Thetownend.com

how do ye?

i'm just into my second season in the prem:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/ben3085/perf.jpg

last season was a real battle to stay up with quite a weak squad. after lurking around the relegation spots for most of the season, i changed to a 4-5-1 formation and it seemed to click, i think i finished about 4 points clear of the top placed relegation team.

a massive overhaul in the summer and a spattering of decent bosmans leaves me with this squad:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/ben3085/squad2009.jpg

i reckon i could be on for a champions league/uefa spot this season.

i'm still waiting for my copy to be delivered  :(

Yakubu is a legend. He scored about 40 goals for me one seaosn as I led Everton to the Premiership.

Started a new game the other day as Boston United. In the first season I lost in the Play Off Semis, but am now about 10 points clear in Feb in my 2nd season.

Squad:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v247/Boeta/boston.jpg

I am still debating to get it or not.

champ manager 01/02

Calne in the premiership, doing well, finished 6th and 5th in the last two seasons and currently 3rd.

Who was the team before you change them to Calne? :?:

don't have a clue! think it was random non league team and just swapped them with none other than forset green rovers.

get a subscription to the world site. £19.99 til Aug 1st and get the game free

The date is 3/11/06.

Rhys Evans has just been called up to the England squad and Piemonte's Swindon sit proudly on top of the English Championship.

It is a good day

Ive lost interest for a bit

Feel free to call me a spastic but how the fuck do you boys get the screenshots from FM?

I have a photobucket account which is a good start.

I click "print screen" in FM
I select "to web page"
I save to my documents
Image is sort of there but as a text only table, not the high res images everybody else posts

HELP A FAT SPASTIC

PLEASE :)

Press Print Screen on your keyboard
Paste it into Paint or something similar (but probably better)
Save as a Jpeg
Upload to Photobucket

I can send it to you via MSN over-night if you want (as long as you have broadband that is)

Cheers Boeta, that was really pissing me off

My Squad:  http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/swindonsquad.jpg

The league   table: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/league.jpg

Englands no 1 (nearly):   http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/englandsno1.jpg

Super sammy parkin:  http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/Parkinisgod.jpg

his diving brazilian partner in crime:  http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/nene.jpg

Piemonte2, who is Barry Bierhoff?  :shock:

Getting bit bored of FM - waiting for Patch 3 in a couple of weeks, then will resume playing no doubt.

I've not palyed it much but I found out tonight that I can run it in windowed mode with Winamp, Mozilla and mIRC open without any slow down whatsoever. My P4 used to struggle with opening Winamp, let alone playing some choons.

I imagine this will lead to me becoming obsessed again.

Still not got it, what's the verdict guys, as good as cm, better, any opinions at all?

For me the last CM was the best. I'm still playing it at work in my lunchbreaks.
FM i'm having trouble getting into it. Just doesn't seem to be as exciting as CM. The fact that all the menues are hidden etc is a pain as you can sit there for ages just trying to look for players.
Still not a winner in my eyes :|

01/02 was my favourite cm, but i prefer this fm.

01/02 was my favourite CM, but I don't think I could ever play it again after my 45 season long marathon which ended not long before Xmas. FM is just as good if not better, in my opinion, with CM95/96 and CM92/93 making up my top four.

In my opinion FM is the best footy management game ever.

Once you get used to the new menu system it works better than the old CM one and the feeling of realism that was absent from the last few versions of CM is back.

Anyone know when the Eidos Championship Manager is out?

http://shop.gameplay.co.uk/webstore/productpage.asp?productcode=RM01295&title=championship_manager_5

Its age 3 and above :shock:  

I reckon you'd have to be one hell of a 3 year old to play it!

Have  a picture of Dougie Howser

http://www.kfcplainfield.com/tv/doogie1.jpg

Anyone got any tips for fm when playing as swindon? Ive ALWAYS been shit at champ manager even though i used to play it loads and try to cheat. Ive only ever had won successful game at it and that was on 01/02 when i got west ham into the champions league semis, come forth in the league and won the FA cup.

basically there tends to be a set of tactics for each game that win all the time. The best bit is developing these tactics and finding the players to suit the tactics (it's no use playing Fallon as a pacey striker that runs onto throughballs). can't really comment on FM as i'm still waiting for it!

