This principle also works in FM Live. Patience really is a virtue and important to have, both in the real world and in the virtual Game Worlds we are in.

The definition of the word "patience" is to tolerate delay. This implies self control and forebearance as opposed to wanting what we want when we want it. Applied to FM Live, think of realistic situations where you splash your entire transfer budget and overpay considerably for a decent player, only to find out a cheaper alternative is a available only a few days later. How many times have we jumped the gun and found out it it would have been better to tolerate delay or had self control?

Also a nice one, what did we miss out on? Couldn't we have built a nice stadium with that money? Did we sell that youth player too soon or too cheap? Should we not have had more patience with that talented forward, instead of flogging him off?

Did we hurt someone else or ourselves (or our team) because of lack of patience? Did our lives just change completely just because we couldn't control ourselves? Patience is not only a virtue but a necessity for a happy exisitience.

The reason for this semi-philosophical rant is clear, I'm one of these more patient managers. This doesn't mean I don't get annoyed at times though and I need to let off some steam. I'm still pretty pissed because I had to flog off most of the U17 generation relatively cheap, instead of being able to watch them mature.

I also invested a considerable lump of cash into the acquisation of central defender Ryhor Filipenko, the tall Russian beast-man. This very morning, right before his auction ended, someone else swooped in and outbid me.

I could have gotten angry. I could have panicked. I could go out and throw enormous amounts of cash around to find a similar player. Instead, I will try my patience. Another opportunity will arise soon. Maybe not for a defender, but I am sure a more profitable situation will soon arise. Patience is my main virtue.

More Quizzing

2009-05-27T10:31:00.000-07:00

Another quiz last night. To my shame, several questions were wrongly phrased or plain incorrect. Yes, even I am human. I am very very ashamed. I am. Really.

Anyway, the results from last night.

1 - Nathan Pollard 20
2 - Tom Delgado 13
3 - Muzzy 9
4 - Nick Megarity 7
- - William Hall 7
6 - Sean O'Connell 2
7 - Matt Legend 1
- - Volkan Ozkan 1

I do feel the need to add that Tom Delgado was comfortably leading the whole thing, before he had to leave prematurely. He would have probably been the first to reach 20, had it not been for some unforeseen circumstance which prompted him to leave.

Scouting Talents Without Judging Potential

2009-05-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

Probably one of the best and most insightful things I have read in a long time took place in a secluded part of the SI fora. It's about how you can scout top youths without the use of the judging potential skill. Potentially, if you get this right, this means you can start your academy in the very first season, when the competition for the top youngsters is less fierce.

Apparently, it's all about setting up the right filters. As the world is quickly swamped with newgen players, you can't go trawling through long lists of players, so you want to set up good filters as fast as you can to start scouting.

One of the tips I picked up, was filtering on wage. Most newgens appear with a wage demand of 200 quid. The ones with higher wages generally have a better chance of becoming better players, if they possess the proper stats as well, so filtering on wages is a smart idea.

Naturally, wages alone are not an indication of a players potential ability. It could just mean his current ability is quite high, but his development chances are limited, which means you still have nothing useful to work with.

We also have to look at certain stats. As I stated in an earlier blogpost, players with decent values for Work Rate and Determination are far more likely to live up to their PA. There's less need of splashing loads of cash on top PA players if there's not a very big chance of them living up to that potential. Looking at these two mental attributes will give you a pretty decent idea if a player will be able to live up to his potential.

One last important thing to look at was basically natural fitness. I suppose that makes sense, especially if you're in the development business for the long haul. You don't want a youth with top stats but who tires after 45 minutes of football, so it is important they have the natural fitness to develop their other physical skills.

Summing it up, these are the things we should be looking at in a filter:

wages: over 200 quid;
determination: 10+;
work rate: 10+ (preferably even 15+);
natural fitness: 10+.

I put this theory to the test by looking at several teams who were signing the top youths very early on in Miller Beta. Teams like the Tallinna Piraaja and AZ Bruntsfield were reknowned for picking up the youths even in season one, before JP skills were unlocked and when I look at the players they signed who turned out great, they all seem to match the profile described above. So yeah, I think this might help out a lot of people.

Inflation Of The Youth Wages

2009-05-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

As we all know, inflation has struck our merry little Miller Game World. For those of you with no basic grasp of economics, inflation is a rise in the general level of prices of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.

When the general price level rises, each unit of the functional currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation is a decline in the real value of money—a loss of purchasing power in the internal medium of exchange which is also the monetary unit of account in an economy.

Translated into FM Live terms, players are becoming more expensive, in both wages and transfer sums. You have to pay more money in wage auctions and more money in transfer auctions to acquire decent players, which means less transfers are taking place.

In a post on the Developer Blog, Rob Cooper stated the inflation levels for every Game World. Miller and Coppell are on an average of 39.78%, which isn't that bad considering the fact that we've started out with 1.2 and the stadiums, which brings extra costs from the very start.

Anyway, I'm trying to look at the cause of this inflation. I think it's generally caused by people who don't know how the transfer market functions or people who are desperate to have a certain player (generally a top real-life player, someone who plays for their real-life club or a highly rated youth). They bid excessive amounts to persuade the player to transfer or the contracting club to sell.

Naturally, this causes some inbalances, as some of the wages have gone insane. The senior wages have pretty much stabilised, but the youth wages are a disaster-area. Every four star or more Potential Ability newgen that has appeared over the last month, is now earning at least 10k a day, if not more.

People fail to realise how much money this is costing them in the long run. 10k a day means 70k a week, 280k a season... For a 15 or 16 year old player, whose future is highly uncertain, as you need to nurture and develop this youngster. He won't be ready for regular first team football before he hits the age 20, so you're paying 1,12 to 1,4 million for this youth.

And let's not forget we're still not sure if the youngster can actually live up the high expectations. You're taking a huge, huge gamble when you pay wages like that to such young players, which is, in my eyes anyway, one of the main reasons for the current inflation.

I refuse to shell out these kind of excessive wages for every player, my top youths earn around 8k a day, but he's already playing regular first team football and he's developing quite nicely, with a Market Value of around 850k at the moment.

The one exception in my team is a Brazilian newgen, but his stats are so good that I don't consider him a youth player anymore, even though he is only 18 years old. He has proven that too, by getting 6.9 averages in the senior games he has played so far, in which case 14k isn't an excessive amount to pay.

Is there any way to curb this inflation of the youth wages? Can we stop this madness? Unfortunately, I don't see any way how to achieve this goal. I have actually thought this through (for a change...) and this is what I came up with.

Wage caps initially sounded like a good idea. Restrict the maximum bids. But these salary caps would be unfair, as it would be a matter who gets the maximum bid in first. Even with a more random distribution of youths time-wise, this would not work.

SI tried to hide the number of bids in the 3337 build of the Beta, but this didn't really help as people just bid high anyway to ensure they get the player. In a way, this measure was even restricting some teams. If you don't have a lot of cash, it's useful to be able to see how many bidders there are so as to decide where to spend your pennies, so in that sense it's not very friendly to weaker/poorer teams.

I considered removing all money from youth competitions, but I quickly realised most teams are not in the youth business for the prize money, since this is generally very very low and hardly worth the effort.

Most teams seem to be in it for the development of players and the chance to sell on their talents for huge fees. I have to admit that this is a lucrative business, as I have recently sold two youths for a combined value of 1,4 million quid. Since their combined wages were a mere 7k, they are cheaper than any of the newer newgens, which probably drove the price up.

Many other managers fail to realise this and they think these players only went for such excessive fees because of their superb Potential Ability. They therefore assume that signing top PA youngsters will guarantee them a lot of money in the future, when in reality it's the combination of superb PA, decent stats, chance of development and normal/fair wages that makes transfer sums sky-rocket at times.

The Demise Of A Generation...

2009-05-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

With the wages for 15 and 16 year old players rising to absurd figures, I have decided to retire the Fortuna Aeternitas U17 team. The best five prospects, those being the ones who might realistically develop into first team assets, are added to the U18 selection, the rest of the squad will be sold in auctions starting at one pound.

I feel sad I have to break up an entire team, but with the current inflation, I don't think I can afford to replace the current U17 team come next season. Well, I could replace them, but it would either be a squad full of extremely expensive talents (10k or more wages pro player...) or cheap dross no-one else picks up.

This season, I experimented with that last option in the U17's. A team full of relatively cheap Africans and Asians was able to do okay, but not as good as the other Academy teams I have. Also, I have noticed the wages in the regions rise to well above my acceptable level as well. I refuse to shell out excessive wages (5k or more) for average players who are used to fill the squad and even more excessive wages (10k or more) for the top stars of a generation.

The current inflation of the market has prompted me to disband the U17's. This decision is effective as soon as the tournaments they are currently in, have ended. Most of the current squad members have been placed in auctions, which end Friday. I'm sad to see the lads go, but I just cannot afford to keep hold of them.

It is sad that I have to break away from the tradition of home-growing my first teamers, right at the same moment that the first Academy graduates are being induced into the first team. Players like Marko Damjanovic, Jack Cleverley, Angelo Antonucci, Carlos Amaro and Velimir Jovanovic were all part of the academy for three or more seasons, but this proud tradition of training my own youths will end in a few seasons, as there are no new Academy teams coming.

