It was a good save but after FM13 came out I was a little too tempted to jump to the new game. I particularly like the sound of playing the classic mode since I do find the regular game a tad too time consuming for me. For that reason I never get that far into my games, I'm hoping FM13 classic will change that.
Anyway, my next little project will involve creating a new database for FM13, which I will expand on in a future post.
Showing posts with label MKD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MKD. Show all posts
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Friday, November 2, 2012
MK Dons - conclusion of our first EPL season
My fourth season with MKD just ended, and I'm pleased to report we kept our pre season promise to stay in the EPL. We definitely had some struggles during this season and at a few points I thought we may not be able to stay out of relegation zone. Fortunately we had a good last stretch, which got us out of 17th position up to 13th by the end of it all. This is a trememndous achievement for our team, especially since we are financially so behind the other teams. Here are the end result and fixtures for us. Man City as you will see, pretty much dominated the 2014/2015 season, leaving Arsenal well behind them in 2nd place.
The stats are also pretty amazing. ManCity completely obliterated the competition this time around. Not only they performed this way in the EPL, but they also won the Champion's League by defeating Barcelone in the finals 2x0.
Below I have stats for our guys. I have two different sets of stats just to take a closer look later. I like using these numbers deciding roster changes for next season.
Finally, I just wanted to showcase a couple of players that got my attention this season. Starting by one of the regens I've had my eyes on for a while, Alession Mancini from Italy. He just got his first major transfer this season from Roma to LOSC Lille Metropole (France) for 2.3M. He's quite an amazing player having a 7.08 average rating before he left for France, and there he had a 7.0 average, 3 goals in 8 games. Quite a feat for a 19 year old striker. Then I have two of our guys, Kevin Mirallas, one of our new additions this season, also from Roma, who cost us over 8M and is by far the most I've spent on a player so far. He did end the season with 33 games and 10 goals. His average rating was 7.0 and I have a lot of hope this Belgium player will be a big part of our team next season. Lastly, I have Idisseas Vlachodimos, our your goalkeeper. We got him for free during our first season and he has been developping extremely fast since. Last season we didn't play him a whole lot in the first team, but I felt that this season he was at a level I could put him in more times. He ended the season with 12 games and a great average of 6.78. I don't think it will be long before he passes Martin in skill, which is my goal as my scouts tell me Vlachodimos has much higher potential than Martin, who may have already reached his peak.
The stats are also pretty amazing. ManCity completely obliterated the competition this time around. Not only they performed this way in the EPL, but they also won the Champion's League by defeating Barcelone in the finals 2x0.
Below I have stats for our guys. I have two different sets of stats just to take a closer look later. I like using these numbers deciding roster changes for next season.
Finally, I just wanted to showcase a couple of players that got my attention this season. Starting by one of the regens I've had my eyes on for a while, Alession Mancini from Italy. He just got his first major transfer this season from Roma to LOSC Lille Metropole (France) for 2.3M. He's quite an amazing player having a 7.08 average rating before he left for France, and there he had a 7.0 average, 3 goals in 8 games. Quite a feat for a 19 year old striker. Then I have two of our guys, Kevin Mirallas, one of our new additions this season, also from Roma, who cost us over 8M and is by far the most I've spent on a player so far. He did end the season with 33 games and 10 goals. His average rating was 7.0 and I have a lot of hope this Belgium player will be a big part of our team next season. Lastly, I have Idisseas Vlachodimos, our your goalkeeper. We got him for free during our first season and he has been developping extremely fast since. Last season we didn't play him a whole lot in the first team, but I felt that this season he was at a level I could put him in more times. He ended the season with 12 games and a great average of 6.78. I don't think it will be long before he passes Martin in skill, which is my goal as my scouts tell me Vlachodimos has much higher potential than Martin, who may have already reached his peak.
