Career Introducing The WEIPER - How To Make A Goal Scoring Legend

[Scratch]

I've had a few careers in FMM24, but none that have kept my interest for more than a few seasons or been worth writing up.

Now I think I have something. It's nothing new. In fact it is just more of the same: a classic lone striker goal scoring career. My motivation this time though is to explain what I'm doing a little more. But before I go on, let me pause for a bit and explain why...

 

The Motivation

Recently, I've been thinking about people's reactions to game breaking feats in FMM, whether it be @Dai_ getting called a cheater during his recent Split 3.5KC, or Scorpio_21 from Discord getting chased off Vibe for getting a player to 160+ goals in a season (lost the link sorry) a few years before that sort of total became more commonplace.

Both know the game inside out and both know how to break it to get groundbreaking results, yet to many people it seems like the results are so incredible that they must be cheating.

I've had a similar reaction from people seeing some of the things I've done, like get Sesko to 201 goals in a season. Interestingly, I haven't had much criticism here on Vibe (more Facebook and places I'm not active), I think because I explain how I do things more than most. Not that anyone should have to do that though - just because I share, doesn't mean everyone should.

Anyway, I got to thinking and a couple of things nagged me:

• Firstly, could I still achieve such high scores in FMM24? I don't think 200 goals in a season is possible anymore, as I did that at the height of the broken corner tactic. But I'm confident I can get a pretty high number. How much? Does my tactic still work? Those are questions I'd like to answer.
• Secondly, if you go back to the start of that Sesko thread I linked to above, you'll see I explained a lot of what I did. That thread is ancient history now and we have lots of new people here who won't have seen that. I figured it might be time for an update. And if I can show people that crazy results are possible, it might lead to just a little more tolerance, which is always a good thing.

 

Disclaimers

A few things:

• This career may not last. I really have struggled to keep a save going this year. I hope this one is different, but there's every chance that I'll bin it at some point (hopefully after getting a lot of explanation out).
• Results may vary. I've had some people who used my tactics or the things I've talked about and had good success, but also some others who just couldn't make it work for them. It's likely to be the same here.
• I'm not using my scouting app for this save, BUT I have seen behind the scenes info on a lot of players that I'll end up using. That does give me an unfair advantage, but I can't do much about that!
• I am going to bend the game for all it's worth, without what I consider to be cheating (reloading, looking behind the scenes, editing anything, etc) BUT some people may consider some of my techniques to be borderline cheating. You need to make up your own mind. And if you are doing any challenges here on Vibe, make sure you're not breaking the rules.

 

Warning

This may sound over-dramatic, but once you learn some of the tricks to breaking FMM, you can't easily forget them. It can change the way you play and while it may seem like that's the point, it can take the fun out of the game. If you like playing realistically, you probably don't want to read any further. 

 

Updates

I'll list updates here so anyone reading this post later can find them more easily:

• Part 1 - Choosing The Club And Player
• Part 2 - Choices When Starting The Save
• Part 3 - Facilities And Staff
• Part 4 - Tactics
• Part 5 - Buying And Selling Players
• Part 6 - Rebuilding Your Squad
• Part 7 - Finalising Your Squad Setup
• Step 8 - The First Season - General Results and Progress

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Edited Monday at 12:56 by Scratch

[sscout]

This is a cool save idea, and I hope you do finish it well and proper.

Hopefully we all get to see the gears behind the machine and it shines light on the effort it takes to run one of these challenges. 

And of course, a thanks in advance for the wonderful and important knowledge you'll soon be sharing. 

[deepheat83]

Here we go!!!

[Dai_]

I live for Scratch careers! Even without all the added bonuses of tips and tricks, they're just fun!

Best of luck, Sir.

Edited March 28 by Dai_

[Scratch]

Part 1 - Choosing The Club And Player

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's always something I consider carefully before I start the save.

 

The Club

The club, and the league they are in, can have a massive impact on how the save goes.

Ultimately you want to be fielding a truly world class team against as weak an opposition as possible. The biggest factor in breaking the game is achieving an absolute dominance over the opposition in terms of skill level. 

Stronger Competitions

Lately I've been playing as Newcastle in the EPL. I have enough money and reputation to buy any wonderkid I like (and even established stars), so it's easy to put together a world class team. My striker will be playing at a high level, meaning he will ramp up and reach his full potential more quickly.

On the flip side, a young, raw striker might struggle to score in the EPL, which could slow things down a bit at the very start (high ratings = quicker development). And because we will be playing better opposition, he ultimately won't score as much (160 goals in the SPL might translate into 120 in the EPL for eg). 

Weaker Competitions

Last year I had an interesting save at Shamrock Rovers in Ireland. I was able to put together a very strong team (world class after four or five seasons). With the very low level of opposing clubs, we absolutely smashed teams week in, week out. The striker scored a LOT of goals.

But the competition being low level meant that it took a lot longer for players to ramp up, with them regularly hitting the "must play at a higher level to improve" cap. Not only did this make it harder, it severely reduced the fun level. And the transfer / wage budget at the start was pitiful, meaning it was harder to attract good players. 

The Happy Balance

The club I keep coming back to (and indeed for this save as well) is Celtic. It is the happy medium: A good budget, able to attract very good wonderkids, high enough level not to slow development, weak opposition meaning a lot of goals. etc. Basically the perfect combination. There are probably other leagues that are similar, but Scotland is the best for me. And within Scotland, Celtic seem the best club to use.

Don't let that stop you trying other club/leagues - find the ones that work for you, but do keep in mind the trade-offs of that choice. 

 

The Player

Equally, you have to choose right player to have a good chance of doing really well. Sometimes it's fun to use a random player that takes your fancy, but you will score more if you are more scientific about your choice. 

