Ask uncle MAD (Uncle MAD's box of choccys)
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How idiotic is the English (sports) press? - obvious answer
Oliver Holt in the DAILY MIRROR being typically knee-jerk, writing about the 'sobering night for Roy Hodgson' and twice referring to the failed 'gamble' ('the decision backfired badly') of moving Raheem Sterling out to the right.
Quite why it's a 'gamble' playing Sterling in the position he primarily occupied for Liverpool last season is a mystery; it smacks of smug hindsight.
Worse still, it's smug hindsight from a man who wrote these words just a day before: 'So tweak a couple of things. Play Wayne Rooney down the middle behind Daniel Sturridge. Let Raheem Sterling wreak havoc in wider areas. But don't change much.'
So to re-cap: Do this. And then if it doesn't work...WHAT THE F*** WERE YOU DOING?
Oliver Holt in the DAILY MIRROR being typically knee-jerk, writing about the 'sobering night for Roy Hodgson' and twice referring to the failed 'gamble' ('the decision backfired badly') of moving Raheem Sterling out to the right.
Quite why it's a 'gamble' playing Sterling in the position he primarily occupied for Liverpool last season is a mystery; it smacks of smug hindsight.
Worse still, it's smug hindsight from a man who wrote these words just a day before: 'So tweak a couple of things. Play Wayne Rooney down the middle behind Daniel Sturridge. Let Raheem Sterling wreak havoc in wider areas. But don't change much.'
So to re-cap: Do this. And then if it doesn't work...WHAT THE F*** WERE YOU DOING?
Suckered Arsenal into buying him for 16.5 mill, what a robbery for an injury prone high wage 29 year old. I signed Alex Sandro and Sebastian Jung for about 23 mil combined. I went for balanced and i didn't lose a game in any of my friendlies and rarely conceded with different types of defenders so thats a plus. I have my training on team cohesion because the season hasn't started yet but when should i decide to switch it?
If tactics are full or near full id leave it on cohesion very high till after first league match.
The english media LIVES off knee-jerk reactions. England were doomed to fail once they hired Woy as their coach. Especially after Woy claimed that Suarez wasn't world-class. What a mistake that was.
I know. Its still depressing tho.
Hodgson didnt do wrong except taking the wrong players (if Im losing with 5 minutes to go in a WC I dont want to be depending on Rickie Lambert - tho I accept that he was not exactly spoilt for choice). Actually it was the first major tournament in ages where England looked like a team, looked like they had a plan, were good to watch (polite for being able to string more than two passes together). But if your back four includes Johnson and Jagielka and your mf contains a player who's not even 50% the player he thinks he is (Gerrard) as well as a player who's only really rated in England and that only recently (Henderson) then chances are that you will fail.
England and the English public must finally accept that most English players are nowhere near the class necessary to do well in tournaments without the help of foreigners (do you think its a coincidence that for years now top teams - any teams?- are not exactly clamouring to buy English players?!). The fact that they dont means an inordinate amount of pressure on English players in every flipping tournament which keeps them from springing a surprise/doing well.
England is not a force in world football. Hasnt been so since, well, never (most, if not all, the World even thinks that 66' was stolen thru that Geoff Hurst goal unfortunately). So Hodgson didnt do badly with what he has available to him.
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I think they will aim for your cf. But I dont like giving too many player instructions esp if Im not sure about the effect of each. And in my experience IFs are there for scoring goals/playing shorter passes than crosses. So I always use at least one winger.
When I was 7 my uncle told me he would turn into 'Uncle Mad' if I didn't do as I was toldHe wanted it to be our little secret though.
Hehehe, so it seems Im living his dream, Mr Picard!
I agree to a certain extent. I feel like Hodgson failed to play his players in the right way. We're not that good outside England, but we're still a decent team. He should have set up to counter with pace. Sturridge and Rooney up top with a diamond. Sterling/Lallana/Barkley at the tip of the diamond. Henderson and Milner maybe in the middle with Gerrard holding. Good energy and discipline in the middle, while we have pace, class and finishing ability up top. The backline... idk what we could do with that back line. I hate John Terry, but him and Cahill would have been golden.
It annoyed me in the Italy game when we were 2-1 down, we were controlling the game well in their half and we bring on Jack Wilshere :S It just seemed like such a waste of a sub.
In my opinion Jack Wilshere is one of the most overrated players in the England squad and certainly not a player I would have bought on if I was chasing a goal
English players don't play Champions league football and that is 100% the FA's fault. They might have created the best league in the word but it's the best league in the world based on Spanish and Brazilian players. Cahill, Shaw, Gerrard and Sturridge were the only English players in the PFA team of the year 4/11 (only 1 played CL football). Spain on the other hand had 6 players in the BBVA team of the year, all of which played Champions League football. Yes, Spain were terrible at this tournament but I think we can put that down to a little bit of complacency... England, no pressure, no expectation and seemingly no worries were outclassed by Italy and out fought by, what I percieved as, a poor Uruguay. As a Scotsman I can't deny that I enjoyed watching this with a small grin on my face but it always seems like a painfully easy problem to fix, there needs to be a clamp down on the numbers of foreign players that are pouring into English clubs, stealing the English players places (pardon the UKIP pun).
