RIP GW10 - long live GW15

So Mirandinha (GW10) was as successful as it's real life counterpart, who if you remember had a spectacular but short lived period of success with Newcastle Utd, without ever troubling the international game. Incidentally Mirandinha scored his only international goal against England - which I reckon is a sure fire way to get a transfer to the Premiership - and a reason why England always seem to come unstuck against less glamourised teams recently (well ask Modric, Krancjar, Pavlyuchenko, Arshavin et al - but who could ever say Croatia and Russia don't have more style and panache than England these days?)

Anyway, I digress, I just wanted to celebrate some players from Wild Geese FC v1.0 who perished with GW10.

Jean Il Makoun is a great destructive DMC. Initially I thought I was going to sign him for £2.5m but unfortunately as often is the case I got into a last hour bidding war and ended up using his buy now amount of £4m as the bids crept up over £3.6m (not worth losing him for the sake of £400,000). In addition to his physical prowess and high mental stats he is a very tidy passer and likes to shoot from the edge of the box. Not many formations utilise DMCs - hence their availability on the market, but he can easily slot into a role of MC, with mentality set to defensive and forward runs set to rarely. His great strength is breaking up play - especially against good dribblers, and distributing the ball more than just 10 yards to the nearest colleague. Against the best play makers in the game, set him to man marking and hard tackling and watch them go quiet. I sold Makoun in season 3 to fund the acquisition of a more progressive DMC, Marc-Andre Kruska, the young Dortmund player.

Damian Ismodes joined Wild Geese FC at the end of season one. He's a strange type of player. If you check him out in FM08 at 18/19 he pretty much has no potential left to gain (he's about 120 ability 130 potential). In FML terms that means he won't progress over time in terms of his attributes increasing. And this happened to me - he had more red arrows (decreasing attributes) than green arrows (increasing attributes). I had training level 5 and loads of other training skills and yet this still happened. However his goals per game average was 0.6. Either as a lone striker or as a striker deployed in wider areas he is a beast - very quick, very strong and surprisingly composed for one so young. Nobody else fancies him (I tried to sell him) and his AF never really went above £100k - but he's definitely one to consider for your original squad.

Juan Pablo Caffa is one of those guys who you might not want to splash out on in your initial squad but you should try to grab him in the 2nd and 3rd weeks when all the £100k to £400k players are being signed up. His attributes are rock solid if not spectacular (lots of 14s and 15s) but he dominates games from the left wing. He played in my team on the left side of midfield ahead of Juan Manuel Mata (who I eventually sold for £7m to fund an overhaul of the squad) - Mata more often playing in the AMC role in my cagey 4-4-1-1 formation. Caffa really excelled when passing was focused on the left flank and he would often get in excess of 20 crosses per game - which is very high for FML. His set piece taking was also massively effective for the team (Luisao certainly enjoyed playing with him).

The launch of the extra game worlds is nice touch by Sports Interactive and a chance to keep my hand in before the launch in October.

Your first week in a new gameworld

So what do you do in your first week? Everything is new and experiences come thick and fast in the first few days.

I'll assume for now that you have chosen your starting skills package and selected your initial squad (which was discussed here).

Tactics
Sort out your starting tactics and remember to leave your best 11 players selected when you log out. If the AI has to manage your team, it will keep your starting tactics and starting players if at all possible. During the game you may find the need to change your team tactics. You receive 2 minutes of real time for timeouts during a game. You can use these to make tactical adjustments and substitutions.

However, I'd recommend that you build 3 different tactics; normal, chasing the game (when losing) and defending a lead. Then during a game you can shift your entire team from one tactic to another at the press of a couple of buttons rather than individually moving players around. Obviously during the first week of the game its unlikely that you will have unlocked many tactical options - but remember to keep three formations/tactics ready.

Also remember to set all your set piece takers. You can't change your set piece takers during a game, and the only time you will remember it is during your first penalty shoot out and you realise your big centre half is about to take the key kick.

Shortlist and alerts
Building your shortlist is a key priority early in the game. You want to list anyone you think you want to buy sometime in the future. The game will give you far more feedback on anyone on your shortlist - most importantly when they are up for auction. A good shortlist will have 200+ players on it.

