So as I promised someone in my GW, I am going to post a short and hopefully clear explanation on how player contracts work.
In Football Manager Live there are several ways to obtain players, below I will try to go over these methods:
Transfer Auction: A Transfer auction is a type of auction where the manager trying to sell a player will place that player in the auction using a starting bid value >= 1 pound and can also set a buyout price as well. The seller will be allowed to define how many days it will take the auction to expire which will be the amount of time buyers will have to place their bid (which are open bids), however any manager will be able to buyout the player during that period as long as there is a Buyout price. So as long as you have the winning bid at the time the auction ends you will get that player. The bidding process also has another aspect that is important to take into consideration. When you are bidding an amount for a player, for example 1000 while there is already another bid in place for that player for 900, you will actually only have to pay 901 pounds for that particular player. This means that the winner will always only have to pay x+1 pounds for that player, where x is the value bid by the second highest bidder.
Wage Auctions: Wage auctions are a very special type of transfer. It happens when a player's contract is about to expire and he is not protected (a team can only protect 5 senior players). In that case the player will be put in a wage auction where any manager can put a bid for that particular player. The main difference from this type of auction to the other kind of auction is that in wage auctions you will pay the price you bid, therefore if you bid 1000 on a player's daily wage and another manager bid 500, you will have to pay him a wage of 1000 and not 501. This however is only true if you are trying to bid on another team's player, if you are re-bidding on a player you currently own the x+1 rule applies. There is also another catch, if you are bidding on another team's player you will not only have to pay the wage you are bidding for, but you will also have to pay the player's AF to the current owner of that player, and you will also have to pay 10xwage of the player to the player (a money sink). Therefore you should always consider this in order to calculate the real price of a particular player in wage auction. A lot of times it is cheaper to buy a player through a regular Xfer auction to avoid paying all these extra fees.
Transfer List: In my opinion this is a similar option to transfer auctions, in the sense that a seller will place a player out for sale with a certain starting price and possibly an auto accept price (same as buyout). My opinion is that this option will give the seller a bit more control over the offers but at the same token it will not drive buyers to compete for the player, which often is beneficial to the buyer, since the prices tend to rise significantly that way.
Free Agents: This will likely be the first method of obtaining players for most people. When you first start FML you are asked to pick players to start a team and you are given the option to chose the players yourself or let the computer do it for you. Both of these options will obtain players from the database who are currently out of a contract, hence they are Free Agents. For most players, getting these players will cost you the Aquisition Fee for the player plus 10x their wage very similar to a wage auction. So for example a player that costs 20k and has a demanded wage of 2k will cost 20k+(10*2k) = 40k pounds to obtain. This is a reasonable way to get players and every manager will be using this method at one point or another to get players. The main difference between this system and the wage auction is also the way bids are placed. Once a manager places a bid for a particular player he will have that bid in for 24 hours and he/she will have the option to make his/her bid anonymous. Also here the x+1 rule works as well. Now there is also a bit of information not everyone knows about these types of bids. The Free Agent database is very large and each manager only has access to a certain % of the database (This percentage can be increased through scouting skills). Therefore, if you see a player you want and bid on him, not all managers will be able to try bidding for that player. One strategy when trying to bid on free agents is to actually offer the player a 24hr trial contract (which will cost a days worth of salary) and then make a bid. The advantages of doing this can be quite obvious, for example the manager can find out if the player will do well in his team, as well as allowing this manager to remove the player from the free agent database for 24 hours. This is often seen as a way to hide players from managers, however it does have a catch. When a player signs a trial contract, he is removed from the free agent list but becomes visible to all manager in the GW, meaning now managers that initially couldn't bid on this player will now be able to. Therefore this is a situation you definately want to think carefully before you do it.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Performance drop
So season 7 started this week and I couldn't help notice a few new teams including some that will certainly be a challenge. I was hoping to do a bit better this season but by the looks of it I think that's not going to happen. I have now played a 4 games:
Zoah FC 1x4 Chaparros United (#31)
Zoah FC 2x0 Baltimore Mongooses
Baltimore Mongooses 2x1 Zoah FC
Zoah FC 0x3 Frankfurt Galaxy (#18)
As you can see it wasn't the best start I could ask for but I have also played some tough teams which doesn't help the cause. I actually though my team was a bit stronger this season since I swapped a few of my worst players for a few decent ones. Looking at my team's wage however I definately went down, despite having a youth team now. So really after considering everything I think my team will struggle a bit this season, but hopefully I can finish on the top half of my FA, ideally 8th or 9th. I did keep a lot of my senior players from last season, which were players that basically helped my team jump from a 400-500th rank to 97th (today). Players like Nosworthy, Gargula, Hibbert, which were amazing last season but are now starting to suffer more and more because of their age.