In all seriousness if all clubs followed Southampton's lead then England would, unfortunately, be a footballing power once again
In all seriousness if all clubs followed Southampton's lead then England would, unfortunately, be a footballing power once again
I'd love to see a limit to the amount of foreign players allowed in the 25 man squad for the BPL. While there is an argument that the quality of football, and the league overall, may suffer, i think that it'd be more than justified by more Englishmen playing first team football.
This has been the usual fall back position for English "experts", media etc, namely blame all the foreigners. Frankly imho it doesnt stand to scrutiny:
1. If you cast your mind back to previous tournaments (say at the time of Hoddle and Waddle) there werent so many foreigners playing in the English top league and still England underperformed (or were ****).
2. Most nations with top national teams also have many foreigners (if not more than there are in England).
3. At least two of the Southampton players are madly overrated (Lallana and Lambert) + where exactly did Southampton finish with all those great players?! + please look back in time and tell me when exactly England were a super power so that they can be one "once again"?!
The most annoying thing for me in the Italy match was that we showed no guile. We equalised against what we knew was the best team in our group and instead of taking the draw we went for the win thereby risking making the Uruguay match one of life and death increasing the pressure on us ...
Hello there,
Firstly great series of posts, I've been playing manager games since CM2 but I learnt alot about the newer features from your posts (took a few year gap). I was wondering if you could possible answer me a question though please, I have seen mentioned a few times that you can ask a player (of your team) to speak to an international teammate in reference to joining your club. I was wondering if you knew how to do this coz I have no idea
Thanks
Firstly great series of posts, I've been playing manager games since CM2 but I learnt alot about the newer features from your posts (took a few year gap). I was wondering if you could possible answer me a question though please, I have seen mentioned a few times that you can ask a player (of your team) to speak to an international teammate in reference to joining your club. I was wondering if you knew how to do this coz I have no idea
Thanks
Sorry mate, first time Ive heard of this.
Anyways thanks for your kind words. Ive learnt so much myself from others about FM Im merely trying to give something back!
Weird I read it over on the official forums but have not been able to find anything else about it after looking for nearly an hour on Google yesterday. Oh well thanks for the quick answer
Hey MAD,
Great thread btw! I have started a career with Ajax after reading various posts about them and their brilliant youth system. I know you have done a few posts about them but wondered if you had any other general tips when managing them. I really want to bring the Youth players through and bring in other talented youngsters that i can nuture. Any advice appreciated
Thanks.
Great thread btw! I have started a career with Ajax after reading various posts about them and their brilliant youth system. I know you have done a few posts about them but wondered if you had any other general tips when managing them. I really want to bring the Youth players through and bring in other talented youngsters that i can nuture. Any advice appreciated
Thanks.MAD
great thread always an interesting read. However, i have to pick you up on couple of your points-
1. Agree
2. This is untrue. The PL has the highest % of overseas players (62%) of all European leagues. Bundesliga 49.5%, SerieA 48%, Ligue1 41.5%, Liga BBVA 37.5%. Now admittedly these countries haven't all done well at this world cup but apart from Germany (who I think are a good bet to win this year) they have all won a world cup and/or European championship since 1998. Its also worth noting after their failure at Euro2000 Germany made radical changes to youth development (better training for youth coaches, national federation put in control of youth development etc) which is paying dividends now. I agree that its not all down to influx of foreigners as like you said we were bad before but I think it has made things worse.
Source for stats Compare European Football Leagues | Open wide for some soccer!
3. Well as a Saints fan i admit i'm biased here but I think maybe you are a little too?! Picking on two players who one has moved to Liverpool and another prob will soon?! Because MOTD hardly ever shows long highlights of our games unless you go and see them you don't get to see how good these 2 and others are. Lambert is always referred to as 'target man' or 'big man' by national media but he is so much more. Yes he does hold the ball well but it is what he then does with it makes him so much more. Brings others into play or creates for himself. Add to that best penalty taker in PL and also scores free kicks as well what more do you want from a player?. 15 PL goals in 12/13 and 13 in 13/14 and i think over these 2 seasons second highest scoring English Striker? Certainly better record than Welbeck. As for Lallana if you genuinely think he over rated maybe maybe your not as good judge of players as I thought. If it had been Messi or Ronaldo who scored the goal he did against Hull it would have been said to have been one of the greatest of all time.
And as for where it got us well we finished 8th one place behind Utd after being above you for a lot of the season. We also beat Liverpool away and had many other good results and played some great football. We had a disappointing end to the season due to boardroom changes and MP wanting out which effected the team. However, we now have another top manager, an academy which continue to produced talented youngsters and a stable and united board again. We also are not overwhelmed with debt. Who does the future look brighter for you or us (H)
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