Quizzy Again

2009-05-24T13:31:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, we have witnessed a miracle tonight... Tom Delgado won something... In FML... Granted, it wasn't a tournament (or a match), but he won tonights edition of the footy quiz. The most notable absentee was mister Nathan Pollard by the way. These were the final scores.

1 - Tom Delgado 20
2 - Muzzy 13
3 - Volkan Ozkan 8
4 - Srinath Murthy 5
5 - Dan Hyde 1

Sob Story Numero... I Lost Count...

2009-05-24T02:31:00.000-07:00

I think it's four or five... Anyway, my story-style advertising is working out pretty well and I decided to use my blog as a holding pen for all drafts and such... I'm not sure how many people actually read this, but this way I can always re-use my old stuff with a new name and location.

August 17th 2007, just another day in Lima. Willy Pellny followed the routine practiced by thousands of homeless children in Lima every day. He took out a handkerchief, dipped it into a bottle of paint thinner, put it to his nose and inhaled deeply. Asked what he was doing, Willy replied: "Dinner."

Willy was sniffing paint-thinner to suppress his hunger and ward off the cold. An estimated 60,000 children live on the streets of Lima, and almost all are addicted to some sort of inhalant.

The city has targeted glue-sniffing as a focus for its resources, and social worker and part-time Fortuna Aeternitas scout PJ has met scores of young addicts like Willy in his work. "These are boys who should be playing games at recess and learning their multiplication tables. Instead, they're living on the streets of a slum and spending most of their time in a delirious buzz."

PJ has been supporting street children for the past 30 years, and his achievement was recognized on Friday at an opening ceremony for a new headquarters, attended by the country's Vice-President. This was due to be followed on Saturday by a football tournament for street boys, opened by rehabilitated glue-sniffers.

It was during this tournament that young Willy was scouted by PJ and recommended to the academy of Fortuna Aeternitas. Unfortunately, Willy came in at the wrong time, as Fortuna manager Merry had just decided to cancel the U17 team.

If he is sent back to Peru, he will almost certainly fall back into his old habits. Can you not spare a quid, put in a bid in the auction and save him from a future of drug abuse and extreme poverty?

It's heart-breaking, I know... I couldn't stuff more clichées in there than I already did, but it's a good read...

Newgen Distribution and Generation A Bit Unfair?

2009-05-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

Seeing as I consider myself a talent spotter and developer, I invested quite a lot of time into developing my scouting skills. These skills increase the amount of players you can bid for in the world by 5% per level.

Without this skill I would not be able to approach some players in order to sign them. Players you don't have the scouting skills to sign aren't visible on the player search panel. You can also click on links posted by someone else, but the approach button will be greyed out. If you hover over this button it will tell you the reason, like you don't have the required skills.

Within the scouting skill-set, there are area specific skills that improve the amount of players you can see by 5% in specific regions. Famous players can be seen by all players regardless of their scouting abilities. This means that the main benefit of scouting is the ability to find regenerated young players who enter into the gameworld as older players retire.

Now allow me to quote a piece of text from the FM Online manual.

If everybody has a certain skill there is no advantage in having it – think about learning something obscure such as the Oceania region scouting skill, which would give you a unique advantage.
Source: FM Live Manual

I followed SI’s advice, as evidenced by one of my previous blog posts.

I'm changing my strategy to keep my wages low but maintain a certain level of quality. I've noticed that most these high wage players are either European or South American. Most managers have focussed their scouting skills in this region. Admittedly, it's where most talents originate from, so it makes sense too.

It also means that most managers have not bothered scouting in Asia and Africa. Admittedly, there's less talent originating from these regions, but they are there and they're still fairly cheap because they're not spotted by most managers, meaning the competition is less fierce and the wages are fairly normal.
Source: my own blog

But looking back on that decision, I can’t say it has paid off. The main reason for this is an unfair newgen distribution by the game itsself. Both in quantity and quality, the game heavily favours South America and Europe.

I’m not saying there are never any decent African or Australian newgens, but for every African four star newgen, there are six or seven South American and six or seven European newgens, so the quantity is not balanced.

The same can be said for the quality. Almost all of the top youths PA-wise are European and South American, there are barely any four or more star African or Asian youths in the game.

To a certain degree, I agree that is realism, as there aren’t that many Asian and Australian superstars, but surely Africa deserves a more worthy faith? It’s not like they haven’t produced anything decent, some of the worlds best players are African or of African descent.

In total, I feel the newgen distribution and generation isn’t quite balanced and even a bit unfair. Learning the African and Australian regions for scouting takes the same amount of time as the European and South American regions, but the pay-off is considerably less in quantity and quality of players.

The one advantage I have noticed is that the competition for these players is less fierce, because not every player is visible to all managers. Unfortunately, the moment a top African newgen appears, he is visible to everyone with five star scouting, so I would still have to shell out 20k wage offers.

Perhaps this is something that can be looked at by Sports Interactive?

Alternative Advertising

2009-05-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

I'm actually taking pride in coming up with original ways to to promote certain players I'm trying to off-load. "They" always say that sex and scandals sell. I'm not sure who "they" are, but I'm willing to test this hypothesis in a new advertisement, by including a celebrity scandal.

I'm sure we've all heard of Julio Iglesias. Julio is a Spanish singer who has sold over 300 million albums in 14 languages and released 77 albums. According to Sony Music he is one of the top 10 best selling music artists ever.

While Iglesias rose to international prominence in the 1970s and 1980s as a performer of romantic ballads and as an iconically suave Spanish gentleman, his success has continued as he entered new musical endeavors. Thus far, he has performed approximately 5,000 concerts.

Not many people know that Julio was actually quite a decent football player. In the early sixties, when he was a law student in Madrid, he briefly was goalkeeper for one of Real Madrid's youth teams; however, a 22 September 1963 car crash truncated his footballer's
career.

According to many people, Julio Iglesias has 8 children with
two different wives. However, much to the dismay of Julio, none of them have inherited his passion and talent for football. The Iglesias talent was deemed lost forever.

But ladies and gentleman, I have unearthed the truth. I have found an unknown Iglesias son, one who has inherited his father's football talent. Born out of an affair with a Brazilian beach soccer beauty was a son who was unknown to the world so far.

I present to you: Germán Iglesias. Every bit the suave gentleman his father is, he will almost certainly pull huge crowds of screaming young girls to the stadium.

Please take a chance on young Germán, who just wants a realistic chance to live his fathers dream of becoming a professional football player. Wouldn't you give the lad a chance? If not for his obvious talent, why not for his smooth looks and his ability to charm the female fans?

Here's to hoping this actually pays off...

Could This Be My Season?!

2009-05-22T23:08:00.000-07:00

I have a dream... Well, I have several dreams actually and some don't include beer and naked women... Some include visions of unrivalled success and stacks of silverware... And this might just be the season in which I can make my dream come true...

Let's have a look at why I am so optimistic, which is not a natural state of mind for me... I'm still in the World Youth Cup. I am currently in the quarter finals, but I have beaten every other side still in the tournament. The current draw looks like this. (Note: I added their current position in the youth rankings)

Kampong (6th) vs The Jakswans (36th)
Griffin FC (2nd) vs Never Walk Alone FK (46th)
Fortuna Aeternitas (10th) vs Gimp Athletic (40th)
Manchester Utd (15th) vs The Leeds Knights (22nd)

I stand a very realistic chance of reaching the next round, and after that... Who knows what might happen, it's the knock-out stage of a major tournament... Anything can happen, but I am giving myself a very decent chance.

I'm also still in the U21 Game World Cup. Having beaten the #1 in the youth rankings in the previous round, I hope the team can build on this momentum. I'm currently in the quarter finals and the draw looks like this.

Fortuna Aeternitas (10th) vs Bradford City (56th)
BB City (58th) vs OutKasts (21st)
Club Atletico Boca Juniors (116th) vs Manchester Utd (15th)
Angels Advocate (20th) vs The Leeds Knights (22nd)

Even when the rankings don't mean a thing in a knock-out competition, I am the highest rank left in the tournament. Realistically, I should be able to progress here and cause some damage in the next round as well.

Finally, the Miller Game World Cup. Again, I am in the quarter finals, and this is what the draw looks like in there...

Terrible Towelies (47th) vs Fortuna Aeternitas (31st)
JK Tallinna Piraaja (1st) vs The Reds (6th)
Mumbai Town XI (10th) vs Canisius (42nd)
FC J-Ilves (4th) vs The Leeds Knights (17th)

I'm not a clear favorite in this tournament, but as I stated before, anything can happen in a knock-out...

So with a dose of uncharacteristic optimism, I think I have a pretty decent shot at two UFFA competitions and I'm an outsider for one. Maybe, just maybe, I will get lucky before Murphy's Law kicks in and prepares me for a rude awakening.

Newgen Renaissance?!

2009-05-21T23:42:00.000-07:00

Or not, but the title is certain to draw some attention... As the latest Miller build was installed yesterday morning, I got a pleasant surprise when I did my routine survey of the newgens. For the past week or so, I hadn't noticed anyone remotely decent appearing and all of a sudden, there were like 20 or more five star newgens in the Game World, all 15 or 16 years old and almost without any exception with superb stats.

It seemed like SI were making up for a barren week of barely no decent newgens by showering us with lovely new talents. The abundance of players would ensure that almost every team would be able to sign one or more of these precious young talents.

