Building your squad
It is important to have a good balanced squad so that you can play different formations.
You can buy players who "can play on any side of the pitch without loss in performance". As the description suggests, they can play left, right or centre of the pitch.
This comes in very useful to make sure you have adequate cover for all positions.
As well as regular positions (DR/MC/SL etc) you can also buy "attacking" or "defensive" players - for example ADEFR / AMIDC / DMIDL.
If you choose to build a squad including these players, remember to make sure you have all that you need to make sure you can play a formation without any players out of position (as per the above post listing ideal player positions).
A lot of managers tend to avoid these players as it is easier to build a good squad with adequate cover for all positions without them.
I would recommend:
2/3 Goalkeepers
6/7 Defenders
6/7 Midfielders
4/5 Strikers
the exact composition of the squad is a matter of preference, personally I aim for: (assuming no anyside players in the squad)
GK
GK
DR
DR
DC
DC
DC
DL
DL
MR
MR
MC
MC
MC
ML
ML
SR
SC
SC
SL
Entering the transfer market
You can buy very good players for 1,500 credits or less, but you must spend a few seasons training them before they get to their best. Top players on the transfer market will usually go for the max 10,000 credits.
There is something called "saving". When you bid for a player MORE THAN 3,000 (lets say 5000 credits) and your bid is THE ONLY ONE over 3,000, you'll get your player for exactly 3000 credits and SAVE yourself 2,000 credits. But if you bid 5000 for a player and someone else bids 4000 for the same player, you'll get the player for 4000 and save 1,000.
Any bid under 3000 credits will cost you the exact amount of your bid (assuming that your bid was the highest one for that particular player).
If there are two or more bids which are the same, the manager who gets the player is picked randomly.
It is also important to note that younger players will be able to play for more seasons than older players. Depending on the age of the player when you buy, they will last for the following number of seasons before starting to decline:
15-18 years old when you buy him (10 seasons)
19-23 years old when you buy him (9 seasons)
24-29 years old when you buy him (8 seasons)
30-39 years old when you buy him (6 seasons)
39 years old when you buy him (3 seasons)
40+ years old when you buy him (1 season)
Playing Style
The best style of play to employ depends on the weather conditions for the match.
Note that although "Use Wings" is not listed next to any of the weather conditions below, it is a good all-round style. Meaning it will always work well, but should only be used as an alternative if for example you have injuries/suspensions/awols which limit your team selection.
Normal - Passing or Longball
Hot - Continental
Windy - Passing
Rainy - Longball
Snowy - Longball
Formation
The best formation to play depends on the style of play you want to use.
Passing & Continental work better with more midfielders, so 4-5-1 or 3-5-2 are often popular choices.
Longball works better with fewer midfielders, so 5-2-3 is usually employed. If not, then 4-3-3 is a good alternative.
Use Wings works well with more width, so 4/5 midfielders is better. For example 4-4-2 or 4-5-1.
If you have built a squad with attacking players there are relevant attacking formations to use in place of the above. (4-4-2 attacking etc).
You should always be careful to make sure you have the right players to fit the formation you choose - playing players out of position will penalise you. (see the post above for ideal player positioning for each formation).
In rainy conditions you will ideally want to play 5-2-3. However if you only have 4 available defenders, you will be better off going with 4-4-2 use wings than putting a midfielder in defence to pad out a 5-2-3.
There will often be some compromise to make between playing your strongest players or playing the best formation, so give it some thought!
Playing Instructions
This part you can not guarentee to get right in any match, as it depends on what your opposition chooses to do. It is a good idea to research your opponent to see if they always play the same way or have any trends in their selection of playing instructions.
Attacking beats Defensive
Defensive beats Counter Attack
Counter Attack beats Attacking
In the lower leagues you will find a lot of team's tactics do not change often from game to game and are easier to predict.
Once you get towards the higher leagues, the opposition will be tougher!
Aggression & Offsides
This depends on the ref in charge of the game as follows:
Wilmot Piddlethwaite - Nutter & offsides: NO
Cecil Dingberry - Nutter & offsides: NO
Simon Pieman - Pansy or Normal & offsides: NO
Michael McLintock - Pansy or Normal & offsides: YES
Butch Gravelneck - Pansy & offsides: YES
Jasper Goodhead - Normal & offsides: YES
Albert Boneshaker - Pansy or Normal & offsides: NO
Terrence Frisk - Pansy & offsides: YES
Terence Trendy - Pansy & offsides: YES
Billy Bludgeon - Normal or Nutter & offsides: YES
Lewis Lummox - Normal & offsides: NO
Brian Blinker - Pansy or Normal & offsides: NO
Buster Jones Junior - Nutter & offsides: YES
No ref - Normal or Nutter if at home, Pansy or Normal if away (home side fan will be the ref in this case)
Also remember that if your aggression is lower than your opponent, you are more likely to get injuries.