BOB OUT!

Im rubbish as well thats why I lose interest.

 :o its not Reg

shit that is offensive. sorry i've had 3 hours sleep, an early exam and i'm starting to drink already! maybe i should take a nap..... na

Howard, Evans & Parkin are the best STFC players in my opinion, give them long term contracts with high release clauses (if they want them) as soon as possible.

Migz, Dukey, Fallon & Heywood are pretty good too.

Sell Hewlett, Smith, O'hanlon & possibly Igoe

Sign a right winger, Igoe is shite on the wing. I went for Stuart Green from Hull for £30k - he did pretty well.

sign Lee Briscoe & david perpetuini on free transfers

play 4-4-2

i just deleted it now, nobody will ever know  :wink:

just get pieface to play it for you soapy tit wank!

I'm great, me :D

I just started with swindon. Bought a decent right winger (andy robinson) signed perpetuni as well as eoin jess (which the fans were happy with!) 4 games gone, 4 losses, bottom of the league. Either im just shit, or the game doesnt like me. On the plus side though, i am on it as one of the regenerated players - and my photo is in the program files folder for everyone to see!

It takes a bit of time and effort. You've got to get 'vision' of how you want the club to play and buy players, set tactics and organise training to fit this. For example. I'm big on fast players, good dribblers running onto through balls, so I set player and team instructions on my 4-4-2 to incorporate this. If you're playing 4-4-2 and conceding a lot of goals maybe make one of your centre midfielders run back into the centren between defence and midfield, make forward runs occasional, close down everybody (something like that). Set training to help the way you play (eg. for me lots of heading at the back, passing in midfield and sprints and finishing up front).

at the end of one season/start of another, i assemble my squad for the season. i don't like to have to scroll down on my squad list (is that a bit weird?) and 25 is the max it can hold which is a good number for a squad anyway. so, i get my 2 goalies, 9 defenders, 9 midfielders and 5 strikers. then i pick what i roughly expect my starting 11 to be. then i find a formation for them - this almost always ends up being 4-4-2 or a slight variation on it. i then take a look at my XI, and think about what my players are like for the division i'm in. if they're not quite up to scratch, i'll go for a more direct style with plenty of pressing and hard tackling. if they're pretty average, you can leave most of the 'sliders' around the middle and it should do the trick. if you've got a decent side, exploit it by being a bit more adventurous and attacking.

simple.

I was exactly the same on CM01/02 and any other games where scrolling on the team squad became in issue.

Being stuck in my ways, I have it set on Position in FM so  there's never going to be a problem of scrolling. I like to have two players for every position - thus a squad of 22 or near enough.

yeah, scrolling down is like footy manager plague.

get those mediocres in the reserves

I went through a period of only having eight or nine players in my first team squad with the rest sat in the reserves, not sure if the extra fitness the rotated players got from reserve games did them any good though. This was in 03/04 though. Personally I hate having big squads, much prefer being able to field the same eleven for weeks on end and it's not been uncommon for a few of my players to play 50+ games in a season. That said, on 01/02 I had a massive squad in one game and nobody played more than about 35.

the last one i played was CM4 which was easy...

I've given myself the mother of all challenges - Stopping Hellas Verona from being relegated from Serie B.

Finished 14th, the fans and board loved me.

2nd season, i have to finish 'respectable' yet they give me £0

Defence for this season includes Hierro, Dailly and Granville!

Best signings of the 1st season = Guy Demel and Derek Riordan.

This season i overloaded on Freebies and have Massimo Margiotta (sooooopoyb), along with Van Der Gun (ok), Pieter Collen (ace) and loads more who to be honest arent up to much.

Oh, and co-ownership is stupid.