I'm hoping to keep them in the team at least for this season, squeeze as much as I can out of them and then retire them. Who knows I may even find a new manager in need of experienced players like them who may be willing to buy them at a low price.
As I mentioned before, I have also started playing with a youth team, both in U21 and U19. So far my team has had quite a bit of success despite my severe lack of players. I will make sure to post the teams profile up when I'm more comfortable with my roster, it's just too small right now. So far they have won ? games, tied ? and lost ?, not bad. They also seem to be increasing their attributes already, which is nice. I'll make sure to post more about my future Zoah FC stars.
Zoah FC 1x4 Chaparros United (#31)
Zoah FC 2x0 Baltimore Mongooses
Baltimore Mongooses 2x1 Zoah FC
Zoah FC 0x3 Frankfurt Galaxy (#18)
As you can see it wasn't the best start I could ask for but I have also played some tough teams which doesn't help the cause. I actually though my team was a bit stronger this season since I swapped a few of my worst players for a few decent ones. Looking at my team's wage however I definately went down, despite having a youth team now. So really after considering everything I think my team will struggle a bit this season, but hopefully I can finish on the top half of my FA, ideally 8th or 9th. I did keep a lot of my senior players from last season, which were players that basically helped my team jump from a 400-500th rank to 97th (today). Players like Nosworthy, Gargula, Hibbert, which were amazing last season but are now starting to suffer more and more because of their age.
I'm hoping to keep them in the team at least for this season, squeeze as much as I can out of them and then retire them. Who knows I may even find a new manager in need of experienced players like them who may be willing to buy them at a low price.
As I mentioned before, I have also started playing with a youth team, both in U21 and U19. So far my team has had quite a bit of success despite my severe lack of players. I will make sure to post the teams profile up when I'm more comfortable with my roster, it's just too small right now. So far they have won ? games, tied ? and lost ?, not bad. They also seem to be increasing their attributes already, which is nice. I'll make sure to post more about my future Zoah FC stars.
Stadiums: How to build them without compromising my team's performance
As all the readers from this blog probably know already, I am far from being the most innovative manager in the community, but I make it up by reading what everyone has to say and making up my mind about what I think works and what doesn't. During my first season I had already devised a rough plan to how I intended to play FML, and I say rough because I just didn't understand the game well enough yet to make any real plans bat that point.
Similarly to pretty much everything else I do in life, I like to have a plan and my plans tend to be long term. For FML, my plan was to build my team and reputation slowly but in a way I could manage. My first big decision was to start working on my stadium still on my first season. My idea was that I shouldn't be spending all the money I had on players that I coulnd't use well anyway. Instead I decided I should spend my money on something that I can't screw up, which is my stadium. The fallacy here is that you can very much screw up your stadium and that's what I want to talk about in this and maybe future posts.
My team was mediocre in my first season, and I have to say losing is not that much fun really, but I knew better and I knew I just had to hang in there and do my best without spending any more money than I needed to. By the end of my first season I had already started building a tier-2 Aziendale stand and soon enough I would be able to start working on some seats. I just knew that despite my performance my team would eventually start to climb up in reputation. It took a while but I got to 2 stars before the end of my first season and I believe 2.5 stars before the start of my second season. Thats when I started to really need some more seats at Carlin Park (my stadium). I think the timing was great and with some help from Jackswan's blog I learned enough about stadium building to at least get an idea of what to do. SI didn't do a great job at presenting us with a tutorial on stadium building so it looks really intimidating for new users. No one can possibly be confortable with spending millions of pounds on something they don't really understand, and I don't blame them, ideally my posts can help some folks out that way.
