Mase’s Mini-Management - Part 1
Posted in Articles | On June 30th, 2008 | By Ash
I’ve been playing FM since I were in nappies. So from about the age of 10 or 11 years old really. I can’t help it; they’re just so comfy and save time and energy on going to the toilet.
Anywho, in that time I’ve managed to pick up a few tips when it comes to playing the game and FM08 has thrown a few spanners in the work on them. Not all of them work on the new match engines, and need to be discarded quicker than Gordon Brown’s reign as Prime Minister. However, the ones that now become redundant seem to have been replaced by a collection of new ones. Here are a few samples to help you along the way…
- If you are managing a big club, don’t just keep your affiliation to a big named player. Sometimes, the player could be on a serious wage, but you could sell him and get two players of equal quality on much smaller wages. For example, in a Man United save game I had, Carlos Tevez was on £90k a week, but spent a lot of time coming off the bench. I sold him and got a considerable amount for him. I then used this money to get Goran Pandev and Mauro Zarate who were on £37k and £3.4k a week respectively. Doing this can seriously free up some money and also means you don’t have a player of such high reputation disrupting squad morale because he’s crying about being on the bench for too long. THAT is good business sense! Stick that up Alan Sugar’s Apprentice’d ass!
- This next tip is something I’ve always, always done on Football Manager 2008, yet it’s something I’ve not seen many talk about or say they utilise. When you’re on your match day, and you’re doing your opposition instructions, set your players to make the opposing teams wide men to use their weaker foot. This can really turn a game in your favour at times, especially if the opposition player is heavily reliant on his favoured foot. This can also be done if you know a striker isn’t particularly good on a certain foot. Make your players force him to use that foot regularly, and he should be no good against you. Unless his name is Emile Heskey, in which case, leave him be and he’ll still be no good against you! It sounds simpler than a Jade Goody fan club convention, and it is, but not a lot of people seem to take advantage of it.
- Anyone see a program called Fatties And Their Feeders? Well, I’m a bit like this, but in a different sense. I think of my players as the food, and my feeder clubs as my fatties. When it comes to young players, i used to just send them all out thinking that the more first team experience they got out on loan, the better. Until recently however, this didn’t really have an affect on my player’s improvement attribute-wise. My eyes were recently opened up though, and this next trick works a lot better for me. When you have a set of youngsters that you like the look of, and i don’t mean that in a father - daughter way in Austria, keep them at your cub for the first season. Hopefully you’ll have decent training set up for them, and their attributes will shoot up over the year. Then, in the second season, send them to your lower league affiliates for the first team football. This means your youngsters won’t miss out on key training at an early age, and in the second season, they’ll become tougher and have a bit of muscle to back up the attributes they have technically. I guess what I’m saying is don’t rush in and give them the McDonald’s Straight away, they need to have an appetizer first. Give them quality training as the appetizer, and first-team football at an affiliate as the main course. If they’ve been really good boys, maybe even give them a run out in your team for desert. Or maybe just some ice cream if you’re unsure…
Leave a Comment