FM 2010 - Tottenham vs Liverpool

One of the great things about the most recent version of Football Manager is the increased options you have during a match to influence the outcome of that match. Just like with real football, having the right tactics won't guarantee a win as you still need the players on the pitch to execute. However, there is no greater feeling than when they do execute after you identify a gap.

Below is one of those occasions where everything came together perfectly.

You may recall from last weeks post that Tottenham came to Anfield early on in the season and spanked me 2-0. This meant that when it was our turn to travel to White Hart Lane, I really wanted a win. Of course, the fact that Spurs were doing really well and I was in danger of ending up in 5th place in the Prem added extra spice to this fixture.

The lead in to the fixture itself didn't particularly favour us. Both Glen Johnson and Philipp Degen were injured (although Johnson had just returned to full training) so I had to play Carragher as RB (there was also a period in the season when all 3 were injured and I had to play a reserve RB in that position). In addition, both Gerrard and Torres were out injured as well.

Considering the relatively weak team I was being forced to field, I went with a 4-5-1 formation with Kuyt up front. Basically, I was hoping to catch them on the counter. As expected, Tottenham sensed the weakness in my team and, as it was a home fixture for them, they went all out attack straight from the start.

In the first half, they pretty much controlled the game and managed to get a goal to put themselves 1-0 up. However, I noticed that their wingers were really pushing forward in an attempt to get goals so I told my team to clear the ball to the flanks. This paid off as Kuyt managed to score a goal on the counter just after the second half started.

Unfortunately, after that, Spurs just resumed their siege of my goal line and just as I was beginning to think I might be able to steal a draw, Jonathon Woodgate popped his head up in the 80th minute to score a goal and put Spurs up 2-1. With another defeat on the cards, I figured what the hell and changed up my tactics. I changed the positioning to fluid (they had previously been rigid as I wanted them to keep their shape and defend) and put my team on all out attack while Spurs decided to try and defend their one goal lead.

Unbelievably, Babel managed to score a goal in the 86th minute to level us at 2-2. At this point, Spurs changed back to an attacking mentality and I considered moving back to a defensive one. However, it occurred to me that, scoring so quickly after they did, the match momentum may well have swung to Liverpool. I decided to leave my team on all out attack.

One last thing, in the 68th minute, I had brought on Albert Riera and placed him on the right winger position with instructions to cut inside. In effect, he was playing in the inverted winger position.

In summary, by this point in the game, my team were playing fluid positional football with an all out attack mentality. My defenders had been told to clear the ball to the flanks and Albert Riera was playing as an inverted winger. By now, I'm sure you can guess where this is going!
:)

In the 95th minute, my Liverpool side produced a moment of magic that had me leaping out of my chair and screaming like a nutjob.

The move actually started with a Spurs attack.


Here you can see Jenas running at my defence. Crouch (at the bottom of the screen) had just passed the ball to him after drawing in two defenders (git). At this point, I was actually quite worried. If Jenas got past Agger, he would have a clear run on goal.


Of course, the key word in that last statement was "if". Agger managed to get the tackle in and we got the ball back deep in our own defence.


With my instructions to clear to flanks, he immediately knocked the ball up to Riera on the right wing. You can see exactly why I told my defenders to clear to flanks in this screenshot. Look how much space Riera has here as the Spurs players have pushed quite far forward.


Riera takes a step inside and spots the run of Babel on the opposite flank. Using his natural left foot (and justifying my decision to put him on the right wing) he lobs a beautiful ball over the top of the defence.


Babel manages to get in between the defenders and has a clear run on the GK.


With Babel's speed, there was no way that the Spurs defenders were going to catch up. Knocking the ball ahead of himself, he catches up with it just as he gets inside the penalty box.


At this point, its a simple job for him to slot it past Gomes and into the bottom corner. The game finishes 3-2 and I have my revenge!



A couple of final screens showing the overall match stats. As you can see, we were outplayed by Spurs in that they controlled possession and had lots more shots on goal. Having said that, I do feel that my Liverpool side deserved the win as my tactics were spot-on, both for the overall match and for the specifics which lead to the above goal.

Bear in mind that my team were playing counter-attacking football so you would expect Spurs to have more possession and more shots on goal. However, if you look at the numbers closely, you will find that of the 22 shots on goal that they had, 17 of them were from long range. Over the course of the match, they only had 1 clear cut chance and 5 shots from close range. Compare that to the 3 clear cut chances and 9 shots from close range for my Liverpool side.

FM2010 - Season 2009/10 - mid season update

Despite carefully managing the number of games I buy, I still find myself in the (unpleasant?) situation of having too many games to play and not enough time. This hasn't been helped by me getting FM 2010 as, despite having Alan Wake, COD4, Hitman:Blood Money, Fifa 10 and Freedom Force waiting in the wings for me to play, I find myself spending all my time managing my Liverpool squad.