Age

Of course you need to choose a young player for a long term goal scoring career. I like players who are 17 or 18 if I can get them. Any younger and you are more likely to run into the "needs to mature" message. I will use slightly older players (19 or 20) if they are clearly a better choice. 

Shape

You have to have an idea about your tactics before you can choose the right player. I always use tactics that rely on the striker being strong in the air (like a cheat code in FMM honestly), so I only look at players that will fit that. Specifically, I only look at players with a decent base for Aerial. 

I also look at a player's height. SI Games has said that height isn't used by the match engine, but I have an (unproven) theory that it may be used in working out how much/how often a player's Aerial attribute increases. There have been cases of shorter players getting to 20 Aerial, but I just feel it's more likely for a taller player to do it. There are a number of places to find out a player's height, but the easiest is Google. Anyway, that means no Endrick for me!

I also take a look at things like their Pace, Stamina etc. I don't worry too much about Shooting or Movement as these are fairly easy to train up. 

Hidden Attributes

I also go to the Personality button on the Personal screen to see their hidden attributes and scout them up in a test save (or even buy them).

I avoid anyone who is lazy or inconsistent or struggles in big matches or is injury prone. I am more likely to pick someone who is professional or works hard or is very rarely injured, etc. That said, most bad habits can be mentored out of them EXCEPT for struggles in big matches and injury prone, so I totally avoid those.

Quality

The hardest part is choosing someone with the right quality. You ideally want a player with low CA (current ability) and high PA (potential ability) as this means the player will get a lot of updates. A young player with lots of updates will always end up better than the established top strikers in the game (Haaland being maybe the only exception).

Of course you can't see CA and PA in the game, which makes it hard to choose players on this basis.  

For the first version of the current year's FMM, you can use the wonderkid list to find players with high PA. As different updates are released throughout the year, we get new database versions and the wonderkid list isn't always accurate anymore, so it may not always be a great choice later on.

Beyond that... We're about to get a little bit controversial:

• The Editor is now free, so you can use it to see CA / PA as star values (always ignore the star values from staff in the game itself).
• I created a scouting app for Android that lets you see the actual 0-200 values.

If you are doing a challenge here like a 1KC, then you should NOT use either of these during the challenge, but as far as I'm concerned (not all may agree), it's fine to scout around in test saves while you work out which player to use - as long as you don't use it on the actual save. 

Note: most young player have PA that generates slightly higher or lower each save, so what you see in the test save won't be the same in the real save - but it will give you an idea of what players you may want to use.

In case it helps, here are the top young strikers in the Winter Database version (you must make sure the Final Winter Update button is on when creating the save):

Spoiler

I didn't show the CA/PA as some people don't like that, but that is all strikers 19 years or younger, with PA of 150 or above and a CA to PA gap of at least 40 (meaning at least 8 updates coming their way) - remembering of course that they could generate higher or lower in each save. 

 

Purchasing The Player

I always spin up a test save to see which strikers I can get at the club of my choice. It's no good choosing a striker that won't come to your club or that you can't afford, so I check out who I can get in advance of creating the actual save. Most of the time I will be looking for strikers that will come to the club I decided to use, but occasionally I will change club to get the player I want.

 

My Club For This Save 

I chose Celtic for the reasons given above. Also, I want to see how close I can get to 200 goals, so it makes sense to use the same club I was using for the original save where I achieved that. 

I was slightly tempted to use Inter so I could use Francesco Pio Esposito, the younger brother of Sebastiano, one of my favourite goal scorers from a few years back. He's on loan and can't be bought, so to use him you have to play as Inter and recall him. 

But I resisted that urge and went with Celtic.

 

My Striker For This Save

I spent a long time looking at Omorodion:

He didn't make the list I posted above because he has a CA to PA gap of 37, but he is perhaps the best choice. He has a fantastic base with those 15s for Aerial, Pace, Movement and Shooting. With 7 upgrades to come (on average), he's going to be hitting some 20s there alright. 

He would come to Celtic: 

And he would rip up the SPL from day one... Actually I'm a bit confused why I didn't go with him! 😀

 

I also looked at Rory Wilson:

He's actually quite good PA wise and has a lot more updates coming to him than Omorodion would. I liked that he was Scottish, but didn't like:

• The Chilled description. Poor Judgement is fine, that will disappear as his Decisions attribute improves, but Chilled is harder to fix;
• That he is only 181cm tall - that's okay, but I'd much prefer someone taller;
• That he was a Rangers junior player - it didn't feel right to bring him to Celtic. 

I took a look at Emre Tezgel too, but I've used him before and decided not to revisit old ground this time around (and he is only 182cm).

 

I looked at a few others, but the one that I settled one was Nelson Weiper:

He is ultimately not as good as Omorodion in terms of PA, but he's still decent (high 4 stars) and he comes in with much lower CA, so will develop much more quickly. He's tall, and with 14 Aerial already, he should hit 20 without any worries.

Perhaps the best part is that hidden attribute list: Professional, Determined, Consistent... What more could I want? Well Hard Working would have been nice, but we can work on that. And Loyal players are always good to have. 

The other thing, which could be curse for some, but which I'll count as a blessing, is that he is German... That means he will never play an international game (as Germany uses greyed out players due to licensing issues). The negative is that I don't have the chance to manage manage him at ITN level and milk the ITN goals by setting up friendlies against weak nations, but I hate managing ITN teams and am quite happy to skip that. The benefit is that he is going to spend every ITN break staying at home relaxing and will be more refreshed for Celtic. That is actually quite good as players seem to get worn out over the course of a season.