At that moment, when witnessing the abundance of youthful talent, the mercantile part of my brain kicked into overdrive. I was figuring out how many of these gems I could snap up without facing bankruptcy. In the end, I decided to stay away from anything South American or European, since most people have focussed their scouting there. I opted for two Koreans, a Japanese and two Ivorian newgens, gambling on the fact that most people had not developed their scouting skills sufficient to see these gems.

Sticking 10k bids on the lot of them meant I had not much left, but I really wanted them and I couldn't see how many other users had made bids for them. Sticking a 10k bid on a five star newgen is a calculated gamble in Miller, where some newgens go for much much higher wages, though these guys are mostly European or South American.

I decided to invest my remaining cash into some other guys who I thought would fit my academy teams rather nicely, before logging of to do some work around the house and prepare for the evening quiz in Miller. I was very content with the new situation, even if it did look a bit peculiar that SI pumped so many newgens at once into Miller, instead of gradually releasing them to ensure a more fair distribution.

As I subconsiously feared, this whole situation was too good to be true and during a chat in the lobby, SI's Rob Cooper burst my bubble by stating there was a problem with the newgens that would have to be fixed. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one who was a bit disappointed. When the new 2333 build had installed and I logged back in, I found the following message waiting for me...

Hello folks,

As you may have noticed over the last couple of days some extremely rubbish, and some extremely good youngsters have been generated, with little or no players in between. This is down to a bug in the player regeneration code which has now been fixed. However, in the interests of keeping the game world balanced, and so ensuring that this world is as close to th live worlds as possible (to ensure fair testing) we have rset the player's PAs to where they should have been before.

Those players who were on trial will remain on trial, but all bids on players have been removed. Those players who have been signed on full contracts remain on full contracts because, by a bizarre twist of fate, they are all at least as good now after the fix has gone in, as they were before, so congratulations to you guys who have snagged a bargain!
To everyone else, there are now plenty of regens available to buy with reasonable PAs, and plenty more incoming in the coming days, happy shopping!

Cheers,

Rob
Chief player Progression Breaker

Deep down, I had expected this. Naturally, that didn't stop the more opportunistic side of me from sobbing and being jealous at the few managers who had managed to snare one of these top players, but that's just human emotions.

As I pondered the situation further, I realised that SI had probably done the right thing. As they said themselves, Miller was designed to be a realistic test environment for the 1.2 build. The realism would be compromised if they had allowed the new situation to run its course.

Alternatively, I could already see the casual weekend managers going into a frenzy when it turned out this was a one-time wonder and they had missed it. The amount of angry mails towards the poor mods (Andrew, Jeremy, Simon, Alec and myself) would have probably swamped us with quite a bit of work, explaining what went down and all.

All in all, the short-lived newgen Renaissance was nice for as long as it lasted, but it was probably unrealistic and would have distorted the balance of Miller. SI took the right actions by fixing the newgen code and removing the bids of the other players.

Looking at the bright side of it all, at least they fixed the code so we have new talents to fight over every day... I wonder if the new code in 1.2 will make the wages drop or go up even higher... I suppose that's something for another day...

Finally Another Quiz

2009-05-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since the last quiz night, but I found some time last night and we had another football quiz in the Lobby of Miller. Seriously, there's nothing like a good football quiz to get the community feeling growing... We even got some of the SI staff to participate, so I call that a successful tool.

Oh, if you do decide to have a quiz, don't invite Nathan Pollard, he's too good for the rest of the mere mortals... Seriously, he knows everything... He really should get out more ;-) Just kidding Nathan, congratulations with winning the quiz... Again... ;-)

The final standings were as follows.

1 - Nathan Pollard 31
2 - Volkan Ozkan 11
3 - Tom Delgado 8
4 - Nick Megarity 5
5 - Ken Bishop 1
. - Mike Fuller 1
. - Graeme Kelly 1
. - Rob Cooper 1
. - Ionite Alex 1
. - Sean O'Connell 1
. - Paul Hills 1

The New Newgen System

2009-05-21T07:39:00.001-07:00

Apparently, the latest 1.2 build has a few nice and pleasant changes in store for us, especially regarding newgens and signing these newly created little wonders. Allow me to talk you through all of the new options.

First of all, when a player is signed on trial, his visibility to other users on the player search page remains subject to their scouting skills. This means that if you are no good at scouting for example South Americans, you won't be able to see South American trialists. A nice move forward from the old situation. Now it actually pays off to trial players to see if they fit your squad, since it doesn't necessarily mean you expose them for the whole GW to bid on.

Secondly, the first bidder in a wage auction is now informed of any second bidder making a bid, which balances out the fact that the second bidder was either notified or can see clearly that at least one bid has been made. This relates to recent changes to hide the number of bidders in a wage auction. Ergo, you can't go trawling through the list to see which player has the most bids on him.

Some managers used this method to find good players, even without the Judging Potential tool. In all fairness, this was a pretty effective tactic, but it was very harsh on the guys who did have Judging Potential and invested time and effort into getting that skill.

In the new situation, you can't see who else made a bid, which also makes it harder to determine the height of the bid. Are you really the only one that bid? Can you afford to go low or should you lock down your money for 24 hours in a high stakes bid for a player that may or may not even be worth the effort. Life's all about decisions and this latest addition has just made everything more interesting.

I also noticed that newgens are released on random times. They're no longer released into the Game World at midnight GMT, they are released in batches, all day long... In my honest opinion, that's more fair towards all the users in the Game World, especially considering the many different time zones people are in.

How this will affect the Game World in the long term is hard to say right now. The new build has only been effective for less than a day. After the first wage auctions end tomorrow, we can see if the wage wars for newgens will intensify or not...

They Said It Would Never Work...

2009-05-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

They were sceptic about my ideas. "You can't be the Diane Fossey of newgens," they said. They may have had a point there, since I am not female, but I meant that in a metaphorical way... Anyway, they also said my new marketing campaign wouldn't work...

Looking back on recent developments, it's GLOATING TIME... Since the FML motto is "play, win, rub it in," I intend to do some rubbing... Allow me to start off with the bit I find the most important bit, the newgens.

Earlier, I promised to get to the bottom of the whole newgen-affair. Over the past week, the number of 16 year old newgens coming into the game world has decreased. The quality of said newgens has also decreased, as I am yet to find a newgen with a PA over 1.5 star. There are a few semi-decent newgens in the age category 17-19, but again no-one with really high PA.

I promissed to harass and annoy if necessary to find out what happened. Apparently, the good people at SI are very customer-friendly and no harassing or annoying was needed. All it took was one forum topic and a wee bit of patience. This was the reply I got by SI's Rob Cooper.

At the moment in Miller only 3.9% or so of players are under 18, whereas ideally the game would like this to be closer to 10%. This means that the game is creating more youth players. However, at the moment it is only creating 50 per day. I hqave recently made a change to this code so it can create more players per day if necessary so you should see a sudden burst of new regens arriving soon! Source: SI Games forum

People said I couldn't pull it off, that I couldn't get to the bottom of this... Well, I could and I did, so teehee, in your face, et cetera. The newgen situation should improve in the near future, maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but it will improve. I came, I saw, I nagged, I got what I wanted... Without nagging even...

Now about the second topic of gloating. My new style advertising campaign is currently enjoying a 66.67% success ratio. The current bid on Salvador "Sal" Lahera is 70k, whilst Brazils new Dunga Clodoaldo will probably go for somewhere over 400k. I haven't had any bids on Alain Bell, but he wasn't in auction in the first place.

Either way, that's a pretty decent success ratio, not even counting the countless positive responses of people responding I had written a nice ad or I had made them smile. Goodwill goes a long way in a community like FML, so yeah, it does work, even when you don't sell your players (and I sell my players as well as scoring goodwill...).

So yeah, I feel I have the right to gloat. For now. Just for a short while. Until I have to think back about my beloved Fortuna anyway... But that's the topic for another blog post.

The Demise Of Fortuna

2009-05-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

As you all know, my FML club Fortuna Aeternitas is named after real-life club Fortuna Sittard, which happened/happens to be my favourite side. Shit-kickers for life, we were/are threatened by financial difficulties and a reluctant FA. Yesterday, this message came through.

Football club Fortuna Sittard is losing its professional licence as of 30 June. This effectively bars the Limburg club from playing in competition matches next season. No appeal is possible against the decision by the Royal Dutch Football Association, KNVB, although Fortuna can ask to have the procedure reviewed by a judge.

Fortuna has been in financial difficulties for a long time, which did not improve after a failed merger with regional rivals Roda JC. Attempts to save Fortuna as an independent club all came to nothing.

The club had incurred debts of up to 5.3 million euros. A support foundation called Proud of Fortuna managed to eliminate a large part of that, leaving a debt of 0.7 million. In order to cover that last amount, the club was hoping to play a benefit match against Bayern Munich, on the initiative of former Fortuna player Mark van Bommel. However KNVB appears unwilling to grant Fortuna a reprieve.

I'm gutted. Devastated. When given the chance, I will re-name my club Fortuna Sittard Aeternitas, so the legend of the mighty yellow-greens may live on forever. Expect no FML related post by me today. I'm just not in the mood.

The Diane Fossey Of Newgens

2009-05-19T00:27:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know who Diane Fossey was, watch the movie Gorilla's In The Mist. Gorillas In The Mist is a 1988 film which tells the true-life story of naturalist Dian Fossey and her work in Rwanda with Mountain Gorillas.

