As you know I finished the last season with Hull on the 3rd position in the Premier League. So Champions League debut was prepared for Hull in the new one.

Champions League

My club got to Champions League automatically by new rules of Euro cups that are already being used in the real life. During a draw I got to an average Group G with Atletico Madrid, Dortmund and Olympiakos. Well and now after the first four fixtures I am glad to inform you that:

 

4 pretty easy victories! By the way, 3 of them were produced by the second squad of Hull! And only away game against Atletico made me to be cautious and use the best players of the team. Therefore I don’t even know what to tell about these four CL matches apart from calling them were easy ones.

 

I have started to think that The Tigers could win the tournament!

Premier League table and matches

English Premier League is a more complicated tournament for me at the moment. In spite of high competition in the Euro zone places The Tigers have wondered everyone making a very good start. 7 victories, 2 draws and 1 loss in 10 matches! Now we are following Arsenal and Manchester United and going to fight for our first title!

Matches

The best and most stuck in memory match is the one against Arsenal. The Tigers merely demolished English champions with the 3:0 score! Here you can see player ratings of this game:

Milovan Rakic and Ramires were real leaders during this tough game. Interesting fact that Arsenal was the last team in Premier League that didn’t loose any match to Hull before!

Secondly, I would like to single out one of the most emotional games: Hull – Chelsea 3:2. As normally for matches against grand-clubs it was equal performance from both sides. But magic Hull’s newcomer Diego made a beautiful long shot to a top corner on the 88th minute and brought us another 3 points! You may see that only newbies Diego and Brand were goalscorers from our side in this surely important match.

Player statistics

Ok, if I have started to talk about the player bought during the latest transfer window then I will add some words about them:

- I am happy with Diego! He plays smart and technical football. Diego feels himself good on position of MC with often forward runs. Though he is still adapting to the team style.

- Manuel Brand. At the moment he is my best central defender I think! Though Chyzhov and Pashaev (especially Pashaev) are very good in the start of this season!

- Alex Witsel. Well, I don’t feel what position does for him. And his rating is slightly below 7.00 because of this.

- Christian Giani. Young Italian DMC is a substitution player for Eugene Shakhov currently. I hope he will train well because now he is a bit below of level demanded by Hull manager .

And I would also like to single out top 3 players of the season start:

1. Milovan Rakic – performs better and better scoring goals and making assists!  He resembles me Thierry Henry with his speed, technique and smart head.

2. Ramires – simply the leader of team.

3. Darwin Suarez – the most flamboyant attacking player of Hull. His dribbling is almost unstoppable!In my opinion Suarez is Hull’s Messi! Moreover, he made 7 assists out of 11(1) matches!

P.S. This is the post #200 in my blog!

 

Hello, my dear readers! Today I would like to share my minds about opposition instructions in Football Manager 2009 and their influence on the game. Some of you asked me several times to tell whether I use opposition instructions. OK, I’m answering: yes, but no so much.

I don’t think this feature very helpful because:

- it’s hard to determine an effect of opposition instructions usage;

- you need to click a lot for setting instructions for all players you want. Unfortunately, Football Manager 2009 has no possibility to save chosen instruction as a template (like we do for tactics and trainings).

How I use opposition instructions in Football Manager 2009

But I’ve just written that I use it sometimes anyway. The most often case for me is shown on the screen shot below:

If my Hull plays against team that has quick and technical wingers then I set ClosingDown=’Always’ and Tackling=’Hard’ on both wingers. It allows to close flanks in a more tight way and decreases amount of dangerous crosses. So it’s the most efficient setup of opposition instructions that I explored in FM 2009.

More rarely I lend to advices of my assistant manager. One of the good practices if an opponent has fairly strong midfielders (who won’t give a centre of a pitch so easy) is to set up Tackling=’Hard’ on every MC. Sometimes I set also Tight Marking on fast and dribbling opponent’s forward like Fernando Torres or Robin Van Persie.

Show onto foot

In my opinion Show onto Foot opposition instruction needs a distinct discussion. An assistant manager offers to set up this instruction for weaker foot pretty often. Sometimes he offers to do it for opponent’s forwards. I think it’s a mistake to listen him when he talks about forwards.

My explanation is:

1. You set your defender to show onto weaker foot of quick technical striker.

2. The defender will not be tackling the striker often who possesses the ball using stronger foot. It can result in higher amount of goal moments.

So it’s better to use this setting only on midfielders I think.

Short post today.

I decided to post all most important summer transfers in my game. I think it will show you complete picture of player moves between teams.

I would single out two of English clubs:

- Manchester City strengthened its squad even more buying Salvatore Foti and Martin Skrtel.

- Tottenham was really active on the transfer market. Barnetta, Samba, Brahimi and Perez can help the team to struggle with Arsenal and Manchester United.