Laivasse

Wigan 1-1 Blackburn, only 7 minutes in. Defence shocking at both ends. Could be a high scorer.

I watched the Yogscast guys do a preview play through of FF14 and it looked

Stopper means they play a bit higher up and close people down early. Cover means they're a bit more cautious, stay deeper and rely on anticipation to sweep things up. In real life Collins is more of a stopper while Dunne is more of a coverer. In general, don't fix what aint broke. The coaches don't necessarily know any better than you. They probably see Delph's pace and think he should be set to 'run with ball often', with an attacking mentality, which is one thing an 'AP: Attack' does, but I'm not sure Delph's creativity and decisions are hot enough for that. When it comes down to it you can usually accommodate the coaches' suggestions by changing one or two of the sliders under advanced settings. So if Delph is working well for you but the coaches think he should be an 'AP: Attack' then look to see what the default sliders for 'AP: Attack' are like, and maybe adopt the ones that make sense. So you could maybe make his mentality more attacking, and make him run with the ball more, but the higher creativity and making him cross and try killer balls all the time might not make sense.

^FM has no shame in the lengths it will go to make some games unwinnable. In such situations I employ my own little trick to make games unlose-able, called 'Load game'. I find that usually the CPU plays fair on the 2nd or at least the 3rd attempt. It wasn't as bad as having my goalie stand around on the halfway line, but I had a similarly cheaty game against Man Utd in the CL semis. After scoring once early on, I had missed countless sitters, given away a random uncharacteristic penalty, one of my pansiest playmakers somehow got a red for persistent fouling despite tackling set to 'light', and I lost another 2 players to injury almost immediately after my final sub in the 65th. Despite all of that, I still held an aggregate lead until the 94th minute. That was when Akinfeev fumbled an easy catch - the first time I'd ever seen him do that - to give Utd an easy goal and an away goals victory. Travesties like that don't go down as canon in my game. Trouble is, until the final whistle is blown you never know if the computer is going to cheat you or cheat itself. In the CL final vs Schalke, I couldn't score from a hatful of chances, but they of course scored from a 35 yard free kick from a tight angle. After that I battered them for the entire game but still couldn't equalise. Then in the 90th minute, after what must be my 20th corner, the ref blows for a penalty - which my 16pen/17fin/15comp striker tamely passed into their prone keeper's body. Sighing, I prepared to consign this match to the 'ludicrous' category, when in the 94th minute, from a long throw, the ref blows for another pen for me Same defender to blame, this time fouling my keeper who'd come up to support. Sanity reasserted itself, the penalty was buried, and then I scored two easy goals in extra time. Exciting, for sure, but you have to wonder where, in what hidden setting, the game is calculating this bizarre behaviour to bias matches one way or the other at different stages.

Yeah, good defensive performance. I'd even go for someone like Lescott as MotM. This match was won by lads consistently getting their foot in at the right times, not to mention making good use of a set piece. I was expecting to be underwhelmed but England won deservedly and what's encouraging is I think we can also play better than this. Some might point to the dominant possession Spain had, but for all of that they had no cutting edge. Hart had like one (tame) save to make, which came in the last 5 minutes. Passing well and creating pretty triangles doesn't entitle you to win every time.

It's rare that I've seen England break up the opposition play this well. Our own passing is still quite poor (although improved since the 1st half) and since the goal we've shown worrying signs of wanting to sit on the edge of our own area. Ramos could have been off there. Milner's looking good :'(

EDIT: the email image I posted here turned out to be fake :/

It only seems like you have to take the corners unnaturally slowly because it comes naturally to travel around at stupendously risky speeds all the rest of the time. Because there is no manual transmission control, it's easy not to notice that you're traveling top gear, top speed along straights only a few hundred yards long. Personally I thought GTA4's handling was perfect, but maybe the game could do a better job of tutoring the player to get the most out of it - when to use the handbrake, when to use the footbrake, when to feather the brakes, when to coast, when to feather the accelerator, and all that. For me, I could play a little bit of RaceDriver: GRID and then a little bit of GTA4 and not have to make any mental adjustment in the way I approached the driving. Both made a great stab at trying to mix realism with arcadey-ness.

Why were we having to rely on Ireland at RB then? :S

HAHAHA GABBY! Delighted for him, if anybody deserves a goal on a plate it's him. Still, how often do we see him pressuring defenders into mistakes in that position...

Don't think anyone's said anything good about Norwich beyond the first 10 minutes, but they were cutting us to ribbons in that starting period. We were the only ones who looked like scoring after the equaliser though.

GET IN!!! Fantastic work Gabby. He's practically doing the work of 11 men.

Use coach reports and team reports to get an idea of your best eleven. Use the 'create a tactic' wizard to knock a formation and strategy together. Avoid playing people out of position - look for them to have a bright green circle on their icon in the formation screen, which denotes a natural position. 'Backroom Advice' can give you some recommendations for formations that suit your players, but if your own judgment tells you something different, use that. Then just hammer 'Continue' until match day rolls around. That's the core gameplay. Most of the rest can be picked up and mastered as you encounter it - scouting, transfers, dealing with press, motivating your guys, training, all that is important, but when all's said and done it's about having a solid tactic keyed in come matchday.