Fossey is inspired by an anthropologist to devote her life to the study of primates. Travelling into deepest Africa, Fossey becomes fascinated with the lives and habits of the rare mountain gorillas of the Rwandan jungle. She becomes so preoccupied with her vocation that she loses the opportunity of a romance with National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell.

Appalled by the poaching of the gorillas for their skins, hands, and heads, Fossey complains to the Rwandan government, which dismisses her, claiming that poaching is the only means by which some of the Rwandan natives can themselves survive. She rejects this, and dedicates herself to saving the African Mountain gorilla from illegal poaching and likely extinction. To this end she forms and leads numerous anti-poaching patrols, and even burns down the poachers' villages and stages a mock execution of one of the offenders.

You could say she was a bit obsessed by gorilla's. I'm sort of like that with the newgens in the Miller Beta Game World. You see, quality newgens are becoming sort of an endangered species in Miller. Over the past week or so, the number of 16 year old newgens coming into the game world has decreased. The same goes for 17 and 18 year old newgens.

The quality of said newgens has also decreased, as I am yet to find a newgen with a PA over 1.5 star. There are a few semi-decent newgens in the age category 17-19, but again no-one with really high PA. For over a week now, no 3 star or higher PA newgen has appeared in the Miller World.

I'm not sure why this happened, but I don't like this development. The current batch of U17's I have is pretty much average, and I can't bleed new players into the team when no decent new ones seem to appear.

So therefore I have decided to become the Diane Fossey of the newgens, only without the patrolling, burning down SI staff homes and staging the mock execution of the programmers. I will do my best to get to the bottom of this situation by asking as many people with SI as I can. Expect more updates as this story unfolds. The plot thickens...

The Advertisement Campaign Continues

2009-05-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

So far, I've had quite a lot of positive feed-back on my original advertisement campaign. People seem to enjoy reading my little stories. Now all I need is for them to actually start bidding for my players as well... I suppose this will happen eventually. Anyway, today's new advertisement.

This is Alain. Alain is a young Cameroon boy, born in the slums of Yaoundé. Ever since he was a young boy, he has been providing for his family after his father had died in a tragic mining accident.

Considering that he has six younger brothers and three younger sisters, this has been quite the responsibility for young Alain. Eventually, as with many of kids placed in these circumstances, he couldn’t burden the responsibility and expectations and he ran away from home.

In Cameroon’s large cities, many children live on the street. Each day, as they struggle to survive, they are exposed to violence. Young Alain watched two of his best friends die right in front of his eyes, before he was arrested by the police for shoplifting.

During his stay in a juvenile correctional facility, he discovered he was quite a decent football player. His football-skills eventually saved him, as the warden of the facility recognised his talent and helped him find a club.

After a few seasons with a local club, Alain made the big move towards Europe. He has become a more mature and level-headed person and he wants to get back into contact with the family he abandoned back home in Cameroon.

However, to do so he requires money. This money can only be gotten by either a substantial wage rise or the signing-on-fee from a transfer. His current manager is reluctant to give him a wage rise, but he is willing to transfer Alain. Would you help Alain get some money, so he can find his family?

Attempting Guerilla Marketing In FML

2009-05-18T00:39:00.000-07:00

Guerrilla marketing is an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are unexpected and unconventional; consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea that's being marketed memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.

In FML terms, it means I'm trying to divert from the standard sales pitch, which focusses on a players Market Value, stats, and attributes. Most people have stopped reading these transfer list mailings long a go, simply because they are boring.

I want to be creative and devise my own unconventional methods of promoting my players and/or tournaments. I want people to start talking about my advertisements. Creating a buzz about them will ultimately lead to people bidding on my players or entering my tournaments.

This is a new advertisement I sent out today, to promote the auction of four star Potential Ability defensive midfielder Salvador Lahera.

This is Salvador. Salvador or Sal for his friends, was a simple Spanish boy, a lad from the country-side. Ever since he was a child, he dreamt of a career as a professional football player.

Salvador was quite fanatica about this dream of his. Every waking moment was speant kicking a ball around, often much to the dismay of his parents and their neighbours, who lost many a window to Salvador and his ball.

Persistency pays off in the end though, as Salvador managed to secure a spot in the academy of various decent teams. Unfortunately, his choice in clubs wasn't always the best. Driven by a greedy agent, he chose the wrong club. He opted for a club which switched away from using proper defensive midfielders.

Now Salvadors dream of becoming a proper professional football player is in danger of extinguishing like a candle in a heavy rain-storm. Can you help him rescue his career? Are you willing to keep a young boy's childhood-dream alive?

So far, I've received only a single reply to this, but I've only just started my campaign. I will keep you updated on more results and ideas.

Advertising In A New Fashion

2009-05-17T03:22:00.000-07:00

I often get bored reading those standard advertisements, so I figured I'd try my luck at writing a proper one myself. Feast your eyes on this...

The new Dunga is for sale. Clodoaldo, an 18 year old defensive midfielder is now available in auction, starting at Market Value.

Like Dunga, Clodoaldo plays the anchor role in midfield extremely effectively. Many players in this position lunge into tackles and put themselves about, but Clodoaldo rarely goes to the ground to make a tackle, instead using his anticipation and timing. His passing ability is also second to none, always starting a fresh attack and rarely wasting it.

Let's just have a look at his History Stats. As you can see, Clodoaldo has had excellent averages in the various XEFA Youth Competitions. His passing percentage has always been over 80%, he barely gets carded and he's capable of scoring goals and providing assists.

You can get this player for a modest fee. The auction starts at Market Value, which means a fee of roughly 65k. For a player with such a history, he's also cheap in the wages. His wages are below 3k, which is a very low fee in today's overinflated economy, where youth players with far worse stats and far worse performances, earn double or more of this fee.

Now that is proper advertising, instead of just summing up a name, price and sometimes senior performance...

Player Development; Development Theory

2009-05-16T05:48:00.000-07:00

People have been complaining about the progression of the newgens in the Miller Beta GW. These new players are apparently not developing according to expectations. These expectations are probably based on the Potential Ability (PA) of said players.

In a way, they are right. Not all great talents live up to their reputations. Stefano Fiore, Alessandro Bernardini, there are a number of top notch newgens that come to mind when we're talking about top youngsters who are not developing as you may expect.

On the other hand, isn't this realistic? Isn't this exactly like real life? Not everyone who is dubbed a great talent actually becomes a world beating super-star. Allow me to introduce a real-life example... Denílson, full name Denílson de Oliveira Araújo, is a winger, who in 1998 became the most expensive footballer in the world when Real Betis paid São Paolo £21.5m. He was touted as a great, great talent.

Despite his obvious skill and talent, Denílson failed to live up to the high expectations. He never became the world beater everyone predicted he would become. The reason for all of this? Poor mentality... He may have had the skills, but he did nothing with them and didn't develop himself as a player... Is this starting to sound like the FML newgen scenario yet?

I think more noticeable improvements can be seen in the performance of young players if the clubs place greater emphasis on the mental side of the game. This way the players will develop a greater sense of determination, resilience and foresight. One of the reasons for this is that they will learn how to play the game in their head, eventually even compensating for poor(er) physique or technique by being smart(er) and positioning themselves well.

I've done a sweep of the top newgens in the Miller Beta world and one thing struck me. All of them had excellent mental stats, especially in the Work Rate and Determination departments. I then compared their mental stats to those of players that weren't living up to expectations. Most of those had decent mental stats, but they were lacking in the Work Rate and Determination attributes.

The conclusion is fairly easy. Players with decent values for Work Rate and Determination are far more likely to live up to their PA. There's less need of splashing loads of cash on top PA players if there's not a very big chance of them living up to that potential. Looking at these two mental attributes will give you a pretty decent idea if a player will be able to live up to his potential.

Expectations For The New Season

2009-05-15T01:38:00.000-07:00

With my recent transfer from XEFA to EEFA, I'm not quite sure what to expect of the new season. EEFA has some top notch teams in it, like Ste's Mighty Villa and Jogabonito FC. Based on the world ranking, my own team should be able to hold its own and achieve a top position, but as I have learned before, world rankings mean shit all.

I am content with the progress the team has made though. I reinforced the defence considerably. Hell, only one player from last seasons defence is still playing for my team. Only Vitaly Mandzyuk is still a Fortuna squad member. Fernando Amorebieta, Rolando, Javier Flano and Sascha Dum have reinforced our defence, whereas Sandy Paillot, Ricardo Clark and Thiago Carleto have departed, all in profitable deals.

Midfield is still a bit dodgy. I don't have a lot of depth in this line of the team. Serge Wawa is basically my only decent defensive midfielder and he's a natural defender... Paulo Henrique is the only class central midfielder, Issey Nakajima-Farran and Marko Damjanovic are either not natural midfielders or not (yet) good enough. Down the wings, Pat McCourt and Robert Flores are world class, but I have no real replacements in case of a serious injury.

Upfront, I have two able strikers. Dieumerci Mbokani is the undisputed first choice upfront. He keeps banging in the goals at all levels, so I have no need to replace him. He's still fairly young and his wages are quite normal (26k), so he really has been a bit of a bargain. Backup striker Ola Toivonen is more static, but better in the air so ideal when the team needs a targetman upfront. He's on very cheap wages (3k) but he's got an expiring contract so I may swap him for another striker of similar value.