Sunday, October 28, 2012
MKD - Fixtures and transfers
Just for completeness sake I decided to post my fixtures from last season, which I had forgotten. As I mentioned on the previous post, I had a horrible slump mid season as you can see below.
This season we had a pretty difficult start. After our pre-season we had to deal with a few really tricky games. Tottenham, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Everton within my first 7 games. There really isn't any way you could make this transition into the EPL any harder. Out of the first 7 games we ended up actually beating Chelsea on a very lucky yet well played game. We also managed to tie a scoreless game against Man United. However, ManU isn't necessarily doing very well this season though. Man United has been sitting in the bottom half of the table for a while now and currently they are one position above us (MKD 14th, ManU 13th).
Lastly, lets look at our transfers. Last season we didn't really spend a whole lot of money on transfers, with only 2 purchases, Dirk Riedel and Paul Caddis, both for 35K. Caddis has been a great purchase of our right back, while Riedel has been developping quite nicely into a very good prospect for the future. He's been drawing quite a bit of attention to himself from some of the larger clubs, and we have had several offers for him already. I am however really trying to keep him in the club if I can, and if not I'd want at least a couple of millions for him, even though he's not worth very much right now (250K maybe?).
Once we got promoted however, I have been making sure we beef up our squad with some big signings. Kevin Mirallas being our biggest purchase yet (8.75M). He's been having a slow start at the club but I do think he has the pace and talent we need to maintain our EPL spot. Our other 2 large buys were Thorgan Hazard (2.2M) and Ruben Perez (600K). Hazard hasn't really shown very much of his talent despit the large price tag, Perez has been doing a bit better, and at less than a million, I think he was a bit of a bargain IMO.
On the other end, we have been selling some players as well to cover some of our costst. Gareth Taylor was sold for 1.2M, this U21 player has been developping for a while and he had many offers just before the end of the transfer period, and we ended up giving him up to Liverpool for a hefty 1.2M. Sampdoria purchased Marc Torrejon, which was a new addition last season. He came in as a free transfer and a large salary. In the end he wasn't a very fruitful addition to our squad, but still managed to give us a profit on his 1.8M transaction.
Lastly Andrea De Falco was sold to Reggina for 675K, which was fair. He wasn't getting very much game time with us and honestly I just don't feel that De Falco was producing as much as his potential allowed him to. He was a good player, just wasn't working for us.
This season we had a pretty difficult start. After our pre-season we had to deal with a few really tricky games. Tottenham, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Everton within my first 7 games. There really isn't any way you could make this transition into the EPL any harder. Out of the first 7 games we ended up actually beating Chelsea on a very lucky yet well played game. We also managed to tie a scoreless game against Man United. However, ManU isn't necessarily doing very well this season though. Man United has been sitting in the bottom half of the table for a while now and currently they are one position above us (MKD 14th, ManU 13th).
Lastly, lets look at our transfers. Last season we didn't really spend a whole lot of money on transfers, with only 2 purchases, Dirk Riedel and Paul Caddis, both for 35K. Caddis has been a great purchase of our right back, while Riedel has been developping quite nicely into a very good prospect for the future. He's been drawing quite a bit of attention to himself from some of the larger clubs, and we have had several offers for him already. I am however really trying to keep him in the club if I can, and if not I'd want at least a couple of millions for him, even though he's not worth very much right now (250K maybe?).
Once we got promoted however, I have been making sure we beef up our squad with some big signings. Kevin Mirallas being our biggest purchase yet (8.75M). He's been having a slow start at the club but I do think he has the pace and talent we need to maintain our EPL spot. Our other 2 large buys were Thorgan Hazard (2.2M) and Ruben Perez (600K). Hazard hasn't really shown very much of his talent despit the large price tag, Perez has been doing a bit better, and at less than a million, I think he was a bit of a bargain IMO.
