True Football Manager

I do not often visit team and player stats in Football Manager 2008. Therefore I've just right found out about great optimizational changes of these screens.

Team stats



We can see that all the information about teams is grouped into the blocks on the screen. It's very comfortable to see statistics of the whole championship and compare stats of the best Premier League teams. What's interesting, the first block (in the left top corner) is dynamic. It shows detailed information about one of the leading teams of the other blocks!

Player stats



New player stats screen has the same concept as the team stats screen. It's convinient due to the blocks grouping and agile because of the first dynamic information block. Here we can easily see that footballers from Chelsea - Frank Lampard, John Terry and Michael Essien are very accurate with passing, that Wayne Rooney with six goals is top scorer of the Premier League or that Curtis Davies is very cool in defence having 6.47 average tackles.

I think these screens are really great and handy for getting the statistics information at one click.

I would like to present you the file with my FM 2008 tactics for Arsenal.

Arsenal Tactics

The tactics is oriented on a quick playing style, flexible and creative players (young talents are always welcomed). It is also very effective to turn on counter attacks for this tactics if your team will play on an away stadium.

I promise I will try to improve the tactics in what follows.

Now there is the time to describe my first matches with Arsenal in FM 08.

PRM Arsenal - Reading 2:0 (Van Persie - 2)

CL FC Kobenhavn - Arsenal 0:4 (Eduardo -2, Van Persie, Hleb)

PRM Arsenal - Newcastle 2:3 (Adebayor, Eduardo)

PRM Everton - Arsenal 0:1 (Van Persie)

CL Arsenal - FC Kobenhavn 1:2 (Eduardo)

PRM Arsenal - Fulham 2:0 (Eduardo, Fabregas)

We have been playing a bit unstable. The loss to Newcastle was really unexpected. They used counter attacks successfully against my Arsenal. Obafemi Martins was the man of the match due to his cool realization of moment and very high pace with acceleration. Toure and Gallas were not so fast unfortunately.



Totally, my team plays quick but often not so great as Arsenal in real life :) Though I think, we need some time for determination of the best squad and tuning our attacking tactics.

Some words about player of the gunners. You might see that Van Persie and Eduardo started the season efficiently scoring both almost every game. Emannuel Adebayor is not so good at the moment. Cesc Fabregas got an injury and missed 4 starting matches.

The overall ratings of players:

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If you are seeking for some Football Manager 2010 tips and hints then I advise you to read FM2010 hints and tips post.

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Team talks

If a team is low motivated or under great pressure from the press (or yours), the tactics will not work effectively. If your players have always played below their usual form, you are running poor talks with the team. This situation can be handled during conversations before the match and after the first half in the dressing room. But do not forget asking assistant to check reaction of your footballers on your talks!

Conditions of players

If your players are overloaded at the training or simply too tired, tactics will not work effectively. Remember, the main sign of overloaded trainings - your players approach the match with the conditions less than 95.

Many newcomers in team

If your team has a lot of newcomers, prepare yourself to the fact that the first 6-8 games will be somewhat chaotic for team due to low team-work. Learn from the assistant about team cohesion.

Team leader

If your team has no leader with a high determination, team will begin playing unstable sooner or later… Try to be sure having such team leader.

Your reputation

If you are new coach for the club, your low reputation will drop morale of your players. It will produce immediate impact on the team performance.

New version of FM has a lot of rather small but cool features. One of them is a flexibility of season expectations choice. You can increase or decrease expectations from board! If you are sure to perform better than board expects, you choose more hard season targets and board give you more money for their achievement. I did this with Arsenal claiming that my aim is fighting for Premier Championship title!
I decided to use non-trivial strategy of team squad management. Actually, it is one of Arsene Wenger: search for young talents and growing them to real stars. Well, it is known that Arsenal's squad is young at the start, but I decided to buy more players for U17-team. Part of new FM screen with bought players:



Teaudors, Pele, Wright - younsters for U17 who are able to grow into very good football players. Young and perspective Urby Emanuelson was bought for increasing of concurrency between left flank players.

Ismael Aissati is a wonderkid attacking midfielder who is ready to play in starting eleven of Arsenal, at least being on substitute. His strongest abilities are agile technique, creative decision making and having both left and right foot very keen.



Considering Aisatti I would like to review another small new feature of FM 2008. Actually, it's about second nationalities. In the previous versions of FM, any foreign player could get second nationality playing in his club for a long time. But no one of us could when it will happen. Since now there is possiblity to know:



Of course, it's a very small feature. But it, surely, allows us to plan more wisely when you have many foreign footballers and some for them restrictions in concrete championship league.
Getting back to my transfers within Arsenal, it is interesting to consider another new screen of Football Manager 2008 - Transfer Centre:



On this screen one can all current and last unfinished transfer attempts. In concrete case you see my unsuccessful endeavours to buy young star Micah Richards and more young Saivet and Sakho, as well as unfortunate enquiries from other clubs for my players.
I'm pretty sure that this screen makes transfer management somewhat easier.

Starting with the Gunners I decided to choose the attacking 4-4-2 tactics scheme for winning title of the Premiership:



Back defenders are often to run forward within wingers who are dribblers absolutely oriented on attack. Hard-working guy with good tackling and strength (consider Gilberto Silva) in the centre of the midfield. And, of course, brilliant Cesc Fabregas. He is intended to be playmaker getting involved in attacking actions. Two different type of forwards ahead: technical and tough. There is choice between Eduardo, Van Persie, Adebayour and Berdtner. I'm not going to buy another one striker, by the way.

Team instructions of FC Arsenal are set for showing quick style with more short than long passing:



I suppose this tactics being suitable for Football Manager 08.

Just started playing for my favouring football club - Arsenal from London. Going to create the same style of playing using the same tactics as in real life :)