On the youth level, I'm quite content with the progress some players have made. Christian Rapp has been promoted to backup goalie and may see some first team action this season. Marko Damjanovic has been making regular appearances this season, same as his countryman Velibor Jovanovic, who covers for Javier Flano if needed. Upfront, Angelo Antonucci has been loaned to Tom Delgado's Red Devils USA to get first team experience. Not sure if I'm going to regret that, as Tom has the nasty habit to break all his players...

Reviewing Last Season

2009-05-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

Looking back upon the past season, I can safely conclude most of my predictions came true. My league form was decent, but nothing spectacular. We finished in mid-table obscurity, near the tenth spot. The cup was a relative success story, as we reached the quarter finals before crashing out to some AI-ridden team (damn you Agbonlahor, DAMN YOU!!!).

The bright side is that I have found a formation that works really well for the current squad. A 4-3-3 formation works very well for the current squad, as Mbokani is the ideal targetman to head home the crosses by my pacey wingers Robert Flores and Pat McCourt.

Flores is the most valuable player of the past season. He bagged an average of one goal in every three games, which is quite a respectable amount of goals. Couple that with a fair amount of assists and his improved market value to almost 900k, and you have a pretty decent idea as to why Robert Flores is my most valuable player.

I do feel Dieumerci Mbokani deserves a special mention for his impressive goals to games ratio. Including his record in friendly games, he bagged over 300 goals in an equal amount of games, scoring a very respectable average of one goal a game. Unfortunately, his record in official games wasn't that impressive, but he still made his mark on the Game World as a top notch striker.

The Thrill Of Gambling

2009-05-13T23:34:00.000-07:00

As the pre-season has ended and another season has gotten underway, I finally found some time to update my blog. Mea Culpa, I should have done this earlier but believe it or not, there are things more important than FM Live.

In this blog-post, I want to address the legalised gambling within FM Live and the fun this brings with it. Although the game of FML can be fun by itself, the excitement is amplified when money or any type of wager is involved. Wage auctions bring exactly this bit of excitement.

The reason for this is quite easy. In a normal transfer auction, you enter a maximum bid and FML looks at the second highest and adds +1 to make your final bid. Wage auctions don't function quite the same way. "What you bid is what you pay," is the credo in a wage auction.

This sometimes creates awkward situations, especially when top stars are involved. Theo Walcott for example, is on a wage of 75k a day because his manager didn't quite understand the general principle of the wage auction. It was an expensive learning process, as it didn't just cost him the 1.5 million acquisition fee and the 750k signing-on-fee, but also a lot of mocking, as the second highest bid was only half that amount. Many laughs were had on his account.

Anyway, the wage auctions provide a nice and legal gambling system. Will I get the player at all? Is my bid high enough to beat the competition? Is it not too high? I don't mind overpaying by a few k, but it's rather harsh when you overpay by a lot...

Legalised gambling and for me a form of great amusement. I like the wage auctions, even when I sometimes do lose in them and even when I do feel they are responsible for crappy players having obscene wages.

Goodbye My Friend...

2009-04-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

As season five draws to a close, I was forced to retire a legend in his own way last night. I feel that this player deserves some sort of a tribute, so you will have to make due with this rant for now.

'I don't care too much for money, 'Cos money can't buy me love.'

So goes the classic Beatles song, penned in 1964 by a fresh-faced Paul McCartney. In the case of Damien Grégorini, this may just have been the case. Quite a few times, managers have made me offers for the stylish French goalie, but I simply couldn't bring my self to part with him.

Loyalty and loyal players who stick by the club through thick and thin are a rarity. Players like Giggs, Scholes, Neville, Maldini, Totti, Raúl, Gerrard and others are a dying breed of footballers, and that's in the high-paced transfer circus of real life. The FML market is even more insane, with people switching clubs faster and easier, especially guys like Grégorini who are not top class.

Tall and slim, Grégorini was a safe, unflappable keeper who rarely needed to be spectacular. Quick and agile, he had good positional sense and great concentration, an asset particularly useful when playing behind a semi-successful Fortuna team that might be on the attack for much of the game only to be faced with a break away move from the opposition. Above all, he rarely made mistakes in big games, setting himself above many of the other keepers I brought in as back-ups for him.

Theo Zwarthoed, Jeroen Lambers, Tyronne and Rune Almennig Jarstein. They all got a few games between the sticks, they were given a fair chance, but they just couldn't compete with Grégorini, mister safe-hands.

Last night however, I felt the time had come for Grégorini to move on. He was slipping up. He was losing it. He made mistakes he normally didn't. He was getting older. At 33, he wasn't as agile and quick as he used to be.

Unfortunately, this isn't FM, where I can leave a legend like that in the reserve squad to finish his career with some honour and dignity. I need his wages in order to compete, so I had to release the Frenchman on a free transfer, only to replace him within minutes with Lithuanian Zydrunas Karcemarskas.

I hope Grégorini does well in the remaining seasons of his career. I noticed he had gone on trial with some Portuguese team. I really hope the manager thinks he's good enough for a contract deal there. He deserves this. After 1,476 appearances, 599 clean sheets and an average rating of 6.8, I wish I could've given him a more worthy good-bye, fitting of his status within the team. Unfortunately, he will have to make do with this tribute.

Sociology 101

2009-04-28T00:07:00.000-07:00

I took some Sociology classes in the past and one of the things I learned was Nietzsche's herd mentality theory. Herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include the early adopters of high technology products such as cell phones and I-pods.

The term herd mentality is derived from the word “herd,” meaning group of animals, and “mentality,” implying a certain frame of mind. However the most succinct definition would be: how large numbers of people act in the same ways at the same times.

Anyway, before I bore you all to death, there's a reason for my re-kindled interest in Sociology and the herd mentality. An in-game conversation with a comrade sparked a discussion. This manager, we shall refer to him as N., wondered why I even bothered to trial players, as most were just snapped up by others anyway.

He reasoned that people would look at my status in the youth rankings and would just figure that any player I trialled would be decent. Surely, if he was good enough for a top 10 manager, he would be good enough for them. That's a nice example of herd mentality.

People would act as if they were sheep and they would just follow the example of a more dominant manager and sign their trialists, regardless of status, stats or potential. I can't believe people would be that stupid. They are not mindless sheep, who just follow a dominant person.

So either way, I wanted to prove a point and decided to run a little experiment. As most managers are not really into scouting African youngsters, I decided to trial six African youngsters, all of them 16 years of age and neither of them had a PA value above 2.5 stars.

Following the herd mentality idea, people would go mental and start bidding for my trialists, driving the price to around the same level of their European and South American counterparts, which is roughly between 500 and 2,000 quid for such average players.

My experiment ended today, this very morning. I will post the outcome below, noting the player names, their new club and the salary they went for.

Joe Kuffour - Darxtar Szczecin - 525 quid
Roland Konaté - Fortuna Aeternitas - 200 quid
Chris Mokoena - The Reds - 1,001 quid
Félix Kehinde - Karthi's 11 - 200 quid
Alain Bell - Fortuna Aeternitas - 200 quid
Michael Estrada - Dark Knights - 200 quid

Two out of the six players were never bid on by other managers, the other four were. The highest number of offers for any single player was four offers (including my own opening offer of 200 quid). Joe Kuffour was the most sought after, despite having a fairly low PA.

Out of our four players who were coveted by by other managers, two received a bid on them before I could even get my own 200 quid bid in auction. The other two, who were incidentally the most sought after, matched the values of their European and South American comrades.

So what do I conclude from this? Not much really, it's not nearly enough data to make any real conclusions, but if I were to have a go, I'd say that some managers have this herd mentality. They see a trialist at a good team and they just put a bid in. This was certainly the case for Kuffour and Mokoena, who had the best stats from the lot.

On the other hand, I get the idea that people are a bit afraid of what they don't know. They are used to signing Europeans and South Americans and they seem reluctant to bid for Africans, not being certain of how they will develop.

Alternatively, I have nowhere near enough data to back these claims up, but I may look towards repeating this experiment in the future and maybe throwing in some Europeans for fun, to see if they are indeed more popular.

The Dutchman Goes African?!

2009-04-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, I too have succumb to the allure of the Real World Cup. I will be entering my All Nigerian Theme Team on Sunday. With no classy Nigerian players on a free transfer and me not having any in my squad, I will be forced to rely on cohesive teamwork rather than individual class, like some managers can afford to do.

I will probably be added to the roster to make up the numbers, but I love the idea of the tournament so I really want to compete, even if it's just once. It's like the Olympics, competing is incidentally more important than winning. Really... I meant that...

So yeah, an all Nigerian team, because the organisation wasn't sure about my Minor African nations team. I initially wanted to submit a team with players from Sudan, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Namibia, Uganda, Benin and Djibouti, since neither nation had enough players to create a squad on its own, but hey, a Nigerian team might be fun too. Maybe I can 419 scam my way to the second round, who knows...

Insane Youth Wages; Changing My Strategy

2009-04-27T10:14:00.001-07:00

With more and more managers learning Scouting 5 and subsequently Judging Potential, the competition for youths has intensified, leading to crazy wages. We've seen several players go for insane wages. I've compiled a top 10, including my own comments as well.

