fm2006

[Spud]

Im doing shit in The Championship and as soon as a new cub comes along i'll be jumping ship.

[PHIL!!!!]

6 games left of the conference season for me and im top by 12 points and i am also in the FA Trophy final. Just wondered though, why the hell have my team started playin really shit? They were quite good for the best part of the season, but have now gone to pot?!?!?! Is this just because the players are gettin nackered as they havent had much of a break?

[pumbaa]

OK, latest update. Crowned League One Champions with 5 games to spare. The screenie is taken two games later. Now blooding some of the youth like Caton, Holgate and Stroud for the last few games.

Looking to build for the Championship. Whalley is on the transfer list already as he is shit.

[url]http://img472.imageshack.us/img472/1258/20060419stfctable8sa.th.jpg[/URL]

[pumbaa]

I most certainly did not cheat. Its simple to be successful, as I mentioned in a previous post - tactics and training.

Find a good tactic that works, and stick with it through the whole season, tweaking as appropriate to get the best out of the players. I used to develp my own tactics for FM2005, but I haven't had the time on FM2006, so I've tried various different tactics with different teams. By far the best was TTF's tactics - if you log onto the official SI Games forum, you can download them from there. I used that tactic all season and those are the results.

Training is probably the most important aspect, and much under rated and understood aspect of the game. There are two key aspects: Good schedules and good coaches. Its easy to find a range of schedules, but they are next to useless if your coaches are crap. So, do a search on unemployed coaches, hire as many as you can with good attributes, and then select them to specialise in one aspect of training, the idea being to get as many stars as possible for each discipline. You'll probably need 3 or 4 good specialist coaches for each discipline. Luckily, staff don't appear to be affected by the wage budget, so you can get as many as possible.

I was luckily financially, by selling Seano to Wigan in the January tx window for 1.8M. That put the club in profit and the board put 10k extra on my wage budget. Also try to tie up key players like O'Hanlon, Evans, Fallon and Ifil on longer contracts right at the beginning, even if you exceed the wage budget slightly it pays dividends long term as you don't lose them for nothing in January.

Of course, my next aim is to survive in the Championship.

[STFC Village]

Not sure if it's been mentioned, but there is a new patch available on the SI website, with all the January transfer updates. So we now have Peacock (ace), Brown permanently (good), Benjamin on loan (send him back) etc etc.

After downloading it last night, i decided to get back into it in a big way. Set-up a network game with my flatmate, he starts as Northampton (for the money), i start at Barnet (for Graz ) and then we see how it goes. Beat him in a friendly, but haven't started then season yet.

Then i started a game with STFC, which i was up 'til 5am playing. 4th after 10 games, unbeaten away from home. Finding a 4-5-1, with Peacock as lone striker is working very well. Took Cox's advice about training, and it appears to be working a charm. I'd recommend signing Gavin Strachan to work with either Gurns or Smith in DM, you can pick him up quite cheap.

[pumbaa]

Gavin Strachan is a good signing. You can get him for 2k or less. Scored about 8 goals from DM as well.

My first choice line up was:

GK - Evans

D/WB L - Nicho
D/WB R - Jenks
DC (L) - Ifil
DC (R) - O'Hanlon (until I sold him)

ML - Ndah
MR - Shakes
MC (DM) - Strachan
MC (AM) Miglioranzi (also Captain as he has the highest Influence stats of the whole squad)

ST (L) - Fallon
ST (R) - Curo

Curo got 25 goals, not the highest in L1 though. The tactic seems harsh fitness wise on the two wingers/wide midfielders, so you need good backup on the bench to replace them both between 55-65 minutes in.  

If you really want to try a good tactic, the best that I've tried by far is TTF's. He has a LQ tactic (hoof!!!) for really crap teams, MQ for L2 through to lower Premership teams, and HQ for the Chelsea's of this world - I used MQ throughout. I'll post them up on here if somebody tells me how, so you can download and try for yourselves. I'll caveat that by saying I've only tried it with Town, but the results speak for themselves.

I'll provide an update on my season in the Championship when I've played a few games. The aim is most definitely survival !!!

Note that I am still playing on V6.01, hence why I've still got Fallon in the squad. The new patches (6.02 and 6.03) weren't out when I started the game, and they wouldn't have affected this game anyway.

[STFC Village]

I'm playing....

Evans
Gurney-O'Hanlon-Ifil-Nicholas
P Smith(DM)-Strachan(DM)
Bopp(RW)-Brown(LW)
Migs(AMC)
Peacock(ST)

Forgot to mention Eugene Bopp, season-long loan from Forest. Fooking ace.

If you could post a link to the tactics Coxy, i'd be very grateful :thumbs:

[pumbaa]

Try this link Village. Its a .rar file, so you'll need Winrar to extract the files (which is a PITA I know, but....).

http://fmdownloads.net/index.php?&direction=0&order=&directory=Tactics/TTF%20II

If this doesn't work, how do I upload files?

[McLovin]

I've just started a network game, and been lumbered with a team who can't compete with the financial clout of Chelsea. With only £5m to spend, can anyone recommend some bargains who will wreck it up in the Prem for me.

Much appreciated.

Blackcurrant.

[pumbaa]

Which team, then I maybe able to help.

[Johno]

Anyone know where to get patches from? can't bothered to also flick through 20 odd pages on here to see if has already been posted. cheers.

[McLovin]

Liverpool, Coxy

[pumbaa]

Anyone know where to get patches from? can't bothered to also flick through 20 odd pages on here to see if has already been posted. cheers.

SI Games Website young Johno. There are probably some mirrors around too. Google Football Manager 2006, that should sort you out. (Sorry, can't post a link as its filtered by the work gestapo)

[pumbaa]

Liverpool, Coxy

Not played with Liverpool - if you'd have said Spurs I could have really helped you!

That said, there are some good cheap foreigners you can look out for. I recommend Lebohang Mokoena (RSA -AM/F C), Benedict Vilakazi (RSA - AM/F C), Anthony Vanden Borre (BEL - DRC Anderlecht), Daniel Agger (DEN - DC Brondby (if he's not already in your squad)), Freddy Guarin (COL -DM), Sergey Kisily (BLR - FC). There are loads of others around. Log into the SI Games Forum, there is a whole thread for Liverpool there (which I haven't read) which should highlight the strengths and weaknesses of their squad.

Vanden Borre may set you back up to 2M, but he's worth it. The others can all be picked up for < 1M. Even if they are crap, their value will sky-rocket at Liverpool, so you can always sell them off for a good profit.

 Probably doesn't help much really as I don't know enough about the Liverpool squad from a FM 2006 perspective.

[flammableBen]

Might give fm2006 another go later. Don't mind getting a few hints for good signings but just using other peoples tactics and training schedules seems like it must take the fun out of it a bit. Surely it's makes it a bit like just sitting through someone elses game of fm. That said my genius attacking 5-3-2 formation which used to work so well for me in the oldskool cm4 doesn't seem to be doing the job this time. But experimentation is all part of the game.