My main advice, is something Jack has said many times, but I completely agree, build ahead of time. Don't wait until you need 18000 seats to build them, look at where you are and where you think you will be next, from that information (which I will talk more about later) you should get a sense of what you need and how much you need. It takes an average of 10? days to get a 2 tiered stand up and probably another 10 days to get seats in it. That's almost a whole season that you are not making money off of your fans. There really is no point in spending all your money on players, building your reputation and getting more fans if you are not making more money and investing back on your team. Buying players is seldomly an investment, and when it is, it still isn't as good of an investment as building corporate boxes. So play smart, there needs to be a balance between how much you spend on players and how much you spend on infrastructure. From what I've been seeing in my budget so far, I have been spending on average 45% of my income on my stadium while spending around 35% to 40% on my players, and even then I have been having trouble keeping up with my reputation. The situation stabilized a bit last week because I was on vacation and my rep was frozen, but even now that I have finished my first two 2 tiered aziendales and seats I still think I'm slightly behind in terms of infrastructure. For the first time I had enough seats for everyone, but that lasted me a good 24 hours only. So don't wait too long to start building your stadium, unless its your first week or two in the game, there is no better time to start investing than now.
As a final aspect of stadium building, I feel like I need to mention something Jack has been preaching people about for months, I'm talking about the costs of building. When you first look at your budget and you see that it will cost you several millions to get what you need don't freak out. Unlike in real life, SI was nice enough to give out interest free mortgages and still pay us interest for our savings, if only real banks were like that. In other words, you don't need to have 3 million to start building a 3 million pound project. I got to the point where in my second season I had a 4 million pound project going on when I only had about 1.5 to 2 million in my account. My favorite installment option is the 8xweekly pay, which means that with no downpayment you can still build this project and start paying 500k installments every week for the next two months. May seem like a lot of money but considering that within a few weeks you will be making more money then you are now, these 500k blows will certainly be softened over time. Also, how many times I've seen players spending 500k on a player after their first season. A player with 500k aq will cost you 500+(10xwage) which would be 700k for that season if the player had a 20k wage. Intead spending 500k on your stadium will bring in more income which later on will allow you to buy better and more expensive players in a sustainable fashion.
In the end my strategy in FML has more to do with economics than it has with football and tactics. The truth is, the game is a manager game not a coach game. To succeed you need to be not only good at coaching your team through games but also thinking about all other aspects of the game as well.
Similarly to pretty much everything else I do in life, I like to have a plan and my plans tend to be long term. For FML, my plan was to build my team and reputation slowly but in a way I could manage. My first big decision was to start working on my stadium still on my first season. My idea was that I shouldn't be spending all the money I had on players that I coulnd't use well anyway. Instead I decided I should spend my money on something that I can't screw up, which is my stadium. The fallacy here is that you can very much screw up your stadium and that's what I want to talk about in this and maybe future posts.
My team was mediocre in my first season, and I have to say losing is not that much fun really, but I knew better and I knew I just had to hang in there and do my best without spending any more money than I needed to. By the end of my first season I had already started building a tier-2 Aziendale stand and soon enough I would be able to start working on some seats. I just knew that despite my performance my team would eventually start to climb up in reputation. It took a while but I got to 2 stars before the end of my first season and I believe 2.5 stars before the start of my second season. Thats when I started to really need some more seats at Carlin Park (my stadium). I think the timing was great and with some help from Jackswan's blog I learned enough about stadium building to at least get an idea of what to do. SI didn't do a great job at presenting us with a tutorial on stadium building so it looks really intimidating for new users. No one can possibly be confortable with spending millions of pounds on something they don't really understand, and I don't blame them, ideally my posts can help some folks out that way.