1 - Younous de Souza - 26k

Probably never worth this much, but yes, he as a five star PA rating so the price went mental on him. He doesn't have the stats that go with his status though and he doesn't look like developing at all.

2 - Nando - 23k

Nick Brookes signed this kid and Nick generally knows what he's doing with these kids. Considering his stats, Nick might be the last one laughing with this deal, but right now Nando doesn't have the stats to warrant this excessive wage.

3 - Cléverson Nery - 21k

I've got him down at a three star potential, but he does have a tremendous attribute set. Taking into account the kid is only 15 years old, one can imagine the carnage of the bidding war. Too bad there's no guarantee he will develop at all. Still, he's currently one of the better youth AM's in the Game World. Alternatively, his wage might drop during the next wage auctions, since his contract is not protected.

4 - Marco Antonio Aquino - 20k

More proof that the youth market is sick. Yes, Marco has the potential and the skills to become a great player, but the 20k wage is killing the team that bought him. Marco was placed in an auction today so he will probably leave by tomorrow, with the selling team losing all profit (if there is any at all, at the moment I'm writing this the highest bid is still one quid...) on pre-sale taxes and the buying team getting a 15 year old on a 22k wage.

5 - Alessandro Gardini - 18k

One of the few players in this list who is actually worthy of such a wage. He's only 16 years old, but darn what a player... He's already good enough to perform well in senior matches and he excels in youth matches. What else can I say, he's a genius on the pitch.

6 - Scott Birch - 17.5k

Bought by the same manager who signed Aquino. This 16 year old striker has the physique of a grown man but that's about it. Average at best and like Aquino, placed in a transfer auction already. A waste of money...

7 - David Novillo - 16k

Again a player who is worth the effort and money spent on him. Tremendous skills and he's been ripping up the youth leagues for several seasons. At 19 years old, he looks poised to start doing the same on a senior level.

8 - Fernando Cortés - 15.5k

A very very young player. Perhaps he will go the same way as Novillo, but perhaps he will be another flop. Like Cléverson Nery, he has the skills to be a good player but there's no telling how he will develop in the future. Another huge gamble. Alternatively, his wage might drop during the next wage auctions, since his contract is not protected.

9 - Jonny Vallejo - 15k

Another very young player with a great skill-set. He's not yet good enough for first team, but he might get there. He does need some developing so as said before, the buying manager has taken a huge risk here.

10 - Simone de Gregorio - 15k

Pretty much the same as Vallejo, good talent, very young, big gamble, yadda-yadda.

I've probably left out quite a few players as well, but this is the top 10 of newgens with excessive wages.

This increase in wages works a long way. Even the poor(er) players are going for insane wages. PA isn't even an indication, as we have two-and-a-half and three star players in the above list as well as the more standard five star players. This means that average players are still going at 2k a piece, which is a huge blow for the wage budget.

I'm changing my strategy to keep my wages low but maintain a certain level of quality. I've noticed that most these high wage players are either European or South American. Most managers have focussed their scouting skills in this region. Admittedly, it's where most talents originate from, so it makes sense too.

It also means that most managers have not bothered scouting in Asia and Africa. Admittedly, there's less talent originating from these regions, but they are there and they're still fairly cheap because they're not spotted by most managers, meaning the competition is less fierce and the wages are fairly normal.

This morning, I managed to get several promising Asian youngsters, all three stars, to my club at a base wage of 200 quid. Hardly a great loss if they don't develop, so I can take a chance on them. A player of similar class from Europe or South America generally goes at 1,500 quid or more, so I'm not very inclined to take a chance on them.

My tip for youth managers is basically to move away from the familiar South American and European fishing grounds. There are too many people trying to muscle in on the action, causing the wages to sky rocket. Instead, invest some time and effort in looking in less familiar and standard region. You are often rewarded with some bargains and a few gems.

Modesty?! Surely Not...

2009-04-16T00:55:00.000-07:00

Standards of modesty are aspects of the culture of a country or people, at a given point in time, and is a measure against which an individual in society may be judged. Though the term can be applied to both men and women, and boys and girls, it is most commonly applied to women, and girls.

The general principles of modesty include:

Avoiding attracting attention to oneself by moderating one's actions or appearance;
Downplaying one's accomplishments (see humility);
Avoiding insincere self-abasement through false or sham modesty, which is a form of boasting.

The Dutch are generally considered modest. It shows in the way they dress, in the houses they live and in the cars they drive. It makes them the butt of jokes with Belgians and Germans: that they are excessively frugal that borders on cheap.

Thankfully, I am not your stereotypically Dutchman and I do enjoy a bit of boasting from time to time. Since this is my blog and since it is about my team, I feel I am entitled to a wee bit of boasting every now and then. It's not like my team is THAT successful anyway...

Anyway, I achieved two unique milestones this morning, earning me two new achievement badges. One of them is currently unique in the Game World and earnt me a Game World record, the other achievement is only held by two other people in the Game World. I took the liberty of copying and pasting both messages below.

"By avoiding defeat in the 1-0 win against Japanese manager Rene (Japan) Steffensen's seasoned Team farscape your side have now gone unbeaten for 50 matches and have unlocked the 'Unbeaten Streak V' achievement! A 50 match unbeaten run is a truly awesome achievement and one that is leaving many pundits asking whether anyone is capable of stopping your side."

And the second:

"The 3-1 win against German manager Manuel Warcholik's seasoned Fortuna 95 was your side's 25th win in a row and so has unlocked the 'Winning Streak IV' achievement! The Fortuna Aeternitas players have a real swagger in their step at the moment, and with every victory confidence continues to rise and tackling your side becomes a more and more daunting prospect."

Expectations, Analysis & Prognosis

2009-04-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

Phew, a tough one this... In the past few seasons, I've always been struggling to attain a mid-table position in the XEFA Premiership. Last season started out well, but an injury to my main striker Dieumerci Mbokani pretty much ruined my league run. The poor bastard broke his leg and was out for 10 days, which pretty much left my team firing blanks upfront.

Looking at my position in the World Rankings, I should end top 10 this season. I feel I have signed a few decent new players and the newly recovered Mbokani has found his shooting boots again, scoring over 40 goals in the past two days. I've brought in quite a few players actually. Various new defenders, midfielders and forwards have come to Fortuna Aeternitas. I'm a bit of a merchant really...

With Uruguayan Robert Flores, Canadian Issey Nakajima-Farran and Irishman Pat McCourt (on loan) I now have the wingers to play a proper wide 4-3-3. These guys have been tearing it up during pre-season, wreaking havoc on many a defence. McCourt has impressed me enough to make a bid considerably above his Market Value, as I hope to make him a permanent part of my squad.

I also had to replace both wingbacks. Sturdy and reliable German Sascha Dum departed for Muzzy's FC Blitzkrieg for a friend's fee and Colombian wingback Rodrigo Sevillano was taken from me in a wage auction. I brought in two new faces to replace them, American Ricardo Clark came in for the RB position and Brazilian Tiago Carleto came in to replace Dum as LB. Both are more of a liability defensively, but they're stronger going forward. Since the best defence is proper offence, I feel this will work out.

At the back, Tom Mandzyuk and Sergio Diaz are forming the new central couple in the heart of my defence. Both are tall, strong and fast and they should be able to do well against most strikers. This means that last seasons duo has been broken up. Serge Wawa has moved on to a position as defensive midfielder, whereas Sandy Paillot is now benched.

In the point of the attack, I now have two decent backups for Mbokani running around. Swedish starlet Ola Toivonen came in near the end of the season and proved himself a worthy replacement of Mbokani in the few remaining official games and the post-season games, bagging an average of 0.8 goals a game before sustaining a serious injury himself, right at the point when Mbokani had recovered.

My second back-up is Iranian powerhouse striker Jalal Rafkhaei, who was brought in as an enforcer. The guy isn't that good, but he's tall and strong and his raw aggression is useful when you're trying to break down a defence in the last fifteen minutes. He's also capable of scoring goals, especially headers.

My expectations and prognosis are pretty much the same I guess. A top 10 spot in the league and with some luck of the draw we could stunt in the XEFA Cup... That will be the main aims of our senior campaign for season 5.

The Start Of A New Season

2009-04-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

People often wonder what a moderator actually does in FM Live. They sometimes see us muting players or checking up on transfers, but as most would put it: "That's easy, any trained chimp could do that..."

That's probably true, as checking transfers is little more than setting up the right filters and views and checking current affairs daily. However, there is more to a moderators job than just checking transfers and keeping the chat rooms clean of filth.

We have a lot of work during the final days of a season and at the start of a new season. People sometimes underestimate this. Once the Football Association Organisers (FAO's) have set up the new competitions (which is a lot of work in itsself, well done lads), we have to check all of the FAO's work.

It's not that we don't trust our FAO's... We appointed them ourselves so we have full faith in their capabilities as organisers. We have to double-check everything, because if they accidentally make a mistake, the whole season goes tits up. And believe me, as mistake is easily made when you have to set up so many different competitions.

The slightest error in the calibration of a single competition can cause the entire season to delay for all federations, as a season can only end when all FA competitions have ended. As you can see, the double-checking of the competition length is rather important.

Because we believe in equality, we also have to check the financial settings for every federation. The bottom team in the bottom league has to earn at least 250k and the rest of the cash should be distributed accordingly.

