Well hey there, no doubt you’ll realise why I didn’t update last night by reading the intro to the previous digest… I was of course sleep deprived and decided to get an early night. Nonetheless I’m back again today for a bit of a bonanza digest, one of the biggest I’ve ever done I think. So make sure to check this out, it’ll definitely be worth it.
Footygamer have three really top draw updates in the last two days, all focused on the FM Community and reviewing the previous year. It’s that time of year I suppose, so it’s not really all that surprising that people are beginning to write reviews of how the past year has gone.
Rob has continued his collection of articles looking at the Official FM Scene Awards with two interesting pieces pertaining to the helping hand award and best writer award respectively. They both give not only an interesting analysis of various sites and individuals around the community but also give various thoughts on what makes a great writer or great resource Fansite, something which should be helpful to anybody looking to be anything more than a simple member of the community.
The Official 2006 FM Scene Awards - Helping Hand Award
The Official 2006 FM Scene Awards - Best Writer Award
The third piece from Footygamer is Smiggs yearly “fm year in review”, where he reviews how the community has faired over the past year, before giving some random awards to random sites at the end.
It’s a pretty good review and touches on areas such as the dugouts closure, the failure of sites such as FM Stories and Sudden Death to get real recognition, and the community’s general failure in acting like a… well, a community, which sounds strange I know, but sadly it’s the case.
The FM Community 2006 year in review
Sportable, an American themed sports blog, has a nice little review of FM2007 aptly entitled “Football Manager 2007: Gaming Cocaine”. Nothing to special but a nice read nonetheless and it’s great to see the yanks are as addicted to FM as us.
Sportable’s review of Football Manager 2007
sortitoutsi have what appears to be a weekly tactics guide. I presume it’s weekly due to the title “Midweek Tactics with Uncle Sam”. It’s an excellent read, I’d even rate it alongside the guides at FM Britain, possibly even better, due to the fact that it’s a much simpler read that the ones at FM-B, although I still think FM-B has the superior quality and knowledge in comparison.
The guide focuses around a 4-4-2 Box formation. It provides a whole host of annotated screenshots and designs explaining exactly how the tactic works attackingly, defensively and even potential adjustments that could be made to the tactic, before finishing off by giving you the chance to download not only the ultimate 4-4-2 Box tactic, but also a counter attacking version of that very same tactic.
Check out sortitoutsi’s brilliant new tactics guide and top tactics downloads
Although a number of guides to manager team talks in FM2007 have cropped up over the last month or two, it’s good to see the way in which they’re being produced somewhat. We started off with short guides giving a one or two line description of each possible statement, before moving onto to more and more indepth guides until we’ve eventually reached today’s article from TI Mod Dutton, which is more along the lines of an “experiment” or “research” than an actual guide.
It’s a very interesting little experiment in which the author played the same match, Man Utd vs Everton, six times selecting different team talk instructions each time and explaining what happened on each occasion. I’m not sure exactly how helpful it is, considering that each match is different and it’s impossible to tell exactly how much effect your team talk had on the side. Nonetheless it gets you thinking and might just give you that little bit of insight you need to get the best out of your team talks.
Find out more about team talks in FM2007 at Throw In
FM Wiki’s guide to Lower League Management has been modified heavily since I last mentioned it and it’s now a lot more detailed on the rules, guidelines, history and ethos of playing LLM in Football Manager 2007.
Check out the new and improved Lower League Management article at Wikipedia
FM Wiki also has two very helpful guides available to anyone wishing to start a career in either Finnish Veikkausliiga or the The Danish SAS Ligaen in FM2007. Giving a brief overview of each club in the respective leagues before finishing off with a summary of the leagues as a whole.
Finally FM Wiki has its own guide to creating facepacks for Football Manager 2007.
Creating Facepacks for FM2007 at FM Wiki
Blog FM have a whole host of updates since I last updated. Firstly the second instalment in Blog FM’s brilliant selection of guides looking at how the boards of various Premier Division club react to you, the manager, issuing them with demands for more money and finally ultimatums.
Find out more about asking for more money and issuing ultimatums in Football Manager 2007
Blog FM also has two updates in it’s “A Royal Affair” story. Firstly looking at game eight in the season against Charlton Athletic and secondly analysing how the squad has performed so far in the league.
A Royal Affair - Squad performance analysis
Finally, there’s quite a few from Blog FM, the site has a fun little “spot the team” image, where you have to spot the different teams represented in the picture by the things in the picture e.g. black cats = Sunderland.
Manager Crisis have a pretty in depth guide to Argentinean Goalkeeper Oscar Ustari. It looks at first impressions of the player, an overview of his general ability and finally a verdict on whether or not he’d be a great signing for you in Football Manager 2007.
Finally FM Offside have opened today. The sites got a pretty nice design, nothing to flashy, it’s easy on the eyes yet still rather sexy in its use of graphics and variation in colours.
Four guides are available upon entrance, the first being a helpful little guide to Chilean wonderkids, although one has to remember that getting in youngsters from Chile will always result in work permit problems.
Find more Chilean Wonderkids in FM2007 at FM Offisde
The other pieces are three great little guides to the various levels of Football Manager, namely Lower League Management, Middle League Management and Higher League Management. They each give various hints and tips on managing in those respective leagues and specifically give hints and tips on the kind of tactical settings you ought to be using in order to get the best out of your players.
Lower League Management Guide for Football Manager 2007
Middle League Management Guide for Football Manager 2007
Higher League Management Guide for Football Manager 2007
The site is also the third site to become part of the community downloads project run by Caleyjag.
