Connor1874

Always wondered how they approach the away crowds. Quite easy to nail home crowds based on average attendances, but away crowds doesn't seem quite as easy to find out. Hard to argue with most of the ones I see, but there's some they get pretty wrong. Just looked at my Benfica save, and apparently we took more fans to Celtic Park in the CL than they brought to Lisbon. Only 500 Celtic fans came over apparently. I highly doubt Benfica would outnumber them away from home IRL.

Currently playing a season as Benfica. They've got a lot of dross at the club so bit of a rebuilding job. Also trying out a few new tactics which are really getting some mad results. Such as this... Also these recently: Out all of the domestic cups thanks to Porto who are just ridiculously good. Can't beat them for love nor money. The week after they beat me 7-1, they did this:

It's true though. In the case of Hearts yesterday, who knows more? Wee Davie on Twitter who thinks the team is shite, or Pro Licence coach Robbie Neilson? Alas, Hearts won comfortably.

I only realised a few years ago just how shit Hertha are. Quite incredible that a city of Berlin's size hasn't got a more successful club. Hertha must really be a bit of a basket case club. Good on Union. You won't find many at Schalke who won't wish them well.

How long does he stay at Dortmund do you think? I personally just can't help but see him ending up at Bayern. Would be good to see him go elsewhere, but I just see him as the person Bayern must be looking at to fill that Lewandowski gap. Big Bobby is still banging them in for fun, but he's 33 in August and won't be around forever. He'd be a great signing for any team, but I think they might want to get him signed before the vultures from Munich start forming over the Westfalenstadion.

People who critique the team line up before kick off. Hearts fans done it yesterday something rotten, but then we won 3-1. Just bizarre behaviour if you ask me. I very seldom read the line up pre-match these days. Especially when going to the games. I like seeing the team and figuring out who's playing where. Sure, it's nice to check and see if a new signing starts, or a big player returns from injury, or even a young talent makes the team, but it's going to probably be very similar to the team we used last week? Hearts fans were up in arms yesterday that Mackay-Steven, Boyce, Naismith and Ginnelly were all on the bench. 1 is a new signing who's maybe not match sharp, 2 have had fitness issues in recent weeks and one is 34 years old. The manager evaluates these players all week at training, then decides on that evaluation, whether it's a good idea to play these players or not. He knows better than you. Accept it.

I posted that earlier in the thread too. I find that this one is either piss easy, or rock solid. No middle ground. Read many say that they think this is the best FM in years, and I dunno. I'm honestly getting a little bored. For a start, I find it slower and clunkier than recent years. I'm very much a pick up and play kind of guy and it feels like games take ****ing ages to play. I'm not a big fan of the new match layout either. I'm actually sitting playing FM20 as I type this. No doubt, the FM21 match engine is a huge improvement on recent years, but I feel like they've sacrificed a fairly smooth and tidier UI in the process.

How you finding it overall? Done a couple of attempts with PAOK in previous versions but really like the thought of Panathinaikos. I've got a Greek mate so follow the league a bit and Panathinaikos are rank these days. Remember them playing in the UCL groups often.

Christian Gross here to save Schalke's season.

Spent the past week or so having great fun on an unemployed save. I loaded up Germany, Austria and Switzerland with a German version of me. Looking to just see where my career takes me. Was offered my first job midway through season one with Grazer AK in the Austrian First Division, struggling at the bottom too. Results were tricky to come by, but in the end, I managed to keep them in the division. Bit of a rebuilding job in the summer, and a blistering start had me hopeful of a promotion push. In this 16 team division though, only the champions go up. It's like managing in the Championship before the play-offs came in. I could imagine it would be deeply frustrating but we thankfully had such a good start, that we had margin for error. First job offer came in from Germany without me applying but it didn't bother me as it was Osnabruck who looked doomed to relegation to the German 3rd league. But that all changed when Werder Bremen offered me their job. Struggling in the Bundesliga and the challenge really enticed me, but I was determined to get Grazer promoted and have that on my CV so I requested Werder wait til the end of the season, which thankfully they accepted. All went to plan, I took Grazer up, Werder stayed up, and I rode off into the sunset in May 2020, now a Grazer AK legend. Still in season 1 at Bremen, but having a terrific season. We've just beaten Leipzig 1-0 to go 2nd ahead of them, and level on points with Bayern, although they still have 2 games in hand, and we've still to play them twice. Like in real life, Bremen had really struggled in the league and become cannon fodder until my arrival, and it was clear to see why. They had some absolute dross, on silly wages on the books, so it was little wonder they were stagnating. I've replaced many of the has been's with some exciting talent, as well as some younger players already in my youth teams. Never had so much fun doing a rebuild job I don't think. Hopefully just the start of a dynasty at Werder Bremen. My transfers are below:

I do. I only got a laptop capable of playing the newer versions in January of this year. I bought 19 straight away as I'd heard 20 wasn't great and initially started with FM but gave FMT a try. Haven't looked back since. Once I realised it was basically the same game minus the stuff I really can't be arsed with, that was me happy. I eventually bought 20 in April, albeit only Touch. Didn't see the point in forking out the extra for the full version when I'd probably not play it and there was about 6 months til 21 came out. Went for the beta version of 21 so had no choice to buy the full thing but I didn't mind. Trying to motivate myself to play FM more, but I just always go back to FMT. Only thing I really like about FM is that I can have custom databases. Other than that, there really isn't anything about FM that I prefer. I've certainly had more time to play over lockdown, but in normal times, I only really get an hour or 2 a day if I'm lucky, so Touch really appeals to that. I've seen myself play through a full season in only a few hours, as opposed to what feels like days on FM.