My main advice, is something Jack has said many times, but I completely agree, build ahead of time. Don't wait until you need 18000 seats to build them, look at where you are and where you think you will be next, from that information (which I will talk more about later) you should get a sense of what you need and how much you need. It takes an average of 10? days to get a 2 tiered stand up and probably another 10 days to get seats in it. That's almost a whole season that you are not making money off of your fans. There really is no point in spending all your money on players, building your reputation and getting more fans if you are not making more money and investing back on your team. Buying players is seldomly an investment, and when it is, it still isn't as good of an investment as building corporate boxes. So play smart, there needs to be a balance between how much you spend on players and how much you spend on infrastructure. From what I've been seeing in my budget so far, I have been spending on average 45% of my income on my stadium while spending around 35% to 40% on my players, and even then I have been having trouble keeping up with my reputation. The situation stabilized a bit last week because I was on vacation and my rep was frozen, but even now that I have finished my first two 2 tiered aziendales and seats I still think I'm slightly behind in terms of infrastructure. For the first time I had enough seats for everyone, but that lasted me a good 24 hours only. So don't wait too long to start building your stadium, unless its your first week or two in the game, there is no better time to start investing than now.
As a final aspect of stadium building, I feel like I need to mention something Jack has been preaching people about for months, I'm talking about the costs of building. When you first look at your budget and you see that it will cost you several millions to get what you need don't freak out. Unlike in real life, SI was nice enough to give out interest free mortgages and still pay us interest for our savings, if only real banks were like that. In other words, you don't need to have 3 million to start building a 3 million pound project. I got to the point where in my second season I had a 4 million pound project going on when I only had about 1.5 to 2 million in my account. My favorite installment option is the 8xweekly pay, which means that with no downpayment you can still build this project and start paying 500k installments every week for the next two months. May seem like a lot of money but considering that within a few weeks you will be making more money then you are now, these 500k blows will certainly be softened over time. Also, how many times I've seen players spending 500k on a player after their first season. A player with 500k aq will cost you 500+(10xwage) which would be 700k for that season if the player had a 20k wage. Intead spending 500k on your stadium will bring in more income which later on will allow you to buy better and more expensive players in a sustainable fashion.
In the end my strategy in FML has more to do with economics than it has with football and tactics. The truth is, the game is a manager game not a coach game. To succeed you need to be not only good at coaching your team through games but also thinking about all other aspects of the game as well.
Season 7 begins
This is my starting team this season, I have a few new purchases which should help me climb up the Houghton ladder a big more.
FC: Jean Carlos
AMC: Bamogo, Cabrera, Quinn (reserve: Betinho)
Midfield: Velcovici, L.Gargula, Lafita (reserve: Barilla, Gulsvik, Ruzicka)
Defense: Velarde, Vilson, Hoyos, Hibbert (reserve: Nosworthy, Mauro, Ruzicka)
GK: Krul (reserve: Ismael Gil)
FC: Jean Carlos
AMC: Bamogo, Cabrera, Quinn (reserve: Betinho)
Midfield: Velcovici, L.Gargula, Lafita (reserve: Barilla, Gulsvik, Ruzicka)
Defense: Velarde, Vilson, Hoyos, Hibbert (reserve: Nosworthy, Mauro, Ruzicka)
GK: Krul (reserve: Ismael Gil)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Comments on my last post
Another good reason to chose one basic strategy to work from is also team gelling. I am not exactly sure how much gelling is important for the players, I know it is a big factor in FM09 but I am not 100% sure it exists in FML. For those that don't know what gelling is, it is basically the idea that players need to play one formation/role for a while before they start getting comfortable with it. If you are swapping from a 532 formation to a 424 formation every game, moving players and changing their roles, they will never really adapt to one thing, they instead will be mediocre at all the roles you put them in. Now swapping formations which maintain a similar framework will not affect them as much. An example would be changing between 442 and 4132 or 4411, which may change the overall team strategy but it keeps 9 to 10 players playing the same role at all times.
Again, I am not sure if gelling really exists in FML but from my experience there does seem to be some variability that way.
Again, I am not sure if gelling really exists in FML but from my experience there does seem to be some variability that way.
My thoughts on the dynamics of tactics
I'm no tactics guru, but I have done my research in terms of tactics in FM and FML. After doing a lot of reading I was under the impression that success in FML is very much a matter of creating good tactics and knowing how to adapt your tactics to your opponent's. After trying that for a little while with some level of success I continued reading more about tactics around the web. After quite a bit of manipulation I finally found something that works for me. From my first two seasons in FML I feel like I have improved tremendously and much of that improvement is certainly due to tactics.
