[funkdoctorspock]

I am going to keep a running diary of my gameplay for fm2008.

I'm going to manage the greatest team in the universe...


^^^^^^

I'm going to tell you transfer sales, bids and purchases. I'm going to let you in on my tactics, team talks and discipline of players.

I'll put up some screencaps as well, not only of what I do, but what the game does (firings, hirings, etc.).

Hope you enjoy it. I'm going to fire up fm either later tonight or on the weekend. So get ready!

[randy420]

this thread sucks. Mine would be better. I've won more than you already

[funkdoctorspock]

ah shut it...

k, so Day 1:

As you can see, my transfer budget is very tight. I am going to try and do the following:

1. Sell Saha. It might not work because he is injured, but I'll see if I can strike a deal with someone before the summer transfer window closes.

2. Look to sell the following players:

i. Carrick. I am planning on using a 442 diamond (more on this later) and I I want Pique to get quite a few games. Depth wise I have Hargo, Pique and possibly Fletcher if I train him in that position which I'm thinking of doing. The AMC position is quite bloated with Scholes, Anderson and then Nani, Park Ji-Sung and in a pinch, Giggs.

ii. Vidic. Now I know some of you are screaming murder, but hear me out. I have Pique (who is a wonderkid), along with Jonathan Evans (in reserves). What I'll do is see if I can get 20+ million pounds for Vidic. If I can pull this off, I'll pull the trigger. The name of the game is boosting my transfer spending. Sometimes you have to sacrifice to reap the benefits later on down the road.

3. Looking to upgrade in these positions:

i. Forwards. I need to bring a forward in to replace Saha.

ii. Rightback. If I can find a quality player cheap, I'll look into it. Right now I have Neville, Brown, O'Shea and Bardsley (in the reserves right now).

iii. Midfielder. Just got my team report from Querioz.

He says I need to look to upgrade in that postion. I'm going to think about it and post on it a bit later. Right now I am in disagreement. Once I make a couple of changes, I'll definitely come back and address this.

I'm going to go to the board and ask for a commercial affliate. Depending on where it is, I might add a lil tour to that country to boost marketing $$$.

[dimz]

You don't need to sell Vidic. Sell Carrick for 40 mil over 24 months (no money down).

[funkdoctorspock]

Originally Posted by dimz

You don't need to sell Vidic. Sell Carrick for 40 mil over 24 months (no money down).

I'm definitely selling Carrick. He is surplus to the requirements... but until I train Fletcher in the dm position, I'll keep Carrick around.

40 million? nice work man...

[funkdoctorspock]

k, Moving along...

I went looking for a commercial affliate from the board. Wasn't given the option. Was told they would find an affliate for me. Sucks, but hopefully I get some decent seletcions.

I named my coaching staff. Rene Meulensteen will be my reserves coach and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer will be my u18 coach.

My staff is being poached as we speak. Lyon has given an offer to one of my scouts, Gilles Rouillon. I'm sure he'll accept. He's going back to his homeland...

Season expectations have been given to me by the board. I indicated to them that I would win the league and as you can see, I got a bump in wage money and transfer money.

So with regards to my hunt for a striker. I checked to see if I could get a "star" player on a free. No dice. Then, I thought, who can I get on a loan. First name to pop up in my mind was... ADRIANO!!! So, I put in a loan bid of 70 percent wages (the board would only allow 52k in wages and he earns 72k) and a future fee of 15 million. 2 million more than he is valued at. Hopefully Inter accept, otherwise I'll have to look at making an outright purchase of someone this season.

Having a quick look at forward valuations, I'm beginning to compile a list of forwards that I can work into United's budget and can be immediately effective. Here is the forward list (Didn't go lower than 3.6ish million)

(have no idea why several the pics are showing that way. Not retaking them...

[funkdoctorspock]

so some teams have come in inquiring about my players. Mostly reserve players.

Both Adam Eckersley and David Gray were inquired about. Here are pics of the initial offers and my counter offers. Also included are Carlos Quieroz's assessment of both players.

Both counter offers were declined.

As mentioned, I submitted an offer to clubs about the sale of Saha. Figured 7.5 up front with 2.5 given when Saha scores his 20th goal.

The offer was turned down, due to him being injured. So I'll wait until he is back and training and make the same offer to clubs that are interested in him.

k, so now to the interesting bit. Remeber the loan offer I made to Inter about Adriano? well, they haven't gotten back to me on that, but they were sure to inquire about the following 3 players:

gtfo. Are you crazy? I rejected all three very quickly. Unfortunately one player got upset that I didn't allow them to negotiate with Inter. Can you guess who that player is? Answer at the end of the post along with me adding them to the transfer list for being a twat.

Dimz made mention to me that I should look into improving my physios. I told a look at them and realized that I could axe Garry Armer. I'll look to replace him with a world class physio. The others are either have World Class or National with high physio ratings.

So my first friendly is coming up against Antwerp. To be honest, I normally let the assistant handle the coaching for friendlies while I scout for players. But, for the diary, I'm going to handle coaching friendlies as well.

My first act is to callup players from the reserves and u18's to join the seniors for these frienlies. Here's the list:

Tom Heaton - Reserves - GK
Phil Bardsley - Reserves - D RC
Jonathan Evans - Reserves - DC
Danny Simpson - Reserves - D/WB R
Darren Gibson - Reserves - MC
Chris Eagles - Reserves - AM RC
Magnus Eikrem - U18 - AM RC
Fabian Brandy - Reserves - FC

Dong is currently injured and when he gets healthy, he'll be sold. Which is why he wasn't included.