Anyway, its time for a mid-season update!

Early season league form
I have to admit that the early season games were really tough. I had trouble breaking down teams and found that I got quite a few draws against decidedly dodgy opposition. Part of the reason for this was probably my inital learning curve in figuring out how to play with the new tactics available in the match engine (and it really is incredible how much more options you have during the match).

This culminated in a 2-0 thrashing by Spurs at Anfield despite our team having more possession and more shots on goal (although less shots on target). After the match, I went absolutely ballistic and really started to crack down hard on the team (which got a couple of players annoyed as they felt I was being too harsh on them. Pussies).

However, it wasn't all bad news. After a couple more dodgy draws (and some more fiddling around in the match tactics engine), I managed to start putting together some good results. In particular, I managed to beat Man Utd 2-1, Arsenal 2-0 and Chelsea 2-0.


Despite the stats, we were actually heavily outplayed by Man Utd. It was only midway through the second half when I changed my play style to counter-attack and retain possession that we started to get more possession of the ball and more shots on goal (albeit from long range). At this point, Man Utd went all out for the win and I managed to hit them on the counter. Fergie was furious :)


Somehow, we ended up pwning Arsena. Must have caught them on an off day as their form in the prem is actually really good.


Another lucky result for us. We were basically outplayed by Chelsea. However, with our 4-5-1 formation, we were able to limit their chances to mainly long shots and some brilliant counter attacking play by Babel secured us the 3 points (2 shots on target and 2 goals!!).

Those key wins against the other big 4 teams is the only reason that I am still within touching distance of the league leaders. Having said that, as you can see from the below screenshot of the league table as at Xmas, I will drop to 5th place if Chelsea and Man Utd win their games in hand.

Still, considering that this is my first season of FM2010, I am quite happy with the results so far. More importantly, I feel that I'm starting to get a handle of the tactical options during a match and hopefully, on-pitch results will start to improve.



Cup form
Board expectations were for my team to reach the final of the FA Cup. Unfortunately, although I beat Man Utd at Anfield, they managed to get their revenge on me in the 4th round of the FA Cup (which really didn't impress the Board or the fans).

The really annoying thing was that I felt I had gotten the tactics right. Considering that we were playing at Old Trafford and how they outplayed my team at Anfield, I decided to play a counter-attacking 4-5-1 formation with Kuyt as my lone striker. And we were doing well. Although Man Utd had more possession and more chances, my team was doing an overall good job of stifling their attacks while creating chances on the counter. Unfortunately, Lucas picked up a red card in the second half and we ended up losing the game 1-0.


Frakkin Lucas >:(

Anyway, now that I've been knocked out of the FA cup, I've really been focusing on the League Cup and playing my best team there. Even though the Board don't care about it, it's likely that my only real chance of silverware this season is with the League Cup so I don't intend to just give it up by playing my second stringers.

Key themes
Several key themes have emerged from the first half of the season.

First - my team struggles against "lesser" opposition. Hopefully, this is just a case of me needing to get to grips with the match tactics as results have picked up since those early season games. Having said that, I still have lots of trouble breaking down teams who play very defensively (hey - just like Liverpool in real life!).

Second - I'm really worried about my league position and qualification for Champions Cup next year. Although I'm still within touching distance of the league leaders (due to the above big home wins), the reality is that I still need to go to the home grounds of Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham. Those are going to be some tough games.

Third - I really need to buy another world class striker. The problem is that Torres is really injury prone in this game. As far as I can recall, he has only been fit for 3 consecutive matchs on two occasions (and one of those was during the early season friendlies!). When Torres is fit, he plays fantastic. The problem is that he just isn't fit often enough.

Football Manager 2010

Football Manager 2010 was recently cut to half price during one of Steam's big sales. Being such a big fan of the sigames developed footie management series, I naturally fell for the bait and upgraded my old FM06 to FM10. I'm still early in the season so its hard to give any real conclusions on this game but from what I've seen so far, its incredible how much has changed.

Anyway, being a Liverpool fan, I obviously chose Liverpool as my club and, despite a few dodgy results, I'm doing okay so far. Anyway, below is a brief analysis of Liverpool as at the start of FM2010.

Finances
The first thing I want to mention is the financial situation. In real life, Liverpool is currently riddled with debt and, despite comments to the contrary from the owners, there has been very little net transfer spending from the club in the last few seasons.

Unfortunately, this appears to have been modeled in the game as well. I started off with debt of around GBP240 million and monthly interest payments of GBP2.5 million. More importantly, my transfer kitty is a measly GBP6 million (probably due to the club having acquired several players over the summer before I joined).

Squad
You can see my starting squad from the screenshot below. Again, in copying real life, Agger, Skrtel, Aurelio and Aquilani started the game injured (although Aurelio is back on light training by the time the season is ready to start). One big difference from real life is that I start the season with Maxi Rodriguez which is a good thing as he is easily the best right winger in the squad.