My only worry with that is that his second nationality is Albanian, so they could call him up. 🤞 they don't...

 

And that's where I will leave it for today. Note, I haven't even started the actual save at this point, it's all just been planning which team and player to use, which will give me the best chance to really break the game.

Next update, I'll start the save and get into the Day 1 activities.

 

Edited March 28 by Scratch

[fotakis276718]

Yeeeeeeah!!! Finally a career from Vibe's legend!!! Best of luck scratchy!!!

[fotakis276718]

Maybe if you want take a look at a alternative choice for a player.. Stefanos Tzimas from PAOK..he is a great goalscorer.

I start a career before this year's release of your AM.. I've made a "cheat" and look at his potential and it's 191 for this save!! I think i can turn him to a monster but at Panathinaikos I don't have the money..

[Rob]

Yawnnnn.

JOKES. Welcome back to our favourite Australian genius. Best of luck with those one. Amazing write ups so far.

[Mae]

Appreciate you sharing this with us and best of luck in the save. Very eager to see the updates!

[leedsunited87]

Go on scratch lad, this will definitely help the lads that need the help. Awesome buddy 👏 👍 😎 🙌 

[Scratch]

9 hours ago, fotakis276718 said:

Maybe if you want take a look at a alternative choice for a player.. Stefanos Tzimas from PAOK..he is a great goalscorer.

I start a career before this year's release of your AM.. I've made a "cheat" and look at his potential and it's 191 for this save!! I think i can turn him to a monster but at Panathinaikos I don't have the money..

He looks pretty awesome there and 191 PA is massive, but I think you were lucky in the save generation that he turned out that high (which can happen, but is not common).

He would have made the striker list I shared above, if I'd done it for the database version prior to winter one. You can still use this database version if you turn the Final Winter Update button off. However, he would have only just made it as his default PA is 152 in that version. His CA is low so he will get a LOT of upgrades coming his way. He would be a decent choice, but getting anywhere near that 191 PA is going to be really rare.

He lost 17 off his starting PA in the winter version though, so he doesn't make the list I shared above and wouldn't be a striker I'd consider for that version. He still has a lot of development coming his way, but to 'break' the game, I'd want someone better. 

[Scratch]

 

8 hours ago, Rob said:

Yawnnnn.

JOKES. Welcome back to our favourite Australian genius. Best of luck with those one. Amazing write ups so far.

Thanks mate. Genius might be a bit strong though... Been meaning to write something up for quite a while now, but a) limited time; and b) couldn't find anything worthwhile. Seems like I've solved part b of that now! 

[Scratch]

2 hours ago, Mae said:

Appreciate you sharing this with us and best of luck in the save. Very eager to see the updates!

Thanks!

54 minutes ago, leedsunited87 said:

Go on scratch lad, this will definitely help the lads that need the help. Awesome buddy 👏 👍 😎 🙌 

Thanks, I think I can see @Rob making notes over there! (only joking, he doesn't need help. Well not with FMM anyway! )

[Scratch]

11 hours ago, Dai_ said:

I live for Scratch careers! Even without all the added bonuses of tips and tricks, they're just fun!

Best of luck, Sir.

Thanks mate. This one is shaping up as info dump heavy, and non of the tips and tricks are new, so might be a bit boring for established players actually! But thanks anyway.

added 0 minutes later

12 hours ago, deepheat83 said:

Here we go!!!

Thanks mate, previous comment applies to you as well, you might find this boring!

[Scratch]

13 hours ago, sscout said:

This is a cool save idea, and I hope you do finish it well and proper.

Hopefully we all get to see the gears behind the machine and it shines light on the effort it takes to run one of these challenges. 

And of course, a thanks in advance for the wonderful and important knowledge you'll soon be sharing. 

Thanks mate! This is likely to be the save where I get sacked 2 months in... 🤣

[Scratch]

Part 2 - Choices When Starting The Save

These are the choices I made when starting the save:

 

Active Nations

As you can see, I loaded Scotland and England. Here's some background information on my choices:

Annoying Free Agents

The main reason I loaded England is that if you don't, there will be a bunch of good young English players who are free agents rather than being at their real life clubs. Basically the English club squads are smaller and some young players end up club-less.

That can be something you can take advantage of (though some here frown on it), but personally I find it annoying. If nothing else, it means I have to sign the best ones or the other SPL clubs will do it instead and be stronger than I want them to be. So I just skip that whole drama and load England.

Having Enough Staff

Another reason I loaded England is that if you only load Scotland, you can run out of interested Gold or (natural) Silver staff to hire. Having a second nation loaded helps pad that out and gives you more staff choices. You probably don't need that if you are using a top nation, but for smaller one like Scotland it's necessary.

Spanish Wonderkids

In some saves I also load Spain, because a) they have a lot of good youngsters and b) all players at Spanish clubs must have a release clause. That means that with some hunting you can sign players who will end up top level for next to nothing. But it does take a long time to troll through all the players (more on that in the next section), so I decided to skip that this time around.

It's not really necessary at Celtic (helpful, yes, necessary, no). I'm much more likely to do it at smaller club like Wrexham or Shamrock Rovers, where I can't afford many players so it's worth spending a long long time to find that one very good player with a release clause of 100K.

Why Not 5 Leagues

Some people will be wondering why I didn't load 5 leagues. For two reasons:

• I like to keep things light and lean and even a few extra seconds on saving or waiting for fixtures to be processed annoys the proverbial out of me; and
• It's easier to find good young players (real or regenerated) with fewer nations loaded.

