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Football Manager as a game has long been about learning and developing your own management skills. You won’t get far even as Manchester United if you don’t know what your are doing. When it goes badly and you don’t know what else to do, it is sometimes good to look around the internet and seek the guidance of others. I too have to seek advice and so I have put together some of the most useful guides from the Football Manager Community and ones I have wrote myself that will help you improve as a Football Manager 2010.
Tactics
Tactical Theorems 2010 – the most comprehensive guide available. Tactical theorems is an eBook that will guide you through each aspect of creating successful tactics. From the basics such as explaining the features of the tactical creator, to the more complex and delving in the scary world of analysis of the match engine and statistics. The guide also comes with regular updates that will attempt to explain the tactics from the professional managers and how to recreate them Football Manager. When the book was released, I spent the time on my train journeys to and from work to get to grips with this epic but helpful book. As a result it improved my approach and skills in playing Football Manager, allowing me to have a much better gaming experience. From the team that had a major input themselves in the making of the tactical engine, they are definitely ones to trust.
How I Play against the Top Four – It is important to assess game tactics per game. They won’t require big changes, but minor moves in your strategy can have a big difference. Playing against the top four can be hard, but not impossible. Small changes to your strategy have allowed me to challenge top teams in the Premiership and if I do say so myself I don’t have a bad record against them.
Killing the rot, keeping your team on form – I wrote this article after months of suffering. I couldn’t pull my team out of a run that had seen Southport go from top of the league to missing out on a play off place by a point in little under 12 games. After looking around at forums and talking to people, I was able to turn my form around and get back on track. ‘keeping your team on form’ is definitely a post born from pain and what I learned from hard work and determination.
In-game Action
What Do The Touchline Shouts Do? – This is actually in the FM Britain TT2010 ebook, but it is also available to view on the mainsite. New to Football Manager 2010, we are all having to learn how to effectively use touchline instructions. Here you will find each instructions laid out in a brief well structured explanation of what they do. Newcomers to the game might want to use it as a crib sheet while playing in matches until they are familiar with the shouts themselves.
3 Steps to Hold The Lead – Probably one of the biggest moans I about Football Manager, players unable to keep leads, these players often blaming the match engine. Alot is down to common sense, keep yourselves tight and deal with an on slaughter of a team looking for a point at any cost. Another article written by myself, appearing on FM Britain, where you can find me posting a weekly tactical article.
Training
How to understand training sliders & Learning how to train effectively Two guides that go hand in hand with each other at Los Wonderkids. Training has been an area that many people have shied away from, it looks much more complex then it really is. ‘How to understand training sliders’ is a nice simple guide that will get to grips with the basics of training. Offering a system and set of rules that can help you better understand and create your own schedules. Although the guides should be merged together as ‘learning how to train effectively’ takes training into more detail with examples and a logical approach. But for a subject that can be simple, the guide is pretty long and may take some digesting first.
Miscellaneous
EDT’s, DDT’s, LNC’s and Chelsea’s transfer ban – an FM View post that was produced not long after the release of FM 2010, a time when the Chelsea ban within Football Manager was much debated. The article will take you through powerful EDT, DDT, LNC files that will help you manipulate your game simply. Add yourself, your own media sources or just stop your least favourite side from being able to buy anyone.
Notes in Football Manager – This article from The Away Stand is not a particularly well written post. But one that really got me thinking and changed the way that I play Football Manager. Using notes as is suggested in the guide I have been able to add a structure to the way I play the game. Regular intervals I will maintain regular tasks in order to keep my team performing well. Little tasks that sometimes can go forgotten as you play the game. Something of a really simple concept, but one that was hugely useful.
Anything to add?
Have you seen any useful guides for Football Manager 2010 that you would like to share with the rest of us? Or read any of the above and would like to leave your own comments on how useful they were. Please leave a comment below.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Levo,
Great post regarding the tips, i haven’t really read all of them except for your post “how you play against the top 4″. Although i am playing in the lower league, i must say some of the aspects you touch on can be applied to lower league management too. Thanks for the useful guides, this really help on improving our management skills.
.-= Lye´s last blog ..Thurrock-March 2012 results =-.
I agree with you Lye, these are great articles. Quite recently I’d been searching for information to help me and found the two articles about In-game Action, linked above, which have made a huge difference to what I do during a match.
The funniest thing is, almost everything is just a case of using common sense, and I’m sure given enough time I could have worked these things out, but we’d probably be on FM11 or later by then.