What I found out, at least for me, is that my team performs the best with a particular tactic, regardless of my oponent, their tactics/formation or the location of the match. It's not as simple as "submit team" and go watch TV but I definately don't find myself switching formations drastically or even other sliders during my matches.
I am of the opinion that you must build your team with a strategy in mind. I didn't think like that in my first season, mostly because I was looking for flexibility. I felt that since I was new to the game I would have to experiment a lot to start. It's a bit of a catch 22 really, I was new so I didn't have a preferred strategy, so I needed flexibility, however with flexibility comes inefficiency. Very bad but common scenario for starting managers, I think this is even something that would turn off a lot of new FML players.
Back from my tangent, I now believe the best way to get good results is to have an idea of what tactics you will use before you pick players. The formation I decided to use now is the 4321 or the Christmas tree formation as I like to call it, as well as the infamous 460 formation. The truth is 460 and 4321 are essentially the exact same formation, the only difference is that instead of using the lone striker from 4321, I use an attacking AMCC. This has a few implications, with the lone FC you should try to use a target man type player, ideally a tall, strong and with good control of the ball. On the other hand the 460 formation requires a strong offensive AMC, who will likely have to carry the ball a lot and will also have to work with the AMCR and AMCL quite a bit. The best players for that position would be players with good agility, dribbling, work rate and offensive attributes. I think work rate is more important in the 460 AMCC than the FC, since the FC will likely receive the ball further in the field, you don't need to have him go back to pick it up. It would work even better if your AMCL and AMCR have high team work attributes.
With all that in mind now you can understand why my 460 and 4321 formations are essentially the same with that exception. I do have another difference between the two, but it is irrelevant to my point though. My point being that I have a very consistent tactic I use for basically every game I play, and in my case it makes no sense for me to keep 3 strikers in my squad since I will likely never need more than one. This saves me money as I need less players and makes my tactic stronger as I can focus on getting players that will work inside my framework.
Finally, during matches I do sometimes make changes to my formation and tactics, but usually these are a result of what I believe to be an area I can exploit from my opponent or an area where my team is weak at the time. In summary, I would like to advise new managers to research and find out what formation you want to play. It's not a bad idea to pick something relatively flexible at first and start from there. One good first option would be the flat 451 which can actually be quite a good formation, or a 433, which is great but not as flexible in terms of what you need. I'm not going to lie, choosing one can be frustrating but I believe that achievement good results require you to pick your style of game and stick with it.
What I found out, at least for me, is that my team performs the best with a particular tactic, regardless of my oponent, their tactics/formation or the location of the match. It's not as simple as "submit team" and go watch TV but I definately don't find myself switching formations drastically or even other sliders during my matches.
I am of the opinion that you must build your team with a strategy in mind. I didn't think like that in my first season, mostly because I was looking for flexibility. I felt that since I was new to the game I would have to experiment a lot to start. It's a bit of a catch 22 really, I was new so I didn't have a preferred strategy, so I needed flexibility, however with flexibility comes inefficiency. Very bad but common scenario for starting managers, I think this is even something that would turn off a lot of new FML players.
Back from my tangent, I now believe the best way to get good results is to have an idea of what tactics you will use before you pick players. The formation I decided to use now is the 4321 or the Christmas tree formation as I like to call it, as well as the infamous 460 formation. The truth is 460 and 4321 are essentially the exact same formation, the only difference is that instead of using the lone striker from 4321, I use an attacking AMCC. This has a few implications, with the lone FC you should try to use a target man type player, ideally a tall, strong and with good control of the ball. On the other hand the 460 formation requires a strong offensive AMC, who will likely have to carry the ball a lot and will also have to work with the AMCR and AMCL quite a bit. The best players for that position would be players with good agility, dribbling, work rate and offensive attributes. I think work rate is more important in the 460 AMCC than the FC, since the FC will likely receive the ball further in the field, you don't need to have him go back to pick it up. It would work even better if your AMCL and AMCR have high team work attributes.
