Just lost out on b2b promotions, lost to Leeds on final day and Boro overtook me by 1 point. Beat them previous week too.

Love playing with the latest patches. Blackpool was easymode anyway, as they give you 15mil just after September so you can splash the cash on loans + Jan window, but the updates for the players means you can sign no-one and still go up easily.

Wilfried Zaha is a beast as well.

Gone a bit old school whilst i decide whether or not to buy FM12, I am playing FM 2009.

Thing is, i get impatient easily, so i create a new user as manager of Man City, buy all of my teams transfer listed players that dont get bids for lots of money, and then its easy! I cant help it!

Going to buy FM12 and start from the bottom and not cheat though

Lol. Thats funny. I hated FM09

Yeah i do at the moment, still really addictive though. Its just that I know all the decent players at the start:

Lewandowski, Mascio, Marquinos, Sakho etc etc

Do need a challenge, found the new one for £12.99 online so think i might just get it!

I think everyone's done it at some stage.

Football Manager is one of those games where most people that play it only enjoy when they are winning. I know I can win 28 games on the spin and I'll love the game. But when I fail to win, drawing at home to a poor side, I get really frustrated with it and end up exiting mid match to avoid a defeat.

The current FM is too easy however, success is inevitable rather than achievement based. I started my latest game as West Ham, got promoted in the second season after a play off defeat the first year, but left to join Everton instead of taking the Hammers up. I then finished 16th in my first season as the squad was simply awful. But I won the double in my second season, with a team that isn't that brilliant:

GK Courtois
DR Romario
DL Fabio
DC Abdennour
DC Mbia
ML Ljalic
MR Veiss
MC Rodwell
MC Poli
AMC Wilshere
FC Rossi

I signed Courtois, Romario, Fabio, Abdennour, Mbia, Ljalic, Viess, Poli, Wilshere, Rossi and a few more squad players in the one pre season all on £0 up front and big money over 48 months. That kind of payment structure might well happen in real life, but it wouldn't be allowed to the extent above. I'm Everton, £16m overdrawn and with £230m being paid off on transfers over 4 years. Completely unrealistic. What happened on the game is the club lost £8m a month and the balance went down until it triggered a purchase of the club. That then wiped out the debt and gave me another £230m to spend This always happens on the game.

There should be some form of financial responsibility put into the game, based on the personality of the Chairman or owners. So some wouldn't permit such silly spending, whilst others would do a Leeds but based on you achieving something. I was allowed to spend that money based on promising mid table and there were no repercussions of the club going £200m in debt by the end of that year at all. Because I'd stayed within the salary budget the club were delighted with my financial prudence

I wonder how they will build the financial fair play system into future versions

To be honest, that sums up most video games (and most things in general really)


Easily the best signing a lower league manager can make on the game, as well as Samba Kanoute.

Took the plunge and bought FM12 for £12! Bargain!

Gets delivered tomorrow so got 24hours to decide on which skins to download, facepacks, kit packs etc.

Will probably start with Man Utd for a season just to find my feet on the game again, and then move on to lower league side - Huddersfield or Crawley I think

Poached from Fleetwood by Palace, struggling near the foot of League One. £25m transfer kitty to spend in Jan though