Not to shit up the good feeling about this game in this thread, but when this video came out a month or so back I remember discussing it on another forum. Overall the impression was pretty negative due to the highly scripted combat, badly scripted script, bad looking acid, dated graphics and whatnot. Just offering an unwelcome alternate viewpoint, no crucify plxthx

The FF games are a strange one for me. I feel like I'm a fan and I really want to love them, but I haven't really completed one since FF7. FF1-3 I nailed on Wonderswan (yes, I owned a Wonderswan). The iconic FF4, I missed out on and regret it. FF5, I nabbed via emulator and sank a lot of hours into, but eventually got bored and never completed it. FF6: completed, liked. FF7: What more needs to be said? I agree with all the superlatives for that one. Beyond that it's an ambiguous relationship. With FF8, I came to the party late after struggling to find a PC version. Once I played it, I enjoyed it right up until the point I completely lost interest and gave up. FF9, I borrowed my friend's slimline PS1 solely for the purposes of playing it, but he demanded it back just as I got to the endgame - I honestly can't even remember if by then I was enjoying it or not. For FF10, as I said in the 'proudest gaming achievements' thread, I sank maybe over 100 hours into it with the aid of another friend and 100%'ed the shit out of it - but I didn't enjoy that grind and I'm not even sure if I liked the main story. FF11 = MMO = didn't touch it. FF12 & FF13: I don't own a PS3 and even if I did I'm not sure if I like the art direction. So I suppose FF7 remains the series' last true hit for me. It really was a lasting classic in my memory though. Incidentally, when I was in Japan I managed to catch a live orchestral performance of music from the FF series, with a Q&A from Nobuo Uematsu and also I believe the first live performance of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8NGDsnv34M, which had enormous nostalgia value.

Sunderland are awful. Aside from our defence letting them get header after header from set pieces they offered bugger all. The Wickham goal, too, boiled down to Hutton making it too easy for them. If we can't beat these guys - and let's face it, it took another Stan wonder goal to even make it a draw - I'm not sure who we're supposed to be beating. There were some good spells of play from us, particularly towards the middle of the second half. Petrov really put in a shift, making up for some poor set pieces with other great ones, and as mentioned getting us out of jail just like he did at Everton. Zog looks like he almost half remembers the stuff he used to do at Wigan, although did it a little too predictably to be useful today. Warnock kept his head and looked mostly dependable. But Gabby was surely MOTM by a mile... He seems to be playing with loads of confidence, despite our unpromising situation. Everything he does is dangerous and bizarrely he seems to be the sole source of what little ingenuity we are able to produce. Threatening all round play, excellent left foot cross to the far post in the first half, set bent up for a one on one, and won the free kick that Dunne scored from. The negative: well what needs to be said that hasn't been? The rest of the team have been largely shit or don't look interested, and what's worse is you can predict the main offenders even before the first whistle is blown - namely, Hutton's a liability and Heskey's a waste of a shirt (in his current form and when played as an AMC). Bent is likewise a waste of a shirt as things stand, and as bitter a pill as that is to swallow. It's all very well saying he doesn't get the service, but missing the amount of one on ones that he has in the last run of games is just not good enough. If I arrived from Mars tomorrow and was asked which of Villa's strikers cost £24m, based on this season's performances, I know which one I'd pick. I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. Hutton didn't put in a single decent cross. Warnock at least reached threatening areas with a couple.

Soooo dire defending set pieces. WTF is going on. Back line shakeup please. This Sunderland team is dire, too. There's no way we should be happy drawing to these.

Looked a great save on first watch - but the replay tells me that's exactly the type of chance our marquee player should be tucking away. And aside from last game's peno he's been missing every one like that.

Hutton, you clown, cripes. Utterly missed his challenge and nearly let them in again.

Never anything good from us hey, just constant shit? Bollocks. ...Don't feed this PFE machine, lads.

Bendtner should have scored there. Collins lost him.

As you say they've been winning everything in our box so far even with Heskey on the pitch. Those headers wouldn't have been any freer in his absence. I think he does a job for us, but not in his current form and certainly not in the position he's playing.

Good summation. I'd like to see a half time change for once but I just know it isn't going to happen. It should though. Aside from a wonder strike we'd be nailed on for defeat under the current tactics. Heskey just shouldn't have started in that deep role, since he did nothing in the previous two games to justify it and nothing since the kickoff either.

Class again from Gabby with that left footed cross. I never used to feel this way when he got the ball, that he's capable of doing something dangerous every time.

Everything? Doesn't sound a like a great thing to do, but at least it's still working for you. Steam sometimes throws a tantrum with that 'game not available' thing, which in reality just means 'RESTART ME!'. In future try a restart of Steam, then if that doesn't work just delete the 'clientregistry.blob' file in the Steam folder. That alone will force Steam to check and re-update itself without touching your games. If that doesn't work, the next easy option is to 'Verify integrity of game cache' via the game properties menu, and if that fails finally delete the game content and re-download. In my experience, 90% of the time a simple restart of Steam will shift that 'not available' message.