On the other end, we have been selling some players as well to cover some of our costst. Gareth Taylor was sold for 1.2M, this U21 player has been developping for a while and he had many offers just before the end of the transfer period, and we ended up giving him up to Liverpool for a hefty 1.2M. Sampdoria purchased Marc Torrejon, which was a new addition last season. He came in as a free transfer and a large salary. In the end he wasn't a very fruitful addition to our squad, but still managed to give us a profit on his 1.8M transaction.
Lastly Andrea De Falco was sold to Reggina for 675K, which was fair. He wasn't getting very much game time with us and honestly I just don't feel that De Falco was producing as much as his potential allowed him to. He was a good player, just wasn't working for us.
Saturday, October 27, 2012
MKD - end of S3 (2013/2014)
Another season has concluded and things are looking good for MK Dons. This past season we definitely had our ups and downs. We had a strong start a mid season slump (slump might even be an understatement) and to compensate that we ended the season on great form. We secured a promotion by finishing in second place after QPR, which were quite good as well this season, one of our worst adversaries. We ended with 89 points, comming from 27 wins and 8 draws, which actually makes us the team with the most wins this season. Below is our table followed by the EPL table just as a preview for what we are facing next season.
Here are some of the player stats for this season, highligting Jorda's great season, with 42 goals to his name. More stats are found below on our team's summary.
Here are some of the player stats for this season, highligting Jorda's great season, with 42 goals to his name. More stats are found below on our team's summary.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
MKD - Transfer history and season summary
A couple more pieces of stats from the 2012/2013 season:
Daniel Powell was voted the player of the year again for us, despite having a lot less goals this season.
Our best eleven this time around were:
GK - David Martin (6.94 in 42 appearances)
CB - Gary MacKenzie, Kevin Feely (6.82 in 18 apps)
FB - Calum Angus, Adam Chicksen
DMC - Michael Mutzel
MC - Jay Spearing, Antonio Tomas
FC - Rafa Jorda (7.04 in 38 apps), Dean Bowditch, Daniel Powell (7.02 in 47 games)
Others - I. McLoughlin, W. Brown, M. Gecov, G. N'Daw (6.98 in 15 games), D. Larsson (7.35 in 14 apps), D. Lewington, C. MacDonald
We didn't tecnically achieve much last season on paper, however I do feel that MKD did use the last year to build upon what was started during our promotion from League 1. This last season we finally got down our core team and strategy, and I really feel that we can actually get far this season comming up. I honestly think we can get promoted to the EPL this time around as long as we maintain our form and add a few new strong players to our team.
I never posted my transfers from the first two seasons but I think a lot of interesting moves did happen. Most remarkable was the fact that we were able to snatch the Right Full Back Kyle Naughton from Tottenham for 1.6M when they offered him out. We played Kyle for a good number of games and he ended up with a 6.9 average for us. He drew attention to himself and due to a contract clause he was snatched by the Wolves later last season for our largest transaction of all time, 3.3M for Kyle, which did help us maintain our finances in check a bit more.
Daniel Powell was voted the player of the year again for us, despite having a lot less goals this season.
Our best eleven this time around were:
GK - David Martin (6.94 in 42 appearances)
CB - Gary MacKenzie, Kevin Feely (6.82 in 18 apps)
FB - Calum Angus, Adam Chicksen
DMC - Michael Mutzel
MC - Jay Spearing, Antonio Tomas
FC - Rafa Jorda (7.04 in 38 apps), Dean Bowditch, Daniel Powell (7.02 in 47 games)
Others - I. McLoughlin, W. Brown, M. Gecov, G. N'Daw (6.98 in 15 games), D. Larsson (7.35 in 14 apps), D. Lewington, C. MacDonald
We didn't tecnically achieve much last season on paper, however I do feel that MKD did use the last year to build upon what was started during our promotion from League 1. This last season we finally got down our core team and strategy, and I really feel that we can actually get far this season comming up. I honestly think we can get promoted to the EPL this time around as long as we maintain our form and add a few new strong players to our team.
