The Higher Tempo Press
Latest Posts
As in life, so in art 2.9
I like the way that FM and football in-the-real-world (ITRW) interact. Before I go to a match, I check the FM database: it helps me to notice things about players. And sometimes watching a player fives me ideas for FM. Would, on FM15, Justin Hoyte have become sweeper at far-away FC Minsk if, ITRW, I […]
Breaking the bank but for who?! 2.1
Welcome to the 2nd season of FM Sessions – and our first in the Ladbrokes Premiership with Dundee United. Last season was a whirlwind ride through a smooth campaign, as we clinched the title and the Scottish Challenge Cup all while retaining our star names. I’m even more excited for this campaign, where we face […]
Episode 6
Well, that wasn’t a great start to the season was it? Nine defeats in a row, leaving us rock bottom of the league level on points with Middlesborough, Time for a big change to our formation. The one we started the season with was very attacking and didn’t use our talented wingers as much as […]
Moving to Australia… sort of
Last blog post we had completed the task there was in Africa of securing a league title in Kaizer Chiefs. So what was next? Umm, if you would have read the introductory post or the post about last season I mentioned that after securing a league title in Africa I will have to move to […]
Gerson
If you are fan of young wingers that have massive potential then Gerson could be the player for you. He currently plays at AS Roma has the potential to become one of the best players on the game. Gerson can play anywhere behind the striker so there is even scope to mould him into the player […]
Tale of two strategies 2.9
At Hapoel Ashkelon FC I have two strategies. One for keeping players fit and one for developing the club. After the first few matches of my second season in charge, I become aware of a tension between the two. The fitness strategy (not playing players when they’re tired, not rushing players back) requires a certain amount […]
The Kosovo Journey 2018 Pt. 1
January With the retirement of Tord Grip we were left searching for a replacement. Unfortunately we can’t really attract anyone with the same ability as Mr Grip. We agree on the hiring of Muhamet Grabovci who is simultaneously employed as Assistant Manager to Kosovan side Dukagjjni. The latest World Rankings have us dropping two places. […]
Blades of Glory 24
Sheffield United | Blades of Glory #24 | Stage Fright | Let’s Play Football Manager 2017 Welcome to Episode 24 of my Sheffield United FM17 save. Today we take on Birmingham City in another six pointer at the bottom of the Championship. Can we pick up a win today and give us a chance of […]
July, Season Two
I protest. I swear and cry. I try everything, but let’s be honest £240,000 is a lot of money and the board seem to have already spent it on monogrammed dressing gowns and expensive cigars, so there’s no chance of keeping Sekretov around. Spending hours looking at potential transfers is not the ideal match […]
Cutting-edge tactical thinking done the Peterborough way
I live in East Anglia. I don’t support any teams in the region, but I often go to watch Peterborough Utd, Cambridge Utd, and Stevenage. And every now and then I make the trek to Nottingham to watch either Forest (my son’s team) or County (the cross I bear). Generally speaking, supporters are pretty much the […]
Gabriel Barbosa
Long term Football Manager players will be no strangers to Gabriel Barbosa a young talented Brazilian striker with bags of potential., This year however he is now at Inter after sealing a summer move from Brazil, so will this move to the big European leagues make him develop faster and become even better? In this […]
Forward Asia S3-4
The Singapore Cup might be a strange competition for an Indonesian team to be in, but if we’re in it we might as well win it. The quarter final against Tampines, champions of Singapore, proved emphatically that Sriwijaya are better than teams from Singapore. A 5-1 aggregate win and that’s the semi-final place booked. This […]
Do I want this striker? Making sense of the numbers
On Football Manager Slack (footballmanagerslack.slack.com) there’s a channel (i.e., forum) called the Transfer Committee. FM managers post player profiles and ask for views on whether to sign the player. It’s fascinating because each commentator works from the same data yet commentators see things differently. That is, they discern different patterns. Personally, I find the sheer […]
The Islanders XIX
OSU! I bring you news, gather, gather. Our debut season in J1 has come to an end so we are probably due some kind of update, no? Well, what a bloody season. What a bloody season. I think I wanted something like 15th place in the table and a decent cup run in one of […]
A Tactical Crusade Episode 5
Well after the first two games of the season I really thought we had a shot at survival this year, even though we lost our second game we still played well and made a strong Leicester team wait until the dying moments of the game to take all three points. Let’s see how we’ve got […]
Bye Bye Africa
This might just be the final time I will be writing something about Africa.. you’ll get to know more below. Transfers Like any other season transfers to the football club were apparent. This year I really did want to get out of this mess in South Africa. Hence I did buy a whole lot of […]
Back to the drawing board 2.7
The fact that Israel’s Toto Cup, played at the beginning of the season, permits the selection of foreign triallists has given me an opportunity to assess two Argentinian left-sided centre-backs – Barrena and Palacio. I’m expecting to sign one of them, for Hapoel Ashkelon. I alternated the two, giving them two matches each. Palacio’s main […]
Episode 18 Part 3
Transfers: Massimo Bruno: Whilst not being a usual signing for us (being 28), Bruno looks an ideal fit for our team, he’s home-grown (which we’re struggling with) and is versatile, being able to play attacking midfield or on the wing. I also think he’d make a good back-up striker although we have plenty of options […]
Blades of Glory 23