What it’s shown me is that the match engine when it really pushes hard at the end of a match is challenging you to make the right calls and changes, before you’re overrun and feel nothing you do is helping. If you don’t understand how to react, it just feels like it’s cheating you, when it is in fact just you not making the right calls. Even if you do make the right calls, there is always the chance you’ll still concede, as happens in real life, but it doesn’t feel so out of control.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..January 2012 – Problems in the Dressing Room =-.
Well these articles apart from the ones that I wrote myself, where a huge help in the way that I have played Football Manager 2010.
The game although not perfect yet, is pushing us all the time and people are quick to jump onto the SI forums and complain about the game cheating them because they have the best attack in the league but losing too many goals. Instead there is material out there that helps people raise their skills and as a result their enjoyment of Football Manager. Games will definitely be won by using skills and knowledge as well as luck, which often people forget you can get luck as well the computer.
That article about playing the bigger four, was aimed mainly at someone who I came across on a forum complaining that it was impossible to beat the big four sides in the Premiership. But the rules can apply to playing many sides that have more quality than yourselves and I would urge people to try it out for themselves against other sides and tell me what they think or different ways maybe you could react to play against these big sides.
I like your article about playing the big four, which is basically common sense again. Since my last blog post, I have played Liverpool, and with the help of my scout and backroom staff, we came up with a sensible tactic which worked against them. I won the game 2-1, and the goal we conceded was a silly lapse of concentration at a set piece.
My backroom staff suggested I should close down Gerrard and Benayoun, which I did. Due to the pace of Torress, I went for easy tackling, no man marking and showing him on his weaker foot. I also went for closing down on the two DMC’s they play, Aquilani and Agger, as they have high passing skill. Although this amount of closing down was bound to tire the players a fair bit it essential. Although Torres is fast it would have been suicide to defend deep, as their would have too much space, but I didn’t dare push up either. My scout told me Liverpool like to play possession, so we could sure they’d have quite a bit of the ball. So I went with a standard strategy, and as soon as the match started I put the touchline shouts, “Retain Possession” and “Work Ball Into Box”. The reason for that is because the two DMC’s make it hard to get through them, so patient build up was the most likely way to get through. Counter attacks would be unlikely in this match I felt.
It worked almost like a dream, and when Liverpool did start to press near the end I took my AMC off and went with a pair of DMC’s which really set our defence up strong. The success could be seen by the number of shots that Torres and Gerrard had through the match, 2 each. Only once did Torres get in close, with our keeper cleaning up, and Gerrard hit the crossbar from distance. Another day they might have gone in, but that’s the little slice of luck you need sometimes, and we were catching Torres offside a lot as well, which was helpful. The stats for the match are almost equal, which I thought was great.
In the past, I think I’ve gone counter attack strategy and had awful trouble scoring. In 4 matches this now takes us to 1 win, 1 loss and 2 draws.
.-= TheZiggy´s last blog ..January 2012 – Problems in the Dressing Room =-.
Some good content here Levo, I’d like to share some thoughts about TT ’10, of course it deserved all the success it had.
However my advice, after a lot of trial and error, would be to try to experiment new ideas in the game, the guide from Millie and wwfan is a great starting point, but sometimes the less travelled road could be more rewarding.
.-= paine´s last blog ..Lost in the Forest =-.
I fully agree with you Paine. TT’10 gives players the skill set to understand the game and how it works, you aren’t able to experiment or tinker unless you know the learning that has gone before. If that makes any sense to you.
I would love to see more experimentation and I am always reading through the forums around the community looking at the different ideas that people are coming up with. The connection theory being one that stands out in my head just now.
All the guides that I put in this post are guides that have helped me personally play a better game and allowed me more freedom to experimenting as I do now have more knowledge of the game.
Thanks for these guides Levin! Took me some time to finish reading them all however they were definately all helpful.
.-= Bilal Ahmad´s last blog ..New Season New Team =-.
Good to hear that these article have helped you play the game, I think these guides show that even experienced players still look for a little guidence at times.
You enjoy or get most out of any of them in particular?
Yeah I also believe that these guides can still help experienced players. The articles I enjoyed and was most helpful would be How I play against the top four, 3 steps to hold the lead and learning how to train effectively.
.-= Bilal Ahmad´s last blog ..New Season New Team =-.
Some of these articles are great, I’ve just had a read through some of them. I usually struggle alot against top teams tactic wise, just do not know what I am doing wrong, but article really helped cheers/ The LW training guide was a big help too as I am interested in learning about training
.-= Daniel Monksfield´s last blog ..Arsenal FC – A Brief Guide =-.