Perhaps it’s because I haven’t been playing that much Football Manager Live of late, but I haven’t seen much talk of cheat tactics around lately. Sure, the same old accusations about the 4-6-0 or the 4-5-1 pop up from time to time. But on the whole, people have been relatively calm on the matter. Or, at least, they are complaining about more fundamental issues. So, with the reset coming closer, I wonder whether this will flair up again? There have been a fair few match engine rants since the game arrived, and quite a few have been down to cheat tactics. The 4-5-1 To start with, it was the 4-5-1. The flat, bog-standard default formation which, for many reasons,…
In July, I wrote an editorial on the structure of prize money in Football Manager Live. In it, I essentially called for a dramatic reduction in income sources which weren’t directly related to official competition performance, such as stadium income, general income and media money; and this should be replaced by a greater emphasis on prize money, based on finishing positions within the league pyramid. Well, on Monday, the new FML Future Developments forum contained a suggestion from Ov Collyer: Suggestion – Give Prize Money More Importance The general idea behind this suggestion is to tie more of your income into your performances in competitions in a given…
Back in Football Manager 2008 we only had ratings going from one to ten. This was fair enough, but it didn’t really give the best indication of how well players were doing. When all of your players play either a “6” or a “7”, who is doing better than whom? Other than by taking the average rating over five or six games, there really was no way to tell – certainly in a one off match, it was next to impossible to really differentiate between the players, and so it was very difficult to see which parts of your team were not functioning that well. Football Manager Live got ahead of the curve, however, by introducing the decimal place. Now, players are rated, in…
Over the past few years the “holding midfielder” has become an integral part of football’s vocabulary. During the 1980s, in England at least, central midifelders played as box-to-box types, going forward to help attacks and putting in covering tackles when needed. One may naturally be a little more defensive than the other, but the idea of a designated player who covers in front of the defence and “holds” in the centre of the field grew in the 1990s and is now virtually universal. I want to outline, then, three “holding midfielders” to try to show what they are and how they can be used. Of course, they are not all alike, and how you use them will affect the rest of…
One of the key parts to any tactic, as anyone who has read articles on GameWorldOne before will know, is balance. Balance is vital to any tactical plan. You need to be attacking enough to achieve your goals, but not so attacking that you become defensively vulnerable; wide enough to use space, but not so wide that you leave gaps in the middle; technically skilled enough to create openings in the opposition’s defence, but not so without strength that you become lightweight. Balance. Yin and yang. Libra, the scales. Of course in different situations the balance will shift. When you need a goal, you will weight the scales more towards attack. But, you still need to…
And lo, it came to pass that Sports Interactive announced their plans for the gameworlds. And it saw that it was good. But has the rest of the community? SI’s announcement, in two testaments, has outlined not only the future structure of the gameworlds (part the first) but also what is to be done with the current worlds as they stand (part the second). Duffy 3:14 – “On the first day, SI cocked up.” First up was the confession. Sports Interactive and SEGA have made a number of mistakes over the previous 12 months. Some seem to have taken this as a sign of weakness, but to me it shows a great level of honesty and self-awareness. Of course, in an ideal…
Full backs are difficult beasts. Do you play them as defenders? Do you want them to push on into the midfield to help attacks? Or do you want them bombing down the wings to put in crosses. Do you even want them at all? Well, it’s a difficult decision, but here are five things you should know about full backs, and how this can help you decide which ones you need. 1. If you don’t play with wide midfielders, full backs provide much-needed width Formations such as the narrow 4-4-2 diamond, or a narrow 4-2-3-1 may not use any wide midfielders at all. Even if they do, if they are being told to cut inside often then the team could become almost totally devoid of any…
It seems like the plans have been finalised from the community day. Marc Duffy has announced via the forums and through the developer blogs that the council has taken place, and there will be a full disclosure of everything that went on in the week beginning Monday 23 November. In the meantime, since Marc has revealed who actually went to the meeting, I can now reveal some of the things I learned which are not covered by the NDA. 1. Never, ever, ever go to Russell Square tube station The nearest underground stop to the offices in which I study is Russell Square, on the Piccadilly Line between King’s Cross St Pancras and Holborn. Thing is, it doesn’t have an…
