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July:
Today I walk through as the new manager of Rotherham United Football Club, this season they are marking their 125 year as a professional club. I want to make this year special, For the fans, For the players, For the board, For myself.

There was only one place to start, at the training ground. Working the players to their limits each day, every day until the start of the season. New players will be looked at, some players maybe sold, some maybe released. We are just looking to the first game of the season, A home game to Accrington Stanley. Everything will be planned out, I have never felt like this before. We Want This! We Need This!

Just one thing: It's Kick-Off Time!

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Well, really the question is... who should get there number retired. Obviously it doesn't happen every day, but there are some cases where the fantastic happens, and the price of the respective jersey skyrockets...

so... to list a couple of the obvious canidates:

John Terry #26 - Chelsea FC
Steven Gerrard #8 - Liverpool FC
Raul Gonzalez #7 - Real Madrid C.F.

Players that would have gotten it if they had the sense to stay in their original clubs
David Beckham #23 - Manchester United


currently... I can't figure any more out... what are your thoughts?

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If you have ever read my posts, you'll know that I had one particularly magnificent game as San Marino/AC Ajaccio... where I won the world cup, took the UEFA cup, took 2 promotions and the Ligue 1 title in 3 years, and built the quality of a french team that many Englishmen would kill for

Of course, this was FM 2008, but a bit of a refresher:

FC: Mäkelä (FIN. regen)
FC: Arhavin
FL: (NOR. regen)
FR: Gomis (SUI. regen)
MC: Rabiola
MC: Gourcuff
DL: Vargas
DC: Ferrante (ITA. regen)
DC: Garnella (ITA. regen)
DR: Hanus (CZE. regen)
GK: Garnier (FRA. regen)

anyway, I decided to start it again in FM 10. Obviously, there is no massive transfer budget, nothing special, as Ajaccio is a rubbish club, and they seem to have wasted all their opportunities to loan players (they used 3/5 loans of the season, and their 3 are rubbish)

Anyway, so the squad looks like so:

FC: C. Vieri (ITA. 36 years old)
FC: S. Wiltford (FRA. 35)
AML: A. Laudrup (DEN. 18)
AMR E. Dohin (FRA. 26)
MC: J. Pierrazzi (FRA. 24)
MC: L. Guerriero (FRA 24)
DL: J. Sabo (FRA 22 OM loanee)
DC: F. Masi (ITA 18 Fiorentina loanee)
DC: R. Fournier (FRA 25)
DR: J Pierreira (FRA 23)
GK: T. Debes (FRA 35)

Transfer Budget: 0 (bloody fantastic... thanks Corsica)

Transfers In:
C. Vieri (free)
S. Wiltford (free)
F. Masi (loan)
A. Laudrup (FC N 1.1 million) - I think I might have slightly overpaid, but he is promising, and I avoided the next transfer fee... so the profit (and there will be one) is all mine

Transfers Out:
Some random 16 year old -› Man City: 1.1 million (which went to FC N... did I mention I'm back at 0 again...
Carl Medjani -› Toulouse 700K... which the board promptly swallowed

Pre Season Friendlies were remotely successful:

vs. AC Ajaccio reserves 5:0
vs. Wehen 1-1
vs. RC Lens 0-2
Elversberg vs. AC Ajaccio 0:5
vs. Valenciennes (Ligue 1) 1-2
Regensburg vs. AC Ajaccio 0:2
Oberhausen vs. AC Ajaccio 0:2
vs. OM 2-4

and now, I will skip the first 4 games I played already (as I am a bit late in this post, as usual) and move on to the Ligue 2 Table:

4 games played:
1.) RC Strasbourg: 10
2.) CS Sedan Ardennes: 10
3.) Tours FC: 8
4.) Stade Malherbe Caen: 8
5.) Dijon FCO: 7
6.) AC Ajaccio: 7
7.) FC Nantes: 6

I am predicted for 17th place this year, which is one above relegation, and am winning 1-0 against La Berrichonne... who is last place.

Transfer status so far: Complete success, my strike force has come together, and despite their (considerable) age, they seem to be scoring just fine... with A. Laudrup getting the occasional assist/goal. I'm planning on bringing in his brother Mads... next year, with a bit of the money the board owes me. I just couldn't manage this year. Personally, I doubt his price will go up, as he isn't set at getting much playing time at his new club HB Køge... and of course, his brother is here.

Unfortunately, if either player gets too good, and get to the level of Barcelona or Real, I will have to let them go immediately, as those are both former clubs. Andreas was tutored by Messi himself... sigh

anyway... until sooner or later

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Toffees only come in blue

There is only one club to support if you are from Liverpool, one team to be proud of and that team is the mighty toffees of Everton. No team has played more top-flight than Everton having been in the highest league for a record 107 seasons. The 1980s was the most successful period for club, having won two league championships, an FA cup and the European Cup Winner's Cup in 1985; this remains to be the clubs only major European trophy in their history. The latest trophy that Everton last won was the FA cup in 1995 when they beat Manchester United 1-0 thanks to a goal from Paul Rideout. Everton came close to adding to their trophy cabinet when they met Chelsea in last season's FA cup but Louis Saha's first minute goal could not stop Chelsea as goals from Didier Drogba and Frank Lampard meant that Chelsea ended up winning the cup.