Back to the striker search. Thanks to Dimz again for a few suggestions. I'm going to look into the following strikers to buy:

Klaas-Jan Huntelaar
Vicenzo Iaquinta
Benni McCarthy
Mika Aaritalo

Have a mix of young and up in age. Can come in and instantly be effective, which is what I'm looking for. I'll let you know how that works out.

As for the player that is now on bad books... drumroll...

RIO FERDINAND

I was looking to offload Vidic, but Rio wants to negotiate. If it works out, I can cut wages and open up a space for Pique and Evans in the lineup. Rio will be sold before the summer transfer ends. Here is my offer to Inter and all clubs for that matter:

Hope Inter is stupid enough to accept this.

[dada]

I'd massage your feet if you get that much money for Rio.

[Jorquera]

I'm looking forward to see what tactics and formation will you use.

I always coach the youth team (U-20 in Italy) as well. Gives a better overview of good youngsters and can give them rest if I might need them in some first team matches.

I finished the first season couple days ago. Fourth in Serie A. 1/16 in CL and only 2nd round in Coppa Italia. Sold Mancini, Juan and Cicinho and have bought only Cassani and Lulinha I bought at the start of the game but will join me now. Due to my squad being ultra thin I quite often need to use Primavera players. However next season I will have back many youngsters who were on loan previous season.

Okay, enough of my game. Looking forward for your next update.

[funkdoctorspock]

Dang, it really has been over a month since I've played football manager. Slight withdrawals I might add, but nothing too serious.

k, I've played a couple of friendlies and have a ton of updates to do, so this is going to be a fairly lengthy post. You should also know that this will be a bit out of order since I can't remember when I did what. I could always look at the date of the pics, but I think that's asking too much...

So the Rio deal was turned down. I never understood this with fm. You reject a teams enquiry or offer and the next day you go back and offer the same player. Only for the opposing team to say they aren't looking for that type of player. What gives?

I have changed my stance on Rio. I am going to keep him and try to offload Vidic once again. I want to pair Rio with Pique.

So with that said, I offered Vidic to AC Milan. Unfortunately they didn't accept. I'll keep offering him to clubs, without slapping the "for sale" sign.

I did some comparisons of the strikers which I mentioned previously. Here they are:

I should point that Mika Aaritalo was not in my game. So I chose Vagner Love instead.

When I was looking into purchasing a striker I was primarily interested in high ratings for the following (URD, let me know if I was correct in doing so please):

Finishing
Heading
Off The Ball
Positioning
Balance
Jumping
Strength
Acceleration

With:

Techinque
First Touch
Penalty Taking
Concentration
Pace
Stamina

as secondary attributes. I'm sure this will be argued as to what attributes should be looked for when selecting a striker, but my mindset was for a striker who I could rely on to score without having to take a ton of shots.

So matching up Love with Iaquinta, the latters ratings are a bit more attractive than Love's. Love's wages, price tag and age work in his favour, but I could always juggle around salaries to make Iaquinta's work. One think that worked in Iaquinta's favour as well was his height. So I chose him for my next matchup. Against...

Benni McCarthy

This wasn't really a contest. Iaquinta has better attributes than Benni, is a lil younger and is taller. So again Iaquinta was chosen to now match up against...

Klaas-Jan Huntelaar

Huntelaar seems to have less attractive attributes than Iaquinta. What is working in Huntelaar's favour is I know through my fm days what a talent he becomes. If I just started with fm and didn't know much about fm or football and was strictly going by attributes, the choice would be obvious. Since, this is not the case, here is the player I chose to add to United's strikeforce...

It's always nice when you attempt to unsettle a player, they play along. Here's Huntelaar's response.

I ended up putting in an offer for Huntelaar which was:

The media engine picks up steam...

Ajax cracks and accepts my bid. I'm surprised this happened for the 7.5 million upfront fee. I figured they would want more. Not complaining though.

Here's the contract I offered. Hopefully he accepts. Forgot to screencap how much he was making for Ajax (19k a week), but I gave him a decent raise and gave him some decent incentive bonuses. I'm hoping that by stating he is a rotational player, he doesn't get pissy. The process has gone smooth so far, I'm just waiting for the ball the drop. Fingers crossed.

I received my options for feeder teams. Here they are:

After reading through all the options, I decided to go with DC United. They had a healthy roster of active players I could get if I wanted and DC United is one of the more "prestigious" teams in MLS.

Adriano's loan deal was declined by Inter who stated that the intial offer was unacceptable. Look and see what happens several days after. It's funny how things work out.

Moving a bit to current players that have been enquired about. They are Carrick, Evra, Fletcher and Ronaldo.

Listed below are the offers I made for each player for the respective enquiring teams to accept.

Carrick

Evra

Fletcher

This transfer hurt because...

I'll try again when he gets healthy.

Ronaldo

[I thought Arsene enjoyed the kiddies. Breaking them in and all... :P]

Carrick and Fletcher were the only two that I'm serious about selling. If Barcelona bite and accept the offer for Evra, I'm going to need another left back.

I'll continue the rest of the update shortly.