Delphouneso

get Pires off. either for Petrov and stick Bannan up there or bring Fonz on.

morale, team talks and press conferences have a big effect on performance. i always find an assistant manager with good man management and motivating stats and let him take conferences. have a look at this guide for team talks. it's from FM10 but still seems to work fine.

so much for the new year. Bannan MOTM for making the only decent pass of the game.

at least Gabby is up front now.

what formation/tactics are you using? are you doing press/team talks or your assistant? also that's quite a few new players, if you've put them all into the first team they'll need time to gel. turning a season round when everyone has poor morale is always difficult, a couple of wins can do wonders though. try looking at player ratings from the last 5 games and have a private chat with anyone doing particularly badly about their recent form.

i spent £1.7m + clauses on him and it was worth every penny. been playing him as a DLP, good passer of the ball, good creativity, great potential.

Houllier got the tactics and starting line-up spot on today. Gabby on the left was a master-stroke, pulled Ferreira out of position and provided plenty of space for Young/Heskey. Downing on the right kept Ashley Cole quiet all game. My only criticism being we got outnumbered in midfield a few times, and again sat too deep after we took the lead.

defence is pretty standard, as for the rest of the team: DM: Anchorman (limited Creative Freedom, short passing - wins the ball and passed to the DLP) CM: Deep-Lying Playmaker (lots of CF, mixed passing, TBs on often - everything goes through this guy) AML/R: Inside Forwards (very defensive mentality so they track back, cut inside (works well with attacking FBs over-lapping), high TBs, roaming) STCR: Trequartista (high CF, high TBs) STLC: Poacher (didn't change much from the default Poacher settings) as for LBs, Dodo has a minimum release fee of £1.5m at the start of the game, was awesome for me on my Villa save, plays best as a WB but can do a job at FB.

started a new game with Crystal Palace to test a tactic i'm working on, media prediction: 22nd in the Championship. made one signing and one loan signing so i pretty much have the squad i started with. 12 games in and i'm top of the Championship and unbeaten: either my tactic is working wonders, i've been really lucky, or the media prediction of 22nd severely underrates the Palace squad.

i've got to disagree with that, you can't say this has nothing to do with the players. and as for subsitutions, Fonz came on and played better than Gabby, and we were all screaming for Petrov on for Hogg. aside from starting Petrov/NRC over Hogg I doubt many would've played it differently. we can't control games, we can't break teams down, we're poor in midfield. the lack of a certain CM springs to mind.

out-played by a technically superior side. Lichaj MOTM.

Liverpool have bought Parzyszek on my game so I doubt I'll be getting him any time soon. My current team: £20k for Downing and £8k for Martin, rest were frees. Gardner's been pretty disappointing when I've played him, but he's still only 21. Salifou on the other hand has been a great signing. Lichaj is available on a free at the moment aswell but my scout basically said he was crap.

pretty similar to my Bradford save, just got into the Championship after 3 seasons, haven't spent more than £35,000 on a player. i got Ben Tozer on a free aswell, Routledge rejected my contract offer and went elsewhere though. I just wait until half way through the transfer window and the top clubs start offering me their youth players for free, got Danny Batth from Manure and he's been awesome, got player of the year last season. was Parzyszek a free? sure I paid a couple of mil for him on my Villa save.

seems an unlikely appointment.

if you don't mind losing Cuellar you can probably use him in a part-ex deal for De Gea.

lost 4-5 in ET in the play-off final. on the bright side I beat Arsenal 2-0 in a pre-season friendly, and I just got Gary Gardner on a free transfer after Villa released him (Houllier is doing some crazy things, he also spent £2.8m on a player who my scout said 'would be a good signing for League 1 sides'). 3 seasons into my save and I've been given a £1.5m transfer budget though I'm yet to spend more than £35k on a player, hoping to save money so the board will allow me to improve youth facilities/recruitment.

last game of the season in League 1 with Bradford, started the season badly, but I made a couple of free transfers in Jan (including Salifou), had a great run of form and I was sitting in 3rd place with virtually nothing between the top 5. I needed a win against Walsall and for either Bristol or Swindon to draw or lose to gain automatic promotion. I was keeping an eye on the other fixtures right through my match. I won 4-0, Bristol won, and Swindon were drawing when my game finished.. got to the post-match analysis screen and discovered Swindon had scored in the 93rd minute and I finished 3rd. Gutted. Onto the play-offs..

have him on my Villa save, him and Sanogo are just starting to break into the first team 4 seasons in. had him on loan on my Bradford City save for the last two seasons and he's bagged 30+ league goals this season playing as a lone striker, hoping to try and get him long term at the end of the season before his value starts going up, unlikely i'll get him though.

finally the tactics screen has stopped getting stuck on player instructions!

i've never rated Collins, but at the moment he and Dunne are as bad as eachother, the one deciding factor for me is that Collins seems to care more, and currently that's enough to warrant his place over Dunne, there's nothing like watching him celebrate a Villa goal, it's like having a fan on the pitch. as stated above Cuellar reads the game much better than both of them, and next game with Clark back from suspension I'd like to see a CB pairing of him & Cuellar.

toss up between Downing and Albrighton but I've gone for Downing. a mention for Lichaj who had a fairly solid game, look forward to seeing more from him. also thought Ash gave a decent captain's performance, and we looked a lot better for having King Carlos back (aside from his late error).

I think if they keep this up Luke can swap to the left again even if he would prefer to stay right totally agree, I don't think he wants to play on the left but I'd feel a lot more confident with that set up. every time the ball goes down the right I've got my head in my hands expecting Warnock to either get skinned or concede a free kick / penalty.

we've missed King Carlos, that right side with him & Lichaj has looked pretty solid so far, a lot more than I can say about the other side of the pitch.

got my Bradford City team promoted to League 1, so i spent ages creating a new defensive/counter tactic to try and cope with being a newly promoted team, seems to be working quite well so far in pre-season: been given a transfer budget of £110,000 and an increased wage budget of £35,000, and the board has finally allowed me to increase the number of coaches allowed. was able to get Nathan Baker back on loan, but Andy Weimann chose to go on loan elsewhere which is slightly frustrating seen as Weimann enjoyed his loan move last season so much he now has Bradford listed as his favoured club. the patch couldn't come sooner for me, getting tired of seeing £10-30m players being offered out for free because they're unhapy.

just noticed this: Cast Scroll of Resurrection on a Friend! Invite a friend that has left World of Warcraft to return with a FREE 10-Day Trial of the Burning Crusade. If your friend reactivates their account and pays for a month of gametime, you will receive a month of WoW FREE! You can only invite someone who was once a paid subscriber and last played the game more than 90 days ago. since I'm a former player that hasn't played for over a year and plan on re-subbing my account anyway there's a free month's game time up for grabs if anyone wants it. (not sure why it says '10-Day Trial of the Burning Crusade' though and whether that'll be a problem cus I have WotLK).