Another great feature of FML is the ability to set transfer alerts. You can specific criteria of an auction (DR, AF>£500k, opening bid <£1m) - and anyone who fits those criteria triggers a news alert. These alerts can save you loads of time doing manual searches of the database.

Choosing an FA
FAs take the same roles as national FAs in FMxx. Consider each a different country. FAs are split by time of day and intensity of play. I have played in the All Evening FA (AEFA) where official games take place between 6pm and midnight - handy for anyone with a full time job. There are daytime, midnight, weekend and various other versions available. There is also a social FA for those that prefer the social side of the game (social FA managers still sulk when you hammer them!). Hardcore players gravitate towards the Extreme FAs - one has no time restriction and one scheduled for the evenings.

Choose an FA that matches your session times. FA matches count more in your rating, and provide large amounts of cash, 50% of which is split between all participants and the other 50% based on performance. Not joining an FA is a bad idea - it will stop you from gathering rating points easily and you will be starved of cash. In the first year the FAs are run as qualifying leagues before a tiered structure is introduced in season 2. In the AEFA I was in, the first season was 4 leagues of 20 teams with the top 5 from each league being promoted to the premier league for season 2. During season 2 there was a premier league and 3 feeder leagues where the winners got automatic promotion and 2-5 went into a playoff for a promotion. You can change FAs at the end of each season but you will start at the lowest division of your new FA.

Over time FAs introduce U21 leagues and reserve leagues when there is enough interest (and U19 and U17 if you are lucky). Do well in your FA and you wil qualify for the European cup style competitions, the Gold Cup, the Silver Cup and the Cup Winners Cup.

Work out your best eleven
Play loads of friendlies, enter tournaments and meet other managers. Work out who your best palyers are, and who you would be prepared to sell. After 7 days you can begin to sell members of your original squad. Be careful of tournaments with large entry fees. This is an easy way to lose money. I'd recommend beginning with free tournaments, test formations and players, until you are comfortable enough to move up to cash prize tournaments. Be careful about who sets the tournament up. Does the organiser have a team of trialists (Lescott, Walcott etc)? He might have invited the worst teams he could find into his league to guarantee some easy money. Playing lots of games will give you a good idea who your best players are.

Make friends
Although the game is basically PvP, building up a good contact list will go some way to building a sense of community for you. Whilst the lobby is full of random nonsense most of the time, you will find similar people willing to share their views and provide their advice all around your game world. A few manners go a long way. Whenever you play a game as a bare minimum you should always begin chat with a "gl" (good luck) and end with a "gg" (good game) or "wp" (well played). Anything less than this may be taken as bad manners. Even mods storm out of games without a gg or wp sometimes, but that's just human nature. I firmly believe that you should be gracious in defeat, every dog has its day, and needlessly upsetting someone means there is one less manager who will sell you his players. The official forums are full of people who think the game is rubbish because they got beat. My take on this is the second you start believing your own hype, is the second you start getting disappointed. Only one manager can be number one at any given time, but anyone can play exciting, attractive football on their day and log off contented.

End of season chaos

At the end of the first season, and every season after that, there occurs a week of chaos. But it doesn't have to be chaos if you are prepared.

The end of the season coincides with the end of players' contracts. Normal contracts are signed with players for either one or two seasons. So every season you are going to have a fair number of players who's contracts will expire.

To protect yourself against this you have two routes of defense. The first is you are allowed to protect the contract of five of your players. When players are protected you automatically renew their contracts at the same wage. You also have extra locks for your youth players, but these end when the players reach maturity. You can protect a youth player for different amounts depending on what age you signed them:

16 - protect to 24
17 - protect to 23
18 - protect to 22
19 - protect to 21

So basically anyone outside your 5 senior locks and your youth locks goes to a wage auction 24 hours before the end of their contract. This means the highest bidder wins the player, and as compensation you receive their Acquisition Fee (AF) - which is considerably below the market rate you could get for the player by selling him.

Of the five players you can protect - if you choose to change the player you want to protect, you have to wait until the current contract of the protect player runs out. Sounds complicated but you will get it as soon as you see it.