With all that in mind now you can understand why my 460 and 4321 formations are essentially the same with that exception. I do have another difference between the two, but it is irrelevant to my point though. My point being that I have a very consistent tactic I use for basically every game I play, and in my case it makes no sense for me to keep 3 strikers in my squad since I will likely never need more than one. This saves me money as I need less players and makes my tactic stronger as I can focus on getting players that will work inside my framework.
Finally, during matches I do sometimes make changes to my formation and tactics, but usually these are a result of what I believe to be an area I can exploit from my opponent or an area where my team is weak at the time. In summary, I would like to advise new managers to research and find out what formation you want to play. It's not a bad idea to pick something relatively flexible at first and start from there. One good first option would be the flat 451 which can actually be quite a good formation, or a 433, which is great but not as flexible in terms of what you need. I'm not going to lie, choosing one can be frustrating but I believe that achievement good results require you to pick your style of game and stick with it.
Pre season 7
I am in a bit of a dilemma for the next season, I have increased my income quite a bit and I have quite a bit saved for trading but I want to save up even more to continue building up my stadium. So how much should I spend and how much should I save up? After some consideration I decided to get about 4 new and ideally younger players, depending on how many players I can sell from last season. My team has a lot of older players which I know will make it difficult to sell, but we'll see.
I feel that even if I keep the same core players from last season, I will still end up with a strong squad without spending too much on new players. It just shocks me how little interest managers have for players over 30, but in a way that's good as I end up with a lot of quality senior players.
So far I have discarded and sold a few of my players but I'm still looking for a buyer to take Wellinton Silva, who's going for 150k at the moment. Due to my change in tactics from last season, I want to make sure I have the right players this time around. Therefore I have signed up a few potentially improvements for the team.
First I got a total bargain for the italian winger Antonino Barilla for just 1 pound. He is never going to be at the level of Lafita, but as Velcovici is not getting any younger I figured I could use Barilla as a sub.
My second purchase was the Uruguayan Matias Cabrera, who will be one of my AMCCs this upcomming season. This 25 year old AMC was a hard player to sign as a lot of managers were interested in him, I'm happy I have him and I have high hopes for this guy.
I am also starting to buy some U21 players as well as an attempt to begin working with youths next season. We'll see how that goes, hopefully I can eventually start producing some players I can keep in my team or even sell later on for nice fees.
I feel that even if I keep the same core players from last season, I will still end up with a strong squad without spending too much on new players. It just shocks me how little interest managers have for players over 30, but in a way that's good as I end up with a lot of quality senior players.
So far I have discarded and sold a few of my players but I'm still looking for a buyer to take Wellinton Silva, who's going for 150k at the moment. Due to my change in tactics from last season, I want to make sure I have the right players this time around. Therefore I have signed up a few potentially improvements for the team.
First I got a total bargain for the italian winger Antonino Barilla for just 1 pound. He is never going to be at the level of Lafita, but as Velcovici is not getting any younger I figured I could use Barilla as a sub.
My second purchase was the Uruguayan Matias Cabrera, who will be one of my AMCCs this upcomming season. This 25 year old AMC was a hard player to sign as a lot of managers were interested in him, I'm happy I have him and I have high hopes for this guy.
I am also starting to buy some U21 players as well as an attempt to begin working with youths next season. We'll see how that goes, hopefully I can eventually start producing some players I can keep in my team or even sell later on for nice fees.
8th place in NFA @ the end season 6
After my second season of FML I have to say I have made vast improvements to my team. In terms of players I made a few good purchases which combined with solid experienced players made my team very competitive. Despite my relatively low team wage of 80k a day, I was able to defeat the odds and beat a few notable teams in my federation. These include the champions of this season "Brutalj Deluxe" from Israel as well as "Frankfurt Universe" which is currently #15 in the server. I also defeated "Lionell the Great" in one of my games, who was #3 in my FA this season and was definitely a challenging opponent.
I believe that my team was very strong and the changes I made to play a more offensive 4321 and 460 formations paid off in the end. My most notable players this season were:
Vilson - 26 year old DC, amazing defensive abilities combined with a deadly aerial ability and free kick taking which granted him 22 goals and 4 assists as a center back. His average rating was 7.02, definitely on my MVP list.
