rocheyb
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I was originally very frustrated with FM14 and I recognise many of the criticisms that people have raised in the Frustrations thread - if you go back through it far enough, you'll find comments from me saying that the game is badly coded. But I persevered and eventually started to work things out - partly via advice from the moderator and an FM-related podcast, and partly through my own trial and error - and I am now enjoying a successful, domestic and European trophy-laden game, currently in the 2019/20 season of my Southampton save.
So, here's my advice on How To Succeed on FM14. I'm not one for brevity, but if you are struggling with FM14 as I was, the information below and the links contained within, to my two threads on tactics, will help you. I've highlighted certain phrases to aid recall for those revisiting this thread for reference, having read it once before:
1) Aim to construct a squad of 25 quality players, plus the odd decent academy regen who you won't have to register, and rotate constantly throughout the season. Rest your better players if you think the others can handle a weaker opponent, and substitute important players for the last 20 minutes or so when a match is won. If you have a weakness in a particular position, retrain existing players and put your scouts to work to find someone suitable. Use the U21s and U18s to keep everybody match fit or to regain fitness after injury.
2) Buy highly-rated young players from all around the world, but prioritise those from your club's own country, for the sake of the European competition squad restrictions. And persevere with them. If they struggle during the first season or so, it may be down to something as simple as the language barrier; stick with them and encourage them along and they will often come good.
3) Make use of the pre-match Opposition Scouting Reports and the Past Meetings list of previous results (when you get well into your save) to help you learn which tactics work against which opponents; the part of the scouting report that tells you which periods of a match they are more prone to conceding goals, for example, gives you a helpful guide as to when might be a good time to switch to Attacking mode.
4) Develop three sets of tactics that suit the players you have and switch between them as necessary to exploit your team's strengths and the opposition's weaknesses. Much, much more about that here:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...ics/158222-you-need-more-than-one-tactic.html
5) If 4-2-3-1 isn't working for you, dump it for a tactic that does. It's a fad, just like the 5-3-2 wing-back formation that everybody tried to adopt in the early 90s. It works for Bayern Munich because Frank Ribery and Arjan Robben are exceptional inside-out wingers; it doesn't work for Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City because Andros Townsend and Nathan Redmond are average-at-best, and they don't have players of the quality of Philip Lahm and David Alaba pushing up in support to prevent their attacks from being far too narrow. Use tactics that work for the players you have; listen to your coach's recommendations at the beginning of each season and be flexible from match-to-match (see point number 4).
Teams that are vulnerable to 4-4-2 don't like facing this tactic, either:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...1-real-4-4-2-how-i-learned-play-triangle.html
6) Make yourself aware of the individual qualities and attributes of each of your players and incorporate them into Player and Team Instructions. A central midfielder who likes to switch play to the opposite flank needs wingers to aim for; wingers who like to run with the ball and have a highly-rated crossing ability should be encouraged to get to the byline and whip a cross in; you'll need good aerial ability among your strikers to make that work. Set-up your offensive and defensive corner and free-kick tactics according to the players' heights, jumping reach, heading ability, marking and long-range shooting ability. Make sure your best corner taker is not detailed to attack the far post, for example - because the player who defaults into that instruction, while he's taking the corner, might be rubbish at it. Consider how substitutions affect your set-piece instructions and make changes if necessary.
7) Consider the importance of players who can play multiple positions. If you have a right-back who can also play on the left (such as Nathaniel Clyne) and another who can also play centre-back (such as John Stones at Everton), then you don't need to have a left-back among your substitutes; you can have two specialist left-backs in your squad and rotate them. If one of them can also play left midfield, then so much the better. And so on, throughout the squad. Retrain promising young players early on so when they reach the first team, they have more to offer.
8) Set Opposition Player Instructions. Show their midfielders and forwards onto their weaker foot, close them down and decide whether to tackle normal or hard, allowing for the increased risk of red and yellow cards. React to the opposition changing formation by updating these instructions. Close down full-backs with good crossing ability when you're having to defend for long periods, and listen to the advice of your Assistant Manager.
9) Watch the matches in the Comprehensive view (a hat-tip to Mike the Moderator for this piece of wisdom) so you can see what is actually happening on the field. It will help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both your team and the opposition, to learn how to exploit or remedy situations that occur during the match and show you how well-suited or otherwise your individual players are to the positions you're playing them in. Switch between offensive and defensive tactics as required to secure a result.