I had a game on CM03/04 with Atalanta in Serie B, and i can agree that co-ownership of players is the gayest, most confusing thing ever

I am into the premiership but haven't played it for a month or so due to lack of time. Just about to start sorting out my new squad for my first year in the premiership, I always spend ages looking for new players 'cos you can get some bargains if you look around. The scouts are ok but you can get better.

the problem with the scouts is that they won't find players that suit your style of play...

I always spend ages looking for new players 'cos you can get some bargains if you look around. The scouts are ok but you can get better.

Are you Swindon BWB?

I totally agree.

Being a smallish club in the game, it makes all the difference to spend ages looking for players who are transfer listed or available on bosmans.

I spend literally hours going through the lists, offering contracts to people who arnt interested too. Every once in a while, a non-interested player will negotiate terms with you if you can throw enough cash at them which makes it all worthwhile

Yeah I'm Swindon. On cm4 I pretty much released the entire squad except for Parkin on frees in the first year and brought in completely new players. Didn't need to be as drastic on football manager 'cos the team's not so bad to start with.

I brought in nine players last year ajnd there was probably at least another 50 that I tried to bring in and couldn't, I've already tried to bring in 7 for the new season including Freddy Adu, 5 of them are on frees but they're all worth at least a million.

in cm4 danny invincible was awesome as a striker! i got adu in cm4 then sold him to spurs for 80m + 50% sell on clause. they were in financial trouble half a year later so i bought him back for 6m.

i can't wait to play FM now my exams are over

I've not played the new one enough to find out if Adu is any good.

I always (and i do mean always) buy Lebohang Mokoena. Bloody marvellous.

Adu is good on FM but not god like. I've got him at Swindon in the championship and he's averaged 7.70 in 12 games so far.

Worth £3.3m and being capped by the yanks already at 17. He's worth getting when 16 for £500k compo as I'm sure I'm gonna be able to sell him for £10m + in a couple of seasons time

I play with a Small Database so good (unkown) foreigners are almost impossible to come accross, and on FM my scouts have always been fucking shit (found one player that I've signed and he never became a regular).

Most successful formation ever was on 01/02 with Real Madrid, dont know how it came about, but basically I wanted all my players up the pitch as far as posible, whilst remaining as tight as possible.

Goalie (obviously)

1 Defender in the centre (preferably defender/sweeper sort)

4 Defensive midfielders in a flat four arrangement (the two central ones were actually defenders, eg Rio, or Walter Samuel, the two 'wing-backs' defensive midfielders with a good cross, naturally bombing up and down the wings)

1 solid midfielder in the centre (eg, Van Bommel)

3 attacing midfielders tight in the centre, with the one in the middle playing a free role, the two just outside him running forward as much as possible.

Finally 1 strong striker holding the ball up (eg. Vieri)

This foramtion never conceded more than 20 goals in a season, and scored a shed load.  Amazed it actually worked, but my reasoning was correct, and justified - hurray for me!

First game went ok. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/2hats/premier.jpg

David Sanchez looks like a good signing, on a free from Barcelona B.

Not on my game  :(

this is some of my stats in my CM03/04 game.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v640/magicroundabout/Screenshots/CM.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v640/magicroundabout/Screenshots/team.jpg

Nice, any chance of a screenshot of Sammy's career?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/option30/parkin4england.jpg

I was so happy when he got capped :D

Here you go.
very good carrier if you ask me

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v640/magicroundabout/Screenshots/SSP.jpg

why are you lot still playing 03/04!? fm2005 is much, much better.

The man speaketh the truth

cos i play 03/04 at work and FM at home

Champions........Champions

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v640/magicroundabout/Screenshots/champions.jpg

with 9 games to go too 8)

My screenshot is from way back when, not played FM much.

finished 5th in the prem in my 2nd season there, so got uefa qualification. here's the squad for the new season:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v219/ben3085/squad2010.jpg

Colin Calderwood got sacked by Northampton last night, offered him a job as a coach and he accepted straight away. result!

