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Post by Narcizo on Jan 14, 2011 14:11:51 GMT
So, Colchester started with a poofy 4231 effort which made it clear why they had the (joint) best defence in the league. As I feared we created a few chances but blew all of them and as the game went on they got more and more into the game. So the game chungered along as you'd expect into the second half with a snooze-fest that saw them threatening as much as us. On 70 minutes came the horrible moment when you know something is going to go wrong. A lofted ball should easily covered by two defenders. The short-arse left-back jumps for it and missed and the ball plops down. Still my fairly quick centreback ought to take it but seems to trip over the ball letting the forward tussle with him for it. Forward falls over and centre back gets sent off for a professional foul. Arse! Still, maybe this will open them up and let us sneak a goal. And right enough the chances are evenly spread despite us missing a forward. Except on 80 minutes it's the usual post-corner farago where we can't clear the ball and all our tackles just knock the ball to an opponent in a more dangerous spot. Smack from outside the box and they go one up. Double Arse! Nothing for it but to bung on the forward who's been dropped because he hasn't scored for 500 minutes or some such. The clock ticks away and we get some half chances but I've pretty much given up when this happens. www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0qUi54CxbwWhich is a) the furthest out we've ever scored from and b) the only time a lob has worked for us. Oh and c) fucking fantastic. Just enough time for my crap but over-achieving right winger to give me a heartattack by gifting them the ball in our box only for their striker to take a leaf out of our books and slot it just wide of the post and it's onto extra-time. Amazingly we're actually fitter than them and we create a fair few chances and finally we take the lead as the same dropped forward stays put in the 6-yard box when a cross comes in while all the Colchester players decide to vacate the area. Choff! Woohoo! 2-1. All we have to do is shut up shop. How hard can that be with a team that has the league's best defence against a team that has struggled to score. Tick-tock. We seem to have things under control. But what's this. A break down our right, some of that triangle passing stuff that doesn't normally bode well. The ball if lofted in, all our defenders decide to have a tea party near the near post and their forward pops up on the far post to head it in. Triple Arse! Looks like penalties. Except no. We pass the ball around nicely through the middle and dropped forward skins a centre back to take it into the box. I actually think he might have scored despite his recent form, but we'll never know as he's hacked down, their defender is sent off and we have a penalty. There follows the longest most tense wait I've ever experienced in FM. If we miss the penalty you have to reckon we'll be shagged in the penalty shoot-out. Up strides our Burkina Faso bloke (for one horrid moment I was worried the team would give it to the guy on a hat-trick). After about a minute's build up he takes his run up and hits the ball pretty much right at the goalkeeper. Luckily the keeper moves and, although he nearly gets a hand to it it goes in. Huzzah! Championship tonkings here we come.
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Post by Moo on Jan 14, 2011 15:25:30 GMT
Yay!™ :thumb:
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Post by coffers on Jan 14, 2011 15:44:18 GMT
Great stuff Nark. have another one of these: :thumb:
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 17, 2011 10:00:58 GMT
Decent enough start to the season - 4-2 win away to Barnsley, 3-0 win at home to Cov and a 2-1 loss to Leicester. (I really wanted to beat Leicester though as their manager Eddie Newton said he thought we were doomed for the drop). The loss to Leicester was a bit of a bummer as we'd, as usual, had more than our fair chances of shots but their keeper played like a thing possessed and then we had a defender sent off. The only way we could score was from a penalty but we held on till the 92nd minute when they scored from an unmarked header from a corner. That's the second match we've conceded from a corner in injury time. Our home grown newgen is now worth £1m and it looks like we'll hold onto him until January so I'm hoping the price will rise even more by then. He scored my first ever goal from a direct free kick in the 4-2 win over Barnsley, and it was a thing of beauty as he curved it round the wall from pretty darned far out.
Setting up set pieces is a pain in the arse, which is probably costing us some goals from corners. Every time you create a new tictac you have to go through the same rigamarole to create set piece instructions. Fantastic, cheers SpInG. Doesn't help when I have my short-arse centre back in either as I don't really want him to mark tall players from corners, while I do want anyone else playing in the position he normally plays in to do that.
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Post by coffers on Jan 17, 2011 10:05:17 GMT
Yeah teh setting up of set pieces is a real pain in the arse, I always end up with two of my own players stood on each post for corners for some daft reason.
