Was a bit dunted when i logged into FML this morning, what with the new stadium patch.

But having known it was in the pipework, i knew that having wages above my daily income was a bad idea so i didnt do it, i knew huge wage offers would be bad idea so i didnt do it. So my team has been slowly building, lots of youth and 5 seniors locked up who are youngish with plenty of seasons ahead of them all of which i can lock to me club, been selling the odd kid and building up a nice cash reserve.

Stadiums are a bit overwhelming when you first log in, but all the information is there plain to see, so ive managed to get stadium work underway, wont be ready in 28 days time but i reckon my team will be able to take the hit to income for a few days if i pay for the seats over a few weeks.

All in all i think FML is really becoming even better with every update, who needs that outdated and boring FM09?

So many changes have come in since Novemeber that have improved the game. The buy to sell meat market has been ended, the double your money makers are being hit by tax, the huge wagers have to pay even more to bid stupidly high, the youth hoarders have been cut off, top one SI.

Cant wait for the SI to announce what big thing their working on next for FML and im sure there will be even more little improvements too.

Can it be true? Have the Warriors gone out and signed World Famous players!? Have the days of youthful upstarts running about the pitch like headless chickens ended?!

Well, not quite. We are still featuring a prodometly youthful squad in senior pitch, but two of the players i signed in season one have risen in reputation to World Famous, Caceres our centreback has gone from strength to strength and is now one of the best centrebacks in the gameworld, whilst Adrian hasnt been the most prolific striker he has been improving on his scoring rate each season, and so far hes managed 91 goals in 160 games.

The third World Famous player is Bruno Fornaroli who played for us on loan back in season one when he was an U21. He’s now a fully contracted player and cost us just over 5million a few weeks ago. Whilst he doesnt have as good a goal ratio as Adrian, he is in fairness being used as a support striker, so the way i look at it 98 goals or assists in 134 games isnt that bad!

And the famous players dont stop there ive got two 17 year olds currently increasing in value every single day, Andre and Muller, no doubt theyll soon be hitting the heady heights of a World Famous reputation in the coming seasons.

With one game left to go in the AFA U21 League the Warriors have be announced as champions for the 2nd season running! The team managed to win every single home match in the competition, which is a testament to the fortress that the Dungeon has become.

One of the players to shine was Terry Dixon, he managed who to bang in 10 goals in 16 games! Unfortunatly this could be Terry last season at the Warriors as he turns 22 next year, and its highly doubtful he’ll be able to push either Bruno or Adrian out of a first team spot, but who knows. Another player to make there mark was 17 year Andre, a brazilian with the world at his feet and a regular first team member, when i say regular i mean when hes not injured! Andre seem to be Darren Anderton reincarnated, and is made from not flesh, but glass.

Wenger would be proud of my team, when biographies came in we where “applauded by pundits for raising the youth of the future”, some tactics skills later and my kids are playing beautiful flamboyant football that makes us one of the most exciting teams to watch.

Its funny, im not a tactician, i never have been. But after reading bits of the tt&f on the FM09 tactics forum, i started to implement stuff that id read about and wow did my results improve! So i went one step further and started to grab tactics skills that would allow me to implement tt&f tactics properly. The result? Flamboyant attacking football, more clear cut chances, and plenty of goals.

This has really brought FML even more to life than ever and im loving it even more now than when i first started playing a year and half ago. TT&F FTW!

In the first season I signed a player called Miralem Sulejmani, he was really a midfielder who could play striker so thats where I played him. He only managed 12 goals in 28 games so I shipped him out a little over what I paid, for 400k.
Its now season 3, and the team who had him decided to sell up, which was great as I negotiated a 90% future fee on Sulej. I did have a bid for him, but decided that with stadiums aroud the corner I’d be better off with the cash.

Sporting Romanian manager Stefan Horobet’s ostentatious Ursakis have won the race to sign Serbian midfield playmaker Miralem Sulejmani in the transfer auction that ended tonight at 21:00.
Their bid of £4,000,004 was enough to secure his transfer from FC Robert on a 2 season contract after sporting German manager Robert Raupach decided to end the auction early.
There is an additional fee of £400,000 (10% of the transfer fee) payable to Sulejmani ’s agent by Ursakis.
English manager Robert Webb’s flamboyant Mitsubishi Warriors receive £3,240,003 (90%) of the profit made on Sulejmani.