Being a club of Liverpool, Everton's biggest rivals are naturally Liverpool and the Merseyside derby has been previously named the Friendly Derby due to families having a mixture of Blue and Red fans. There is also no major reason to support one or the other as they are less than a mile from each other meaning there is no geographical reason and there is also no political, social or religious divides between the two clubs. Although it has been known as the Friendly Derby, recent performances on the pitch seem to go against this as it is the fixture with the most red cards since the Premier League began having been seventeen dismissals. Last season Liverpool won the match at Goodison park 0-2 but Everton managed to get a point in the reverse fixture with a scoreline of 1-1 but the best result for Everton last season was when they beat Liverpool 1-0 in the FA cup fourth round replay thanks to an extra time goal from teenager Dan Gosling although this goal was missed by many because of ITV's bad organisation of handling extra time.

Everton currently have one of the best managers in the division in David Moyes and he has consistently got the best out of his team with little money to spend. When he first joined Everton, he said the club is "The People's Club" of Merseyside when saying in his first press conference,

"I am from a city (Glasgow) that is not unlike Liverpool. I am joining the people's football club. The majority of people you meet on the street are Everton fans. It is a fantastic opportunity, something you
dream about. I said 'yes' right away as it is such a big club."

Although he hasn't won any trophies with the club, the fans love him as he is the sort of manager that every club wants, a tactical genius and knows about the game. His ability in the transfer market is a major skill that he has buying talents with the likes of Tim Cahill, Steven Pienaar and Phil Jagielka who have all showed high ability since joining Everton for such low prices. David Moyes has also managed to get big prices for players with Wayne Rooney being a good example but another good bit of business has been the recent selling of Joleon Lescott who has gone to Manchester City for £22 million but Moyes managed to bring in Johnny Heitinga, Sylvain Distin and Diniyar Bilyaletdinov along with free transfer, Lucas Neill.

The Everton faithful will be hoping for a season similar to the last by being in a respectable position in the league while having a decent cup run or two. With Manchester City's riches it is becoming extra tough to be a top team in the division especially when Everton do not have that financial backing but what the Toffees do have is a team spirit and a manager who can get the best out of his players and achieve what the team deserves. But whatever happens though, the fans will always be behind their manager and they have an equally good chairman who loves the club and would do anything for the club.

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It's not like this is a new topic, but just for discussion, let's spin again.

Assuming that you've built a wonder club that can play any way it wants and still be great - that is, your choices for this question are not limited by talent insufficient to consider "respond to the situation" tactics.

How do you pick how to play v. a particular side?

In the game you get some suggestions from staff. In 09 (and earlier? or did it start then?) t's a very basic scouting report from the staffer you assigned "scout next opponent". In 10, there's a lot more in terms of a staff recommendation, where there are more than just a few catchword points. Neither of those have I found incredibly useful. In my brief experiments with 10, which I don't own yet - only played the demo - I was especially irritated that there always seemed to be conflicting suggestions. I find the game-provided suggestions too simplistic. e.g., it seems the general wisdom is you have to adjust your style of play (passing style, speed, etc) based on the scout comment on the pitch dimensions, but this seems almost useless; the skills of the opposing side seem to matter much more.

The assistants seem to give some particularly useless in-game advice, at least in FM09 it seems to be completely canned and unrelated to reality. e.g., if I play with one "striker" but opt for a flowing attacking system with two mobile advanced wingers, it always tells me we're being outnumbered by the opponent's back line and might want to consider more attackers. In spite of this we do just fine... I'm pretty much at the point of ignoring this sort of advice.

You can obviously play a lot of formations, in English football we can pretty much take for granted four in the back to start (yeah, you'll see variations, but not many), a keeper, and at least one up top. So you have five positions to fiddle with in most scenarios, midfield/forward, and there are a lot of combinations. Sometimes I find playing a narrow diamond very effective, which is really giving you a central four, with no wide players. Sometimes a central three works well, one or two defensive mids and a complementary one or two CMs. Sometimes wide players work better than not having them, and sometimes it's better to advance them and sometimes not. I've not played much with using wingbacks - this seems to be a recipe for disaster if we do it, although not as much if the opponents do (???). But I'm not convinced that any one formation will always be best, nor am I convinced that I know how to pick it consistently - sometimes what I choose brilliantly works, and sometimes it doesn't. And... being Football, you can't tell if it's that the side didn't show up mentally while the opponent did, or if you chose wrong. Such is life.