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 17, 2011 11:55:45 GMT
Still seems to be too much money available to me - the board have given me a budget of like £450k/month - which seems obsecenely huge, particularly as we still seem to be skirting around £0 balance, with last year's two trips to Wembley the only thing keeping our heads above water. Presumably, eventually, one of the players that the Permiership big boys have been sniffing around will get bought up and then we'll have a bit more breathing room but the board seem to be blythely indifferent to such concerns.
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Post by coffers on Jan 17, 2011 12:33:12 GMT
£450k a month in the Championship. Hellfire, Alghero didn't get that when they first made it into Serie A if my memory serves me well.
I'm still only operating around the £600k to £800k per month mark now and have won the Champions Cup and everything else too. Hopefully about to win our first Wolrd Club Championship final too.
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Post by Mr Bismarck's Electric Donkey on Jan 17, 2011 14:30:11 GMT
450k a month!? Motherfucker!
The Ipswich board haven't given me half that and I've been in the top eight three years in a row, routinely pulling in 25,000+ a game at Portman.
The most annoying thing though is that they refuse to give me more than six coaches.
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 18, 2011 8:27:27 GMT
To be fair I got it to £450k by reducing my transfer kitty from £1.5m to £500k (I never spend more £200 on a player and only then if they're 4.5 star potential of more) or somesuch and upping my objectives from "Battling relegation" to "Avoiding relegation" I'm allowed six coaches, a goalkeeper coach, two fitness coaches, two first team coaches and two youth coaches. And I didn't even have to ask for them. When we got promted to the Championship I suddenly got a load of recommendations about what coaches and scouts I should sign. For the first time ever I'm allowed more staff than I actually have taken as I can have 8 scouts but wouldn't know what to do with them all and don't want to get bogged down in scout reports. So it seems I have a chairman with more money than sense. My kind of chairman. He won't improve my youth facilities mind which seems to entail all my half-star yoof remain half-star yoofs until I get bored of waiting for them to improve and cut their useless arses. Which kind of defeats the purpose of having an above-average youth network, I'd have though. Still, at least I have my star of the youth ranks Gregory. Well, I have him until January anyway. He's gone and scored on his debut for England U21s now so I'm hoping to push his value up to £1.5-2m before I have to let him go. Last night continued to please and frustrate me in not quite equal parts. Came back from 2-0 down at home to Coffers' shower to win 3-2 with a penalty 2 minutes into injury time. Beat Slut's shower 3-0 at hom in the league after they had a man sent off (again - they really can't control themselves against us) and lost 2-1 to Norwich thanks to some teeth-gratingly irritating antics by various members of the team. I get far more annoyed than I should when the expert predicts a draw and then slates us for losing to a team that we're predicted to end up about 10 places below in the league. At their place. The fans were predictably disappointed about it as well. Wonder how they'll take it when we get tonked at Chelsea in the Third Round of the Useless Cup. I think I'll start my reserves in that game to avoid calamitous morale loss for my starters.
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Post by coffers on Jan 18, 2011 9:30:59 GMT
Ah the Youth facilities, much like teh training facilities, you only get to improve those when you have shedloads of cash available so you are stuck with what you have until that happens.
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Post by Narcizo on Jan 20, 2011 9:32:52 GMT
HA! Take that Chelsea reserves. 2-1 to us, and we were playing quite a lot of our back-ups as well. So nur! We aer teh giant-killers of the League Cup.
In the league we wins at home and lose away. I think the opening day game with Barnsley was the only time we've departed from that script. To be honest I'd say there's more of a risk of us losing at home than winning away at the moment, we perpetually ship goals from set pieces, which is annoying. The only thing keeping us ticking along is excellent morale, so it'll only take a couple of losses in a row to set the tailspin in motion.
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 1, 2011 7:29:38 GMT
Well this is all very exciting. Well it would be if I didn't regard the potential prospect of promtion to the Permiership with all the eager anticipation of an agorophobic about to get on the tube at rush hour. Anyway, yeah, with 5 games left there's 3 points between 2nd place and 8th place and we're sitting pretty much in the middle of that pack. Ideally we'll make it to the play-offs, get to Wembley and go down in a honorable loss to Leeds or someone. We just tonked Palace 4-0 at their place which was strangely satisfying.