I never posted my transfers from the first two seasons but I think a lot of interesting moves did happen. Most remarkable was the fact that we were able to snatch the Right Full Back Kyle Naughton from Tottenham for 1.6M when they offered him out. We played Kyle for a good number of games and he ended up with a 6.9 average for us. He drew attention to himself and due to a contract clause he was snatched by the Wolves later last season for our largest transaction of all time, 3.3M for Kyle, which did help us maintain our finances in check a bit more.
Friday, October 12, 2012
MKD - 2012/2013 Player performances and MKD's tactics
Player stats for 2012/2013
So after this latest season, these are the numbers for our players.
Special note to some of our most important players, for instance in terms of goals Daniel Powell was once again our top scorer with 18 goals this season. Followed by Rafa Jorda (16), Daniel Larsson (9), Dean Bowditch (9), Gary MacKenzie (4).
Passing wise, Luke Chadwick had 84% pass completion, followed by Daniel Larsson (83%), Michael Woods (83%), Jay Spearing (82%)
Tactics
So I finally decided to post my current tactic as it seemed to have started to work. After having a fairly slow start in the fall 2012, I ended up tweaking my previous tactic quite a bit to achieve a more effective strategy... Not only that, but I also learned last season that you need at least a couple of tactics in order to succeed. Using the same one all the time seems to cause the opposition to learn how your team plays. So basically I have this tactic trained up as well as another similar one, which I tend to use during easier games, as I don't feel it is quite as polished as this one.
First, let's look at the team instructions
My 4123 "carbon" strategy involves a Balanced philosophy, with an attacking strategy. Passing is set to shorter and creative freedom set to More disciplined. At this point, I just don't feel my team is quite as talented as I would like, therefore giving them too much freedom would probably be a bad idea. I may change that once I aquire a stronger side.
Closing down and Tackling are set to Default, but Marking is set to Zonal for the team. Despite that, I actually have individual instructions for a lot of my defensive players to Man Mark, and that's useful since my defense is not top tier, and they are also a bit on the slow side.
Crossing and Roaming are also set to default here. Aside from all that, you can see I have a few manual changes as well (by a few I mean a lot). My defensive line is set quite low, despite showing as normal. I do think this strategy works best using a deep defensive line. Width in this strategy is also important, and it needs to be set wide. If you observed the formation I use, I have quite a narrow midfield and setting them to wide, allows some more space for our midfielders to create with our full backs. We have our tempo set to slow, which has worked so far, however this may also be something I change over time. I often debate on increasing this setting because our team does seem a little too relaxed more of the time, but having players that don't have high score %passes does make me want to keep this setting for another season. Time wasting is set to the default low value, but as I mentioned, the team does seem to play a slow moving game, and often I feel that they waste a lot more time than they should.
The Focus of our passing is down both flanks, again this is so that midfielders and full backs are using the outter open areas to create chances, while leaving the middle relatively covered during counter attacks. This idea came from reading about other people's strategies, in this case especifically the grid system, where the OP did a similar thing with the midfield.
Finally, Counter attack is set to yes and Offside to No. Much like some of the stuff above, I may change offside to yes in time, once I feel my team can handle strategies like that.
Below are my individual settings for goalies and my defence. The goalie is pretty much set on defend with the only change being Closing down. Full backs are set on a more defensive stance, which may not seem intuitive since I have so few wide players, but it seems to be working so far, and this is obviously affected by my "attacking" mentality applied to the team.
My central defenders are slightly different from each other. Having the DCL play a Cover duty while the DCR plays a defensive duty. I tend to keep a strong CB on the left position just to make sure our defense stays strong throughout the game, including counter attacks.
My midfield is layed out below. Having my Defensive Midfielder on "defend" duty, man marking his area. Central midfielders have essentially the same assignment, but I just try to balance things by having always a more defensive player paired with at least one attack minded midfielder like de Falco or Mutzel.
