WSL - transfers + transfers

It has been a quite active couple of months for Tottenham. Turns out this database creates a huge amount of games, so my team is definitely in form. Since the last update we've been doing spectacularly well, and I feel that the squad is finally gelled the way I wanted. On that note I'm starting to find out where I need to tweak the squad to get ready for the tough games in a few months.

First of all, I have began to play a secondary formation/tactic with my team. After doing quite a bit of reading I decided to try something similar to what Vitaliy Mokosiy uses on his Boston United series, which can be found on his blog, True Football Manager. If I haven't mentioned this blog before, I recommend it, it's fun and very informative. The guy has been playing FM for a long time and I feel like he's one of the better players out there. He's at least very good at writing a fun FM blog.

So my team is now switching between my original 4-3-2-1 which has been fairly successful and my new 4-3-3 (although I am tempted to also call it 4-3-2-1). This new formation if quite different from my original one, where I now have 3 midfielders playing in the middle with no one on the ML and MR positions. Then I have an AML and a AMR playing as inside forwards, who are supporting a Poacher at the FC position. I actually had a lot of players to make this formation work with my current squad, and I'm starting to feel that this new formation might be a better choice in the long term. The 4-3-2-1 was a bit limiting as my 2 AMCs were often covering the same ground, and my two wingers would have to move much more than in my new strategy. I also feel that my 4-3-2-1 would work better if I had amazing wingers, which I didn't, I was using some relatively young players in that position.

Anyway, I will talk more about my new formation once I'm more comfortable with it. The bottom line is, I have been getting rid of a couple strikers, such as Milivoje Novakovic who was sold to AC Milan for 3M (not bad for a player that I barely got to play) and now I am discussing the sale of Mikael Forssell for 3.3M to A.C. Milan as well. I have had some trouble with Forssell in the past, as he was quite unhappy about playing so little first team football. With these two sales I intend to bring a new striker to the squad, and right now I'm seriously considering Lukas Podolski, who is currently a free agent (I couldn't believe that when his agent contacted me). Here is his profile right now:

 

The only downside to picking him up is his high salary, but 80+k is probably fair for a player of his caliber. It should really add some quality to our front, I'm just hoping Luis Garcia doesn't mind new competition.

Aside from that I have also received a substantial offer for Juan, our main DL who was valued 7.75M. Arsenal and Liverpool began a bidding war on him, even though I did not have Juan on transfer list, in the end I received a 14.25M offer, and despite not wanting to sell him originally, I can't see myself saying no to such a large sum of money. Anyway, I sold him, but I'll have Juan until the end of the season, with so many good young talents in the team, I don't think it should be hard to substitute him with someone a bit weaker and still survive for a while. I do wonder whether the next tier will be as easy as this one, something tells me it won't.

Finally, I have been considering a new central midfielder for our squad. Playing 3 MCs does make my selection look a bit small at the moment. I want to eventually build up a really solid midfield, and I'm going to start by picking a good defensive one for my MCc position (ball winning mid). Currently I have 2 free agents who I'm looking at, here they are:

They are similar players, and I wish I had some help deciding. Right now I'm kinda pending towards Ernst. I feel like his size advantage as well as slightly better speed would be more suitable for ball winning midfielder / anchorman.

WSL - huge transfer deal

One of my big priorities once this game started was to find a solid team of scouts and start a major search for young talent. I managed to grab quite a few gems, including the English striker Mike Walker (16). Well, turns out this kid was highly sought after by the big clubs and despite his estimated value of 1.6M I have received offers varying from 1.6 to over 4 million dollars. Well this week I finally gave Walker up to Real Madrid for a whooping 4.7M.

This certainly gives us a nice little boost to our financial situation which is actually quite good already. I've been trying to keep my budget way below what I'm allowed, here is a sample of how we're doing prior to this transfer.

Finally, here is a list of our fixtures since the beginning of the season. I'm very impressed with how we've been performing, and aside from a spell of ties in September, I think almost all results so far have been adequate to our level.

WSL - a few months in

So far the club has been performing well, I have filled out the squad a bit more and I added a particularly good striker, who I believe will be useful in the next few months. His name is Ricardo Fuller, who came in as a free transfer, and I believe he will be a nice addition to our 4-3-2-1 formation.

As I mentioned I'm currently playing a 4-3-2-1 formation (Christmas tree formation) which is a formation I use to very much enjoy in my FML days. After doing some research online about what other managers use, I have to say this isn't a particularly popular choice. I think I might stick with it for a while but slowly pick a secondary formation. My tactics right now look like this:

I'm playing with a balanced philosophy, standard strategy and pretty much all the default settings for the rest (if you use the tactic creator). I made a few tweeks to individual players, but in general that's how I'm playing a lot of my games. I do switch to a 4-1-2-2-1 with a counter strategy when I want to take a more defensive approach.

WSL - pre 10/11 season, not a bad start

We had quite a nice start with our pre-season, which is a good sign. The only problem is that this db does cause the 1st season to be a bit hit and miss, so a lot of the top squads are still looking to fill up their teams, meaning they are not as tough as they should be. Nonetheless I'm happy to see the team gelling and getting results right away.

WSL - Trying a new db on fm11

After losing my save for the Zoah FM11 series which I started earlier this year, I decided to try something different. I went ahead and downloaded an interesting custom database made by Kgok at "The Dugout", and it is the World Super League database (with free transfers), based on the original World Super League by Nick. The general idea of this db is to have a very large selection of teams into 6 tiers, with all the best clubs in the world. Kgok's version however, goes a step further and releases everyone from their teams, leaving you and other managers to build up a squad from scratch. This just sounded like a ton of fun, so I went for it.

For my team I decided to join Tottenham Hotspurs, the reason for that being that I like the club, they were placed on the 3rd tier of the tree (World League 1) and they have a decent sized stadium and funds. I figured this would allow me to at least have a chance of getting to the top, despite my still amateurish skills on FM.

So let me introduce my first cohort of players

 

A few of these I hope to keep for a while in my squad and to start I really have high hopes for the following players: Luis Garcia (ST), Sergey Ryzhikov (GK), Drago Gabric (MR) and Kyle Naughton (DR, use to be a Spurs in RL)