Here are some observations about how best to handle this end of season chaos.

1. Forewarned is forearmed. At least 10 days before the end of your season, look through your squad and work out who's contract expires this season. To do this use the contract view and sort your team by contract expiry date. Protect your best players. Ensure your youth players are protected - you need to set their contract renew to auto renew.
2. Be honest about your squad. If it goes to wage auction, who is going to attract a bid from another manager? Who are you willing to increase their wage? The best option is to sell anyone who you think will attract bids from other managers and you are happy to lose. The earlier you do this, the less it would smell of desparation.
3. What is happening to you is happening to everyone else. This is a great time to improve your squad. From 7 days out from the end of the season, start setting up All Player search queries. You are going to compile a shortlist of 100-200 players who are potentially going for wage auctions in 7 days. The filter you need to apply is contracts > contract expires in 7 days. List everyone and anyone you think you want.
4. In filling your shortlist you should set up some queries to sort the good from the average:
a) average rating >7, senior appearances >30; sort by motm awards
b) 15+ in key attributes for the position
c) high acquisition fee players
Run these queries every day for the next 5 days
5. After 5 days you are getting into the money end of wheeling and dealing. You now need to create a query that isolates players in the last 24 hours of their contract, sorted by contract expiry.
6. When a shortlisted player hits the 24 hours to go mark, the wage auction begins and you get a mail telling you. My advice is to isolate your best prospects and bid big for them. 20 small bids will probably mean you will lose 20 auctions. Look at your squad and determine what your priority positions are. Make a short list of 3-5 high priority targets. What players would you like you have - these are your secondary concerns. In reviewing hundreds of players, which players you like the look of are not being bid on - these are your tertiary targets.
7. Remember point 2? Well if you like the look of somebody elses player, you should be making offers on their players. The chances are they will accept a low bid to avoid losing the player to the wage auction and only receiving the AF. As a rule of thumb I'd offer 2x AF.
8. Generally if 20+ managers are already bidding on a player there is little chance you will win the auction. I avoid those auctions like the plague.
9 Don't spread your money over too many auctions. The bank calculates your credit based on the assumption that you will win every auction. So bet late in the auction, and win or lose, you get your money back very quickly. Tying up your money in auctions you can't win is a complete waste of your time.
9. This happens every season; over time you will get better at it. See it as an opportunity. And sometimes it's better to sit on your money than to spend the next season regretting you signed Danny Mills on £75,000 a day because you got carried away.
10. Find some mates and compare notes. Agree not to compete with each other and maximise your combined scouting knowledge.

Judging regens

How do you judge a regen without the judging potential skill? Or how do you sort out the good 4 star potentials from the average 4 star potential players? Similar to the last post, I've analysed a set of data from FM08 to determine which attributes are correlated with potential ability.

Sometimes when you see a regen you head gets turned by 18 to 20 scores in certain attributes. Depending on which attributes those scores represent it could mean absolutely nothing, or something very special. Just like the previous post on strikers, I conducted similar analysis but opened it up to all positions. This analysis therefore doesn't factor in position specific attribute importance (e.g. heading, marking and tackling for DCs). So just treat it as a rule of thumb.

The five attributes that are most correlated with potential ability - that means the higher these attributes are the higher potential ability will be (and vice versa) - are:

Technique 0.49
Anticipation 0.47
First Touch 0.45
Composure 0.45
Passing 0.43

Good players invariably have good technique. This should be the first attribute you look at (ignoring position specific attributes for now). Anticipation, first touch, composure and passing round out the top five. Sometimes when you watch the match engine (ME) it's easy to see the effect of pace and acceleration on a match because you can see that some players are physically faster than others - and it's easy to assign that fact to the reason why you scored or conceeded. How do you observe technique? How do you measure composure?

Michael Lewis in his great book Moneyball, a story of revolution in baseball scouting, reported that young pitchers are measured on the speed of their fast ball rather than control or disguise because all you need is a speed gun. Control and disguise are much harder to measure, but ultimately far more important if you want a successful career in major league baseball.