It's worth noting, using Spain as an example, that if Spain is loaded, then Spanish regens will come back as 16 year olds at a Spanish club academy. If it's not loaded, then they can come back anywhere from 16 to 25 years old. 16 year olds are a little young, but anyone over 23 is going to have trouble reaching their potential, so that's probably a draw. Coming back through the academy system generally takes longer (sometimes years longer) so that's a negative.

The bigger point for me is just that it's easier to find diamonds in a smaller pool of players. If Spain is loaded there will be a LOT of mediocre players to dig through to find the gems. I did some research using test saves to back this up: 

In a save with Scotland, England and Spain loaded, this was the breakdown of Spanish players by PA:

Stars (PA)	Number
4.5 and above	82
4.0	437
3.5	1127
3.0 and below	4042

In a save with Scotland and England loaded, this was the breakdown:

Stars (PA)	Number
4.5 and above	64
4.0	139
3.5	19
3.0 and below	15

In which group do you think it is going to be easier to find good young players (either real or regens) for your team? Yes, there are more great players with Spain loaded, but there are so many crap players that you have to look through to find them. Pick a Spanish player at random and you have 9% chance they are good (4 star or above) if Spain is loaded vs an 86% chance they are good if it's not.

 

Game Start Date

This one is not that important, but I always choose the earliest data available, so I have longer to put together my team and scout out players etc. 

 

Coaching Badge

I always go with Gold badge if I have it, or earn it asap if I don't.

Note that to get to gold level you need to tick off as many achievements as possible, so check out the achievements section. Some you have to wait to earn, but some you can go for right away, like winning a game with short passing and winning a game with direct or long passing, etc.

 

Coaching Style

For coaching style, I go for Motivational every. single. time.

Choosing motivational means that the players coming through your academy will have great values for professionalism, hard work, determination etc. Here is an example from a Wrexham save I was doing a while back:

His PA is only 120, so he won't be a world beater, but he will absolutely maximize his career. And almost all your academy players will be like this.

I'd noticed this happening for several years, but it was only a year or so ago that I learnt, through @DanEnglish, that having chosen Motivational was the cause. 

 

Reputation

For reputation, I just go for whatever is the highest level I have. There is a time and a place to start out unknown and see what you can achieve, but it's not when you are trying to break the game.

 

Star Titles

Star titles are new and I don't fully understand the effect of them, but I choose to activate the ones that look like they will attract players to me, namely that I can make them a star and win them trophies.

 

Anyway, that's enough for part 2. I'll be back again soon.

 

Edited March 29 by Scratch

[Scratch]

Part 3 - Facilities And Staff

Day 1 at the club is going to be a long one, but lets start at the beginning. The first thing I do after the save starts, even before I bother reading the initial messages, is to sort out the club facilities, followed by the staff. 

The aim of course is to get the best support in place to help young player development. The most important thing (in my eyes) is game time, as long as you're playing at a decent level. I am not sure how much staff and facilities help in most cases, but I feel like it is worth having the best you can get for both. 

Let's pause for a second to consider player development 'hold ups' in general:

• Age: If the player is young, you might get the "development has plateaued" and "needs to mature" messages and you have to wait until their birthday before they start moving again. Some players develop a little later than others and are more likely to run into this issue, but a 17 year old with high PA and lots of updates is unlikely to run into this in the current game (was much more likely a few years ago). 
   
• League level: If the player is too good for the league, they can run into the "needs to play at a higher level" message. If you keep playing and winning things and progressing in Europe (or the equivalent), the league level will slowly improve each year and unlock this (though you may run into it again as the player keeps improving). They can also improve in ITN games.
   
• Training Facilities and Staff: I don't run into this often, but at lower level leagues (like Ireland) development can be held up by not having good enough staff or facilities (there are messages for both cases). The solution is to improve the level of facilities and staff (and maybe hire specialist coaches if that's what's asked for). 

At Celtic, I'm very unlikely to run into the staff / facilities issue, so it's not likely to hold up Weiper's development.

However... I feel like the improvement in attributes you get for each update is better when you have top staff and facilities. I can't prove that and there is randomness built into it, but it seems to me that a youngster is more likely to get an update that increases only one or two attributes when the staff/facilities are lower level and more likely to get updates that increase three or four attributes when staff/facilities are higher level. 

Like I say, that's just a feeling, but I'm not leaving anything to chance here...

 

Facilities

Celtic start off with 4 star training facilities and 3.5 star youth facilities.

My main priority is the training facilities, as that may affect Weiper's development.

The youth facilities are only going to affect the level of youth players I get through. I'd like that to be as high as possible, but as I'm in Scotland, I won't be counting on my academy players. A few will be good enough, but many will be solid squad players that fall short of the elite team I will be building. Still I'm going to ask for both to be upgraded.

It used to be pretty hard to get a "Yes" and there were weird things that gave you a better chance, such as saving, closing FMM and opening it again before asking (I'm not talking about reloading if you got a bad answer, just closing and reopening the game before asking).

Anyway, it seems a lot easier now. I haven't had any trouble getting a Yes at any club I've been at - I just ask at the start and then every 3 months afterwards. As long as I've got enough money in the bank (ie transfer balance), I've gotten a Yes. I guess it might still be harder at some smaller clubs? Wrexham was fine, but they have ambitious owners. If you do get held up at a smaller club, then ask after you get promoted or win cups etc. 

I'm not sure how much money you need in the bank for every step. When you get to the last couple for the training facilities, you need £10M in the bank, but previous steps are cheaper and the youth facilities steps are cheaper too. If you ask without having enough money, they will say No. 

Spending that money can be a tradeoff compared to spending it on transfers etc, but I want to maximise my striker's development. I should have enough money to do what I need at Celtic, so I pull the trigger (and get Yes for both):

I started with a transfer budget of £21M, and the training facilities cost £10M and the youth facilities cost £500K. That leaves me with £10.5M to start rebuilding my squad.

