True Football Manager 2011 / 2010

Wednesday, 1 September 2010

Football Manager 2011 first news

Hello my dear readers!

Finally I am back from my August vacations and has already continued managing Leeds with a great pleasure. So be prepared for Leeds story post quite soon. When I had switched on my notebook just right after coming back home the most tempting thing for me was reading the first news regarding Football Manager 2011. And there are some actually… Let’s start to analyze them.

First of all I hope many of you have already seen the official Football Manager 2011 announcement by Miles Jacobson (SI Games director):

It’s really interesting and worth watching. By the way a textual version of first FM 2011 news and comments of fan community can be read here:

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/221267-Football-Manager-2011-official-announcement

Now let’s make a short review of announced features.

Dynamic league reputation

It’s very awaited feature by many fans for a long period. It allows changing reputation of a league by any team due to successful or unsuccessful performance on a continental level. If league gets higher reputation it provides an opportunity for its clubs to attract better and better players. It’s really great if you like to manage Belgian, Irish, Ukrainian (for example) clubs and want to have a chance to buy world-class players. And it should realistic feature actually.

Changes in training system

Every player gets an individual training focus in 14 areas you will be able to choose.

Moreover, SI Games added a match preparation stage where you can train you team in specific tactics and workload before a concrete game.

Better board, players and media interaction

Well, the screenshot above is pretty interesting. We will be able to ask board to build or buy new stadium in Football Manager 2011. Miles Jacobson says also that there will be other new interactions options with board and bunch of new private conversations with players.

News and inbox

Dividing news and inbox into 2 different areas in previous version of Football Manager was a mistake. It’s confessed by Miles. I almost don’t read news – only inbox. So as far as I understood, another approach will work in FM 2011:

- inbox and news are grouped together again

- news subscription is improved much allowing to tune your news fluently

Football agents and new contract options

Football Manager become more and more realistic adding agents to the game. Yes, football agents represent players in the real life. Therefore it’s really nice to see this new feature in the game.

Additionally Miles promised some new contract options being available during negotiations. Among them new clauses that you can see on the screenshot below:

Match engine

Match engine is probably the most important part of Football Manager. New features for 3D pitch view are:

- night matches

- more goal celebrations

- floodlights

- more than 100 new animations for players

Hope they will fix “magnetic hands” bug for goalkeepers in FM 2010 too.

Release date

Miles Jacobson promised to make the release before Christmas – but it’s too blurry estimation for us. Let’s just wait. There is also unofficial date – late October. It’s hard to believe this kind of rumours so it’s necessary to wait for an official information.

My opinion: Because of low news amount it seems like we will have Football Manager 2011 later than in previous year.

10 comment(s)

Wednesday, 11 August 2010

My vacations till September

Hello, my dear readers!

Today is the day when I am going on leave. Ye, it’s time to have some rest from my job, Internet, computers… It means there will no be posts in this blog till September because I’m not taking my notebook to the trip. Actually the point is in that I need 3 weeks to travel through west and south of Ukraine. Just look at my route:

- Kamenets-Podolskiy

- Chernovtsy

- Karpathian Mountains

- Lvov

- Black Sea

- Askania Nova

- Herson

- Odessa

After all I will return to Kiev and continue playing Football Manager 2010 and writing to this blog. Most likely you will know first news about Football Manager 2011 that moment (earlier than me). So it will be some kind of surprise for me after home arrival. I suppose the first post after the trip will be regarding all missed Football Manager 2011 announcements.

Don’t be bored without me, play FM 2010!

21 comment(s)

Sunday, 8 August 2010

Leeds. Bad season #7 start

Ye, bad start this time. Unfortunately change of goalkeeper and defence renewal influenced my squad harmony much…

Leeds results in tournaments

First of all let’s look at the Premier League table after 12 fixtures played:

4 wins, 4 draws and 4 losses – this is what my Leeds managed to gain. The reason of such poor performance is 3 new players in defence + new goalkeeper. Additionally all my forwards started to fail goal moments more often for some reason… So I don’t even know what I can analyze here. Everything is simple. New Leeds players need time to blend into the squad and learn playing together well. So now let’s just look at played matches:

We see here the start was awesome – Chelsea lost Community Shield conceding two goals made by Gignac (as scorer) and Marquihnos (as assister).

Euro Super Cup was gave up to Juventus. We didn’t have chances because of higher class of Italian team. They are simply better and the best club in Football Manager 2010 now.

If you look again at the list of played Leeds matches and filter only losses using eyes you’ll see that my team lost all games apart from 0:2 from Arsenal in goal. I think this fact confirms player collaboration problems in the squad.

Unfortunately we got out of League Cup: Tottenham is very tough this season, seems like they are going to win the title…

Regarding our attempt of ‘Europa League winner’ status protection I can say that it’s OK for now:

The group is not that hard for us, of course. I think Leeds will take the 1st position.

Players: new and old ones

Traditionally Leeds squad for you:

New players cause 2 serious problems.

Goalkeeper problem

Julio Cesar was considered a main goalkeeper who should perform better than Vincent Eneyama. But, but, but… It appeared a big mistake. You see he played 10 matches and has 6.76 average rating. This is because the 36 years old Brazilian made around 5 stupid errors! Guys, I didn’t expect it could happen. If we look at his attributes’ values we will see the only serious weakness – speed (Pace=5 and Acceleration=6). So we can make a conclusion: speed is important for goalkeeper in Football Manager 2010.

Silviu Lung replaced Julio Cesar in the first squad… Fortunately his performance is much better! Certainly I like this Romanian already.

Defence renewal problem

New defenders - Javi Garcia, Pablo Sanchez and Sergiy Kryvtsov – have been trying to blend into the squad since the season start. For now they are not synchronized at all, they don’t play well together with Mevlut Sahin (other my main squad defender this season). Too many conceded goals. I have some thoughts regarding every new defender in the team:

- Javi Garcia failed his start completely. I am not even sure now if he can be a good defender for our team at all. May be I will use Javi Garcia in the centre of the midfield.

- Pablo Sanchez settled down feeling of contradiction in my mind. Several times he made great tackles, important headers and scored goals. On the other hand Pablo managed to make 3 bad mistakes that resulted in 1 straight conceded goal and 2 penalties (both goals). Anyway I think he’ll be a great defender in year or half of year.

- The most confident adaptation process is shown by Sergiy Kryvtsov. He made rare errors and this is great. What I like most of all - Kryvtsov is the new king in air winning all headers one by one. He may become equivalent replace for Hangeland.

And my main total conclusion - obviously Leeds defence needs time.

Poor attack at the start

Here is the fact of weak attack by all our main forwards Marquinhos, Gignac and Anichebe. They all scored 9 goals together… How do you think could it be caused by new 4 players behind them in the pitch? I hope, the answer is yes. Though it’s too early to make any conclusions.

Adolphe Teicou

Adolphe Teicou is the only old footballer in Leeds who has been playing since the first season in League 1! And he is the first squad player!

Interesting that attributes’ values of Teicou are mostly lower than Mbia, Delph or Vidal have. But his rating is better now, his performance is more efficient. Even in the national team of Cameroon: Mbia is on substitution bench, Teicou – in the first squad. He is the real working horse of Leeds.

26 comment(s)

Tags: football manager 2010 , Leeds United , matches , player stats , results , team stats

Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Fabregas, Pato, Balotelli, Alexis Sanchez and others

Today is the day of my traditional answer on your requests regarding different Football Manager 2010 players. This time here are many star names among footballers you asked. Also I would like to remind: all screen shots are taken from my Leeds story game (season #7 – 2015/2016).