My team is kicking serious ass at the moment. I've played 24 games and am 13 points clear of WBA in 2nd. I've not lost for 13 games, which includes 8 straight wins.

I'm just waiting for the unexplainable dip in form to happen.

I think I might lose SSP too. He's scored 25 in 24 this season and has a £3m min fee release clause in his contract (had to give it to him to get him to sign 2 seasons ago) and Everton and Boro are sniffing round him. The transfer window opens in 5 days and I think he might go as he wont sign as new deal.

I've offered him EVERYTHING I can, including £375k signing on fee, £1500 a goal/game/assist, promotion wage rise of 25% and he still wont sign.

Any ideas?

just do that and whack the min fee up to 8 or 9milliion. if you're going to lose him atleast get some serious wedge.

this thread always makes me want to play it, and its quite a nice hangover cure too  :-))(

Thankfully no-ones bid for him yet.

I fianally lost last night after 18 games unbeaten, the last 11 of which were victories. (club records all round!) I'm 15 points clear after 30 games now. If i dont get promoted to the prem i may have to throw the PC out of the window.

Injuries and as a consequence of that knackered players finally caught up with me. At the moment i have Parkin, Evans, Otsemobor, Quashie, Lionel Morgan, Brian Howard, Pekka Lagerblom all injured with some of them out for the rest of the season. They'd all be in my starting XI apart from Morgan.

On the plus side I signed Andrea Gasbarroni for £400k. He was a god on my Swindon game on CM 03/04 and i'm hoping he's as good on this one. early signs are promising, I urge you all to sign him

Just coming up to Christmas for me in the premiership and after 19 games two back to back wins have taken me from the relegation zone to 10th. The board have increased my wage budget so I can afford to pay more than £3000/week wages which means new signings for the January transfer window.  8) They'll have to be frees though as I've used up my 500k transfer budget already. :|

Might still have a chance of an uefa place.

£500k transfer budget for the prem????? :shock:

I've got that to look forward to :?

The STFC board are a bunch of cunts in this game

I got sacked for asking the board for money,im waiting for a new job to come up.

Yep, almost my entire team is free transfers, they do give you 100% of any sales but I've only sold Parkin for money so far.

The oxford board must be much more generous judging by those wages, my highest earning player is on about £3,200 a week at the moment.

Really?

I've got players on 6k a week in the championship, and can offer up to £7250 for key players

Yeah the bastards only increased it after the transfer window was shut, not sure why but I'm only in my 3rd season, I can offer up to 12k a week now so I've signed a promising player for 9k a week for January which'll be the new highest earner instead of Rhys.

I've asked them for more transfer money a few times but they think I have enough and were starting to get annoyed.

in cm4 i kept asking for a stadium increase. after saying yes 15 times they got pissed off and sacked me. maybe it's like real life, and some Swindon Council member helped write the game

Ive only just finished my first season with swindon - champions of league 1!

Had to sell parkin to Millwall in january coz he had a 1.1 million release clause in his contract, and i was gutted coz he was top goalscorer by a million miles. and even playing half the season without him, he was still top scorer of league 1 come the end of the season. My strike force is now Jason Norville, Freddy Eastwood, Freddy Adu and Rory Fallon so im hoping thats gonna be enough to keep me up this season. Also Sammy Igoe is by far the best player on my team - he finished last season with league 1 player of the year, 6 player of the months and an average rating of 8.21.

For a championship club, with £300k to spend and who doesnt need strikers, can anyone recommend the best player to buy?

Jon Otesmobor, maybe too expensive though.

My advice would be to concentrate on free transfers, theres loads of good 'uns available at the end of the first season.

Dean Richards
Florent Laville
Tugay
Micheal Hughes

they're all old, but good and have at least a season left in them.

If you can get Kenny Lunt on a free then definitely get him, he is class in right midfield. Get David Sanchez if you can get him on a free and Youssef Safri is worth getting too.

I've got Safri too. Hes good and steady. Cant shoot for shit though :?

