Category Archives: Football Manager
FM12: Interceptions – The Art of Modern Defending
“GET INTO ‘EM!” – a cry from the stands all too familiar to English fans weaned on the game during the seventies, eighties and early nineties. And how many of us have looked to the “get stuck in” touchline shout when a game of Football Manager isn’t going our way? But should we really consider tackling as the principal art of defending?
As the game has developed with teams like Barcelona hitting so many passes, and at pace, modern defending has had to become more ‘ball-focused’ – that is to say the very best defensive units look to close down space and force their opponents into making a difficult pass. They do so knowing that the increased the likelihood of a miss placed pass will lead to an interception and, thereby, a turn-around in possession.
FM12: Asymmetrical Symmetrical Formations (by Forza)
Following the interest in his last article Making 4-4-2 Current And Effective, I am over the moon to be introducing yet another fantastic tactical study by Forza (Lee Scott). In today’s piece Lee examines how to turn a seemingly ordinary symmetrical formation into an attacking asymmetrical tactic using individual player instructions to devastating effect, and it is inspiring stuff! – Dan.
This article as with so many others that I have written has come after I found inspiration in the ‘real’ football world. Where though did I get the inspiration? From Michael Cox or Jonathan Wilson? Perhaps from Jose Mourinho, Andre Villas Boas or Marcelo Biesla? Well not quite. The inspiration for this article actually comes from the tactical lessons of one Harry Redknapp…
FM12: The Sir Alex Ferguson Experiment
Countless books and articles have been written on the personality traits and skill sets that go together in making the perfect football coach. But in the world of Football Manager these magic ingredients are more readily identified as a series of attributes.
But how important are these personal and coaching attributes in determining how the A.I. teams will perform? What would happen if we were to take one of the game’s greatest A.I. managers and put him in charge of a lowly ranked club?
FM12: Making 4-4-2 Current And Effective (by Forza)
The following article was put together by a friend of mine and one of the Football Manager Community’s finest writers and theorists – Lee Scott, otherwise known as Forza. I am thrilled to be able to introduce Lee’s article which is appearing here on The Boy Done Good first, I hope you enjoy reading it – Dan.
Those of you that are familiar with my previous articles on FM will know that I have written about the 4-4-2 tactic before in an attempt to show that the system can still be considered current in today’s age of 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1. This time around I am going to show that 4-4-2 still has a place on the tactical bookshelf of the contemporary FM player as a purely defensive setup.
FM12 Versus Real Life: Peter Crouch & Juan Mata
Each week here on The Boy Done Good we are comparing statistics from real life fixtures with those from the same game played out in the Football Manager match engine*.
*with the computer A.I managing each team.
All of the real life data has been gathered using the Statszone iPhone app’ from FourFourTwo magazine.
FM12 Versus Real Life: Robin Van Persie
In a series of short posts over the coming weeks I’ll be taking a look at how the players of Football Manager compare to their real life counterparts, first up it’s Arsenal’s in form forward Robin Van Persie and his performance this weekend against Wigan in the English Premier League.
FM12 Statistically Speaking: The Best Goalkeepers (EPL)
As a Football Manager season progresses the game retains an incredible amount of statistics, perhaps too much to take in whilst we are playing. But if we pause for a moment what can we learn from the numbers? Can it help us understand our opponents and improve our game? It is at the very least interesting to draw parallels with the game’s real life counterparts.
For this article I recorded all the important goalkeeping statistics over the course of one entire English Premier League season played out in the Football Manager match engine. That is 380 games worth of data analysis that could be useful in understanding how we can expect these players to perform.
FM12: The Importance Of Goalkeeper Distribution
Building a team that is comfortable on the ball and retains possession effectively can be instrumental to achieving success in Football Manager, and there is no reason why this shouldn’t start with the man furthest back – your goalkeeper.
FM12: Analysing Your Squad
I previously posted about the merits of creating a bespoke layout for your squad screen in Football Manager, a simple but effective way to make day-to-day management easy. There are other benefits to using bespoke screens, however. I use a similar approach to gather invaluable statistical data about the performance of my team and of my opponents, to spot weaknesses in my defence and make adjustments to counteract the opposition or channel our build up through certain players.
FM12: Optimize Your Squad Screen
The ability to change screen layouts is a much under-used feature in Football Manager 2012.
To help illustrate the benefits of creating your own screen layouts let’s take a look at the “First Team Squad” page. There are fourteen default layouts available on this screen: General Info; Contract; Contract Offers; Transfer; Home Grown Status; Full Player Status; Unique ID’s; Selection Info; Assistant’s Reports; Injuries; Fitness; Stats; International; Attributes.
More often than not you’ll find these layouts lack some of the detail that you wanted to view in the first place, whilst switching between layouts when carrying out multiple tasks can be both time consuming and cumbersome.
When I go to my “First Team Squad” page I want to be presented with ALL the key information I need to manage my team effectively on a day-to-day basis – and so that is exactly is what I created!