So now my team have cool 6million in the bank, which just happens to be the perfect amount for the stadium work I plan doing. Which means I’ll be able to pay for it upfront and not in instalments. Unlike lots of other teams with inflated wage bills from overpaid stars, our total wages is 170k and a daily income of 190k, so the future is bright for the Warriors.
Im really looking forward to the stadium patch that should be here in a week, the default stadium holds 7000 fans and my teams expected attendance looks to be about 26000. So the plan is to fill up 3 stands with seats that cater for the main bulk of my fans, the devoteds, and then to build a 3 tier monster stand that will be home to all the other fans.

Wow, its been awhile. Im still playing/moderating in gameworld Cantona, and i’d almost forgotten about my blog.

Before Christmas i was actually in the progress of putting together an all new look to the main site, you can see that here… http://addictedtofml.com/Root3/home.html unfortunatly it is a work in progress, a very slow work to be honest as ive been a enjoying FML so much for the last few weeks!

FML is also about to get even better, version 1.1 is expected on thursday! Tho the stadiums arnt quite ready and should be with us in another couple of weeks.

Season 3 is about to kickoff for us in Cantona tomorrow night, hopefuly i’ll be able to throw an update about that together friday morning!

It’s that time of year again, Pre-Season, John Bosman would have been proud. The first pre-season is by far the worst as when you sign your initial squad they all receive one season contracts, and you cant lock more than 5 over twenty year olds, so this means there is a huge amount of players going to wage auction.

We’re just two days into silly season and already there’s bumper pay packets being passed around. Carlos Vela went for a £140k wages, youngster Marquinos got £100k, and it was just the wonderkids picking up the big wages, Ledley King managed to get himself 80k!

The Arsenal wonderkid Carlos Vela left his club for a £140,000 pay packet, with his pay and transfer fee taken into account its going to cost his new club a staggering £5million over the coming season, which really is madness as that kind of money could have bought you a just as good player on a much lower wage and one you could lock to your squad, its likely he’ll be back up for grabs next preseason as I doubt his club will be able to sustain his wage for much more than four weeks, how do I know that? Well wage auctions are one of the few ways you can spend your projected 28 day balance, you can do a instalment plans with private deals but most managers will want the cash upfront so they can buy a replacement.

Its not just the signing clubs who are hurting, think of the teams the players leave behind, for most of the players their market value will be in the millions, but clubs don’t pay that, they pay acquisition fee which is a lot lower, sometimes as much 10 times lower.

What we then often see is seven days later is the player will be up for transfer auction for the players market value so the club can make a tidy profit but that’s going to be changed in a future update with the inclusion of wage x 10 signing on fee, it will help but is the best option to suck even more money out of the gameworld? Especially with more money sinks coming early next year like Stadiums, Profit Tax, Agents Fees and Competition Tax.

Rampant transfer fees and wages are about to be countered with rampant taxes, but is it the way forward? Will we all be so skint the game will become boring as everyone can barely able to scrape a dime together?

An idea I’ve had to make things fairer in wage auctions is to ditch them and replace them with a more friendly transfer auction, one that will benefit the club with cool hard cash. When a player reaches the end of his contract it starts a transfer auction for the acquisition fee of the player, teams can then bid the same as a normal one but with a slight difference, their offer can involve a instalment plans, but they must pay a deposit of the acquisition fee. This idea would make the losing club more money when the player leaves and the buying club would benefit from paying the player cheaper wages.

Not to say this idea hasn’t got its pitfalls, it has as the buying club won’t be able to retain their player, but how many players who go to end of contract wage auctions (with at least 2 bidders) actually stay at the their original club? That’d be a nice figure for SI to show us, id stake my £140,000 a week waged player it’s a very low percentage.