So maybe when you think the ME is biased towards fast players what you are really doing is judging what is easy to perceive rather than what is really important. Just like going to a football game in real life you spend most of the time watching the ball - which means you miss the off the ball movement or anticipation of a striker. It's easy to witness a composed finisher in action - but how does composure manifest itself in your midfield general?

Out of interest the five attributes you should completely ignore when evaluating a regen because they have no bearing on potential ability are:

Influence 0.18
Natural Fitness 0.16
Long Throws 0.15
Flair 0.13
Aggression 0.09

You will often find regens with 17+ for long throws and natural fitness - and I think this analysis proves, if nothing else, that those attributes are meaningless in judging the quality of the player.

What to look for in a young striker

I've been playing with a data set from an FM08 save game. I thought it would interesting to interrogate the data to see if I could find anything of interest to give managers an edge in FML.

The first random thing I looked into was which attributes are most highly correlated with potential ability for a striker. Or, which attributes should I look for if I am trying to gauge the potential value of a young striker.

A simple correlation test between all attributes and potential ability revealed the following attributes as having the strongest relationship with potential ability:

1 Technique 0.60
2 Dribbling 0.57
3 Finishing 0.54
4 Passing 0.53
5 Long Shots 0.52

The number relate to the strength of correlation with 1.00 being totally positively correlated and -1.00 being totally negatively correlated. Although correlations can't explain causality they can prove a relationship. Which means by examining those five attributes for a player you can guess their potential ability - which in FML you either not know because you don't have the Judging Potential skill, or you do have it but it is expressed on a 1 to 5 star scale with a degree of inaccuracy built it. The higher these five figures are, the higher the potential ability will be.

Those attributes that have no relationship with potential ability include Influence, Aggression, Flair, Natural fitness and Long throws. The lesson here is regens with high values in these attributes could be complete busts.

The test was run on about 12,500 players so it should be robust - however the save game the data was extracted from the first week of the game and includes no regens.

Negotiation skills

One of the most important skills you can possess as an individual is an ability to negotiate with your fellow players. Unlike AI, humans possess radically different characters and you should change your approach depending on who you are dealing with. But first some general principles:

1. Good manners cost nothing. Being rude automatically makes a deal less likely to go through.
2. Never sell a first team player unless you know how you are going to replace that player's value to the team.
3. Don't be rushed into making decisions. If you own the player, you own the clock.
4. Never accept the first offer. A sensible manager's opening offer will be less than his maximum. Always ask yourself what else you could get thrown into the deal. Often you can casually ask for a 4+ star youth player to be thrown in the deal.
5. Every player has a price. Your job is to know it. Sentimentality is for the weak. Lionel Messi is worth less than two almost as good players to your team.
6. Famous players are worth more for sentimental reasons. If a manager has Arsenal in his team name, he is probably going to pay over the odds for any Arsenal players you hold. Always check which team managers support when you negotiate with them.
7. Some attributes are worth more than others. Players with 20 pace, or 20 long shots, or 20 freekicks will always command a premium.
8. As soon as a player opens private chat with you take a look at his players, sort by AF and review a few that look attractive to you. In particular look for good players not in his starting team or unprotected. He is most likely to trade these players.

The different types of characters you will come across require different negotiation approaches. From my personal experience, here are some personas and how I have tried to deal with them.

1. The vocal high ranker. Has a good team and knows it, always gets what he wants, knows the game very well, will never sell you his players but will demand your best players be sold to him.

These guys are difficult to buy from, apart from when they have contract renewal issues. They often take great pride in their teams and are looking for marque 'named' players. As such never forget you hold the aces if they try to buy your players. You may be better off exchanging your player for a few of his reserves - because his reserves will probably be better than your starting team. And two very good players are better than one great player in my opinion.

2. The fan. The fan either wants players of his nationality, or who play for his club (the giveaway is usually in the team name). Fans will try to emotionally blackmail you into giving him his favourite players by going to great lengths to explain why they love the player so much.

My advice is to be as polite as possible but play on their sentimentality. You can always get more than the going rate from these guys. The fan can be played off against another fan to create bidding wars.

3. The bully. The bully will roll up and attempt to buy one of your players by brute strength. He will tell you that nobody else will buy that player, he will tell you that you have 15 minutes to decide, he will only look for a deal that's right for him.