David Sanchez AMC

Cant remember where I got him from bit he was free and finished number 1 in the overall player rankings was voted players player of the year  and is currently worth 4 million after a season  8)

I went back to older save so Im still in the job.

the only player i think i've bought is the goalie, lastuvka. he's a class act and cost about £2.5m.

Wage bill is around £600k, bugeted at £425k. but the £10m tv money will cover the over-spend.

Transfer budget wise they gave me about £3m in my first season, £6m in the second, and now £10m.

My wage budget was £50k, it's now £200k but the actual wage bill is £51,000 so I'm way under.

I bought David Sanchez from Barcelona B. He's my top rated player so far in the premiership. Now 7 games unbeaten. 8)

I have a 75k p/w wage budget at the moment. Wages total £97.5k. doh.

If you whinge at them for more wages they tell you to fuck off then just put it up without telling you a week later I've found

Still waiting for a new disc as my CM 01/02 disc broke! so, my life is worthless at the moment, i was close to winning the premiership with Calne Town!  :x

i started the game unemployed and heckled the mansfield manager, a week later he got sacked and i was offered the job, spent two season there taking them from 18th to 10th to 6th and lost in the play-off semis, at barnsley now in league 2, top of the league, beat man utd in the fa cup 3rd round crewe in the 4th and have chelsea in the 5th round. come on the tykes!

My Boston side that just got promoted from League 1:

GK: Iain Turner (from Everton, free)
RB: Lee Beevers
LB: Matt Lockwood (Gillingham, 2k)
CB: Ronnie Wallwork (Hull, free)
CB: Mark Jones (Macclesfield, 20k)
RM: Josh Low (Northampton, free)
LM: Matt O'Halloran
CM: David Noble
CM: Simon Rusk
AC: Juan Ugarte (Dorchester, free)
AC: Rustum Al-Ali (Ethopian Bunna, free)

lost to chelsea but got the barnsley up with 6 games to spare, get in there!

Ive played one game as swindon in the championship and lost 4-0 at home to gillinham and andy hessentiler said we were going to go down. I got all disheartened and havnt played it since coz i hate getting thrashed every game.

well it just arrived through my letter box. don't know whether to install and play, or crack one out over it tbh

crack one out, then play.

pause for a bit, crack another one out, play some more

I've just won the championship by a few points  
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/championshipwinners.jpg

Parkin did ok

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/Parkinisgod1.jpg

The new messiah

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/andreagasbarroni.jpg

The championship winning squad

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v494/Piemonte/swindonsquad2.jpg

When playing this if a rubbish player gets 9/10 during the match and a half decent player gets 7/10 whos playing better during that match?

mmmmmmmmm

I guess the rubbish player with a 9 would be playing better as the ratings are based on pass/tackle/header./shot completion and all that.

not going too well for me at the start! played 11, won 4, drawn 2, lost 5.
Howard out for 3 months after game number 2. Managed to bring in Perpetuini on a free but he's also injured. Sold Heywood for £20,000 + Danny Allsopp, who has got 3 in 2 for me so i'm quite pleased. Tactics have been sorted so time to move up the table! Got a few other players but they are back-ups at the moment, they're more for the future.

Stuart Green (hull 30k) trevor benjamin (leicester 24k) & Tony Dinning Wigan 6k) were superb for me at that point of the game.

hope that helps a bit

yeah i've tried to get green but he's going nowhere fast - valuation now 95k as well. got andy ducros instead from barnet. looked to be shit at first but he turns in decent performances every game now. cheers for the tips though pieface! another couple of signings just on their way now - i'm well into it already!

I've got to say that its a fucking brilliant game. I'm a sucker for being adicted to football manager type games but this is the nuuts.

Being able to gob off at other managers is great 8)

peter taylor was the first i mouthed off at. beat them 3-0 as well

For my second premiership season they gave me a huge wage budget of £500k and £10 million to spend which made it a lot easier.