My shiny young home product Michael Gregory has been described as the new David Platt, which impressed me no end until I realised a) his play-style is nothing like Platt's (from the little I can remember of how he played) and b) Platt started his career with Crewe. So it's nothing to do with how he plays and more to do with the fact that he's a midfielder that plays for Crewe, then. I get a perverted sense of fulfillment watching his attributes go up from month to month though, I must say. And he's finally starting to deliver, which is even better - although his 8 finishing seems to be capped and leads to no end of frustration as he surges through the defence into the box only to try the most ludicrous of chips that would end up on the top of the net were they anywhere near being on target. No it's the Burkino Faso striker we bought back in League 2 who's, still, banging them in for us - his 15 composure and finishing and his professionalism means that he's the only one I vaguely have hopes of scoring when one on one.
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Post by coffers on Feb 1, 2011 9:00:38 GMT
Still well done whatever happens.
KUTGW! :thumb:
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Post by Moo on Feb 1, 2011 9:13:32 GMT
Sounds like an excellent season, Narkle. :thumb:
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 3, 2011 10:53:32 GMT
Played the last 5 games or so and had mood swings where I thought I was going to finish 2nd and was consequently worried about that and then when I thought I'd end up 7th and was worried about that as well. We continued to be the most bipolar team in the league as we won all our home games and lost all our away games but in the end a win at Sheffield Wednesday meant we finished 4th and will be playing Wigan (who have one player who is paid nearly as much as our entire team) in't play-offs. Ipswich made it back-to-back promtions as they finished 2nd for the second year in a row to get whalloped in the Permiership but last year's run-away winners of League One, MK Donks, have dropped back down again this year. Go figure.
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 4, 2011 9:51:09 GMT
Ho Hum - one long range direct free kick and one cross bouncing off the arse of one of our defenders later and we lost 2-0 in Wigan - we never really looked likely to score either. I noticed that they had Frank Lampard trundling around to little effect in midfield but he was too out of puff to play in the return leg, which wound up 1-1, as we threw caution to the wind and went a goal down and then did little else until Italian Poof slotted in a goal in the last 5 minutes. Shame.
Still just as well because I can't find ANY players that I think would be much of an upgrade. There was a decent Dutch centre-back from Cellick but he wanted a "highest earner wage guarantee" clause, which is a new one on me so he could fuck right off. My usual hunting ground the high-rep youngsters release news item garnered me naffink this year because they were all pants (unlike last year where I got a DC my chairman later sold for £1m, an ML my chairman sold for £1.6m and my starter DR, that loads of teams are sniffing round). So as my scouts can't fucking find anyone worth spending any money on I shall probably sit on my £5m transfer kitty all year and continue tootling along.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 4, 2011 10:53:04 GMT
How long does it take to play Narkle? Sounds interesting. I have, but haven't installed. My PC has decided not to play anything on Windows Media Player (reason why I haven't yet, plus time to play probably equals needing lots of time to get deep into this game too). I have the latest operating system too, and for some reason the only thing the disk lets me do is whip the bloody thing. Grr.
Oh, sounds like a fun game apart from the lack of singings and promotion :humb:
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Post by Moo on Feb 4, 2011 11:00:08 GMT
It seems more fluid that FM 10 in my limited experience, but the fact that my Newcastle team are getting throughly tonked doesn't help.
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 4, 2011 11:08:35 GMT
Takes me far, far too long to play - I'm used to FOF - worry about the draft and then scoot through the season really quickly pace - whch gives you a good chance to see how your players develop. It seems to be taking me close to 30 hours to play a season here. I should speed up the highlights or something - and just have 8 or so set tictacs that I can default to instead of fiddling around with player roles and whatnot in every game. Of course playing in England with their 46 league games + cups doesn't help matters.
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Post by Sonic on Feb 4, 2011 11:11:52 GMT
So no improvement on that level then. I'm time poor, so 30 hours is a definitely a luxury. I wonder if it would work playing it as an iso on a virtual drive...?
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Post by Moo on Feb 4, 2011 11:40:44 GMT
You could whizz through it quicker than 30 hours, Sonic, but I'm probably the same as Narkle in that I tend to be a bit more hands on with FM, because I choose to be. Highlights obviously slow the "game day" down, but as they're integral to FM11 (as opposed to FM06) then you should be watching them.
The English league doesn't help though, Narkle is correct. There would be shorter season in other countries for sure somewhere.
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Post by Narcizo on Feb 14, 2011 14:26:37 GMT
So I got the bump in reputation that means teams suddenly start playing defensive 4141 against you at your place, resulting in a glut of 0-0 draws. Realised I would have to alter my tictacs in order to create more scoring chances but then decided I really couldn't be arsed any more. I'd already been losing patience with the game but having to think up new tictacs because all teams suddenly play a uniform tactic against you kind of did it for me. So we shall never know if great things awaited the new David Platt.
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