Last time I tried to provide some tips for those who take rich and well-known clubs in manager mode of FIFA 08. Today I’d like to touch Cinderella growing up to Princess strategy - when You take a team from the last league and almost without budget and lead it to champion.
If You choose this way, Board of Directors will be rather calm and gentle, leastwise in the beginning. You will be asked to avoid fall to lower league (if You play in the very last league, a request probably will be to stay in the top half of the table or something like that), to win derby matches or to extend a contract with a team star (if the footballer from the semi-amateur club can be called this way).
However, Your aim presumably will be to bring Your club to the top. To set things clear, to the top in the supreme national league. Therefore You must improve not only Your gaming skills but management and administration of the club.
First of all, I should mention that even if everything went in the right way and You made Your club developing fast, Your budget wouldn't increase in the same tempo. I believe the mentality of sponsors in FIFA 08 (in FIFA 07 too) is programmed to estimate their proposals not for club results but for manager rating - manager prestige (a number near Your selected face in manager mode central)
Your budget can be increased by enlarging Your club's stadium (this action also needs money, but not so much in the beginning cause clubs from last leagues don't have big ones) and setting tickets price to high status. However, before making a decision go to the Office - Financial prediction and learn whether these actions will pay You back. I believe (but the only evidence is my own experience in playing FIFA'08) it depends even on the population of the town if more fans will come to the enlarged stadium. And it is proved that the the number of coming fans is tightly related to the fan support (those numbers and flag icon in the manager mode central). You should examine both fan support level and the numbers in Financial prediction before deciding whether it is useful to raise tickets price.
However, these operations have their restrictions. You cannot enlarge stadium to higher level than 10 (and it costs approximately 25 or 30 million, if I'm not wrong) and raise ticket price more than high.
Therefore the best solution for making money is the one I've already stated. Free agents market. There You can buy players for comparative low prices (cause You ought to pay only his salary) and then sell them to others clubs for their real market value and earn nice sums. It is more worthy than to send Your scout for searching new talents because as Your a club is undeveloped, a scout will have little rating and will be bring not very good footballers. However, scouting is also the way to get talents who will either good enough to play in Your team or expensive enough to sell them. I just want to highlight working with free agents is more efficient.
So You should upgrade negotiator who is strongly related with the success in the bargain with free agents. Upgrading and other staff is also highly welcome. Even if You don't notice the improvement in playing Your manager prestige will increase.
In the end, I also want to remind You don't be afraid of veterans or players with intermediate skills. As I have mentioned before, bear in mind that numbers and figures don’t show real situation even in videogames.
On the other hand, it is worth sometimes to examine Team management-Player growth. There You might find out that some of Your leaders have reached the peak of their skills and his numbers will drop in a few seasons. Then You will have to decide if it is worth to sell it and get younger player for the same or even less sum but with more talent and brighter future.
All in all, think like real businessman. Be active in buying and selling, comparing players and their contracts. Otherwise, do not forget that if You want some success the most important thing You should do is to football.
If You have got some more tips about the manager mode, You are highly welcome to share them in comments.
9 comments:
Good tips. Nice idea to sign Free Agents and sell them off; I've done that a few times myself and it works a treat.
One question, though: what happens if your budget goes into the red (i.e. below £0)? My decision to keep Frank Lampard (after signing him as a free agent) rather than sell him has put the future of my club in jeopardy (half my wage payments are going to him, lol). I had planned to sell him straight away for a cool £5,000,000, but I thought I'd keep him instead.
So yeah, are my days as manager of Notts Forest numbered, or will I get the chance to right my financial misdemeanour come the January transfer window?
And how many days left till January? I haven't fail to manage a team in FIFA 08, but last year I got into no-go area in the way simply like Yours. My budget went to minus and Board of Directors just kicked me out, although I would win almost all games. It took approximately five or six games and I didn't manage to wait until transfer season when I'd been able to sell some stars...
However, I want to emphasize that if You want player of the same rank as Lampard, You don't need to buy especially him (except he is Your best player, then You desire to have him, I understand). But if You just want talented but cheap players, search them in that "holy" Free agents list. Maybe now they are not the best but in one or two years their abilities will upgrade .
What is more, some famous and talented midfielders, for example, Snejder, cost free or four times cheaper than those like Lampard or Gerard.
I think it's going to be all right actually. I'm only a month from January and my Job Security is pretty much stable, despite losing about £250k every away game.
I don't mind getting rid of Lampard. I originally only signed him to sell him, but I decided to let him stay for a few games. I didn't realise he'd put the club in danger of bankruptcy!
Thanks for your support though. Hopefully my managerial job is secure! :)
how do you get a free agent then sell him
Yes, Denny, there is a problem. If You sign up a free agent, You can't sell him right now. You must wait till the end of season. On the other hand, it isn't very uncomfortable, cause he usually improves his skills (and price) till the time.
Sorry, but this is completely worthless. It doesn't matter what team you pick. They all want to hit the top 3 even if they have 1.5 stars. Manager mode is plain easy, but getting through the first season is pure luck. You can easily not have any players of any reputation pop up in Transfers. That means investing heavily in a negotiator won't improve your team as the players you'll get won't be good enough to start.
Your post assumes that people will play every game. I don't. I'm a manager. I sim them. Building the highest overall at each position is the best way to win. Chemistry really doesn't play that much of a difference. A bad team with good chemistry will mean that you lose.
In the end, Fifa sucks in this regard. If you want to take a bad team, it has the same expectations as the good one, but you don't have the tools. If you manager to luck out in your first season, then you just up the stadium and scout skills and fill out your team. You then up the negotiator skills and start cherry picking people as they come along in Transfer.
By that time, you'll have so much money you max out the endurance skill and then up the skill development for each position. You'll end up losing maybe one or two games a season.
I took the worst club in EPL and had them as the best team in the world inside of one season.
It'd be nice to say this mode is really challenging, but it's not. It's hard at first as there are unrealistic expectations, but then after that, it's quite easy.
I can't say You're definitely wrong, but I have one "but". If You want to be a pure manager,play manager games ("Fifa manager", etc.). It will be much more challenging.
Of course, it would be great to have 2 in 1. Great simulation game + great manager game. Unfortunately, market system functions differently.
Thanks very much for this, it's very useful. I used to play Fifa 2007 with my friend, and we took Scunthorpe to the Premiership - once we got there and won the thing, we still weren't able to buy players better than the Scunthorpe team of 2007. That said, we didn't invest heavily in the administration of the club. Is that the solution - putting great amounts of money into coaches, stadia, commercial managers, etc - or are clubs like Scunthorpe destined to be treated like League One clubs even when they're winning the Premiership?
WHAT IS THE HIGHEST MANAGER PRESTIGE LEVEL?I STILL WONDER CAUSE I FELT DURING A SEASON WITH ARSENAL AND A MANAGERAL LEVEL OF [8]EIGHT.
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