10) Keep the opposition's formation on display during the match and watch the commentary - so you know immediately when they make changes to their set-up or personnel and can respond straight away. Don't be Arsene Wenger; react to their changes.
11) After good results (or bad ones), use the Private Chat function to reward players who have achieved ratings of 7.6 and higher (or to criticise 5.9 and lower) to keep their morale high and give you an advantage going into the next match.
12) Manage player contracts and don't be sentimental. If your favourite player is getting on a bit and you have a younger player ready to take his place, sell him or let his contract run out. Identifying promising young players, signing them and loaning them back to their original club for a season while an older player plays out the last year of his contract has worked well for me, with those younger players continuing to play regularly and improve towards their scouted potential ability in the meantime.
13) Put your scouts to work. Have them scour every major footballing territory and attend all international tournaments, especially the youth tournaments, and compile the best reports into your Shortlist. Look at their contract expiration dates and any minimum fee release clauses to help you secure the players you want. Check their history for past seasons' average ratings and injury records. Avoid players with a history of hernia or repetitive groin and hamstring injuries. Also avoid players with poor ratings for stamina, determination and passing.
14) As you progress through the game, with your reputation improving, leverage your growing cache to manage the board's expectations of you. Nicola Cortese wanted me to sign mainly Italian players, which I did at first, but I eventually managed to edit that requirement out of the list and persuaded him that we should be concentrating on signing young players for the first team squad, instead. Now I can target players from all over the world, with only work permit restrictions to stop me (and I'm trying to arrange a suitable foreign feeder club to remedy that situation, now).
15) Assemble the best team of backroom staff that you can and improve it year-on-year as their contracts run out. As you progress through the game, the board will let you sign more backroom staff - sign as many as they will let you and have them specialise on specific areas of training to get the best out of them. There's a mobile phone app called FMCoachCalculator that enables you to see how good a potential coach is at teaching a specific discipline, so you can tell whether he's going to be an improvement on what you already have before you sign him. Only costs a couple of quid (it's nothing to do with me, I'm just a happy customer making a recommendation - I'm sure other apps are available etc). Sometimes, there are very few coaches around who can improve on what you already have, so you might find it useful to promote existing staff members from the U18 or U21 set-up in order to "shift" the vacancy, to give you a different position to fill and more candidates to choose from.
16) Take pre-season seriously. Get new players in early, if you can, and play 8 to 10 pre-season matches to make sure that everyone is match fit for the first game of the season. Use the U21s and U18s, too. This is also the best time to introduce a change of formation and tactics.
17) Persevere. You might not win anything for the first few seasons but look for signs of year-on-year improvement, such as:
- You're getting the club's finances under control, while signing younger players whose potential ability exceeds the current ability of your existing first team players, and accumulating two good players for every position.
- You're learning how best to approach opponents who play certain formations and which of your formations are most productive against them.
- Your results against the very top teams are improving or, at least, you do achieve the occasional victory against them that provides a clue how to tackle them in future.
- You're learning how to identify what's actually happening during matches, how to influence proceedings and, to some extent, control the outcomes.
- More of your players are gaining international recognition, which (I assume) helps to raise your club's profile in regard to attracting other good players.
- The board is rewarding your performance by giving you more money for transfers each summer, enabling you to sign more and better players.
18) Sign Tom Ince. And play him on the left-wing (M_L or AM_L) with instructions to Get further forward; Get to the byline; Aim cross at target man. You won't regret it - he's brilliant.
As long as your squad, and your team's results, are improving year-on-year, you are going in the right direction. When you get to grips with the preparation and tactics function of FM14, your promising young players mature and your more established players reach their late 20s, you will see an upsurge in performance and consistency that will make you a force to be reckoned with. Hopefully!
Your reward, for reaching the end of this admittedly rather lengthy post, is a link to a zipped folder that contains the logos and icons for every team in England, complete with config files. It is the product of online image searches so styles vary a little, but it is fully up-to-date with FM14, including the recently redesigned badges for Crystal Palace, AFC Bournemouth and Port Vale, and those of now defunct teams listed on the Past Winners pages of various competitions - such as the very early winners of the FA Cup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjcjhm3msfkpcp6/England.zip
Additional hints and tips that I might have missed out are welcome in this thread. Start from number 19 and keep going. If there are many contributions and/or duplicates then I'll copy, paste and edit to post a revised list.
