Won 5-3 away against Reading, now 2 points clear at the top with 5 games left. Won 7 in a row in all competitions and have to play Chelsea in the FA cup final
Due to boredom I thought I would share my squad with you. I am in March 2013 and currently lie in 11th in the Prem GKs Davis Alex McCarthy (Reading) Ben Amos (ManU) Paul Power - 17yrs potential of 5 star Defs Clyne (Palace) Richardson Hooiveld Fonte Chambers (Forest) Harding Fox Mids Guly Chaplow Lallana King (Leicester) Cork Schneiderlin De Ridder Sessangon (Blunderland on loan, but has done nothing for me) Str Lambert Barnard Sharp Hooper The only players I have bough in the 2012/13 season was Hooper and Clyne. So I have a budget of £0! Doing ok but my team has a habit of letting in late goals, three times away from home in the last 5 mins I've gone from winning to getting a draw and the same a few times at home! Doing nicely though. A lot of players out on loan icl Shaw, JWP, Sinclair plus a few more 5 star potential players that joined my youth team at beginning of season Beat Arsenal 2-1 away and fan confidence was only 50% (good)!
i remember once i was playing either football manager or championship manager on my psp and i had to play two games in the same day!!!
In my debut Champions League season with Basingstoke, after three group stage games I've beaten Bayern Munich 2-1 (H), drew with Marseille 1-1 (A) (I was rescued by the most ridiculous own goal I've ever encountered on FM..) and beat Fenerbahce 4-1 (A). Unfortunately my domestic form has suffered as a result and after a good start I now haven't scored in three league games, and I've just lost 2-0 to Bury, currently propping up League One, in the Carling Cup. All of my strikers are just terrible domestically...
You got Basingstoke all the way into the PL and the CL? How many seasons did it take ya? That is fecking impressive work. I'm always Spurs and in my 3rd season have finished 6th, 6th and currently 3rd with 10 games to go. Only won the League Cup so far in 3 years.
Thanks I tell many people this and they accuse me of cheating, though I can assure you that other than the odd crash dump (only had two on FM12 so far) I have never replayed a match: Consecutive seasons, got promoted every season since I started. I've found this year's game to be waaaay to easy in LLM, though in the Premier League I'm finding it relatively tough to be successful whilst playing my preferred style. I do play the game extremely slowly, sometimes taking a couple of hours to get through 2/3 days because I'm obsessed with the statistical side of the game. I should add that my rise through the leagues was aided by an extremely flukey FA Cup final win whilst I was in League Two; to my knowledge I am the only person to have won the FA Cup on FM12 with a League Two side. I did get favourable draws (average teams who were playing awfully) and when I got the latter stages the big teams put out stupidly poor sides against me - Man Utd in the semi played Ferdinand, Badeij, Evra and 8 16/17 year old regens against me. In the FA Cup semi-final. Bug? You decide. They played a 3-4-3 because Marcelo Bielsa was in charge at the time, with Evra playing at left wing who was tactically subbed after 15 minutes for a terrible regen. That made it easier, then Badeij got sent off which is when I scored both my goals. In the final Everton had Tony Hibbert sent off and I won that 2-0, thus qualified for Europe, thus giving me a lot of income. So I have had some luck on the way, but LLM is still very easy on FM12. So many amazing players willing to sign for you at the start (Dalle Valle, Counago, Scorza, Casalinuovo etc) and those players are League One quality. I'm gonna start another game soon, but unemployed and try and take an obscure Portugese club or something up. As you're from Reading I guess you're familiar with Brian Howard and Adam Le Fondre? Had Howard on loan for six months where he got 30 assists in 21 games, and got Le Fondre on loan for two years in which he scored 83 goals in 101 games. Amazing players for me, shame Howard wouldn't renew his loan. I qualified for the CL in my first Prem season, finished 4th (despite a horrendous last 5 games - lost them all, only scored two goals) due to Chelsea getting tonked 4-0 by Man City in the last game of the season and me finishing above them on goal difference. I had to change all my tactics and abandon my footballing philosophy in my first season in the PL to avoid heavy beatings every week, playing a 4-1-3-2 almost every game, with a rigid style, dropping deep and low creative freedom. I had the 3rd best defensive record in the league, but also the fifth lowest goals scored. My forwards were just awful due to lack of service; Petrucci, Baris Ozbek and a beastly regen Scottish CB I have were the goal-getters for me. I've reverted back to my 'sexy football' this season with mixed results, but I'm gonna try and stick at it as I hate playing lumping it long and scoring jammy goals. Doing okay in the CL so far as I said, but I'm currently having a centre-midfield injury crisis with Mehdi Abeid James McCarthy and out for a month and 3 months respectively. Not good when my formation (4-1-3-2/4-3-1-2) is based around CMs... so I think my good run may be about to come to an abrupt end. I have no idea if/when I can even think about winning the Premier League, as Liverpool are just insanely good on it. I did beat them 2-0 at home in my first season, but they beat me 5-0 at Anfield in the return and this season have not dropped a point after 10 games. They're managed by Sam Allardyce as well (!), with players like Cavani, Griezmann, Robinson (absolutely amazing LB, I only wish I could have a player like him) etc etc. Going to be very hard to beat, might take a few years/decades that one. Oh, and I am a total scrooge in terms on finance. Strict wage structure; only two players on £30,000 a week, two between £20,000 - £28,500, everyone else way below £20,000. I have a player who I just bought from non-league on £525 per week, and he's averaging 7.06 in the Prem so far for me, and up until today had another player on £250 a week until he started bitching about a new contract, so I upped it to £10,000 a week. I will have to increase this next year when the majority of contacts will only have a year to go, but I still intend on keeping it very tight. I've missed out on some good players because of this but also convinced some good ones (Lorik Cana, Khouma Babacar) to come on reasonable wages and bonuses. I'm currently making a profit every month (ranging from around £140k - £1m - depending on TV revenue, player fines/bonuses and CL revenue), and my expenditure includes paying a £26m debt back on a new stadium and transfer fee payments. I've never had a club make money on FM before until Basingstoke - a far cry from my FM10 save where my Southampton side were losing £7m-£10m per month every month at the height of my dominance! I'm still playing at The Camrose as well - only 6,000 seats - so when my 16,000 seater stadium is finished at the end of this season I hope I can make even more money.
I agree, it's a bit too easy to bring players in to Conference teams. I don't think in real life the boards of those teams would allow their managers to have so much control over the budgets.
Can't give you exact stats because I lost my game but I remember him being a PL regular and I think, an England international. He was certainly good at any rate, but not an all star.
Just dominated all my games in Friendlies.. looking forward to the season..and i've found some absolout Gems... Played 5.. Won 5. Scored 25 and conceding 3.
My Saints team in 2012- Joe Lewis, Kelvin Davies, Bialkowski (Seen him first choice at Villa on one save somehow) CBs - Fonte, Loovens, Khumalo and Hooiveld RBs - Walker, Richardson, Butterfield LBS - Fox, Harding, Walker (if necessary) CM - Cork, Schneiderlin, Hargreaves (loan), Luca Cigarini, Marco Donadel Wingers/Inside Forwards - Lallana, Puncheon, Bajrami, Iago Falque Strikers - Sharp, Rodriguez, Jutkiewicz (Lambert and Barnard in reserves)