While we're looking at the Board Request screen, I should also mention that in past versions I used to ask for the Stadium to be expanded every time the average attendance got up to the maximum capacity. It was free and apart from a "can't get planning permission" catch around 80K (which could be overridden with the "board owes you one" event) you could get your stadium to 100K pretty easily, which helped with your reputation and attracting players etc. That wasn't a day 1 thing obviously, it was ongoing, but it's much harder to get stadium increases in this version and I've stopped asking as much and I may forget to mention it later.

 

Staff

Celtic start off like this:

I'll focus on the Coaches first:

Th

That's actually pretty good! I normally sack my existing coaches and try to get at least 2 Fitness coaches, one Youth coach and one Motivational or Attacking coach. In this case I have three coaches I'll keep. Unfortunately for John Kennedy, I don't want Defensive coaches, so I let him go.

I look around for Motivational or Attacking coach (or maybe another Fitness coach) to replace him and settle on Kieron Dyer, who is a Natural Attacking coach with a Silver badge. I won't tell you exactly how many saves I've hired Kieron in, but here's a hint: I'm a Newcastle United supporter. Anyway I hire him and immediately click the Take Coaching Exam button. Keiron doesn't let me down: 

Or more accurately, he doesn't let himself down. I am brutal with this. If he had failed I would have sacked him and found someone else. I sometimes go through 4 or 5 people before I get one that passes the exam and can stay. You can't afford to do that at a smaller club, but the budget at Celtic will cover it. 

Anyway, that leaves us with the following mix of coaches: 

I know some will argue for more Fitness coaches, but that how I'm rolling this time around.

We then move on to the other staff. I won't go through it step by step, but I'm looking for Gold Level staff in all areas.

For Scouts, I try to get a Technical Analyst if I can get one and First Team scouts otherwise - but it doesn't really matter. All I really use scouts for is to show me the difference between current and potential ability and to see the information such as thrives in big games" etc. I'll talk more about this later. The point for now is that I want Gold scouts so their information is more reliable, but I don't really care what type they are, as I ignore things like pre-match reports anyway.

For Physios, I go for 2 Preventative and 1 Rehab.

I ended up with the following staff at the end of the restructuring process:

I managed to get Steve Watson and Jay Lefevre to pass their exams (if they'd failed they would have been gone). A trick to get them to pass is to wait until a new hire passes (Dyer in this case) and then immediately get them to do it. It seems they are more likely to pass.

Maybe that's just a superstition I've tricked myself into believing, but I did some extensive testing a few years ago and there definitely seemed to be some correlation there. It's almost like the Pass decision is cached and reused for the next candidate - but it's not 100% so it can't actually be that. Maybe one data point into the decision is remembered by FMM rather than randomly generated next time. Or maybe I'm just a crazy old man.... 

Anyway... I had to hire Physios and ask them to take the test. John Alti passed, but unfortunately Steve Allen failed. I would have sacked him and hired someone else, but there wasn't anyone suitable to replace him. So I am stuck with a Silver badged physio for now. I will get him to take the test again in 6 months. If he keeps failing, I will just have to wait until I win enough that more gold staff want to come to Celtic (won't be long). 

 

Anyway, I'll leave it there. In the next part, I'll finally start to look at the squad.

 

Thanks for reading.

 

[Dai_]

I'm pretty much like for like, so far. Only thing I wasn't aware of was making myself a motivational manager. I've always used attacking and hired a motivational assistant. I'll try the alternative next time around and see what happens. You'll always find some golden nuggets in these write-ups. 

Basically, I've learned all this from you before whilst following your careers but it's always good to get a refresh. 😂

I knew it wouldn't be boring. 👌

[deepheat83]

36 minutes ago, Dai_ said:

I'm pretty much like for like, so far. Only thing I wasn't aware of was making myself a motivational manager. I've always used attacking and hired a motivational assistant. I'll try the alternative next time around and see what happens. You'll always find some golden nuggets in these write-ups. 

Basically, I've learned all this from you before whilst following your careers but it's always good to get a refresh. 😂

I knew it wouldn't be boring. 👌

Very much the same here,

Tend to go Motivational for myself, 2 attacking, 2 fitness.

Any benefits from going 2 prevention 1 rehab?

I use to run with this but recently changed to 2 rehab 1 prevention, havent really noticed any difference

[Mae]

It’s only been a couple of updates and I learnt more than me just plug and playing ever since FMM20. Keep them coming, of course in your own free time. This is like favourite series you’re waiting for every week  for a new episode 😂

[Rav44]

20 hours ago, Scratch said:

Part 1 - Choosing The Club And Player

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's always something I consider carefully before I start the save.

 

The Club

The club, and the league they are in, can have a massive impact on how the save goes.

Ultimately you want to be fielding a truly world class team against as weak an opposition as possible. The biggest factor in breaking the game is achieving an absolute dominance over the opposition in terms of skill level. 

Stronger Competitions

Lately I've been playing as Newcastle in the EPL. I have enough money and reputation to buy any wonderkid I like (and even established stars), so it's easy to put together a world class team. My striker will be playing at a high level, meaning he will ramp up and reach his full potential more quickly.

On the flip side, a young, raw striker might struggle to score in the EPL, which could slow things down a bit at the very start (high ratings = quicker development). And because we will be playing better opposition, he ultimately won't score as much (160 goals in the SPL might translate into 120 in the EPL for eg). 

Weaker Competitions

Last year I had an interesting save at Shamrock Rovers in Ireland. I was able to put together a very strong team (world class after four or five seasons). With the very low level of opposing clubs, we absolutely smashed teams week in, week out. The striker scored a LOT of goals.

