Part 3: Chapter the Third: Shut up and take my money!

Chapter the Third: Shut up and take my money!
July 16, 2013-July 26, 2013

The day after our thrashing at the hands of Fleetwood I get introduced to the assembled members of the press. Press conferences usually bookend matches and sometimes occur when you bring a new player. The media tends to ask questions about the results of the recent game, the performance of players, strategy, your relationship with opposing players and coaches, and potential future transfers and signings. In this case, they're wondering what I'll do to the staff that was present when I arrived.



“You brute! When are you planning on firing everyone?”
“I already did it 35 minutes ago.”



It's generally not a good idea to get on the wrong side of the owners straight off the bat, but there will be times when complaining to the press might help you get something you want, such as new training facilities or a larger transfer budget. Generally you need to be firmly entrenched in your job, which will make it hard for them to just fire you for impertinence.



Can it really be called a press conference if only one reporter shows up? I guess it's understandable, but you'd think we'd at least have some local bloggers who wanted free coffee and danishes. But at least this means we won't be bothered while we try and build our team.



And this is why having your potential transfers leak is a bad thing. I've put contract offers to a dozen or so players, based upon what I knew from my original scout. The problem is that we're a bottom rung team, and players tend to go to the highest level where they can get a job even if that means being a backup instead of a full time player. Moreover, most of them are wanted by other teams who are also offering them contracts.



Board meetings. Football Manager does a great job with verisimilitude here, board meetings in the game are as boring and frustrating as in real life. You can request a meeting with the board more or less whenever you wish, but they won't accept any requests which had been recently denied.



I first try to persuade the board to change their philosophy towards a youth oriented one rather than one of signing high reputation players. This both fits the way I play, and means we wouldn't have a grumpy board when no stars are willing to come play for us. They refuse. I also try to get them to find us a parent club, a team from several leagues above us from whom we can take players on loan.



It takes some convincing, but they agree to it. They also agree to improve our training facilities, which will cost us £1.3m but will be worth it once we start getting players who have a lot of potential upside. We only get to make three requests at a time, and given that the board can reject our wishes they're essentially a shit genie.



I've let the game run a bit, and while we still haven't signed any players we've at least got some scouts now. You can assign scouts to watch one league and look for new talent in one region, and under what criteria they should file a report on a player they scout. Since we're currently limited to the UK and Ireland region, there's not much variety there, but I send them off to look for young players with a chance of being excellent or better. This will hopefully find us players who can improve enough to be useful through multiple leagues. More likely it'll result in me finding a lot of players who have no interest playing for us.



You can also select individual players to be scouted via either the search screen or their team's screen. These will get done by whichever scout has some free time. Currently we've got 229 players in the scouting pool, and it'll take several weeks for our five scouts to work up reports on them all. A scout will get more or less work done depending on their determination, motivation, and discipline stats. Most of these players are all on the transfer list at their current teams, which means their team has put them up for sale.



We've also hired a full compliment of coaches. Coaches are rated on a scale from 1 to 5 stars, and unlike players their rating is not compared to other coaches on your staff. Coaches work best when they are only teaching one skill, have them do more than one and their ratings drop quickly. Generally anything above 3 stars is very good for the lower leagues, and you should be aiming for 4 stars minimum when you get to the top league. The goalkeeper coaches have only a 2 star rating at the moment, but that's because they don't have any to train yet.



Figuring out what makes a good coach is a bit of a pain in the ass, however. Ratings are based upon the interplay of two primary statistics, such as Attacking and Mental for Attacking rating or Attacking and Technique for Shooting rating, as well as their Discipline, Motivation, and Determination scores. I strongly recommend just getting one of the many rating calculators available so you don't have to try and do the math in your head. It's not a lot of fun when you think you've improved your coaching staff, fired the old guy to make room, and then find out that your new, more expensive coach has the same rating as the old guy. The above attributes belong to our new 4.5 star fitness coach, who I've locked up with a very long, very cheap contract as he's good enough to be working in the Premier League.



Beyond setting up your coaches you also determine the practice schedule. I tend towards fitness training during the pre-season and a switch to a balanced schedule during the season, but in this case, I'll be switching over to teamwork since our players are as familiar with each other as the Mighty Ducks were after the recruitment montage. You also have to determine how much time you spend training for each match and familiarizing the team with the tactics you're using. During the pre-season I tend to focus on tactical training heavily as players, like students, tend to forget everything they learned the prior year over summer break. Once they're well trained in a formation, then I scale back significantly on the amount of match training they do. You can also schedule days off before and after games, which is a good idea if you don't want your players to all die of exhaustion by mid-season.



Our first signing is Sam Edwards, a 30 year old fullback who cost us more than he really should have. It's only a 2 year deal, however, and given our budget we could afford to pay much more than we are. We need players, and I can't afford to be picky.



He's not a very good player, but he can play all of the defensive positions competently and can fake it just about everywhere else on the field. He's also going to be our designated throw in man, with a Long Throws stat of 19 he could create some real chances for a goal when we get throw ins on the opponents side of the field. At 30 years old he should still be a couple years away from when his physical attributes go into free-fall, if they do he's going to become awful real quick.



After one week we've only signed one new player. Most of our targets went elsewhere, including the ones who were actually decent. It gives me some schadenfreude to see the guy I had tried to sign as a backup goalkeeper hurt himself immediately after signing elsewhere. Our team is more or less set up except that we don't have players, and I'm starting to get concerned as our next friendly is in a week. It's time to stop trying to find bargains and start throwing money at the problem.