It won't be any surprise to learn that key players in the squad are Torres, Gerrard, Mascherano, Carragher (although he is valued quite low due to his age), Glen Johnson and Reina. Based on his value, Aquilani looks like he could be an important player once he returns from injury.

My biggest concern is with squad depth. My first team is pretty good (not great) but I'm just not convinced that I have decent cover. In particular, I'm worried about who is going to score goals if Torres isn't in the team. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to judge my squads readiness during the off season as we only had friendlies against second rate opposition.

With a transfer kitty of only GBP6 million, I likely won't be able to buy any new players to shore up my squad. Instead, I intend to spend that GBP6 million on young players in the hope that they can join my first team in a couple of years (assuming I haven't been sacked!).

Tactics
In general, I will probably play a straight up 4-4-2 as my main formation. This is the main tactic which I used in FM2006 with so much success. The key difference though is that my squad in FM2006 was comprised of world class players in every position and I will need to change the way I play until I can replicate this in FM2010.

To help act as a bridge between my strikers and my midfield, Kuyt will be set to "Deep Lying Forward" so that he will drop back to pick up the ball. In addition, Gerrard will be set to "Advanced Playmaker" and told to shoot often as he has a long shot stat of 18.
:)

Unfortunately, my wingers can't cross the ball to save themselves. The best crosser I have is Riera with a crossing score of 15. Every other winger is in the 12-13 range so I'm going to have to ask them to limit their crosses and focus on cutting inside before passing the ball into the box. Probably not a huge deal as I don't have a traditional target man (with good jumping and heading stats) in the final third anyway.


One big worry is that my defenders are worryingly slow. The fastest defender I have is Glen Johnson with pace of 15 and acceleration of 15. My fastest central defender is Agger with pace of 14 and acceleration of 12. To combat this, I'm going to have to play a deep defensive line with my 2 CBs set to "Limited Defender" otherwise a simple ball over the top is going to split my defence wide open. With Reina set to play as a "Sweeper Keeper", this should limit the number of chances that the opposition will get although I may also have to limit Johnson to defensive duties on occasion if the opposing team has a fast striker.

Some alternative tactics which I may use depending on the situation are detailed below.


I primarily intend to use this formation if I believe I am going to struggle in the match or if I'm trying to protect the lead. As you can see, both Mascherano and Lucas have been set with defensive duties. Their role will be to get the ball and then lay it off to someone else (possibly Gerrard). With only 1 striker, scoring could well be a problem so I will probably only start with this formation if Torres is fit.


The good old 4-4-2 diamond. I will probably use this when I am playing against weaker teams who will likely sit back and defend. Having Gerrard that far upfront will help to create chances for my strikers. It also allows me to safely restrict Kuyt to a "Poacher" role so he can focus on scoring goals. Both of the full backs have been set as "Wing Backs" and told to get forward and attack. Meanwhile, having Mascherano set as an "Anchor Man" will help deal with any counter-attacks.


This formation will primarily be used on narrow pitches where my wingers wouldn't have sufficient space to do their thing. This formation may also be useful against teams which I would be expected to beat but which are still good enough to be a threat against me. In this formation, both Mascherano and Lucas are set as "Ball Winning Midfielder" to help deal with attacks. Meanwhile, Johnson and Insua are set as "Wing Backs" to help provide a little width in my attack. The key concern with this tactic is whether having one striker will be enough to score goals so, as with above, I may only use it if Torres is fit to start.

Portal

As you are no doubt already aware, Portal was recently made free for a limited time by Valve in celebration of the launch of Steam on the Mac. Which is a great deal as this is really a fantastic game.

I won't talk too much about the game here as, to be honest, there's not much point in doing so. Considering how famous this game is, if you don't know about the gameplay by now, then its probably something you wouldn't be interested in.

Anyway, I was actually over at my brothers place when we found out that it was free for download. We immediately fired up Steam to verify (my bro, being the cynical git that he is was convinced that it was only free to play for the weekend) and then downloaded it. We managed to get to around testchamber 18 (out of 19) while I was there but I promptly finished off the game after I got home.

As already noted in reviews, the game is incredibly short (although a bit longer than the 19 testchambers which I thought it initially consisted of). However, considering the type of game it is, the length is probably just right. The short length gives you just enough time to get familiar with the gameplay elements and then apply that knowledge in a variety of fiendishly designed levels.

But what makes this game stand out is the superb level of humour prevalent throughout the game. From the moment you wake up in the very first chamber through to the end of the game, you are accompanied by the disembodied voice of GLaDOS. Her various comments throughout the game fit the mood perfectly as you try and puzzle your way out of the various rooms and traps and is topped off with a fantastic song during the end credits.

PS if you liked the song Still Alive, then you should also check out Re Your Brains (also by Jonathon Coulton).