The Carbon tactice relies on having 3 strikers with slightly different instructions. Most teams play with 2 CBs and having the extra striker really helps put pressure on the opposition and tends to create more space for goals. Looking at the three, you see I have the poacher in the center, who will end up being the one with the most chances to score, paired with a Complete Forward (attack) which tends to be set for a good overall striker like Powell or MacDonald. This player is set to have a lot of creative freedom and will be almost playing a bit like a playmaker at the front. On the other side I have a Deep Lying forward set to attack as well, however this player will be set a bit more negatively and the main idea here is to have a far player on this side, such as Daniel Larsson who has 17 pace and was a great addition to the team this season. I may even change this position later, having a better and faster striker and setting up the Run From Deep setting to high so that this player acts a bit like a winger at the front, helping bring the ball up from midfield, and using speed to create crosses and other opportunities.
So after this latest season, these are the numbers for our players.
Special note to some of our most important players, for instance in terms of goals Daniel Powell was once again our top scorer with 18 goals this season. Followed by Rafa Jorda (16), Daniel Larsson (9), Dean Bowditch (9), Gary MacKenzie (4).
Passing wise, Luke Chadwick had 84% pass completion, followed by Daniel Larsson (83%), Michael Woods (83%), Jay Spearing (82%)
Tactics
So I finally decided to post my current tactic as it seemed to have started to work. After having a fairly slow start in the fall 2012, I ended up tweaking my previous tactic quite a bit to achieve a more effective strategy... Not only that, but I also learned last season that you need at least a couple of tactics in order to succeed. Using the same one all the time seems to cause the opposition to learn how your team plays. So basically I have this tactic trained up as well as another similar one, which I tend to use during easier games, as I don't feel it is quite as polished as this one.
First, let's look at the team instructions
My 4123 "carbon" strategy involves a Balanced philosophy, with an attacking strategy. Passing is set to shorter and creative freedom set to More disciplined. At this point, I just don't feel my team is quite as talented as I would like, therefore giving them too much freedom would probably be a bad idea. I may change that once I aquire a stronger side.
Closing down and Tackling are set to Default, but Marking is set to Zonal for the team. Despite that, I actually have individual instructions for a lot of my defensive players to Man Mark, and that's useful since my defense is not top tier, and they are also a bit on the slow side.
Crossing and Roaming are also set to default here. Aside from all that, you can see I have a few manual changes as well (by a few I mean a lot). My defensive line is set quite low, despite showing as normal. I do think this strategy works best using a deep defensive line. Width in this strategy is also important, and it needs to be set wide. If you observed the formation I use, I have quite a narrow midfield and setting them to wide, allows some more space for our midfielders to create with our full backs. We have our tempo set to slow, which has worked so far, however this may also be something I change over time. I often debate on increasing this setting because our team does seem a little too relaxed more of the time, but having players that don't have high score %passes does make me want to keep this setting for another season. Time wasting is set to the default low value, but as I mentioned, the team does seem to play a slow moving game, and often I feel that they waste a lot more time than they should.
The Focus of our passing is down both flanks, again this is so that midfielders and full backs are using the outter open areas to create chances, while leaving the middle relatively covered during counter attacks. This idea came from reading about other people's strategies, in this case especifically the grid system, where the OP did a similar thing with the midfield.
Finally, Counter attack is set to yes and Offside to No. Much like some of the stuff above, I may change offside to yes in time, once I feel my team can handle strategies like that.
Below are my individual settings for goalies and my defence. The goalie is pretty much set on defend with the only change being Closing down. Full backs are set on a more defensive stance, which may not seem intuitive since I have so few wide players, but it seems to be working so far, and this is obviously affected by my "attacking" mentality applied to the team.
My central defenders are slightly different from each other. Having the DCL play a Cover duty while the DCR plays a defensive duty. I tend to keep a strong CB on the left position just to make sure our defense stays strong throughout the game, including counter attacks.
