Didn't buy a Striker as I had one already

For the last few seasons I've stuck Ashkan on the wing, don't get me wrong he is a fantastic player but I really like my wingers to have a burst of pace. Whilst he's no slouch he's not your normal tricky nippy winger.

In the end I switched Roberto to the wing and Ashkan up front, I changed Dida (a decent MC) from free role / runs with ball to off / sometimes and gave a free role to Ashkan. A very steady return of goals per game followed so I then started looking at wingers.

Paulo Roberto at 23 is already High Profile and very good but he's not world class the teams I play often have left backs that can cope with him so I wanted a player that could really trouble a left back unless he was very very good.

Beta 1.2 : Tactics

This is the biggest change, now I'm going to try to not say the words Tactical Theorems and Frameworks. For two reasons (1) I just as well say DJHDSAKJD DSDKD DSDSDS and (2) see (1).

I would link FM Britian but it's down suffice to say the best tactics from the FM09 community have come from them and the guys there called it TTF. Your better of reading their stuff it's very good from a user point of view you could just say that the tactical interface has been overhauled.

To set up a tactic it works by going through a wizard I won't show them all but here is one of the steps.
Players get assinged more descriptive roles once you've set it up you can change them by right clicking a player on the tactics screen and it brings up a little box:-
In the game itself there are more features

Their still working on this.....

Beta 1.2 : Stadium Screens

I wasn't allowed to post anything until recently and things have been well covered elsewhere but I'll do a quick tour.

First up is stadiums....
Two new things here, the black stand to the north (they used to be all silver) and the new button in the middle of the screen which shows you:-

That's pretty cool feature, seating information.

Up or Down

I really can't make my mind up if we're having a good or bad season, we beat last seasons champions away from home, we've lost in the ladder to teams we really should beat we lost away to Fremantle Utd 4-2 and then won against them at home 5-0.

It's erratic, I'm secretly hoping this is my bad run of form as I know from GW6 with better players bad runs last less and good runs last longer and come more often. Have to admit tactics remain a mystery I've fiddled at length with Mentality sliders etc and I think I've got a degree of consistency in it all. I consistently makes things worse :(

I think we need another Wendell like striker, Paulo Roberto is a great player but at 23 he's a few seasons off the real deal. Wendell himself still has dry runs that last 4/5 games but it's much better than dry runs of 8/10 games. Hopefully next season this will come down further and he'll get more consistent with age.

Finally my Shearer finance graph is starting to look healthy again.

Later a quick tour of 1.2.

Shearer Season 5 Squad

Wow the fifth season already how time has flown. I sold my youth off didn't get much but good players don't cost much so fair play.

This is the team for season 5, I think Season 5 will go down in Jakswans history as the dawn :p For the first time my wages are sitting over £170k a day and as you can see it's a pretty serious team. Their all mature, high rep, highly skilled, strong and apart from Alonso quick.

After I had sold the youths I was thinking about who to sign and should I sign two good players or one great one. I like 4-4-2 it's good football and suits a solid team lacking in big stars. So I signed a few solid players.

GK - Gorka has been the teams keeper since Season One, he's not brilliant but pretty safe. I think he might move end of this season as I have a lock on him.
DR - Osorio currently keeping Ansaldi out of the team, 31 years old very solid and safe nothing too fancy.
DL - Filipe very good player 26 now and just coming into his prime, quick strong great mentals, could become world famous he's that good.
DC - Berra scottish Centre Back who's safe doesn't take prisoners and actually current captain, 27 years old and coming into his prime.
DC - David Luiz ok yes is the real deal this is the problem with young players though at 22 you could see he had everything that would allow him to become a good player but still young so didn't boss games. 25 Next Season and I'm expecting a lot otherwise he's out.
MR - Ashkan, crazy isn't it how attached you get to something in a databse somewhere. He is immense at times he lacks breathtaking pace if he had that he's Household name material but a fine player none the less 26 this coming season and continues to improve.
ML - Gimmy signed him when his wage demand was £2,500 a classic late devolper, shows what age can do, in the same bracket as Ashkan only a tad more consistent, at 31 still getting better!
MC - Diba I wanted solid and he's that a good footballer and at 29 has enough experiance to provide consistency.
MC - Alonso the first mega name at the Jaksi his rep is only high profile but he is the player this team is built around, more on Alonso later.
FC - Wendell pace & power great player but at 21 terribly hit and miss, the runs of form get longer and the runs of poor form shorter. 24 this coming season and threating to gain world famous rep.
FC - Paulo Roberto got early rep very quick with some nice technical ability still very young but has pace and some decent technicals.