But the competition being low level meant that it took a lot longer for players to ramp up, with them regularly hitting the "must play at a higher level to improve" cap. Not only did this make it harder, it severely reduced the fun level. And the transfer / wage budget at the start was pitiful, meaning it was harder to attract good players. 

The Happy Balance

The club I keep coming back to (and indeed for this save as well) is Celtic. It is the happy medium: A good budget, able to attract very good wonderkids, high enough level not to slow development, weak opposition meaning a lot of goals. etc. Basically the perfect combination. There are probably other leagues that are similar, but Scotland is the best for me. And within Scotland, Celtic seem the best club to use.

Don't let that stop you trying other club/leagues - find the ones that work for you, but do keep in mind the trade-offs of that choice. 

 

The Player

Equally, you have to choose right player to have a good chance of doing really well. Sometimes it's fun to use a random player that takes your fancy, but you will score more if you are more scientific about your choice. 

Age

Of course you need to choose a young player for a long term goal scoring career. I like players who are 17 or 18 if I can get them. Any younger and you are more likely to run into the "needs to mature" message. I will use slightly older players (19 or 20) if they are clearly a better choice. 

Shape

You have to have an idea about your tactics before you can choose the right player. I always use tactics that rely on the striker being strong in the air (like a cheat code in FMM honestly), so I only look at players that will fit that. Specifically, I only look at players with a decent base for Aerial. 

I also look at a player's height. SI Games has said that height isn't used by the match engine, but I have an (unproven) theory that it may be used in working out how much/how often a player's Aerial attribute increases. There have been cases of shorter players getting to 20 Aerial, but I just feel it's more likely for a taller player to do it. There are a number of places to find out a player's height, but the easiest is Google. Anyway, that means no Endrick for me!

I also take a look at things like their Pace, Stamina etc. I don't worry too much about Shooting or Movement as these are fairly easy to train up. 

Hidden Attributes

I also go to the Personality button on the Personal screen to see their hidden attributes and scout them up in a test save (or even buy them).

I avoid anyone who is lazy or inconsistent or struggles in big matches or is injury prone. I am more likely to pick someone who is professional or works hard or is very rarely injured, etc. That said, most bad habits can be mentored out of them EXCEPT for struggles in big matches and injury prone, so I totally avoid those.

Quality

The hardest part is choosing someone with the right quality. You ideally want a player with low CA (current ability) and high PA (potential ability) as this means the player will get a lot of updates. A young player with lots of updates will always end up better than the established top strikers in the game (Haaland being maybe the only exception).

Of course you can't see CA and PA in the game, which makes it hard to choose players on this basis.  

For the first version of the current year's FMM, you can use the wonderkid list to find players with high PA. As different updates are released throughout the year, we get new database versions and the wonderkid list isn't always accurate anymore, so it may not always be a great choice later on.

Beyond that... We're about to get a little bit controversial:

• The Editor is now free, so you can use it to see CA / PA as star values (always ignore the star values from staff in the game itself).
• I created a scouting app for Android that lets you see the actual 0-200 values.

If you are doing a challenge here like a 1KC, then you should NOT use either of these during the challenge, but as far as I'm concerned (not all may agree), it's fine to scout around in test saves while you work out which player to use - as long as you don't use it on the actual save. 

Note: most young player have PA that generates slightly higher or lower each save, so what you see in the test save won't be the same in the real save - but it will give you an idea of what players you may want to use.

In case it helps, here are the top young strikers in the Winter Database version (you must make sure the Final Winter Update button is on when creating the save):

  Hide contents

I didn't show the CA/PA as some people don't like that, but that is all strikers 19 years or younger, with PA of 150 or above and a CA to PA gap of at least 40 (meaning at least 8 updates coming their way) - remembering of course that they could generate higher or lower in each save. 

 

Purchasing The Player

I always spin up a test save to see which strikers I can get at the club of my choice. It's no good choosing a striker that won't come to your club or that you can't afford, so I check out who I can get in advance of creating the actual save. Most of the time I will be looking for strikers that will come to the club I decided to use, but occasionally I will change club to get the player I want.

 

My Club For This Save 

I chose Celtic for the reasons given above. Also, I want to see how close I can get to 200 goals, so it makes sense to use the same club I was using for the original save where I achieved that. 

I was slightly tempted to use Inter so I could use Francesco Pio Esposito, the younger brother of Sebastiano, one of my favourite goal scorers from a few years back. He's on loan and can't be bought, so to use him you have to play as Inter and recall him. 

But I resisted that urge and went with Celtic.

 

My Striker For This Save

I spent a long time looking at Omorodion:

He didn't make the list I posted above because he has a CA to PA gap of 37, but he is perhaps the best choice. He has a fantastic base with those 15s for Aerial, Pace, Movement and Shooting. With 7 upgrades to come (on average), he's going to be hitting some 20s there alright. 

He would come to Celtic: 

And he would rip up the SPL from day one... Actually I'm a bit confused why I didn't go with him! 😀

 

I also looked at Rory Wilson:

He's actually quite good PA wise and has a lot more updates coming to him than Omorodion would. I liked that he was Scottish, but didn't like:

• The Chilled description. Poor Judgement is fine, that will disappear as his Decisions attribute improves, but Chilled is harder to fix;
• That he is only 181cm tall - that's okay, but I'd much prefer someone taller;
• That he was a Rangers junior player - it didn't feel right to bring him to Celtic. 

I took a look at Emre Tezgel too, but I've used him before and decided not to revisit old ground this time around (and he is only 182cm).