So, here's my advice on How To Succeed on FM14. I'm not one for brevity, but if you are struggling with FM14 as I was, the information below and the links contained within, to my two threads on tactics, will help you. I've highlighted certain phrases to aid recall for those revisiting this thread for reference, having read it once before:
1) Aim to construct a squad of 25 quality players, plus the odd decent academy regen who you won't have to register, and rotate constantly throughout the season. Rest your better players if you think the others can handle a weaker opponent, and substitute important players for the last 20 minutes or so when a match is won. If you have a weakness in a particular position, retrain existing players and put your scouts to work to find someone suitable. Use the U21s and U18s to keep everybody match fit or to regain fitness after injury.
2) Buy highly-rated young players from all around the world, but prioritise those from your club's own country, for the sake of the European competition squad restrictions. And persevere with them. If they struggle during the first season or so, it may be down to something as simple as the language barrier; stick with them and encourage them along and they will often come good.
3) Make use of the pre-match Opposition Scouting Reports and the Past Meetings list of previous results (when you get well into your save) to help you learn which tactics work against which opponents; the part of the scouting report that tells you which periods of a match they are more prone to conceding goals, for example, gives you a helpful guide as to when might be a good time to switch to Attacking mode.
4) Develop three sets of tactics that suit the players you have and switch between them as necessary to exploit your team's strengths and the opposition's weaknesses. Much, much more about that here:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...ics/158222-you-need-more-than-one-tactic.html
5) If 4-2-3-1 isn't working for you, dump it for a tactic that does. It's a fad, just like the 5-3-2 wing-back formation that everybody tried to adopt in the early 90s. It works for Bayern Munich because Frank Ribery and Arjan Robben are exceptional inside-out wingers; it doesn't work for Tottenham Hotspur and Norwich City because Andros Townsend and Nathan Redmond are average-at-best, and they don't have players of the quality of Philip Lahm and David Alaba pushing up in support to prevent their attacks from being far too narrow. Use tactics that work for the players you have; listen to your coach's recommendations at the beginning of each season and be flexible from match-to-match (see point number 4).
Teams that are vulnerable to 4-4-2 don't like facing this tactic, either:
http://www.fm-base.co.uk/forum/foot...1-real-4-4-2-how-i-learned-play-triangle.html
6) Make yourself aware of the individual qualities and attributes of each of your players and incorporate them into Player and Team Instructions. A central midfielder who likes to switch play to the opposite flank needs wingers to aim for; wingers who like to run with the ball and have a highly-rated crossing ability should be encouraged to get to the byline and whip a cross in; you'll need good aerial ability among your strikers to make that work. Set-up your offensive and defensive corner and free-kick tactics according to the players' heights, jumping reach, heading ability, marking and long-range shooting ability. Make sure your best corner taker is not detailed to attack the far post, for example - because the player who defaults into that instruction, while he's taking the corner, might be rubbish at it. Consider how substitutions affect your set-piece instructions and make changes if necessary.
7) Consider the importance of players who can play multiple positions. If you have a right-back who can also play on the left (such as Nathaniel Clyne) and another who can also play centre-back (such as John Stones at Everton), then you don't need to have a left-back among your substitutes; you can have two specialist left-backs in your squad and rotate them. If one of them can also play left midfield, then so much the better. And so on, throughout the squad. Retrain promising young players early on so when they reach the first team, they have more to offer.
8) Set Opposition Player Instructions. Show their midfielders and forwards onto their weaker foot, close them down and decide whether to tackle normal or hard, allowing for the increased risk of red and yellow cards. React to the opposition changing formation by updating these instructions. Close down full-backs with good crossing ability when you're having to defend for long periods, and listen to the advice of your Assistant Manager.
9) Watch the matches in the Comprehensive view (a hat-tip to Mike the Moderator for this piece of wisdom) so you can see what is actually happening on the field. It will help you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of both your team and the opposition, to learn how to exploit or remedy situations that occur during the match and show you how well-suited or otherwise your individual players are to the positions you're playing them in. Switch between offensive and defensive tactics as required to secure a result.
