True Football Manager

Today I want to present another portion of FM graphics – Football Manager 2010 kits. It contains more than 2900 kits of different teams! If I am not mistaken this kits pack was created by guys from FMGlive.com 

Arsenal

Juventus

 

How to download Football Manager 2010 kits

I uploaded the file with FM 2010 kits to several file sharing web services. You can choose any of them for downloading:

Kits on ZShare

Kits on Mediafire

Kits on SendSpace

 

FM 2010 kits installation steps

1. Unpack the RAR file using 7-Zip or WinRar.
2. Copy its unpacked content to folder “graphics” subfolder of your Football Manager “user data” folder  (if “graphics” folder is absent - create it!).
3. For being able to see kits from installed pack you must have the following settings in FM 2010 Preferences:

    - Use Skin Cache = Off
    - Always Reload Skin on Confirm = On

Dear readers, I am in the middle of February with Leeds United. Now you will get an information about my latest matches and squad changes during winter transfer window.

Latest results

Comfortable 10 points lead allowed to try changing squad easily. In first 4 matches of January Leeds gained only 1 point. The reason of such poor performance was intention to sell several players and their unhappiness about that. Few of them were sold by the way. I am going to describe my transfers below.

I don’t think it’s really interesting to tell you in details about League 1 matches. Definitely Leeds had an absolute advantage in the most of them. Moreover, it was rather predictable. I have even started thinking about going on holiday to miss several League 1 matches and approach the next season more quickly…

But one of the most funny and emotional games was against Leyton Orient:

Follow the goal minutes and how the score had been changing: 1:0, 1:1, 1:2, 2:2, 3:2, 3:3, 3:4, 3:5

 

It’s a pity but FA Cup match with Bristol City was suddenly lost. Though my team showed better football and earned victory having more shots, corners and possession… But it’s a football. Now we can only win Johnstone’s Paint Trophy – and we are close to the victory. The final against Southampton awaits in the end of March!

 

Leeds Players

Transfers

I had many hopes on this transfer window. Just wanted to sell several players whose price grown up to $2M and higher and buy better guys instead of them. Actually it was my intention of preparation to the next season in the Championship. I think it’s very efficient if you buy new players in the winter window – they will have enough time to adopt in a team and adjust to a new team play.

Players Out

Nevertheless I didn’t cope with task of selling Bromby, Williams and Michalik (their total price is over $9M together!). Only Snodgrass and van der Meyde were sold to other clubs. Why I sold my main wingers? Because they’re slow! I think flank players must be fast and explosive.

Players In

Another problem I met is that the reputation of Leeds and its manager (me ) is not enough to get players of really high quality. In spite of this fact the following transfers were made:

19 years old Cameroonian Teicou was bought for $1M + $2.4M of monthly instalments stretched out for 2 years. He will be play as MC in the main squad.

The most valuable signing is central defender Roman Hubnik:

Joel Lindpere is a replacement of Snodgrass with better speed and crossing abilities.

 

Player stats

And now some statistics about Leeds players:

Pair of quick forwards – Jermaine Beckford and Andriy Yarmolenko – is a very complicated problem for all League 1 clubs. They have already scored almost 40 goals together!

Among other players I would like to single out Sol Campbell. His experience and wonderful pitch vision allows us to escape unneeded goal moments.

 

Previous posts of Leeds United story, season 1:

- Excellent start in the League One!

- Season expectations and first transfers

- Leeds United squad analysis

- Leeds United will be my first FM2010 team!

After Football Manager 2010 Facepacks post I was asked by many blog readers about pack of logos for the game. It wasn’t a complicated task to find it because guys from Sortitoutsi.net prepared FM 2010 Metallic logos for fans of the game as well (that wonderful 2.7GB facepack is also their work)

  

The size of logopack is 1.75 GB. It contains more than 17000 different club and nation logos!

 

Download Football Manager 2010 Logos

You can use these Filefront links to download the logopack:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Logopack is created by www.sortitoutsi.net

FM 2010 logopack installation steps

1. Unpack the RAR file using 7-Zip or WinRar.
2. Copy its unpacked content to folder “graphics” subfolder of your Football Manager “user data” folder  (if “graphics” folder is absent - create it!).
3. For being able to see logos from installed logopack you must have the following settings in FM 2010 Preferences:

    - Use Skin Cache = Off
    - Always Reload Skin on Confirm = On

Hello my dear readers!

The day of the next Leeds story post has come Today I am going to show results of my starting 3 months in Football Manager 2010.

Table and matches

At first I would like to boast with League One table after 14 fixtures:

Well, what I can say… Leeds United is stronger by squad than any other team in the league. My transfers before the season start have only strengthened the squad and added more flexibility. Another important reason of success is efficient tactics choice and its tuning.

Here are results of Leeds matches:

 

I had problems of the team play quality in the end of August, start of September. Several draws and losses happened during that period. That was caused by my tactical experiments and try-outs – 5-3-2 scheme was unsuccessfully used.

During that period Leeds was knocked out by West Brom in the 2nd round of League Cup. We were winning the game with 1:0 score after the first half and had certain advantage in performance on  pitch. But then West Brom players showed very good football enclosing my team during the whole 2nd half. It was a slight shock for us – however I understand that opponent’s squad was stronger in almost all positions

Regarding other matches I would like to say we had always technical and flair advantage over opponents. It resulted in many victories with very low amount of conceded goals!

Johnstone’s Paint Trophy

I was glad to have an opportunity of participation in this tournament. Don’t understand why but JPT matches turned out very complicated for my team. Look at the 2nd round fight against Tranmere:

Series of penalties were really crazy! All 20 players scored goals apart from goalies. In the end there was some kind of duel between legendary Ian Walker (Leeds GK) and Luke Daniels (Tranmere GK). Walker struck penalty shot quite efficiently as opposed to Daniels

 

Tactics (new one!)