Nosworthy - 34 year old DC/DR, I bough him as a last minute bargain for 8k. He was certainly a key player for my team this season despite his declining attributes. He is an extremely talented DC which is his natural position but he was also my best DR playing well in offensive and defensive roles. I usually kept him on the bench for most of my substitution needs in terms of defense. I'm now trying to sell him but due to his age it is unlikely anyone will pay the price and I am fairly certain he'll end up retiring in my squad.
Hibbert - 33 year old DR, he came in half way in the season after I traded Lacroix. Despite his age and declining attributes, this player had a 800 pound wage which was an absolute bargain for his talent. He is an amazing defensive full back and I hope to keep him around for longer with that kind of wage demand.
Gargula - (33) What can I say, he was my star during my first season and he played just as well this time around. He's reliable, strong and an amazing set piece taker. I hope to keep him around until he hangs up his boots. His average rating was 7.00, with 5 goals and 10 assists.
Velcovici - (30) During first season he was in my rotation list and did quite well, but not until this season he started to shine. This 30 year old left winger is probably the most underrated player in my team, and he's a total bargain to have as well. Definately keeping a lock on his cheap contract. He ended this season with 6 goals, 9 assists and 5 MoMs.
Lafita - (30) Lafita is supposed to be the greatest player to wear my teams jersey so far, he was certainly my priciest purchase, but was he worth it? For sure! This guy is absolutely amazing at setting up plays from the right wing and he can also play as a AMC when I need him to. He ended the season with the highest average rating in my team, being 7.24, 11 goals, 8 assists, 4 MotMs. Few full backs can ever hold this guy as he is fast and can dribble really well, he's also extremely creative and technical. I'll be aiming to keep him around unless I get a nice offer for him.
Bamogo (32) He came in half way during the season through a swap with Rodrigo Tosi. It was a hard trade to make as I had been enjoying Tosi's football for a while. I have to say the trade was good, Bamogo really fit into the squad well, specially playing the AMCL role during my 460 games. He's fast, strong and unstoppable on good days.
Wellinton Silva (28) One of my biggest purchases in FML, he came in at the end of season 1 and displayed amazing potential. Due to tactical changes I made during season 2 he became a rotation player rather than a first team player. Despite all that he still was one of my stars of season 6 creating 9 goals and getting a 6.94 average rating. He is a great lone striker, strong, tall and great in the air, I am currently looking to sell him simply because his ability is being wasted in my team, I just can't play him enough.
I ended the season with the following team:
FC: Wellinton Silva (reserve: Jean Carlos)
AMC: Bamogo, Betinho (reserve: Quinn)
Midfield: Velcovici, L. Gargula (c), Lafita (reserve: Ruzicka, Roni)
Defense: Velarde, Vilson, Hoyos, Hibbert (reserve: Nosworthy, Mauro, Saez)
GK: Ismael Gil
I believe that my team was very strong and the changes I made to play a more offensive 4321 and 460 formations paid off in the end. My most notable players this season were:
Vilson - 26 year old DC, amazing defensive abilities combined with a deadly aerial ability and free kick taking which granted him 22 goals and 4 assists as a center back. His average rating was 7.02, definitely on my MVP list.
Nosworthy - 34 year old DC/DR, I bough him as a last minute bargain for 8k. He was certainly a key player for my team this season despite his declining attributes. He is an extremely talented DC which is his natural position but he was also my best DR playing well in offensive and defensive roles. I usually kept him on the bench for most of my substitution needs in terms of defense. I'm now trying to sell him but due to his age it is unlikely anyone will pay the price and I am fairly certain he'll end up retiring in my squad.
Hibbert - 33 year old DR, he came in half way in the season after I traded Lacroix. Despite his age and declining attributes, this player had a 800 pound wage which was an absolute bargain for his talent. He is an amazing defensive full back and I hope to keep him around for longer with that kind of wage demand.
Gargula - (33) What can I say, he was my star during my first season and he played just as well this time around. He's reliable, strong and an amazing set piece taker. I hope to keep him around until he hangs up his boots. His average rating was 7.00, with 5 goals and 10 assists.
Velcovici - (30) During first season he was in my rotation list and did quite well, but not until this season he started to shine. This 30 year old left winger is probably the most underrated player in my team, and he's a total bargain to have as well. Definately keeping a lock on his cheap contract. He ended this season with 6 goals, 9 assists and 5 MoMs.