General Summary
Well, the season for the youthful Warriors is complete, we’ve had ups and downs, players in and out, we’ve horror stories and we’ve had legends put down there markers for the future. Its been, interesting.
AFA Qualifier One
The league is now over and we know can announce my immature side have finished in 7th place in a 16 team league, not bad for a bunch of kids. Next season they’ll be needing to take it to the next level though as we’ll be in the top flight! The club was sitting in the top five teams until the final 3 games (which we lost all of), I blame it all on an injury to my defensive midfielder Sunny who picked up a injury in a youth match which ruled him out of the league run in.
Whilst Fabianski did let in quite a few goals, it was to be expected with such a inexperienced back four in front of him. Defender Martin Caceres definitely made a impact though as he was our top scorer with 12 goals in the league, it was a shame striker Adrian didn’t really get going until near the end of season.
AFA Cup
The club scrapped thru the first round by the skin of there teeth with a 3-2 away win, but the youngsters lacked the experience and consistency needed in the cup as they got dumped out in the 2nd round 3-1.
AFA U21 Cup & U21 League
Whilst we pretty much average in the youth league, we did grab a 4-2 victory in the youth cup final against a team who won the Youth League, AFA Cup & AFA Qualifier 2. Adrian shone in the cup as he grabbed 3 goals to finish joint top scorer, shame he didn’t perform so well in the league.
The Future of the Elite Five

Fabianski – Whilst not having played awesome, he has been impressive behind a shaky back four. The future looks bright for the polish keeper, as the back for gain experience I expect so will his performances.
Current Ability 4/Potential Ability 4

Martin Caceres – Hes been phenomenal at corners, and works so hard for the team during matches, hes helped stop some of bigger names in the gameworld despite his age. A legend in the making at the club.
Current Ability 4/Potential Ability 5

Sunny – Has had his work cut out in protecting the defence but hes reacted to the challenge greatly, has defiantly been the beating heart at the centre of my team, lets hope it beats stronger with time.
Current Ability 4.5/Potential Ability 5

Martin Galvan – Not yet up to standard of first team football he has been learning his craft in my U17s, recently added him to my U18s. Whilst he is young and undeveloped he has show great potential and glimpse of what to expect from him in the future. One thing im not going to be doing is rushing him into the senior squad.
Current Ability 1.5/Potential Ability 5

Adrian – Started slow in my team, tho he looks good on paper and full of potential he still didn’t seem to have the experience or confidence for first team football. Tho this could have been down in some part to his striker partners being loanees. Towards the end of the season he really was showing some great touches of class to grab goals, I really do expect great things from him next season.
Current Ability 3/Potential Ability 4

Ones To Watch
Next season we’ll be seeing a “no loan in” policy at the club, what this means is I’ll be pushing my own talent into action rather than bringing in players on loan. Now that we’re in the top flight I don’t need to have the best team available and im sure the players I do have have the ability to succeed, some more than others…

Nebojsa Gavrilovic - alongside Caceres who was partnered much of last season by loaned in centrebacks.
Michael Muller – What a youngster, all the last season he quitly played his matches and got on with the job in hand, and still a young pup at just 15.

Robson Andrade – A lot of the time Andrade has been eclipsed by another Brazilian kid at the club, but his talents haven’t gone un noticed by me, improvement has been steady and I expect he will continue to dazzle everytime he comes off the bench.

Andre Augusto da Silva – The coaching staff believe hes ready for regular first team football, so that’s what hes been getting for the 2nd half of last season. Next season I’ll be looking for him to share his spot in the starting IX with Andrade tho.

Terry Dixon – Was a regular in the team at the start of last season, but when we ditched the AMC role for a more defensive postion Dixon was relegated to the bench. Hes been catching my eye though with some goals off the bench in the business end of the league, next season im sure I will feature him regulary again.

Roberto Grimaudo – Next season will be his big chance to impress, I’ll be pairing either him or Dixon alongside Adrian in our senior matches, its make or break time for the lad. The mails from the training pitch have been impressive, lets hope next season he’ll be grabbing the goals to underline that.

Expected Starting XI & Formation
I cant see any reason why we’d be differing much from last seasons 4-3-3/Diamond Hybrid, its great defensively I maybe looking at making a few attacking tweaks but the shape should stay the same.