I think the most important factor of such good start is my new tactics. Starting new story in new Football Manager I decided that’s enough of 4-1-4-1 which had been the tactical scheme of Hull (FM 2009 story) and Southampton (FM 2008 story). So work over new tactics started with first friendly matches.

I am happy with quick result:

 

In my opinion 3-5-2 is a very special formation. I had several failures trying to tune it for different clubs in previous Football Manager versions. I remember I had success only once when this formation was used for Parma in Football Manager 2005. Therefore I was  selecting roles for each position and changing individual instructions very carefully.

I will describe my tactics and the way how I use touchline shouts in one of the next posts!

 

Leeds Players

I would like to single out 4 players I am happy with:

Jermaine Beckford – excellent scorer with 12 goals in 16 matches. I set up Poacher role for him!

Sandrinho – seems like this Brazilian is my best transfer before the season! The most technical player in the squad. Best assister. Playmaker.

Patrick Kisnorbo – confident work in defence.

Sol Campbell – the most slow DC but he compensates this problem with fantastic pitch vision and position choice.

 

Looking into the future - Championship

As far as I understood I won’t have any problems in Championship’s promotion. So I have already decided to start thinking about strengthening squad!  Leeds squad will changed much before the 2nd season – it’s obvious. Obvious because many players either too old and slow like Ivan Campo or merely below level of “average Championship” player.

Now I am very interested in price growth of my players. I am going to sell several guys during the winter transfer window because prices grew highly. In the very beginning Beckford was the most expensive Leeds footballer – $1.4M. At the current moment I have the following players with price about $2M:

Leigh Bromby (will be sold)

Patrick Kisnorbo (he stays, of course)

Gareth Williams (don’t know if I should sell him )

Luciano Becchio (will be sold)

Jermaine Beckford (he stays)

I have already started to rub my hands with joy of gaining transfer money in winter

Previous posts of Leeds story:

Season expectations and first transfers

Leeds United squad analysis

Leeds United will be my first FM2010 team!

I think facepacks are the most interesting extension of Football Manager. It’s just always pleasant to see player faces in your team or other teams. Therefore I spent several hours in the Web trying to find a really big Football Manager 2010 facepack. And I found one! It contains more than 55000 photos of players and staff. It’s certainly the best of all I’ve seen!

Several well-known faces from it:

   

 

 

Facepack Download Links

You can download this FM 2010 facepack through torrent:  Torrent (2.7GB)

   or

you can use this alternative Torrent link

Facepack is created by www.sortitoutsi.net

FM 2010 facepack installation steps

1. Unpack the ZIP file.
2. Copy its unpacked content to folder “graphics” subfolder of your Football Manager “user data” folder  (if “graphics” folder is absent - create it!).
3. For being able to see faces from installed facepack you must have the following settings in FM 2010 Preferences:

    - Use Skin Cache = Off
    - Always Reload Skin on Confirm = On

Today is the day for Leeds story post.

Season expectations

The board didn’t give me any chance to choose other goal. Leeds United has certainly the best squad in Coca-Cola League 1. It means if one becomes Leeds manager he should promote the club to the Championship at least. If one doesn’t do that he is a looser

So my target for the first season – win the title of League 1!

Interesting that my club is not the top favourite by odds from Sky Bet. Charlton and Norwich are considered my closest opponents who will fight for the title.

 

Leeds Transfers

I didn’t define a tactical formation when I had been working on transfer market signing that or another player. I had just been thinking over Leeds tactics…  So you should understand that all my new players were signed mostly separately from my tactical thoughts.

Players out

I sold several quite poor players like Grella, Ankergren, Robinson. The last one had to be sold because of his pretty high wage.

And the best sale here is the transfer of Alan Sheehan - $625K when his price was $350K!

 

Players in

As usually for my Football Manager stories bought players attract more attention than sold ones:

The list consists mostly of free transfers and loans. I had many free transfer clauses on different players. Some of them were lost to other clubs:

- Skacel

- Glauber

- Pablo Cavallero

- Samuel Kuffour

- Brahim Hemdani

- Stepen Appiah

- Ebi Smolarek

- Vratislav Lokvenc

Seems like I wasn’t too insistent for signing those names. From the other hand fortune turned to me with Sol Campbell, Andy van der Meyde, Gareth Williams, Carsten Janker, Ivan Campo and Ian Walker. These two are the best of them:

Sol Campbell

Former star of English national team and Arsenal. Simply the best defender in my Leeds now.

Gareth Williams

Williams is central midfielder with good passing, creativity and team work. And his age is 27 – that’s good. I am going to use him in the first squad instead of Kilkenny, Howson and other native players of Leeds United.

And, of course, I should mention Ian Walker who was signed to be the first team goalie of Leeds.

 

Now some words about two bought players. I think they are really special guys for my club.

Sandrinho

I intend to use Sandrinho as playmaker in my team. His Passing, Flair, Agility and Dribbling attributes inspire me to buy him for this role. Nice Brazilian from Bulgarian team .

 

Andriy Yarmolenko

Well, I have some kind of weakness regarding Ukrainian players just because I am Ukrainian . Therefore I was looking for an opportunity to transfer one of Ukrainian talents. Of course, I know Ukrainian footballers very well and there was no problem to make several transfer offers. The transfer offer regarding young talent of Dynamo Kiev – Andriy Yarmolenko – had been accepted and I got quick forward and winger for quite high price of $1.1M.

I am going to use Yarmolenko as second forward together with Jermaine Beckford. Becchio and Jancker will play from substitution bench actually.

 

And now, I should inform you that my first season has been started! Follow my blog and you will know what tactics I choose for Leeds and if I gain success with it!