I=Since I posted that, I've had a couple of defeats and been knocked out the cup. Finding it harder to win games as the season goes on, but still 15 clear with 6 to go so looks like the title is mine. Sonderjyske in the CL could be fun/

Came to the conclusion that this FM is ridiculously easy. Started with Sonderjyske in the Danish league, and after 15 games, I'm top by 9 points with a game in hand. 13 wins and 2 draws out of 15. Even beat Copenhagen and Midtjylland away from home. Still in the cup too, however I did lose away at Rosenborg in the Europa League. Playing a 4-2-4 wide formation. Positive mentality seems to be the key, and once I've gone 2 up, I switch to cautious. Before that, I was shipping far too many goals. Since that change in mentality, I've not lost a league game, not just on this one, but on my Hearts save too. Sweeper Keeper - Support Full Back - Def Centre Back - Def Ball Playing Defender - Def Full Back - Def BBM - Support Mezzala - Support Winger - Attack Inverted Winger - Attack Advance Forward - Attack Advanced Forward - Attack 4 defensive players, 4 attacking players, and the middle 2 assisting with both, gives a good balance.

I'm sure many of you probably do this, but don't be shy to include ridiculous bonuses when trying to entice a player to your club. Be mindful of it obviously, but I started a season with Sonderjyske in the Danish league the other night. Limited budgets and needed a striker so brought in a 29 year old striker from an Icelandic club. Could only offer £120k and they wouldn't budge below £150k. Managed to wangle them down to £100k on the basis that I pay them £40 million if I win the Europa League. Let's be real, that's no going to happen in the next few seasons, especially considering I'll be probably playing in the Euro Cup II next season onwards.

If it all gets a bit much, I'd recommend Touch. On the laptop, it's pretty much the full game minus press conferences, in depth training etc. Same match engine and what not, big bonus is it processes much quicker in between days. I'd went from playing 09 on the laptop to 19 so quite the difference for me. No matter how hard I try, I can't get into the full version. Too much going on in between matches. I like the good old tactics and transfers approach.

I've started a save in Denmark with Sonderjyske and have a record of 7 wins and 1 draw after 8 games, and sat 9 points clear at top already. Spent a bit of time tweaking my tactics and finding out what mentality works best but even still, it's pretty ridiculous.

I had a 6-3. 3-0 up after about 15 minutes, got pulled back to 3-3 before scoring 3 late goals Not had it as bad as that, but I find that happens quite common. Had a few on the Beta where I was 2 or 3 up, closed back to a goal, then scoring 2 or 3 late on. Quite frustrating. Seems almost impossible to keep a run of clean sheets.

I barely got a month past the transfer window and was getting offered money for him. Best offer was 50k from AEK Athens, but he's doing well for me and with Boyce out long term, I don't want to risk selling him and not being able to upgrade. Happy to turn the cash down for goals. Famous last words...

b*****d! Also signed Bendtner on a free. Klimala and Bendtner as a front 2 in the Championship.

@Stellaboz Just started my Hearts save on Touch and signed Klimala. Just thought I'd let you know. He rejected me too first time round, but I tried again on deadline day and he's signed. Thank **** because Boyce is out for upto 9 months with an ACL. Just like he was on my Bets save.

For those who just can't be arsed with all the bells and whistles of the full FM, the Touch version is released tomorrow. Much prefer it for long term saves. The full game just grinds me down after an hour or 2. I haven't played a lot of 21 so far while waiting for the Touch version. Only thing I really like about the main game, is the custom databases. Had a wee bit of fun playing in the Lithuanian league, but once Touch is out, I can't really see me going back to it. I downloaded another Scottish pyramid last week while waiting for Mozza's. It's quite interesting as it's sort of modelled on the English system. 4 divisions of 20 teams, and the prize money is modelled on England too. Not overly realistic, but seemed like good fun. As delighted as I was to find Musselburgh Athletic included in his setup, I've just got frustrated with it as I need to build a whole squad and literally have no wage budget to do so. I've got £800k transfer budget for some reason, but despite that, the board won't let me reallocate it. Annoying.

I swore there was something that was included in game, but was optional but maybe I'm mistaken! Looking back, it's quite strange that they were so against Covid but happy to include Brexit. Especially in the earlier days when no one actually knew what effect it would have on football.

Didn't they make Brexit an optional thing when it was first released post vote? It would've been interesting if they did do a Covid database that was optional. It would be an interesting challenge to have some Covid restrictions put on your save, but if it was forced, it would just be an absolute pain.

The prolonged period at the start was a bit shit, but you can of course choose to start at a later date. My reasoning for not doing so was not wanting to miss out on the free agents (assuming the best of them would've been snapped up by the time of a late start). Other than that, I'm quite content. The only thing really that different would've been omitting fans from stadiums, but that would've been shite, particularly up here. I think if they included players having to self isolate etc. on a random basis, it would've just been ridiculously frustrating. Miles from SI said that while they want to keep the game as true to life as possible, it's also meant as an escape from reality and that making this situation 'too real' would just piss many off. I'm sure it won't be long until someone on the forums adds a modded database that reflects real life if that's what people want, but I'm quite happy to have it realtively normal. In fact, I'd prefer they just left the Scottish leagues at 36 matches, buy hey ho.

Has anyone managed to give anyone a pumping yet? I can't really complain, because I'm not losing games at all on my Hearts save, but I'm never really convincingly beating teams either. I easily go 2 up, and then have to defend like **** to hang on for 3 points because they always get a goal back.