Boots
Which boots to wear depends on the pitch conditions:
Soft: Molded
Normal: Molded or Blades
Muddy: Studded
Hard: Astros
Frozen: Blades
Captain
Go for a more experienced player with high morale.
Penalties
Have a look at your player stats, it figures that a player with good shooting would be a wise choice here!
Morale is also important.
Free Kicks/Corners
Again player stats are the key. Set plays, passing, shooting are all important. Again high morale helps.
Advanced Tactics
Once you have mastered the basics, this is where you can start to play some mind games with your opponent.
Use the drop-down menus in here to change your tactics at certain times or events during the match.
For example:
You set up to play attacking style, but you think you opponent might change to counter attack. You might want to select "if not winning after 30 mins change to defensive" to try to get the upper hand.
There are too many variables here to go in to any detail, but once you get to play some top managers, prepare for some bluffing, double bluffing and triple bluffing!
You can also make substitutions here. Unfortunately the match engine does not allow for easy switching of formations as you will end up with players out of position with no way to correct them.
Therefore the best thing to do with your substitutions is to swap like for like. This is useful for some fresh legs towards the end of a game and to help improve the morale and gelling of your subs.
If you get an injury during a match, the most suitable player will automatically be sent on in his place. (assuming you still have substitutions left to make)
Training
First of all, it has to be activated. This will cost you 30 credits per day and gives you a training session at 3am (set between 3pm and 3am).
You can also get an extra training session by playing (and paying for - 100 credits) a friendly match at 3pm.
So for maximum training benefit, it is a good idea to arrange a full schedule of friendlies as soon as possible at the start of a new season.
There are two sections to training: the main training section and morale building.
The main training area will improve your players attributes. Each option improves different skills, and at different rates.
Using corners is generally considered the best choice to get a good all around improvement, although this doesn't improve pace or stamina.
To improve pace and stamina jogging is the best option. Using Defence training is also useful to help the defending stat to improve a bit quicker.
To get the best results you need to change your training schedule every few days. Leave it for too long and stat improvement will slow down.
I would therefore recommend using 4x corners for a few days, then change to 4x jogging, then to 4x defence. Once defence has been active for a few days simply repeat.
The other options can all help to improve other stats faster, so feel free to experiment with them if you want to improve specific attributes more.
Morale building is important too. Use nice rest before the afternoon matches to keep fitness levels higher (but only if you have friendly match arranged) and rehabilitation before the 3am kick-off to help prevent players going AWOL (regardless of having a match that night or not).
Players who will play in the night match, both starters and subs will have higher morale for the next day. Players who are left on the stands will get a decrease in morale.
You can see how a player is improving his attributes. How to do it? When you click on a player, there is all kinds of information about him. There is a dropdown menu as well, "view seasonal change/view lifetime change", and beneath it are players attributes. Drag your cursor over one attribute (on the blue coloured bar) and hold it for a sec. It will show the percentage of how much is left for a player before he gains plus one on that particular attribute (from 0 to 100).
You can then sum all the percentages and compare your players.
Private leagues
Under Competitions>Private Leagues you can join leagues and cups arranged by other managers. As well as getting to play more games at 3pm, this also helps to keep the team gelling up. It's a good thing to rotate all 20 players so you can use any of them at any time in case of awols or injuries. You'll know your are doing a great job when you manage to get all 20 players on 100% gelling. It's hard but sometimes that gives you the advantage in some matches. You can enter as many of these leagues as you like, but beware - playing with more than 5-6 matches per day will exhaust your players. Their fitness level will drop below 90 or even 80. Even with proper training you would not be able to keep it high.
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The above has been writen based on a lot of experience of playing the game. Some information may be subject to a matter of opinion and other managers may vary some things slightly.
If you have any questions, please head over to the questions or strategy tips forum where someone will be happy to help you.
If there is anything missing or something you feel should be changed, please contact me via pm.
Last edited by anthony@smokey on 02 May 2011 09:50; edited 1 time in total