WWFan who's a pretty fine expert and co authored the superb FM Britians TTF was in a form and talking about 4-5-1 and how it wasn't actually overpowered just that teams didn't try to combat it. It works in FM Live as you can patch over a few weak spots in the middle if you have a great striker. A lot of teams try to play high and just overwhealm the middle.

So I've read up on TTF and we seem to play as a better unit. I've then used WWFan's advice. I've made the pict hbigger, I play with more width and deeper, Alonso is the playmaker.

As every player now is very solid it should allow use to play to our strengths as it's 1v1 across the pitch not 5 scrapping around in the middle of the park.

Invariably with these settings Alonso has space and his passing is divine! So if teams try to counter this by playing high and restricting our passing pure football game then Alonso is more than capable of knocking a 60 yd through ball to really damage the oppoistion.

They don't get it

I keep posting my daily income up in various lobbys in Shearer:-

Jakswan's current stadium and fan base brought in stadium income of £193,067 with general income being £51,450, bringing it to a total of £244,517.

I'm trying to educate as to what can be done! It doesn't end there, I want the rep to get to 4 star now (current players will probably get there) and the stadium starts generating £210k a day. In four weeks or so it's pretty much paid for and then I'll get another higher rep player in turn I'll spend another million or so on it.

When I get to £299k a day and five stars we'll have arrived at our destination, I'll kick back enjoy the show for a few seasons and then start all over again somewhere else.

Asking the Right Questions

Should I buy a £1m Striker or Spend £1m on the stadium?

I think this is a question that a lot of managers are asking themselves and the answer is:-

A £1m striker will change my team makes us more competitive and I'll think about stadium another day.

Ok, well first of all that's the wrong question, in Shearer a £1m striker buys you a FINE striker £20k Wage Demand jobby, so if you look at it from a 28 Day Projected point of view.

Striker - 28 Day Projected DOWN £1m Fee + £20k Wages = DOWN £1.56million.

So is the question should I spend £1.56million on a stadium then? NO, you spread the cost of the stadium over 8 weeks.

So is the question should I spend £3million on my stadium then? NO, £3m will improve your income by at least £20k a day (if you do it when the time is right) and takes 10 days to build, so 20 Days @ £20k a day = extra £400k. Double that as we're looking at eight weeks

So the correct question is:-

Should I spend £4million on my stadium or £1m on a striker?

The Shearer End of Season Shuffle

We won the SFAU21 and SFAU19 leagues again and it left me a bit cold, then I watched the team collapse once more at senior level and decided enough. The youth game is great etc but it's a waste of resource at current prices there are teams that focus on this part of the game solely so I thought I'd do an end of season shuffle! Most of the kids are on £1 Auction and I've just retained a competitive youth team.

Bidding went high quite early so I got a £200k High Profile on £10k a day left back for £600k immediately. Subject to the cash / projected coming in I'll try to add a MC and maybe even a DR. Same sort of player.

Meanwhile in Beta we've finally ramped wages up to £130k but I'm still chucking money at the stadium. So now we can break into the top 100, have got into the Premier League and still rolling investment in to a long term future. Some big cock up's I made here though.

I took wages upto 100k from the off which held me back a season and I built on the 1 Tier Basic Stands which I then had to knock down, this wouldn't have been so bad but the seat prices were tweaked during the beta so paid double what they are now.

Looking at it Stadium investment is really a four / five season thing and if you go short term with wages around £140k you won't really get hit until season 5. In saying that in season 5 your pretty much done and you'll either have to do really well trading or cut your wages drastically.

The graph looks a bit grim due to being in close season, Premier League / Media money should bring around £250k more and those stadium payments soon tail off to nothing!

The beta has remained quite active and prices for players have gone WAY high and slowly have come back, during the wage auctions I was after a DC the first one went for £33k (Wage Demand £10k) by the fourth day I picked up a £150k High Profile 29 Year Old for just over £10k a day, sorted.

Not much to do - Tick Tock

I get stadiums I think I know it's a long term investment but I get it. The thing is though you can't really do much in the interim to speed up progress.

Currently in Shearer we have a decent competitive squad which looks set for a top 7 finish in the Premiership which isn't bad, it's where we should be. In six weeks or so we will have finished the stadium and have a massive disposable income so next season we're their to make the numbers up and really waiting for Luiz / Ashkan to hit their prime combined with bringing in another big name player.

The thing is I can't really do much to accelerate this progression, I guess I could really focus on the remaining league games to try and push for 4th spot but the prize money difference is £50k, once the stadium is finished at current wage levels I'll be making £150k a day PROFIT.

In the meantime we'll just have to settle for watching Alonso knock 60 yd balls for my strikers then curse as strikers duly hit the ball at the keeper :) Our current form is deadly consistent it goes like this WLDDDDDDDDWL.