It feels like a logic puzzle: with some element of chance, if you pick the right formation it feels like you ought to beat any side you're superior to. Given that the game has let me build a side that's clearly superior to all but maybe 5 or so clubs in the game world, this is most encounters. Is that true? What factors should you consider? I've tried to experiment some but you don't dare truly experiment enough when you have titles to win

Thoughts?

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Well, I've just recieved some news today.

I thought I would tell you, that I think I'm pregnant. I did a test today, and it came up positive. I got an appointment with the doctor tommorrow to see if I am pregnant.

I didn't really want a baby, because I'm so young :/ I'm only 19.
I think I will keep it because having a kid is a special thing in life.

Its a long story how it happened.

So I won't be on FM for a bit while I get this whole thing sorted.

Thanks, Robyn.

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Hi there and welcome to the new and improved version of the Football Manager Portal. You’ve probably already noticed the new design; it’s a lot cleaner I’m sure you’ll agree.

Hopefully you’ve noticed a few of the changes as well, such as the release of our Football Manager Facebook Application.

We’ve also teamed up with two top sites CMREV and Sortitoutsi to start bringing you the biggest list of FM2008 Graphics around, all in one place. We’ve only got two sites onboard at the moment as the whole thing needed properly setting up and testing, but hopefully I can talk to a few other sites and get an even bigger collection of graphics for you to peruse through at ease.

You may have noticed that the blog has been scrapped. Long time visitors will know that I simply didn’t have the time to write reams and reams of text everyday (busy writing code instead!), but never fear, this will, strangely enough, mean that the site is updated more. As I’ll simply update the directory with the front page being a feed of the latest directory updates allowing you to easily get to the best Football Manager content from around the world, without me blathering on about some nonsense inbetween.

I’ve got quite a few more features in the pipeline, which didn’t quite make it to release date, but instead will be released bit by bit over the coming weeks. This includes things like a fun and interactive fantasy betting league, a challenges section which integrates into the Facebook Application allowing you to challenge your friends to see who really is the greatest manager of all time and possibly some more user orientated features such as videos, screenshots, records etc, although I haven’t finalised how best to go about that yet.

But most of all, this site will of course bring you all the news about Football Manager 2009 and Football Manager Live, as it comes.

Oh you may be wondering why there are so few forums, well lets be honest, I wasn’t around enough on the last forums, far to busy, and they got quite messy with a little bloated, so I thought with these forums I’d start small and build up. This will also include, hopefully, the appointment of a few staff members, after all the sites being going 2 years with just me at the helm, it’s about time I brought a few more people in and the clean start that the new site is bringing should give me ample opportunity to see who would do well in a staff role here at the FM Portal.

For now, I’ll leave you to look around, post a bit etc etc, the old forums are archived over at the old url, so don’t worry if you’re worried about losing some of your posts or anything like that.

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Hello, This game will be ran at the same time as my Plymouth Argyle one. (Sorry for not logging on in a while, had a little break with the girlfriend).. (And it was fun)

This story is a story of rivals. Manchester United and Manchester City.
In the blue corner, First Great Western worker Connor Clarke. The young new manager, comes to City with the style of Macini and the passion of Hughes. Money won't buy him trophies, but talent will.

In the red corner, the first ever female manager in male pro. football. Young, Natwest Employee, Robyn Gardner. A tough challenge to keep up the proud history of the red devils.

So who will dominate Manchester?
Transfers Coming Soon.

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Right then, here we go!

A brand new game, a fresh start!

This time I'm with my local team, Swansea, sitting pretty in the championship play off spots in reality, I'm hoping for something similar in this game if possible, maybe even more!

We're on FM08, and I've made all the changes necessary so that the entire Swansea aquad is now up to date.

The board expects a top half finish, and if I'm honest, I'm fairly confident. We have a good chance, and have a few million to spend on players, though the only area I see which actually needs strengthening in the first team, is the defence, I'll need a center back, a left back, and maybe some cover. If possible, I'd like to sign a new striker too, because Trundle is my 2nd best option, but he's only on loan, and I want someone good to play alongside Cedric Van Der Gun, if that's not possible, perhaps I could loan in a reserve gk

*(Feel free to make any suggestions)*


To spare you the boredom, I played the friendlies myself, so I'm just going to post the friendly results here:

Waterford United 1 - 3 Swansea

Btw, I've had a 1 million pound bid for Trundle accepted by Bristol, he is 30 though, I'm not sure if I should sign him or not, what do you think?

Ostersunds FK 0 - 4 Swansea

Port Talbot 0 - 2 Swansea

That's it for now, I'll update again soon.

PS: I'd like to know whether or not you think I should buy Trundle, and any suggestions for CB, LB and a backup keeper are welcome. (you can request pics too if you want, but I was going to upload some after the transfer window.