HELP! - Football Manager 2010

[rva]

Haha.  Yeah, no matter how well he plays, I'm gonna slate him individually in all team talks, criticize his recent play in the press whenever possible, fine him 2 weeks wages for "poor performance in prior match" after every game, and set his squad status to "Not wanted by the team."

What happened?  Last thing Hulk remember, Hulk smash missile to prevent A-Bomb explosion! 

Now Hulk on soccer pitch with puny humans.  Why do puny humans try to stop Hulk from score?  Hulk just want to be alone.  BAH!  Now puny human try two-footed tackle?!?  Hulk angry!  Hulk smash! 

Pass Hulk ball, little man!  Hulk wide open!  Why little man not give Hulk pass?!?  Bah!  Little man try to trick Hulk because Hulk not understand offside rule.  Now different little man lecture Hulk?!?  Do not wave card in Hulk's face, little man or Hulk smash you too.  Hulk does not dive, Hulk only smash! 

Hulk smash puny humans and put stupid ball in stupid net.  Then Hulk find Bruce Banner.  But first Hulk rest......

[Cockney Rebel]

Just make sure his pants fit properly

[Butter]

and South Africa to get Lebohang Mokoena.

Is this guy still good?  I haven't played the game in 3-4 years, but he was one of the best acquisitions I ever made back in the day.

[rva]

Naw, he sucks pretty bad.

Remember, you brought him over pretty young and got him good coaching and quality competition.  Whereas in real life he stayed in South Africa.  Moreover, Orlando Pirates appear to have buried him on the bench somewhat partly due to a series of minor injuries, even further hindering his development.  He's already 23 at the start of the game so much of his potential has already been lost.

But it looks like he got a fresh lease on his career in 2009 with the Mamelodi Sundowns.  He put together an excellent 2009-10 campaign, being named PSL player of the month twice.  And then a fairly decent 2010-11 season though his stats were hampered by a few minor injuries.  

Unfortunately in 2011-12, he blew out a knee and seems to have missed most of the season, and then he never won back his spot.  In 2013-14 he is out of contract and it looks like he is about to disappear from the database.His physical attributes are pretty good, so you can still see the potential he once had.  

It's already too late for him to do much on the European or even English stage, but if Dan can get him in and get a work permit, he might be able to do the job for him in League One and go on and carve a nice little career for himself as a journeyman British footballer.  Maybe get a $2-3k/week wages for 3-4 years, save it up, settle down in the country somewhere.  

I'm thinking he plays his last two years for Luton where he'll be fairly dominant in Conference National.  He retires at the young age of 30.  Scores a brace in his final game, and takes his last lap round the pitch, clapping to the fans while they serenade him with the old "one moko, two moko, three mokoena... hey, mokoena!" chant.

He buys a nice little place in Toddington. Takes a job at Vauxhall Motors, does some coaching on the side.  On weekends you can sometimes catch him at The Angel Pub, where he is a regular.  And at least once a month some stranger comes in, finds out he's Lebohang Mokoena and goes crazy.  "My God, I had you in Football Manager 2007.  You were pure class!"  He just laughs about it, and sometimes he'll buy them a drink just for remembering.  He is happy with his life.  He still goes back to South Africa every year to visit.

[Butter]

Sad part was I got all excited a couple years back when I saw a "Mokoena" in the EPL... found out it was that hack Aaron Mokoena.  Fucker.

[Dan]

but if Dan can get him in and get a work permit, he might be able to do the job for him in League One

For the record, I've tried to get him to transfer from Sundowns to Saints, but he keeps saying "I just joined Sundowns and want to see what I can do here." The last time, two days before the transfer window closed, I offered Sundowns double what he was worth. They accepted. Then I offered him a wage of $500,000 per annum. Yes, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND AMERICAN DOLLARS. He's making $29,000 at Sundowns.

He still said no.

Jerk.


Instead, I signed Gregory Bettiol from ESTAC as my 2nd striker. By the way, Papa Waigo got hurt three games into the season, but he was god-like prior to that. I fell in love very quickly.

[Dan]

How do I tell one player to tutor another player, beyond when my staff suggests it? Can I just decide this needs to happen and tell them? I can't figure it out.

Also - how do I tell one guy to work on something specific in training beyond when my staff suggests it? I've had guys work on "playing a more simple passing game" or something like that, but I can't figure out where it is unless my backroom tells me to do so.