 

I looked at a few others, but the one that I settled one was Nelson Weiper:

He is ultimately not as good as Omorodion in terms of PA, but he's still decent (high 4 stars) and he comes in with much lower CA, so will develop much more quickly. He's tall, and with 14 Aerial already, he should hit 20 without any worries.

Perhaps the best part is that hidden attribute list: Professional, Determined, Consistent... What more could I want? Well Hard Working would have been nice, but we can work on that. And Loyal players are always good to have. 

The other thing, which could be curse for some, but which I'll count as a blessing, is that he is German... That means he will never play an international game (as Germany uses greyed out players due to licensing issues). The negative is that I don't have the chance to manage manage him at ITN level and milk the ITN goals by setting up friendlies against weak nations, but I hate managing ITN teams and am quite happy to skip that. The benefit is that he is going to spend every ITN break staying at home relaxing and will be more refreshed for Celtic. That is actually quite good as players seem to get worn out over the course of a season.

My only worry with that is that his second nationality is Albanian, so they could call him up. 🤞 they don't...

 

And that's where I will leave it for today. Note, I haven't even started the actual save at this point, it's all just been planning which team and player to use, which will give me the best chance to really break the game.

Next update, I'll start the save and get into the Day 1 activities.

 

Excellent. Have always enjoyed reading your threads and may copy you for this year as I have no original ideas of my own 😂.

i was surprised to see no Evan Ferguson on that list. Did he come into your thinking? Good Ariel and stamina .

good luck 👍🏾

[StuartM]

Every day is a school day for me!

No small amount of effort goes into these write ups, not to mention the time taken to generate the know how - so thanks from me.

Good luck, I bet you will get some big numbers here!

[Scratch]

17 hours ago, Dai_ said:

I'm pretty much like for like, so far. Only thing I wasn't aware of was making myself a motivational manager. I've always used attacking and hired a motivational assistant. I'll try the alternative next time around and see what happens. You'll always find some golden nuggets in these write-ups. 

Basically, I've learned all this from you before whilst following your careers but it's always good to get a refresh. 😂

I knew it wouldn't be boring. 👌

I wonder if you get the same (mentally) great academy players if you're not a motivational coach, but you have one on staff? Never considered or tested that. I just always went with Motivational because I thought it would keep morale up and I thought everyone was getting these fiercely determined and professional kids coming through. There's always stuff to learn in this game.

But yeah this is basically just a big refresh session. I wasn't expecting to go into as much detail as I have so far, but .... that's just what came out when I started writing!

[Scratch]

16 hours ago, deepheat83 said:

Very much the same here,

Tend to go Motivational for myself, 2 attacking, 2 fitness.

Any benefits from going 2 prevention 1 rehab?

I use to run with this but recently changed to 2 rehab 1 prevention, havent really noticed any difference

I suspect most of us who break the game will have similar setups etc. As for the physios, I don't know if there is actually much difference, just my head seems to say "better to stop him getting injured rather than let him get injured and have him heal faster". So I go with 2 preventative. I doubt it makes a huge difference though. 

added 0 minutes later

15 hours ago, Mae said:

It’s only been a couple of updates and I learnt more than me just plug and playing ever since FMM20. Keep them coming, of course in your own free time. This is like favourite series you’re waiting for every week  for a new episode 😂

Thanks!

[Scratch]

14 hours ago, Rav44 said:

Excellent. Have always enjoyed reading your threads and may copy you for this year as I have no original ideas of my own 😂.

i was surprised to see no Evan Ferguson on that list. Did he come into your thinking? Good Ariel and stamina .

good luck 👍🏾

Thanks!

Evan Feguson missed out because his gap from CA to default PA in the Winter database is only 24, so he'll only get about 5 updates. They really nerfed him in the winter update. His default PA was really high in the previous version (which you can still play with the Final Winter Update button off when you start the save) but he lost 28 points of PA in the Winter version. So he used to be mid-level 5 stars, but is now only just 4.5 stars. Still a good player, just not much development.

added 0 minutes later

7 hours ago, StuartM said:

Every day is a school day for me!

No small amount of effort goes into these write ups, not to mention the time taken to generate the know how - so thanks from me.

Good luck, I bet you will get some big numbers here!

Thanks, yeah it has taken a long long time writing these updates. Gotta keep going before I lost the energy and enthusiasm to keep doing them!

[Scratch]

Part 4 - Tactics

Did I say we were finally going to get into the squad? I guess I lied!

Before you can start shaping your squad you need to know what sort of tactics you are going to be using. You don't need to know the exact tactic, but you do need to know the basics, such as whether you want wingers or IFs, tall strikers or shorties, how many midfielders you'll play, etc. I've had some interesting saves where I changed tactics mid-way through and ended up not having enough players for each position...

For this save, I'm falling back onto my tried and tested tactic, which I'll talk more about below. Before I get to that, I need to say something. But before I get to that, I need to say something else! Talk about complicated. First...

 

A Disclaimer

The thing I see people asking for the most, whether it's here or on Discord, is help with tactics.

"How do I score more goals?", "Why can't I hold a lead?", "I keep losing, help!", "Where can I find a good tactic?"... And I see people give great, well thought out tactical advice that works.

There are a lot of people who give great advice, but I'd have to say @DanEnglish has really stood out over the last several years as The Tactical Master. I have the utmost respect for Dan and his depth of tactical understanding and what he can achieve with it. There's no doubt that optimising your tactics can be a game changer if you are playing reaslistically.

But here's the thing: I am NOT playing realistically. I am breaking the game. Which leads me on to...

 

Tactics Are Not Important!

At least not in the way most people think...

If I'm going to score 3K goals with one striker, it's not the tactic which does most of the work.