I bought Fabrizio Miccoli on a free from Fiorentina for £50,000 a week wages and he was the top scorer in the premiership with 33 goals and an average rating of 7.95

If you get the chance to buy him DO IT!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/2hats/miccoli.jpg

Also bought Jonathan Spector from Manchester United for £2.6 million, Christian Pander on a free from Benfica, Antonia Di Natale who averaged 7.98, the highest of any player in the premiership, Arni Gautur Arason who finally replaced Evans as my number one, Steed Malbraque who was outstanding, Gabriel Milito also quality and my record signing £6 million compensation for Goran Gavrancic from Dinamo Kiev.

Managed to win the premiership after a close fight against Arsenal and Chelsea. Get in! :D  :D Kept the 5-4-1 formation and only conceded 4 goals at home all season.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/2hats/premtable.jpg

Here's my squad:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/2hats/premsquad.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v367/2hats/premsquad2.jpg

Fair play Ben!

Do you only have Rhys left from the current team and any decent youth players come through?

What's with Ben Tal Haim, is he the very same Bolton diver?

Just Rhys in the first team but Garrard and Caton are in the reserves, no way near good enough to play though. O'Hanlon played a couple of games at the start of the season but I sold him to Burnley. Let the rest of them go on frees.

Only youth player I've played is Kyle Lapham in the first season, most of the team were expiring contracts or out of contract.

It is the same Ben Tal Haim, not such a great signing but he was alright as backup.

Fucking fair play BWB! thats one hell of an achievement :beers

I'm on the verge of starting my first prem season. I tried to sign Micolli on a free, but he turned down my £10k a week wage for £50k a week and champions league football at Juventus. Fuck knows why :shock:

I was given a full £600k to spend to keep us in the premiership (cheers board) and a wage budget of £120k a week. Which wasnt great as I have £17m in the bank after prem TV money. After a few weeks of moaning they upped the wage budget to £200k p/w which is a bit more like it.

I've signed:
Adam Drury (D/DM L) free from Naaaarwich
Calum Davenport (DC) from spurs (Free)
Brett Emerton (D/AM RC) free from blackburn
Gary Docherty (D/S C) free from Naaaarwich again
Gavin McCann (DM C) free from Villa

SSP has just torn his groin muscle in the last pre season game which has totally fucked me over as I've been unable to sign an good quality striker on a free.

Any ideas anyone? loan or less than £700k :oops:

That's about what I got in my first season but I was only paying £50k a week wages so I managed to make a £20 million profit in that season from prize money and tv money so they gave me loads more for the second season.

Yeah you won't get Miccoli for less than 50k I was amazed when he accepted that. I'm trying to convince Ledley King to come now but he's not accepting yet.

I'm bored of my Boston game - about 19th in the Championship. I'm gonna start a new game and move up to a normal sized database.

Had a fairly disastrous pre-season with countless offers for my three best players, Miccoli, Malbranque and Di Natale.

Di Natale left for his minimum free release clause of just £4m,  :cry: Miccoli's is £16m so I've still got him but turned down a £12m offer. Malbranque is probably going to leave soon as he won't accept a new contract.

Must remember to get  higher minimum fee release clauses.

Di Natale is proving very difficult to replace as he was the best player in the premiership last year.

Just got the Totenham job 2009 .Got fed up with Swindons stingy directers .2.1m in 2009 buys you nought! :cry:

Malbranque has gone to Arsenal for £17 million. Not a bad price especially as he had a £4.9m release clause but he'll also be very hard to replace.

I'm nearly at the end of first season and I'm third with four games to play... someone recommend some players please. I badly need a right winger next season and probably a new striker :(

Try Marcelo Gallardo from River, or Carlos Fernando Figuero....

Jamie McMaster is brilliant on the right wing, should be able to get him on loan. He has an average rating of well over 8.

Leandre Griffit from Southampton is another great winger for League one/Championship.

Get Abel. simply class on right wing, or Devlin, the Scottish chap. Get Freddy Guarin as soon as you can afford him. I played Griffit in the centre, running forward. Scored more goals than each of my strikers  :beers