Tomorrow’s early morning I’m leaving Kiev and going to have some rest with my wife in Turkey . I will be away from Internet for 2 weeks. So you will see the next post of the True Football Manager in 2 weeks .

Meanwhile…

You know I started to play the season #6 with my Hull. So meanwhile I propose you to be active and comment this post answering on the question:

What FM 2009 wonderkids of my game would you like to be reported?

The rules are: you tell me the name of that or another wonderkid and I report about his career and maybe some interesting facts linked with his personality. And, please, read comments to this post before writing your comment – don’t repeat names of wonderkids many times.

Hope to see many comments in two weeks!

Dear readers, you asked me about coaches of my club. So this post is a kind of answer.

Coaches and their attributes

Coaching workload per each training discipline

 

It’s very difficult to find and sign a 6-star coach. And I’m silent about 7-star coaches…

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.

After the glorious finish (the 3rd position in PL) of the previous season I decided to escape loud claims about the Premier League title. The point is in that I’m thinking my Hull being able to compete with Manchester United and Arsenal. But I’m not sure that it’s really true . Therefore I selected the same expectations that were promised before the last season:

Luckily Hull board gave superb amount of money - $87M – and made me to think about new star players.

Media prediction and bets

But at first I want to show you that my squad is still not so strong as Tottenham and Chelsea have. And I’m silent about Arsenal and Man Utd in this squad comparison.

Sold players

Most of sold players were either too unhappy with their appearances in the first squad or didn’t bear competition merely. Unhappy players were Quentin Othon, Damien Plessis, Roger Johnson, Bartocz Salamon.

Promising central midfielder Luca Santonocito was sold because of mad competition for 2 positions of central midfielders. Our oldbie Abdou Rasack Traore was totally displaced from substitution bench even and his contract has finished.

Forward of Spain U21 team – Eduardo Garcia Alvarez – didn’t impress me much during the previous season. So I decided to replace him with another young talent – Akeem Ugbah. You will see him below.

The most funny thing is that Leicester managed to buy 3 players from Hull! Maybe they feel that our team has good selection policy .

Newcomers

Ok, here they go:

Almost $100M  were paid for 3 star players: Diego, Manuel Brand and Axel Witsel.

Diego

Attacking central midfielder who will increase competition for MC positions to really mad level. I have over 8 players that can play on this position!

Ok, but lets return to Diego. I’m sure everybody knows his name. He is the real leader of Werder in my game. In the real life he had been the real leader of Werder until he was signed by Juventus. You see his attribute values and seems like there is no need to say anything more.

Manuel Brand

Regen player and former wonderkid central defender. I was reporting about his personality in January of this year actually.  His skills haven’t change since that time. But anyway Brand is very strong DC who will become the first team player indeed. And, of course, I hope my coaches will  increase his values of attributes somehow.

Alex Witsel

Witsel is a versatile attacking midfielder (AMLRC) of Belgium. His person is very known among experienced Football Manager players. Alex Witsel was mentioned in my Football Manager 2009 wonderkids list as the most talented young MR.

Akeem Ugbah

Young prospective striker that will play from substitution bench. Looking into his attribute values I can say he has the only problem – low Passing. But surely I have high hopes about this Englishman.

Christian Giani

Damien Plessis was sold. And there are only Pashaev, Ramirez and Jagielka who can perform of position of defensive central midfielder. But Jagielka is our main DR, Ramirez is leading MC and Pashaev appears as central defender usually. So I made decision to sign another promising youngster for this position. By the way, Giani has all prospects of becoming first squad player.

Mad squad competition

Yes, I have to many players in the first team. Especially, on MC, AML, AMR positions. And the problem is that I like them all and don’t want to sell anyone at the moment . Therefore I decided to make some kind of experiment with trainings. I set Very Hard level of trainings for all positions apart from goalkeepers. This approach has pros and cons:

+ Players will be trained better due to higher growth of attribute values

- There will be more injuries during trainings

+ Better rotation. If some player is injured, another player will replace him in the first squad.

So we will se how this experiment ends up.

I have some good news today about Ivory Coast national team I manage. The team was invited to Confederations Cup as African Cup winner. And we managed to get bronze among such great teams as Holland, Argentina, Brazil, England.

Confederations Cup results

My group was almost the same as Ivory Coast’s group in the World Cup 2006. You should remember that they had Argentina and Holland as well. In my case there was only distinction - Australia instead of Serbia and Montenegro.

You see very unexpected results in the both groups actually. My guys displaced Argentina (it was very tough 2:2 draw with them) and USA managed to be better than England.

Brazil was waiting us in the semi-final. We surprised a football community again - it was equal game. We had 3-4 real goal moments but Gomes (their main goalkeeper) performed fantastically. And Ramires from my Hull scored a decisive goal on the last minute of the match . He came to be a real patriot .

The final game against USA was our chance to win the 3rd place of the tournament. And my players showed Americans how to play quick football scoring 3 unanswered goals!

But for me the best match of the tournament is the one versus Holland national team. Holland has better players than Ivory Coast – that’s for sure. Huntelaar scored long shot during the first 20 minutes of the match. Though my guys had an advantage during the rest of the match and scored 3 good headers: 2 from corners by Kolo Toure and 1 from cross by Boubacar Sanogo.

Kolo Toure was a hero of this match and the whole Confederations Cup as well. Unfortunately he got the red card and missed very important game against Brazil. By the way, Didier Drogba missed all matches apart from the first one due to injury…

Best players of Ivory Coast

Kolo Toure is the best goal scorer of the tournament!!! 4 goals from corners using his magic head and ability to win air! I cannot forget about Sanogo – he showed everyone that attack of Ivory Coast can do goals without Didier Drogba in match of any complexity.

Salomon Kalou is always important player for our team. His dribbling and ability to think before passing does a lot for Ivory Coast team.

World rankings

Meantime Ivory Coast became the 6th in World Rankings. Do you believe this?

Finally I would like to notice that my team deserved this success. Equal matches with Brazil and Argentina and victories over Holland, USA and Australia prove this!