Essentially the leagues and cups are already set up in terms of %’s for places so it’s only numbers of teams that will affect whether this is still correct. Suggest starting with the Prem and adjusting the total prize fund until the winners get exactly £1m. Then suggest adjusting all bottom tier leagues total prize money so that the minimum prize money is £250k. Adjust other tiers total prize money to suit somewhere in between. All leagues are to pay out daily, not as a lump sum.

Finally, we have to edit and approve all leagues before the FAO's can start them. Because of the lockdown of the FA's taking place only 24 hours before the seasons start, a moderator has 24 hours to manually check, edit and approve all competitions and cups in every federation. Believe me when I tell you it's quite a stressful task...

Still, the fifth season in Miller has gotten underway now without any problems, thanks to some excellent teamwork. With almost all of our FAO's and two mods online at the same time, we managed to check and approve all competitions in a little less than 3 hours time. Special thanks to Jordan by the way, for his last minute entry as "Super-FAO" to save the day for the OFA.

Quizzy III

2009-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

A long one this time... Many questions were asked and the competition was fierce before Muzzy ran away with the win...

1 - Abdul Mu'iz - 40 points
2 - Volkan Ozkan - 18 points
3 - Nathan Polland, Tom Delgado - 17 points
5 - Alexander Sletten - 15 points
6 - Abdul Muqsit - 5 points
7 - Jocke Grundberg - 3 points
8 - Dan Hyde, Jukka Nieminen, Bernard Tapie, Adam McIntyre - 1 point

Altering The Youth Locks?

2009-04-14T00:37:00.000-07:00

As everyone knows, you can currently use Youth Locks on talented youngsters. The end of the season coincides with the end of players' contracts. Contracts are signed with players for either one or two seasons. So every season you are going to have a fair number of players who's contracts will expire.

To protect yourself against this you have two routes of defence. The first is you are allowed to protect the contract of five of your players. When players are protected you automatically renew their contracts at a set - normally similar to current - wage. You also have extra locks for your youth players, but these end when the players reach maturity. You can protect a youth player for different amounts of time depending on what age you signed them:

16 - protect to 24;
17 - protect to 23;
18 - protect to 22;
19 - protect to 21.

So basically anyone outside your 5 senior locks and your youth locks goes to a wage auction 24 hours before the end of their contract. This means the highest bidder wins the player, and as compensation you receive their Acquisition Fee (AF) - which is somewhat below the market rate you could get for the player by selling him.

Each lock stays with a player until you either sell/release him or he signs a new contract with auto rebid. Of the five senior players you can protect, if you choose to change the player you want to protect, you have to wait until the current contract of the protected player runs out. You will know who has a lock by virtue of them having a blue closed padlock. If you choose to remove a lock, this becomes a green open padlock until the player signs his next contract, or is sold. You then get that lock back to use again. Sounds complicated but you will get it as soon as you see it.

Now I noticed a suggestion on the forums by our very own Nathan Pollard, who said that players like Pato and Bojan are considered youth players and can get locked under these youth rules, despite being tremendous talents for their age. Since both are 17 at the start of the game, a manager could potentially keep them until they reach 23, using the youth lock and thereby gaining a valuable first teamer without using any senior locks.

Nathan proposes that players with such obvious skills like Pato and Bojan should be classed as senior players, despite their age. I for one don't mind such players being classed as senior players, because they are obviously good enough to compete with any defence in the Game World.

The discussion quickly centered on how to implement such a rule. Most people felt it should be linked to wages, to stop managers from making crazy wage bids for players and ensuring a more even spread of top talents between the various Game World teams.

I disagree with that. If people want to invest in a top youth team, it will cost money. Good prospects will cost money, as we have talents going at 15k or more at the moment. I personally feel 15k is a bit much, but I have a few 8k youth strikers in my squad.

If the locks were linked to money, I would risk my young starlets being classed as seniors, which I feel is unfair. I'm not sacrificing any seniors for the good of the youth squad, so that would mean a rich team could just swoop in end of season and pay an even sillier wage to take my youth star away.

Instead of this wage system, I would like to propose a reputation system. As soon as a young player reaches a 3.5 star reputation, he should no longer be classed as a youth player. Most players won't reach such a status before they hit their early twenties, barring the odd exceptions of guys like Altidore, Messi, Bojan, Pato, Kroos and such talents.

This rule is much fairer on the true youth managers, who wish to develop talents and sometimes have to invest crazy wages to get a player. I sincerely hope SI take my suggestion seriously.

Player Development; Academy Re-Styling

2009-04-13T04:48:00.000-07:00

Nah, this blog entry isn't about the academy skill that has been discussed on the fora, but about how I decided the re-style my academy. I've been pretty active in youth games over the past few seasons, playing between 400 and 600 games a season (manually playing, not counting auto resolves)...

I did all of that with a single squad of youth players, consisting of about 30 or so young players in different age ranges. I had 15 year olds in the same squad as the 19 year olds and the 20 year olds. To be fair, they did pretty well, getting me to a spot near and at times in the top 10 of the World Youth Rankings.

I still had the idea I could do more to maximise the development of my players though. That is the main purpose of the youth squad anyway, develop players you can either implement in first team or sell on for a profit. The youth rankings are a nice indication whether or not you're doing well, but these rankings are not a goal in themselves.

Since all of my players were bunched together in a single group, I decided to re-style my academy into new age groups, so I could sign every team into competitions against players of similar ages.

The Academy U19 and Academy U17 were created for the younger players to get match experience against players of their own age, which will generally help their performances during a match. Better performances should lead to a faster development of skills.

The Academy U21 acts as a gathering bin for players ineligible for the younger squads and the bigger younger talents, blending them into a single talented squad which will perform in the highest level youth competitions.

This is probably the best way to develop my talented U17 generation. Players like Clodoaldo, Velimir Jovanovic, Mahmoud Said, Fabio Antoniacci, Christian Rapp and Denivaldo are potential first teamers and I want to develop their skills as efficient as possible. Any other pointers are welcome by the way...

I Spy With My Little Eye... (Part I)

2009-04-12T22:39:00.000-07:00

I pride myself in being an accomplished scout. In an effort to have some fun and improve community spirits, I've decided to make a list of some of Miller's finest newgen players. I will present these players in sets of three. Today, part one.

Luca Facchini - D / L C - 19 years old - Ashley Young 4 England

This kid has all the right makings to becoming a top class defender in the near future. At the tender age of 19, he is already fast and strong and good in duels. His jumping needs a bit of work, but he's got the raw potential to get there.

Stefano Fiore - AM / L C / F / C - 19 years old - Mental Militia

This young Italian forward is one of the hottest newgen playmakers I could find. His style of play and attribute setup reminds me of players like Alessandro del Piero or Francesco Totti. The ideal attacking midfielder, capable of both giving a penetrating pass or scoring a goal. His mental stats need developing, but he will get there...

Simone Gentili - D / L C / WB / L / AM / L C / F / C - 19 years old - Tallinna Piraaja

Everyone in the Miller Game World knows Simone Gentili, one of the most versatile talents in the Game World and certainly one of the most talented as well. Gentili can pretty much play anywhere down the left side of the pitch and his skill-set ensures that he will play well at pretty much any place on the pitch.

Doing Transfers My Way

2009-04-12T22:16:00.000-07:00

There is no 100% accurate way to describe this style. I'm an opportunist and I will pounce on any deal I think is profitable to me in the long run. I have a special interest in youth players though and I have made some great deals for some of them.

Take for example a 5 star prospect I shall refer to as "Mister A" for obvious reasons. This is one of my first season signings, so he costed me a little over 20k at the time. During the second season, I managed to sell him for 200k, not knowing he was a 5 star talent. Still, I kept an interest in the lad.

When the signing manager forgot to put his contract on auto extend and instead put in an auto re-bid at minimum wage, he was quickly back at my club, costing me about 40k. That's 160k of pure profit there, made on a 17 year old striker...

"Mister A" developed nicely and at the age of 19 (this season), he's quite a decent striker, with a market value just over 400k. Along comes a manager who offers 600k for the lad. I accept his offer and "Mister A" is off again. 560k of profit this time, not taking wages into account...

Once again, his manager set his contract to auto re-bid instead of auto extend, so I reckon I might try another bid to re-claim him at the end of the new season. Cheeky, opportunistic, devious but within the rules and a perfect example of how I do business.

Quizzy II

2009-04-12T09:54:00.000-07:00

Today's edition was a bit shorter, but I still felt I got a respectable amount of questions in. These were today's scores...

1 - Abdul Mu'izz - 12 points
2 - Abdul Muqsit Mohd Gazali - 6 points
3 - Rafael Affonso - 3 points
4 - Wayne Whitty - 2 points
5 - Jeremy Ang - 1 point

To serve and protect?

2009-04-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

To serve and protect. It may not be the “official” motto for moderators across the various Game Worlds, but it certainly should be and in most cases is the driving force of their service to the public.

Trying to live up to this credo, I sometimes encounter situations that strike me as very unfair, but there are no rules against it, so my hands are tied. I encountered a situation like that this very morning.

Imagine if you will, a new user that only joined the Miller community last night. He built his team and he was ready to start playing. Three games later, his illusions are probably shattered and the new user has logged off, probably never to be seen again.