[rva]

It's on the far right of the player screen.  Click on "Interaction" then "Interact with Player."

There should be a long list of preferred moves you can train (or untrain). 

At the bottom of the screen there is a thing that says "Linked Players."  You can click on that and see what players are available to tutor the chosen player.  If it's blank, then that player can't be tutored.  After you pick a player, you can scroll around in the middle section and there should be three options.   The first one is heavy duty tutoring.  It takes six months, but the player learns more.  The second two are minor tutoring.  I think one focuses more on mental, and the other more on skills and preferred moves.

[Dan]

Thank you thank you thank you. I now have Jaidi, Saga, and Enza Yamissi tutoring guys. I guess I never figured that out b/c I kept on going to Schniederlin for this, and he doesn't seem to be a candidate for either tutoring or training. Weird. But much of the rest of the team will listen to me.


Two more less important questions:
1) In the game progress bar there are two shades of green. What do they mean?
2) In the "recent form" lists, it shows four possibilities. WLXD. W=wins, L=losses. What's the differences between X and D?

[rva]

1) Do not know what you are referring to. 

2)  D= Scoreless draw (0-0)
     X= The other kind of draw (eg. 1-1, 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, etc.)

[Dan]

Just the "match" progress bar. You know, when your team is playing a match and it shows you how far along the match has come. I'm pretty sure that the lighter green is when a "highlight" has occurred, but it never seems to line up perfectly. Anyhow, not important...


As an update:
-It's today's date in the game and on my real calendar, and I'm obviously a better manager than Alan Pardew, and I don't even know what I'm doing. We're in 5th place, have 44 points, and a 17-3-4 record. Although I admit I sucked a bit in that we beat Leeds (in 1st place) away, and then followed that up with a draw to Exeter (in 24th place) at home. I put in my 2nd squad for that game, and it came back to bite me. Oops.
-You were right about that guy Enza Yamissi. He's turned out to be the best guy on the squad.  Saga has scored a boatload of goals, Jaidi is a rock in the back, Lloyd James is favorite of mine, and I picked up this defender Rhys Williams who is pretty freaking quality as well. I got him for a $1.4 mil transfer and he's now valued at $2.2 mil. Nice. Papa Waigo scored 4 goals in the first two games, got hurt, and then has sucked the rest of the season. Bummer.
-I like how I come up as the number 1 guy for every managerial opening. I mean - I started the game with whatever job I wanted...why would I leave?

-And my only two real questions, that aren't even that important (I don't think) are:

1) Am I supposed to make a profit? I know that no club except ManUre makes a profit, but I notice that I'm bleeding about a million bucks every month. That can't be good. Will I get fired for this? I'm still considerably under budget in the wage dept, so I'm confused.

2) Is there a way I can download the player photos? I like the guys who aren't a silhouette better than those who are. Stupid, I know...

[rva]

1)  In general, fiscal restraint buys you points with the board which can help you retain your job although in this situation your owner cares more about the wins and has authorized (at least short term) an amount that leads to debt.  You'll be sacked for underperforming before the club gets into deep financial straits.  You've been given the wages to spend; if you are under the budget you will generally be okay.

Still, it's a good idea to save money when you can.  Because you have a good owner, any profit/revenue generated generally goes back into the club, giving you a bigger transfer/wage budget the next year as well as the possibility to expand/improve stadium and facilities.

If you look at either your "finances" or "board room" screen (I forget which), it'll tell you the % of money from transfers you are allowed to keep.  My club finances are "secure" at my point in the game, so I'm allowed to keep 90% of my transfer revenue to spend on other transfers.  If you are in the red, you might be as low as 15%.  Something to keep in mind when you think about selling players.  If you transfer a guy in season while you are in red, you won't make as much money as you would if you wait until finances are healthier.

Also, if you are in the red your owner will have a tendency to start interfering with your transfers.  This happened to me this game.  I think someone made a $6 million offer for Lallana which was okay but not great.  I didn't really want to sell him, or if I did I think I could have gotten $9-$10 million.  However the board deemed it "too good to refuse" and accepted it for me.  I had to quickly offer Lallana a fat contract which he accepted over the other team's offer.  Good thing he likes Southampton.