The best way to deal with bullies is to laugh at them, and make their offers public, a whitty put down and making it public is just icing on the cake. If they are bidding on your best player(s) remind him that the whole gameworld wants that player - so what makes him so special? The bully will likely move on and target the next soft manager he can find. Bullies will be dismissive of your offers on his players.

The key to negotiation is to lose any sentimentality you have for your players, know their worth and know the worth of anyone you are bidding for. You can gain an advantage by being polite, massaging someone's ego and being as flexible as possible.

What to look for in a player

People often ask on the forums what are the key attributes for each position. Whilst a lot of this information can be found on the SI games forum, here's a quick cheat sheet based purely on my opinion and my observations from beta.

Fullbacks / Wingbacks
I play very attacking fullbacks and look for 15+ in crossing, dribbling, flair, acceleration and pace. A more sensible approach to fullback talent spotting would focus far more on tackling and positioning. Slow fullbacks are a definite no, and depending on how much work you expect your fullbacks to deliver, stamina is vital.

Centre halves
Sometimes when you let a goal in it's easy to point the finger at the centre half who couldn't stop Eto'o spinning on a sixpence and lashing in a thunderbolt. However you will come to love your centre backs if they have 15+ for heading, tackling and marking. If your DC has pace 15+ you can relax those scores slightly. Secondary considerations should be given to strength, jumping, positioning and concentration. A player with 17+ in any of the three key attributes is gold dust and should be snapped up, as long as they possess at least average pace. Slow DCs will cause you to pull your hair out.

Defensive midfielders
A DMC or a defensively minded MC will find themself on the ball more than anyone else in the entire team if played correctly. Watching the game engine you will see these guys often have very little pressure when in possession. Therefore passing is vital. The person in this role should average 85% passing completion. He should also have 15+ for tackling and positioning. Tactically you can either play the person as a Mascherano (mark the space with low closing down) or Sissoko (chase the ball with high closing down) or Pirlo (deep lying creative force).

Creative central midfielders
Being creative in the final third is far harder than being creative deeper on the pitch. The defense is more packed and there is less time and space on the ball. Passing, creativity, dribbling and flair over 15 are a dangerous combination. The ability to beat a man means someone else has to close the ball, leaving one of your players open. Long shots for attacking midfielders is often the number one consideration.

Wingers
Quite simply the match engine seems to like wingers with plenty of pace, acceleration, dribbling and crossing. If you set them to high forward runs, you will need plenty of stamina too.

Strikers
All strikers should have finishing and composure. A lone striker needs strength, off the ball movement, first touch and heading. A target man in the traditional sense, ignoring the way Tevez played in that role last season, needs good heading and jumping, strength, touch and passing. Fast strikers need the skills of a winger with off the ball as probably the key additional ingredient. Often off the ball is overlooked - credit goes to the midfielder making the key pass rather than the clever movement of the striker who created the chance by their off the ball movement.

Setting up your initial squad

When you set up your initial squad you receive £500,000 towards acquisition fees (AF) and £100,000 towards your initial salary budget. You have the choice of allowing the computer to automaticall assign you a squad of players within certain rough parameters, but where is the fun in that?

Before you begin randomly selecting the best players you can remember from FM08 or the ones you find with the best attributes it's a good idea to have already worked out how you want to play. At a basic level this means if you want to play 3-5-2, you can skip looking for fullbacks. If you want to play a narrow diamond, you can skip wide midfielders. If you want to play 4-5-1, you only need a 2-3 strikers but plenty of cover in central midfield.

I'd advise that you keep your initial team salary below £50,000 a day. Your initial income will be £100,000 a day. At £50,000 a day profit plus you newly found overdraft limit, you can soon afford the better quality players that you can't fit within your initial budget.

Either buy the minimum number of players and preserve your cash, or buy additional players with a view to selling them after 7 days for a profit. At the beginning of a gameworld, player values go through a period of steep inflation as more money is pumped into the market.

Either way, don't get too attached to your initial squad. Select players with high resale value (i.e. young, good attributes and good reputation), when you look back after 3-4 seasons you will have very few of your original squad left.