Sheffield United | Blades of Glory #23 | Derby Disaster | Let’s Play Football Manager 2017 Welcome to Episode 23 of my Sheffield United FM17 Save. Today we take on Sheffield Wednesday in the Championship. After losing the Sheffield Derby earlier in the season can we claim back the bragging rights from our local rivals? […]
Duel in Little Argentina 2.6
This season, my second in charge of Hapoel Ashkelon FC, I don’t need my assistant, Seb Rozental, to alert me to the rule that permits you to play foreign triallists in the Premier League Toto Cup. I intend to do just that. I have two lads over from Argentina – the club is known as […]
Title run in at the Double? 1.6
Welcome back to the 6th and final instalment of our first season in charge of Dundee United. It’s only March but I’ve taken the decision to rattle through the rest of the season, I hope you enjoy the ride. Youth Candidate Day comes and goes without much to write home about, except for a young […]
The Bundesliga Tale 5.1
A Kolnoscopy Challenge The Bundesliga Tale: Season 5: 1 Extract from the Managers diary: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, where are you Gary? I miss you.’ The beer slides down the back of my throat with ease. Wonderful this stuff, I thought. Tasty and good quality. None of that rat poison they serve back […]
I’ve messed up
There’s no easy way to post things like this, but I felt that everyone should know. THE ALPHABET CHALLENGE IS NO MORE 🙁 🙁 🙁 I haven’t quit it, no, I loved that save. I was having so much fun playing it and was hitting a FM groove that I hadn’t experienced before in my […]
Youri Tielemans
Youri Tielemans is a player that all Football Manager players will have heard of and been talking about for years. He starts off at Anderlect and has in the past become an absolute amazing player! Is that still the case or can his lack of physical stats hinder him? In this player profile we take […]
Thank you, Mourinho 2.5
On the day before Hapoel Ashkelon FC’s season’s opener, I make a signing that has me punch the air in jubilation. Given that I’ve already brought in 8 new players, you might wonder why I need to sign a 9th. But this signing isn’t a player. The board have increased the number of physios permitted. […]
Gaze into Your Crystal Ball
Gaze into Your Crystal Ball How Youth Intake Can Dictate Your Squad’s Evolution To follow me on social media, check out my profile at the end of this post and to see what else I have written click on my name. It is important that over time, a manager does not become predictable. If one […]
Transfer Special Part 13
It was Harold Wilson who said a week is a long time in politics. I’m sure, had he ever tried to reshape an entire football club in four weeks, he’d say that in football, a month goes by bloody quickly and it’s a mad slog to get anything done. Although, perhaps he’d have been a […]
A Tactical Crusade Episode 4
We’re back from pre-season and ready to roll into the glory that is the Premier League, before all that I have to take part in a pre-match press conference. I don’t get nervous very often but when there’s a spotlight on you and journalists and pundits are throwing questions at you left right and centre […]
To The Promised Land 2.4
Israel’s senior football season opens with the Premier League Toto Cup. Hapoel Ashkelon FC has drawn a tough group. I would have liked an easy opening match to give our legion of new players a chance to bed in. But the fates didn’t have that in line for us. No, instead the team we faced […]
First Trophy!
Last time out you saw me taking over at Kaizer Chiefs, here in this blog post you will see how we actually got on in our first year. Transfers There were a few transfers but they were for the sake of getting the team that I wanted and the kind of players I would have needed […]
Blades of Glory 22
Sheffield United | Blades of Glory #22 | 6 Pointer | Let’s Play Football Manager 2017 Welcome to Episode 22 of my Sheffield United FM17 save. Today we take on Brighton in the Championship and with the teams so close in the table this is certain a most win and definitely a not lose game. […]
Franck Kessie
Welcome to the Franck Kessie player profile. Franck Kessie has been linked with top clubs in Europe and at the start of the game has come very good stats for his age. He likes to take shots from distance but also has the attributes to become a midfield destroyer. In this review we see which […]
The Kosovo Journey 2017 Pt. 2
July July begins with the news that the 2022 World Cup will not be hosted by Qatar and instead will be awarded to China. Take note for your travel plans Kosovans! We’re then presented with the announcement that our Assistant Manager Tord Grip will retire on Christmas Eve…this is not welcome news. Given the youth […]
To The Promised Land 2.3
Back in the spring I decided to renew the contract of Avi Nimni, the Head of Youth Development at Hapoel Ashkelon FC – the one remainder of the staff I inherited when I took. Well, I needn’t have bothered, since he’s been poached by Bnei Sakhnin. When I got wind of the offer, I told […]
Blades of Glory 21
Sheffield United | Blades of Glory #21 | Tykes Trouble | Let’s Play Football Manager 2017 Welcome to Episode 21 of my Sheffield United FM17 save. Today we take on Barnsley in the 4th Round of the FA Cup! Can we win in the local derby to book our place in the 5th Round? Join […]
To The Promised Land 2.2
I started the process of signing players for my second season at Hapoel Ashkelon FC well before the end of the first. I had some spare budget and I created more by gradually terminating players’ contracts by mutual consent. I like to get the bulk of my transfer business done early. A good deal of […]
Taste The Feeling Episode 18 Part 2
Transfers Only 2 players from last years successful season were sold, with striker Cerqueira getting sold to Atalanta for £6m (possibly rising to £8m), not a bad profit considering he only joined last summer (on a free transfer!). Souici also leaves for 150k. We bought him for 300k and got 2 good seasons out of […]
FM17 Who Would Win A European Super League?