10) Keep the opposition's formation on display during the match and watch the commentary - so you know immediately when they make changes to their set-up or personnel and can respond straight away. Don't be Arsene Wenger; react to their changes.
11) After good results (or bad ones), use the Private Chat function to reward players who have achieved ratings of 7.6 and higher (or to criticise 5.9 and lower) to keep their morale high and give you an advantage going into the next match.
12) Manage player contracts and don't be sentimental. If your favourite player is getting on a bit and you have a younger player ready to take his place, sell him or let his contract run out. Identifying promising young players, signing them and loaning them back to their original club for a season while an older player plays out the last year of his contract has worked well for me, with those younger players continuing to play regularly and improve towards their scouted potential ability in the meantime.
13) Put your scouts to work. Have them scour every major footballing territory and attend all international tournaments, especially the youth tournaments, and compile the best reports into your Shortlist. Look at their contract expiration dates and any minimum fee release clauses to help you secure the players you want. Check their history for past seasons' average ratings and injury records. Avoid players with a history of hernia or repetitive groin and hamstring injuries. Also avoid players with poor ratings for stamina, determination and passing.
14) As you progress through the game, with your reputation improving, leverage your growing cache to manage the board's expectations of you. Nicola Cortese wanted me to sign mainly Italian players, which I did at first, but I eventually managed to edit that requirement out of the list and persuaded him that we should be concentrating on signing young players for the first team squad, instead. Now I can target players from all over the world, with only work permit restrictions to stop me (and I'm trying to arrange a suitable foreign feeder club to remedy that situation, now).
15) Assemble the best team of backroom staff that you can and improve it year-on-year as their contracts run out. As you progress through the game, the board will let you sign more backroom staff - sign as many as they will let you and have them specialise on specific areas of training to get the best out of them. There's a mobile phone app called FMCoachCalculator that enables you to see how good a potential coach is at teaching a specific discipline, so you can tell whether he's going to be an improvement on what you already have before you sign him. Only costs a couple of quid (it's nothing to do with me, I'm just a happy customer making a recommendation - I'm sure other apps are available etc). Sometimes, there are very few coaches around who can improve on what you already have, so you might find it useful to promote existing staff members from the U18 or U21 set-up in order to "shift" the vacancy, to give you a different position to fill and more candidates to choose from.
16) Take pre-season seriously. Get new players in early, if you can, and play 8 to 10 pre-season matches to make sure that everyone is match fit for the first game of the season. Use the U21s and U18s, too. This is also the best time to introduce a change of formation and tactics.
17) Persevere. You might not win anything for the first few seasons but look for signs of year-on-year improvement, such as:
- You're getting the club's finances under control, while signing younger players whose potential ability exceeds the current ability of your existing first team players, and accumulating two good players for every position.
- You're learning how best to approach opponents who play certain formations and which of your formations are most productive against them.
- Your results against the very top teams are improving or, at least, you do achieve the occasional victory against them that provides a clue how to tackle them in future.
- You're learning how to identify what's actually happening during matches, how to influence proceedings and, to some extent, control the outcomes.
- More of your players are gaining international recognition, which (I assume) helps to raise your club's profile in regard to attracting other good players.
- The board is rewarding your performance by giving you more money for transfers each summer, enabling you to sign more and better players.
18) Sign Tom Ince. And play him on the left-wing (M_L or AM_L) with instructions to Get further forward; Get to the byline; Aim cross at target man. You won't regret it - he's brilliant.
As long as your squad, and your team's results, are improving year-on-year, you are going in the right direction. When you get to grips with the preparation and tactics function of FM14, your promising young players mature and your more established players reach their late 20s, you will see an upsurge in performance and consistency that will make you a force to be reckoned with. Hopefully!
Your reward, for reaching the end of this admittedly rather lengthy post, is a link to a zipped folder that contains the logos and icons for every team in England, complete with config files. It is the product of online image searches so styles vary a little, but it is fully up-to-date with FM14, including the recently redesigned badges for Crystal Palace, AFC Bournemouth and Port Vale, and those of now defunct teams listed on the Past Winners pages of various competitions - such as the very early winners of the FA Cup:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jjcjhm3msfkpcp6/England.zip
Additional hints and tips that I might have missed out are welcome in this thread. Start from number 19 and keep going. If there are many contributions and/or duplicates then I'll copy, paste and edit to post a revised list.
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