As soon as he confirmed his team, he was pounced upon by a number of high ranked teams. Unsurprisingly, he didn't stand much of a chance and he was crushed. Three games were played, all three were lost with humiliating numbers. 5-0, 5-0 and 7-0... Not a very nice way to welcome a new user and most certainly not a very good way to ensure a new user remains active in the Game World.

To me, actions like this are unfair and even counterproductive to the good of the entire community. Why pounce on these poor new users? For a few measely ranking points and some extra goals for your strikers?

In the end, most new users who encounter situations like this will lose all hope of settling into a new Game World. Losing your first matches big time is not very motivating to continue playing and it will just drive these new members away, leaving the in-game economy as dead as it was before they came along.

Where am I going with this rant? I feel we should add a bit of newcomer-protection for teams entering an established Game World. Some sort of protection for new users, which means they are given adequate time to settle into their new Game World, without being harassed by much stronger opponents looking for an easy win.

There's a few possibilities to achieve such a goal. We could opt for a protection system based on the team reputation, meaning the new teams with 1 and 1.5 stars are only capable of playing each other, ensuring they can easily settle into the Game World. As a team gets stronger players, its manager can opt to play stronger opponents as well.

A second way would be to add all these new players into a special federation for newcomers, which means they would mainly be playing each other in the first season, allowing them even more time to settle in. After the first season, they would be cleared from this federation and allowed to pick their own federation.

I'm sure there are other ways to achieve this, but that is not the point I'm trying to make. The current situation simply isn't working and it needs improving, before we succeed in driving away all new users...

Quizzy...

2009-04-11T13:31:00.000-07:00

I am renowned in the Miller world for being the quiz master... I have to love up to that name and I will do so by running my quiz and keeping scores on here... A night of quizzing left me with the following scores.

1 - Abdul Muqsit - 20 points
2 - Nathan Pollard - 19 points
3 - Karsten Ulrik - 10 points
4 - Matt Pilgrim - 3 points
5 - Volkan Ozkan - 2 points
6 - Rafael Affonso, Michael Pearce, Jeremy Ang, Nick Brooke, Frank Sigurdsson - 1 point

Naming My Club

2009-04-11T07:47:00.001-07:00

Despite starting the fifth season soon, I figured I wanted the opportunity to explain why exactly I have chosen such a pretentious name. It originates from the club I am supporting in real life, Dutch minnows Fortuna Sittard. Who the hell indeed...

Fortuna Sittard is a football club based in Sittard, The Netherlands. The club currently plays its football in the 13,000 capacity Fortuna Stadion and features in the Dutch Jupiler League (First Division).

The club is the result of a merger between former clubs 'Fortuna 54' and 'Sittardia' to combine forces as the Fortuna Sittard Combinatie on July 1, 1968. 'Fortuna 54' was a relatively successful club which once won the KNVB Cup in the 1956/1957 season where they finished the Eredivisie season 2nd place behind champions Ajax Amsterdam whereas the 'Sittardia' battled against relegation for many seasons. Another KNVB Cup triumph was also celebrated by 'Fortuna 54' in 1964 before the merging of the two clubs in 1968 due to financial difficulties.

The club experienced mixed fortunes throughout its history although they were a regular fixture in the Eredivisie in the 1990s, with many talented players such as Kevin Hofland, Mark van Bommel and Fernando Ricksen emerging from its youth system. These players later joined PSV Eindhoven and Rangers as well as featuring for the Dutch national team.

The team's management also had an eye for talent, as they snapped up Wilfred Bouma and Patrick Paauwe from the youth setup of PSV. Both players developed well under manager Bert van Marwijk, before breaking into the Dutch national side and moving towards bigger clubs.

At the end of the 1999-2000 season, successful manager Bert van Marwijk left to join Feyenoord and the team seemed to collapse. Due to poor management, the team signed a number of over-paid and under-performing "stars". Fortuna relegated to the First Division in the 2000-2001 season, where things were getting from bad to worse very quickly.

Financial irregularities had been discovered and the team has been facing bankruptcy for the past 4 seasons. A little highlight came in the winter of 2003, when two of the clubs fans won the Dutch lottery and donated all of the prize money to the club. The team still hasn't been performing on the pitch and finished dead-last in the Dutch First Division for three consecutive seasons.

In the 2005-2006 season, the club managed to set a new record in Dutch professional football, going a staggering 28 league games without a win. The club also set a new record by finishing last for the third time in a row.

Despite things improving from that moment on, the Dutch FA or KNVB has decided it's now time to terminate Fortuna Sittard and maybe one or two other clubs in the region...

In the business world, mergers are a fact of life and a straightforward way to gain size and market share. In football, we are rather more sentimental and the idea of clubs merging with neighbours who are (usually) bitter rivals is enough to send most fans into apoplexy.

Less so in the Netherlands, where, since 1958, there have been no fewer than 13 mergers among professional clubs. But the biggest could be yet to come. If the FC Limburg project goes ahead, Roda Kerkrade (a product of the merger of four clubs) in the country’s top division could combine forces with any or all of the following three: VVV Venlo, MVV Maastricht, and Fortuna Sittard from the second tier.

The four clubs boast a combined attendance of 29,600, which would make them the fourth-best supported club in the Netherlands. And while a merger would mean losing some die-hard fans, proponents of the FC Limburg plan (named after the area of the country that is home to the clubs) believe that it would be more than offset by the possibility of a bigger, more successful club attracting new supporters.

I suppose most of you have never heard of Limburg and couldn't care less, but I happen to live here and I happen to support Fortuna Sittard, so this is something I deeply care about. Please allow me to elaborate.

Limburg is the southernmost of the twelve Dutch provinces. It has a highly distinct character. The social and economic trends which affected the province in recent decades generated a process of change and renewal which has enabled Limburg to transform the drawbacks of its national peripheral location into advantages inherent in its European settings, linking the Netherlands to the southern part of Europe.

A consequence of this "international gateway" location is, for the last few decades international crime, often drugs-related is on the rise, especially in the southernmost part of this province.

This small province houses four professional football clubs, none of which have ever really had substantial and lasting success. In order to create a club that would be capable of challenging the traditional top-sides, a merger between all four was proposed.

Watching games of my own club, Fortuna Sittard, is a form of sadomasochism these days. The phantasms of a glorious past haunt the club and supporters. Occasionally we see flashes of pride and quality, more often we see a rage against the dying of the light. Deep down, everyone knows the glorious days of the past will never be brought back.

The players try to compensate by playing a physical and aggressive style of football, but they simply lack the quality. It's an act of desperation, a cry that shouts "we're still here, we're still fighting, we will not be forgotten."

The latter is exactly what will happen though, as bankruptcy threatens the very existence of the club once again. The players know this and they are desperate. All of them have to live up to high expectations, brought forth by a (fairly) glorious past.

They all suffer because of the burden of history, as the descendants of giants who were once the hub of the Dutch professional league. Fortuna '54 was one of the top-sides in Dutch professional football early on, but the team lost the momentum and was overtaken by pretty much all other Dutch sides.

Instead of looking back at a glorious past, other clubs—buoyed by wealth, have given it some extra effort, they dared to take a chance and they have left Fortuna and the other Limburgian sides in the rear-view mirror.

Recent attempts at a merger have failed, but I am afraid they will be successful sooner or later and my club will cease to exist. In tribute of the braves in yellow and green, I have dubbed my club Fortuna Aeternitas. Fortuna forever...

Audentes Fortuna Juvat

2009-04-11T05:33:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not have noticed, the club crest boasts a Latin credo, "Audentes Fortuna Juvat." This phrase originated from Virgil's epic poem, the Aeneid. It means that Fortuna, the Goddess of luck, is more likely to help those that take risks, take action, and develop their skills proactively.

In Roman mythology, Fortuna goddess of fortune, was the personification of luck; hopefully she brought good luck, but she could be represented veiled and blind, as modern depictions of Justice are seen, and came to represent the capriciousness of life. All in all, people that actively tried to better their situations by taking risks had a better chance of being lucky than people who just stood by and did nothing.

The Roman consul Lucius Cornelius Sulla for example was said to believe in the influence of the goddess Fortune in his life. He was a consummate risk-taker, achieving martial distinction by taking risks on the battlefield such as wearing disguises and living among the enemy. He was also the first of the great Republican Romans to march upon Rome- a great taboo, but one which cemented his power and influence.

Julius Caesar also transformed his fortunes when he marched on Rome, with the famous words alea jacta est (the die is cast) as he crossed the Rubicon river. The utterance was a commitment of his fate to Fortune. While Caesar was a thorough and professional soldier, many of his greatest victories were achieved by taking bold risks which often exposed him and his troops to great danger, but often resulted in memorable victories. Obviously, his last gamble, attending the Senate on the Ides of March without his lictors (bodyguards) exposed him to successful assassination.

I'm a manager who controls his team in such a style. I intend to aim for the highest and I want to take chances to try and get there. This is also reflected in the team's style, as I'm employing a proper 4-3-3 formation. Not an attacking 4-5-1, but a proper 4-3-3 with three central forwards. As I said earlier, the Goddess of luck, is more likely to help those that take risks, take action, and develop their skills proactively...

Welcome

2009-04-11T05:01:00.001-07:00

This is the blog where I shall keep those interested updated on the current affairs around my FMLive team Fortuna Aeternitas, currently competing in the XEFA Premiership in the Miller Beta Game World.