The idea of a European Super League has been flirted with for a long time now. It is a concept that would see some of the best teams in Europe compete in one league to crown the best team on the continent. Real Madrid president, Florentino Perez, among others is a known supporter of the […]
To The Promised Land 2.1
FM has both a rational side and an emotional side. A harmless way to indulge the latter lies in the organisation of pre-season friendlies. My son, Simon, and I have both developed the habit of organising competitions – cups and leagues. During his long stint at York City, where he took negative football to inexcusable […]
A quiet transfer window?
We move into December and the month starts with a top of the table clash against Hibernian. We’re level on points, and as discussed in the last episode we’d been on a blistering run of form up until our loss to Morton. We stick with our usual 4231 formation coupled with an attacking mentality, and […]
A New Club
Well if you did read the previous blog post you could hint that we did have quite a good season we an average Ajax CT side. There I did say that if there was a job offer which would come about of a club which is in the upper fringes of South Africa. And boy […]
A Player Profile of Kelechi Iheanacho
Manchester City have said they want to produce top young talent in their youth system to one day enter the first team. Kelechi Iheanacho is a player who could reach that level he came onto the Premier League scene and scored some important goals for his club. In this player profile we take a look […]
Champions League Return
It’s been a while but it’s time to get my Liverpool save back into full flow. We return with a bumper episode with no less than six fixtures to look forward to. Also, we finally have Champions League football back at Anfield. Follow me on Twitter – @MarcusBanks7 – Visit my blog The Beautiful Game […]
CM9798 tackles FM17 | Part 7 | Don’t Look Back in Anger
Greetings! Welcome to the 7th and final part of my FM17 experiment. We’ve been through a lot together. We started in those care free December months, where things looked optimistic for a bit. Then as Santa came and went, so did that optimism, and before long I was at loggerheads with half the squad and […]
#FM17 | Emotional Engagement | 5 of 5 | The Role of Narrative
I knew a lot of people played FM. But until recently, when I began to explore the blogosphere, I had no idea how many people wrote about FM. Stories of saves are everywhere. What explains this fecundity? Does FM, like the University of East Anglia’s creative writing master’s, attract a particularly literary set – all […]
#FM17 | A Kolnoscopy Challenge | 4:2
A Kolnoscopy Challenge A Bundesliga Tale: Season 4: 2 Extract from the Managers diary: ‘How many Germans does it take to change a lightbulb?’ Valerien Ismael, the new french assistant manager smiles politely. ‘Nein.’ Valerien stares blankly. *Sigh* ‘I miss Garry.’ So, I entered into my new managers office on January 2nd with my new […]
#FM17 | Hull City | A Tactical Crusade | Episode 3
Being a Premier League manager is hard work, I’ve only been in the job just over a month and already I want to rip my hair out, I don’t understand how Arsene Wenger has done it for twenty years. Our pre-season has come and gone with differing results against an assortment of opponents, this is […]
#FM17 | Emotional Engagement | 4 of 5 | The Role of Decisions
In this mini-series of posts I’ve been exploring what factors account for the extraordinary ability of FM to engage managers’ emotions. This post examines the fourth of five factors, namely the role of decisions. The more that you as manager make decisions, the more emotionally engaged you will become. I don’t mean any old decisions. […]
#FM17 | Back in the USSR | Part 12
This is no time for a preamble. The push for promotion suffered a near fatal blow last time, but I won’t let that discourage us. If we keep pushing and the teams at the top have something cataclysmic happen to them then, mathematically, we can still do it. Illichivets come to visit, it’ll be a […]
#FM17 | International Management | The Kosovo Journey | 2017 Pt. 1
I’m going to vary the format slightly here to make sure the bits you definitely want to read are the most prominent…bear with me while I find the best way to update you! ====== Our competitive losses in 2016 were expected so it would be slightly harsh to say I was in any way disappointed. […]