We do have quite a lot of talent coming through from Season 1 of the U17 squad who are looking good for the U21 title with only one of them being yet 21, most are 19! They are going to be very scary in a few seasons.

Super Duper DM?

Back from a Weekend away

I got a few bob for the £1 auctions I left running, now have wages of £100k but the rep will collapse unless I replace one or two. I'm going to try and play a diamond 4-4-2 with an AMC and DM instead of the flat variant.

This type of formation will put even greater emphasis on the DM (who in my opinion is the key to a 4-4-2) so that's the target.

I've been watching youth players of late and I'm fairly sure there is a consistency variable at senior level, some players have huge Aq Fee's and great stats but this variable, consistency, is a hidden stat and is very low at 16 and climbs as they get older. I don't think it peaks until 24/25 and continues to grow until 34/35.

Pretty much every Gameworld I've seen if you sort teams by rank and then pick out lower rep teams that are high in the rankings invariably their older squads. I'm not saying that all youths start low, some will start high e.g. Pato but generally this is why youths don't work so well.

The problem with going this route is that you have a team of depreciating assets although very effective ones. So an old DM is what I'm after! UPDATE: Xabi Alonso signs he'll work I hope :)

Further example of youths / mature players in beta I signed Pierre Wome at 31, Aq Fee £50k ish compare him to my Shearer Left Back a £300k Aq Fee 19 year old, Wome is perfect, consistent, rarely makes a mistake, the Shearer Left Back I'm crossing fingers every time he plays. Mind Wome did only cost £1 :)

I know it's an old saying Rome was built in a day but it is built just not paid for! The Jaksi stadium is now generating £205k a day at 3.1/2 star, it'll scale nicely up for me. I think we've six weeks of payments left now then we go.

Tick Tock, tick tock, we're getting there!

On a break

Sometimes it's too much

I've been playing FM Live every night for a while now and it's great game but it's not without it's issues :) Injuries work wrong and corner goals grrrrr.

Anyway it eventually starts to grind and I think at that point rather then carry on playing and get more annoyed it's best to walk away for a little while. I'm away for the weekend so I'm going to bolt this on to some holiday time in the game.

I'm doing my £1 auction once a season clear out with three previous first teamers up for grabs (high profile £100k Aq Fee+) but I'm just letting them ride without spamming the market place. At least I'll save on wages and when I get back will have a tiny bit of cash.

Oddly the beta world having played it very casually I find much more enjoyable, a little bit more detached from the team and I'm more of a spectator just going with the flow. I sometimes think maybe playing FM Live intensely isn't quite the way it should be :)

A Crafty Git?

I've now chucked the kitchen sink at the stadium in order to be immensely rich is eight weeks time :) I'm sure when the time comes there will be an outcry of users saying how horribly unfair it all is with many stories of rich V poor etc :)

I'm planning on being a right crafty git and I'm about to double back on myself. Pretty much in wage auction if you bid 20% above a players demand I bet you could take whoever you wanted these days.

If you have a stadium and cash when the rest of the gameworld doesn't then you don't want to go splashing that cash around, spent on on player wages and signing on fee's do not give it to another manager so he can catch you up!

However whilst we muddle through the hard times they continue to get very hard, no one wants to buy M'Villa and as he costs so little it's kind of pointless selling to cut his wage :) Ashkan is now out for a week and Gimmy is only just coming back as well. Wendell was on super sexy form but his little injury spoiled that run.

Still we're in no danger of relegation from the Premiership and no concerns over contract locks this season. So sit back and enjoy the drama (which is us mostly losing) but it's still drama all the same!

Up and Down

The signing of Ansaldi saw the the teams fortunes turn quite drastically for the better with a sustained runs of games where we've won six or seven on the bounce. Thankfully Wendell found his form and scored a wonder goal in the League against Wrexham Tigers to underline the point.

I see Fm Live now very much as a journey, it's not so much the destination but the stories that you can tell along the way, some bad some good. Bene's chasing the SFA title last season and coasting at 1-0 with 88minutes on the clock and the nerves of his team as M'Villa at just 18 in the 93rd minute shattering his dreams to make it 2-1 to us.

The stunning De Rossi display for Athlectic Madrid as we went down 6-1 yet managed to survice in Division One of the active league.

The game githeth and the game taketh away
Just as thing were looking all rosey we lost a hard fought game to a late corner goal, then we played in the SFA cup against a team that was inactive (always a danger doing this as they get due a result) guess what corner goal. Then we played in the SFAU19, 3 corner goals lost 3-1. Ahhhhhhh, I logged on to beta and then remembered I'd been daft and left my activity rating drop to 3.5, doh the injuries were piling up.