GK – Lukasz Fabianski
WBL – Majd Younis
DC - Nebojsa Gavrilovic
DC – Martin Caceres
WBR –Michael Muller
DMC - Sunny
MC – Christian Mendez
MC – Robson Andrade/ Andre Augusto da Silva
MC – Branislav Yankovic
FC – Roberto Grimauldo/Terry Dixon
FC - Adrian

Transfer Targets

Whilst im not going to give away any transfer targets,  i am taking a look at the wage auctions and will be trying to bring in some experienced U21 players.

WBR - Whilst Muller is playing ok in the position im still looking at bringing in a more experienced fullback as at 15 i feel he i still to young, hopefuly i can grab someone with good corner taking as we lack a good corner magician.

MC - In midfield im looking for some to thread that killer ball to my forwards as this is one of the current midfields weaknesses, them lacking in ability and experience could be the reason why my attack has been fairly impotent.

FC - Whilst we have lots of potential waiting to partner first choice striker Adrian, it wont harm my teams prospects if i dip into the market for another striker, at worst they could be sold at the end of the season for a profit if i pick the right players.

As most people will know my team in FML is a youth squad, and as such the main aim of my team is to produce the best youth, which in turn involves me having good coaching skills. That means I’m working thru the coaching skills methodically to give the maximum boost, firstly I grabbed all the five levels of the Coaching Badges, this means I get 25% off the times to learn, which will save me a few minutes early on but at the higher skills it will be saving me days!

Whilst each skill max’s out at level five which is 25% boost, it is still possible to get a 100%. This is broken down as follows, each group is worth 25%…

Coaching Skill Level 1-5 - This covers all attributes and players.

First Team & Youth Coaching Level 1-5 – To cover all players in your team you need both skills, First Team is all players over 23 and youth is all players under 23, grabbing both Levels of each will give you the same effect as one level of the Coaching Skill.

Grouped Attributes Coaching Level 1-5 – These are your coaching skills that handle groups of attributes, like Physical, Technical, Mental, Set Pieces and Goalkeeping, one level in each of these will equal one level of the Coaching Skill.

Single Attributes Coaching Level 1-5 – Each of these handle just one attribute, so if you get every single one of a level, each level is worth the same as the Coaching Skill.

Still with me? So if I get ALL the level ones that would mean my players are getting 20% boost on any attribute/ability progression, with each level that rises by 20% again, until you reach level 5 when you will hit 100% boost.

So what does it do though? Well, all attributes are out of 100 points and ability is out of 200 (though the ability of a given players potential maybe lower), each time a attribute changes the game looks at the gain in points and uses all your Coaching Skills to boost this, but with every boost of attributes you also receive a boost in the current ability of your player (as ability and attributes are tightly linked).

For example – PLAYER A is 24 years old and has an ability of 100 and a potential ability of 150, his Finishing is at 13 (67 hidden points, each 5 is one that you see on the players profile).

PLAYER A now has an ability of 107.25 and a potential ability of 150, his Finishing is at 14 (74.25 hidden points, each 5 is one that you see on the players profile).

So if you have very good coaching skills you will be able to progress young players quicker to there potential, which means a good youth coach will be able to get a massive turn around in players. Of course you have to really think about what skills you learn in what order, and whether its quicker to grab other skills which do the same as a longer one.

A lot of managers grab what they see as key attributes skills, but in doing so they are leaving out other skills, but what a lot of people don’t realise is just because you have certain coaching skills it doesn’t mean that attribute will progress, attribute progression is a strange beast, it will effect what attributes it wants to effect, so having a good spread of coaching skills will mean you’ll be able to maximise every little change that happens to a player.

Well that concludes player progression class for today, I’m sure I’ll be able to bring more enlightening facts to the table soon. And please no questions on this, its been hard enough getting what I know on paper lol.

Well, we’ve done it, just 21 days into FML Retail the Warriors have picked up there first official honour, the AFA U21 Cup. I wont bore you with a in depth match report but I will point you towards the video section where you can watch all the goals in the 4-2 triumph.
It was in fact a scrappy performance by my team, with our goals being scored not through skill, but more from grit and hard work with a dash of luck. 3 of the goals game from defenders (only one from my player challenging the goalie at corners) but it was nice to see Adrian score number four in the match.
Here’s to many more official triumphs! Enjoy the video.

AFA U21 Cup Final.wmv