My midfield is layed out below. Having my Defensive Midfielder on "defend" duty, man marking his area. Central midfielders have essentially the same assignment, but I just try to balance things by having always a more defensive player paired with at least one attack minded midfielder like de Falco or Mutzel.
,
The Carbon tactice relies on having 3 strikers with slightly different instructions. Most teams play with 2 CBs and having the extra striker really helps put pressure on the opposition and tends to create more space for goals. Looking at the three, you see I have the poacher in the center, who will end up being the one with the most chances to score, paired with a Complete Forward (attack) which tends to be set for a good overall striker like Powell or MacDonald. This player is set to have a lot of creative freedom and will be almost playing a bit like a playmaker at the front. On the other side I have a Deep Lying forward set to attack as well, however this player will be set a bit more negatively and the main idea here is to have a far player on this side, such as Daniel Larsson who has 17 pace and was a great addition to the team this season. I may even change this position later, having a better and faster striker and setting up the Run From Deep setting to high so that this player acts a bit like a winger at the front, helping bring the ball up from midfield, and using speed to create crosses and other opportunities.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
MKD - 2012/2013 Season's end
Another season comes to an end... 2012 started off a bit slow, and our team maintained a barely good enough form for a good portion of this season. Not until the last strech of 2013 did the players really put in the work, as you can see on the fixtures for this season.
Here is what the league table looks like for the Championship and for the Premier League
Lastly some stats for you from the EPL and Championship
...and a piece of good news... after pushing a bit on the board, this is what is ahead for MKD
Here is what the league table looks like for the Championship and for the Premier League
Lastly some stats for you from the EPL and Championship
...and a piece of good news... after pushing a bit on the board, this is what is ahead for MKD
Sunday, September 30, 2012
MKD - 2011/2012 Other results
Just for anyone curious about how the other leagues panned out, here it it. EPL -> Brazilian league -> Championship -> Italian league -> Spanish League
MKD - Promotion to npower Championship
We had quite an exciting team as well and here are some interesting stats from our players. Notably, Daniel Power was the league's top scorer with a wooping 37 goals, followed by Francois Zoko (32, Carlisle United) and Iain Hume (28, Preston). Preston actually had a really impressive season in my 2011-2012 season, they not only did well in L1 but they managed to get to the final of the FA Cup after beating Newcastle on the semi final and Wigam in the Sixth round. They lost the final to Manchester City 3x0, but boy they showed some heart there.
Other interesting stats... Daniel Power had the best rating of the L1 with 7.51, followed by Preston's Iain Hume (7.48) and MKD's Mauricio Risso (7.35). In terms of assists Stephen Quinn took 1st (19, Sheffield United), followed by Antonio Tomas (18, MKD) and Dale Stephens (15, Charlton). MOM winner was Francois Zoko (14, Carlisle), Iain Hume (11, Preston) and Daniel Powell / Shefki Kuqi / Nathan Eccleston (8, MKD / Oldham / Brentford)
Milton Keynes Dons - new FM12 carreer
All the talk about FM13 has made me very eager to play FM again. I thought I'd be able to wait for FM13, but turns out I couldn't, so I started a new game managing Milton Keynes Dons from the English Npower League 1. I decided to go with MKD for a couple of reasons:
1. They had a reasonably sized stadium
2. They were not as low league as my previous games
3. They were located in a more prosperous region than some of the other teams I was considering
I will have to come clean to start with... In this game I have cheated a little. By that I mean that I edited so that MKD has a sugar daddy and so that I wiped all the debt off of the team before I joined. Problem? This will just make my financial situation a bit better in this game, which may help me stay motivated and play more than a couple of seasons. Well let's see how it works out.
Also I'm not going to updated the blog on this game as much just to see if I can get further by just playing through. In the beginning I might just do a few reports every season to mention how things are going, however not until I have a pretty solid thing going on, I will post more details on this career.
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