Lafita - (30) Lafita is supposed to be the greatest player to wear my teams jersey so far, he was certainly my priciest purchase, but was he worth it? For sure! This guy is absolutely amazing at setting up plays from the right wing and he can also play as a AMC when I need him to. He ended the season with the highest average rating in my team, being 7.24, 11 goals, 8 assists, 4 MotMs. Few full backs can ever hold this guy as he is fast and can dribble really well, he's also extremely creative and technical. I'll be aiming to keep him around unless I get a nice offer for him.
Bamogo (32) He came in half way during the season through a swap with Rodrigo Tosi. It was a hard trade to make as I had been enjoying Tosi's football for a while. I have to say the trade was good, Bamogo really fit into the squad well, specially playing the AMCL role during my 460 games. He's fast, strong and unstoppable on good days.
Wellinton Silva (28) One of my biggest purchases in FML, he came in at the end of season 1 and displayed amazing potential. Due to tactical changes I made during season 2 he became a rotation player rather than a first team player. Despite all that he still was one of my stars of season 6 creating 9 goals and getting a 6.94 average rating. He is a great lone striker, strong, tall and great in the air, I am currently looking to sell him simply because his ability is being wasted in my team, I just can't play him enough.
I ended the season with the following team:
FC: Wellinton Silva (reserve: Jean Carlos)
AMC: Bamogo, Betinho (reserve: Quinn)
Midfield: Velcovici, L. Gargula (c), Lafita (reserve: Ruzicka, Roni)
Defense: Velarde, Vilson, Hoyos, Hibbert (reserve: Nosworthy, Mauro, Saez)
GK: Ismael Gil
Into my second season
After reading quite a few FML team blogs I decided to keep one for my team too which is a nice way to post strategy suggestions as well as perhaps advertise players to the Houghton community.
I am currently at the end of the first week of Season 6 in Houghton which is actually my second season as I just joined the game with my team Zoah FC. My first season I actually did quite poorly in terms of performance but I kept my hopes as I knew I was going to be playing a long term strategy.
Much like the majority of new users, I joined the New User Football Association (NUFA) and played in the league two along side a few decent new teams but despite my impression that I was in one of the easier NUFA leagues I still only managed to come in 12th place.
This didn't really affect my hopes of becoming a high end club in Houghton. As I kept my wages around 50k during first season, after releasing a few bad players I had bought. I think one of the issues with my team in my first season was the fact that despite my lack of experience in the game I decided to shop for my players without the help of the game. I handpicked a team composed of 75% bad players including a lot of reserves that I didn't need. But I think it was all a learning experience. Out of all the players in that season I may consider a few of them as good purchases and for the most part I kept those players for another season.
A few notable players from my first season were my captain and most expensive player Lucasz Gargula. This older Polish player costed me 200k in aq fee and a fairly high wage of 12k a day. I almost restarted my team after I realized how much money I had spent on this player but he really was worth the price. Not only his high influence makes him the perfect captain, he is also able to play with both feet as well as being a great set piece taker.
Rodrigo Tosi was another key player during season 1, he was probably my best striker during my first few days, but he really excelled as a attacking midfielder. He was also a proficient free kick taker and had a relatively good aim with long shots.
I also had three other relatively good midfielders: Gabriel Velcovici, Kazim Seker and Nicolas Bayod. All three great using the right and the left wings. Since I planned to upgrade the team I had to let two of them go. I got a great offer on Bayod that ended up even giving me a profit and I eventually released Seker which left me with Velcovici which was probably the one with the most room for growth out of those guys.
My defense was probably my weak spot so I did try to get rid of most of those players. I only kept my best CB, the tall Brazilian Mauro, I kept my 17 year old Lacroix, who despite relatively mediocre performances was still developing very much. I also kept a few of my FBs including Ruzica, Saez, Trommel. I probably shouldn't have kept all of them but they were giving me decent results and had very low wages which makes them that much more appealing to me.
Finally I had also purchased Jean Carlos, a 28 year old brazillian striker that really will stay as my top scorer for a while.
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