The single most important thing is creating a massive skill imbalance between your team and the opposition. Basically you want the equivalent of your team being Man City's first team while your opponent is St Paddy's Under 7s team. Once you have achieved that imbalance you will win and score a lot of goals, no matter which tactic you use. 

Where the tactic does come in is in directing where the goals come from. For a lone striker goal scoring career you obviously want them to come from the striker. The tactic is important to ensure this happens and it's not other people scoring. But the key point here is that the tactic by itself is not going to get the results you want.

With that said, let's move on to the tactic I'm using.

 

How I Roll...

I'm using the same tactic I used for the Sesko 3KC a couple of years ago. Back then I just said it was the Balanced variation of my TT Blaster tactic with the two extra strikers moved back into CM roles. This time around I will go into more detail.

First, here are the formation, roles and Shape instructions:

Yes, I only have 1 in the back line. Once you have a dominant team you don't need more than that. That player does need to be fast and have good positioning etc, which is why we're talking about the tactic before I put the squad together. I'm also using wingers (who will need great Crossing) and a TF (who will need great Aerial).  

I go back and forth about whether I should use WBs or IWBs. I leave it on IWBs, but most of the time they stay wide and act as WBs anyway, I think because the CMs stay in place and the IWBs have no space to come inside. No matter, the tactic works, so I'm okay with that.

I don't have any RPs or BBMs because those roles score too many goals. I want the most chances to go to my TF!!

Likewise the attacking midfielder is an AM because the other roles score too much. The AM still scores too much sometime, so I will rotate players through that position until I find one that assists more than they score. If the AM takes a lot of shots in a particular game (which happens sometimes), I will swap them with another midfielder or even move that position back to a DMC one.

A lot of maximising your strikers goals comes down to making sure he's taking most of the shots. Hence you want Ws who will put the ball on his head 3 yards out, AMs who will pass to him rather than take shots, a center line that will dominate the game and set up attacks without being a goal threat themselves etc.

If we are losing a game once I've sub my striker off, I may mix all of that up and do things like turn the AM into an SS, or the CMs into RPs etc. Anything is fair game once my main striker is off.

As for the Shape instructions, I go with Balanced as everyone sits back a little deeper leaving more of the shots to the striker. Any more attacking and too many other players pinch goals. Later in the save when my team is more dominant, I will often turn on Wide, which creates more space for my striker, and Fast, which allows us to bamboozle the opposition - but neither works well until the squad is super powered. 

Next up is the Defensive instructions:

Not much to say here. I find we do better if we press all over. I sometimes turn on Offside Trap as I figure it should be easy to spring the offside trap with only one person in the line! But mostly I leave it off because when things go wrong with one at the back, you can get into real trouble - and having the player stay back a little might give them more time to recover. 

Here are the Attacking instructions:

I tweak these a fair bit and can never tell which works better! Sometimes I go with Through Ball instead of Run At Defence. Sometimes I go with Mixed passing focus instead of Centre. I switch these things up if the tactic stops working quite so well, then switch it back later for the same reason. 

With Early Crosses, I normally have this off at the beginning of the save, until the striker is strong in the air. Because Weiper starts with 14 Aerial I figured I'd turn it on from the start, even though I normally wait until they hit 16 or so. I turn it on as I find a) it gets the ball into the striker quickly, before too many other players get forward and want to shoot, and b) once the striker is good in the air and has decent pace and movement, they have a reasonable chance of scoring from this. 

Lastly, the corner tactic:

Yes, I'm still using the corner tactic that was broken a few years back: everyone stay back, except for my striker who marks the keeper, while the corner taker aims at the penalty spot. It's not broken anymore, but I still score reasonably well from this. 

I don't bother with any other set piece instructions, except to put my striker on pens, free kicks from the two central positions outside the penalty area and to get the best crossers taking the corners (I always have a long list of takers so we don't end up with the striker taking them, which they seem to like doing).

 

I used to watch games more closely and make changes if we weren't getting many chances. I'd do things like move the AM to PF on the right of the TF (the right side, not the left, so that the TF still gets the corners) if the TF was up against too many defenders. These days I'm a bit lazier and less likely to do this. I'm probably leaving goals on the table, but I still score a lot. Maybe I'll do that in this career, but most likely not.

 

Anyway, I better leave it there for now. Thanks for reading!

 

[hoon87]

I'm enjoying it
Why didn't you consider Shaqueel?

[DanEnglish]

4 hours ago, Scratch said:

The single most important thing is creating a massive skill imbalance between your team and the opposition

4 hours ago, Scratch said:

Where the tactic does come in is in directing where the goals come from.

This is a great thread overall - and completely agree with what you’re saying about tactics 👍 this is a great read also 🔥 

[Dai_]

3 hours ago, hoon87 said:

I'm enjoying it
Why didn't you consider Shaqueel?

I'm going to guess it's because he isn't consistent and doesn't thrive in big matches. 🤷 Weiper is and does.

 

Also, @Scratch, using a target man? One of their "roles" is to hold the ball up and bring others into play. We don't want that. Not near the opposing penalty area anyway. We want to keep the ball all to ourselves. Surely with the balanced approach and balanced defensive line you'll be deep enough for an AF to exploit the space behind opposition defences? Especially with early crosses on? I've never used TF for this type of challenge and ever since your sniper tactic (which used AF, didn't it?) I swear it's super effective. Granted, that was using a defensive set-up. 🤷

[DanEnglish]

6 minutes ago, Dai_ said:

Also, @Scratch, using a target man?

Yeah I was surprised by that also. Was expecting him to use a Poacher. As a Poacher doesn’t really contribute to build up play, just stays in/around the box waiting for crosses or through balls.

Interesting 🤔