You have a couple of weird things going on in the game.  First is that the game doesn't really handle administration points deductions properly.  The first couple months of the season you were not getting the home crowds you should have because you were projected to finish top six and you were in like in last place instead, whereas in real life, Saints drew 30k fans last weekend despite being midtable because people understood about the deduction.  So now that you are in fifth and no longer "under-achieving" the crowds should return and help you generate revenue.

The other thing is you are a recently demoted team with an overly fat wage budget.  You've got some fairly high earners that are maybe decent players but have exorbitant wages.  Wayne Thomas and Paul Wotton come to mind.  Next year, some of those contracts should be coming off the books, giving you a bit more financial flexibility.

Also remember that at the end of the season, you will be awarded prize money based on your finish.  So you can be still end up in the black as long as you finish high enough in the standings to cover your losses in season.. especially if you get promoted.  You can see the prize money awarded in the "Rules" tab when you look at the league page.  Try and make sure the prize money will be enough for you to break even.

You got Waigo and Trotman on loan whose wages are being paid by another club.  Waigo you have until the end of the season (but he sucks).  Trotman leaves in January, so if you are using him then you will need to free up some transfer/wage money to replace him or start looking for another free loan.  It's actually pretty easy to do at League One.  There are plenty of EPL sides who will loan you a young player and pay all their wages just so they can get the experience.  A lot of them are probably better than your starters.  That is what having a parent club is good for.

As a bonus, oftentimes these are players who really don't have what it takes to make it at say, Man U or Tottenham.  You treat them well and they'll like you and then you can buy them and bring them in permanently.  Like in my game I signed Jacob Mellis.  I also brought in Matt James on loan from Man U. and eventually signed him.  Actually both those guys are still on my team, albeit on the second string.

I was pretty much at the max of transfer/wage allowed my first two seasons at Saints, but I did get promoted both years so that covered the expenses.  One thing you can do if you have a lot of vets who like the club but are maybe past their peak is re-negotiate their contracts.  For example, Saga had one year left in his contract and I thought he had enough in the tank to last another two years.  I signed him to a new three year deal at a salary LESS than what he was presently making.  So while that locked me into two more years, I saved cash in the short term by paying him less in the current year than he otherwise would have been due.

2)  You can download "face packs" which various people have put together for different teams.  Eventually someone will put together a bunch of team/league face packs as well as various improved logos and kits that are floating around into one big graphics "megapack."  I don't know if anyone has done that yet.  But do a search for "Southampton football manager face pack" or "Football 2010 megapack" or something.  Just be warned a "megapack" can often take several hours to D/L via torrent.

I like the real faces better as well, except that after a few years your team will be mostly regens anyway.  And then it just looks weird with half computer-generated faces and half real photos.  Plus, I'm a bit tight on hard drive space right now.

You can also download skins for the interface, sounds to improve/vary the crowd noise during games (which I highly recommend), and even different balls, goals, and advertisements (some which attempt to replicate actual stadiums) if you are truly anal.

[Dan]

This is awesome. Thanks for the advice. I'm off to travel the world, but when I return I will definitely incorporate what you're saying.

One thing is... I'm out of transfer wage. Heh. I guess I get it back if I sell a guy? I'd love to sell a bunch of them but right now I'm just waiting for someone to bid on them. The window just opened, so I imagine it'll take a few weeks.

[Dan]

I got promoted!  That sure was easy.
Won the JPT and League 1. Now it's time for some better players?



Anyway, my question is:
everytime I close the program, I get a yellow bubble in the corner that says:
"Windows - Virtual Memory Minimum Too Low
Your system is low on virtual memory. Windows is increasing the size of your vitrual memory paging file. During this process, memory requests for some applications may be denied."

So yeah - is this b/c I loaded up too big of a database? Or is it b/c my video card isn't good enough? Or b/c I don't have enough RAM? Or simply b/c my machine is crappy and I just need a new one?

Is there anything I can do about this? Should I even worry?


While we're here - it takes a LLOONNNGG time for the game to process days. I know that it went a lot faster when I did just North America with Columbus Crew, so I know this is b/c of the large data set that I loaded. Can I reduce that set without starting over? I'm fine with it as it is, but wouldn't mind a little more speed, you know?

[rva]

Yeah, both of those issues are related the complexity of the game you have set up.  It's usually not so much raw database size, but how many leagues you are actively simulating.  I wouldn't worry about it.

It does suck that it slows down your machine, but it's worth it.  The game is a lot less fun if you only have two or three leagues running and/or a small database.