fifa 12

[Czechlad]

I had to restart my career mode because the game kept freezing every single time after I played a match against City. It was so stupid, but this time around I bought some young players with promising futures and hopefully I can make champs or europa league with my youngsters this season and next season their stats will be much higher.

[HolteEndRob]

After my Villa manager mode stopped working I decided to try and bring the glory days back for Forest. I'm currently in February and I'm absolutely smashing the league. I'm playing on world class and I've played 32, won 31 and drew 1. Leicester spoiled the party with a 90th minute equaliser! Sold alot of players and made some decent signings under the circumstances. I've got a Villa reunion on the go as amongst my signings I've got Gabby, Dunne and Ireland. Playing a 4-3-2-1 which gives great protection to the back 4 aswell as being great on the counter. I've got nearly 40 goals with Gabby so far. I've got the carling cup final in a couple of games and I'm still in the fa cup too. Who needs Brian Clough! :-)

[T.Daley]

I will be starting my career again tonight (probably for the 7th or 8th time), as I get off to steady starts, then about 15 games in the AI goes crazy and I find myself 5 nil down after 20 mins and can't win or score for toffee!

I probably should try managing another club, but worry I would not try hard enough if its not Villa. Git of a game, but can't leave it alone.

[Czechlad]

So realistic. I shut out Man U and Tottenham but then I conceded 5 to swansea. What got me really mad was my fullback was knocked down off the ball which gave the player he was makers a tap in. No foul or anything and that cost me 2 points.

[TRS-T]

With it being a month since FIFA 12 was released, I'd thought I'd check how we are doing in Support Your Club.

We have been relegated to League Two and currently sit 20th in the table :oops:

Looks like us Villa fans aren't very good at FIFA

Also checked out how many fans we have on there compared to the other clubs.

At the time of writing we have 23,292 fans on Support Your Club (on PS3.)

Top 10 in England (by total number of fans)

1. Manchester Utd - 378,767

2. Arsenal - 248,973

3. Liverpool - 183,009

4. Chelsea - 156,382

5. Manchester City - 67,773

6. Tottenham Hotspur - 51,262

7. Newcastle United - 38,717

8. Aston Villa - 23,292

9. Leeds United - 21,076

10. West Ham United - 17,669

The Midlands (by total number of fans)

1. Aston Villa - 23,292

2. Wolverhampton Wanderers - 9,419

3. Birmingham City - 8,262

4. Nottingham Forest - 7,283

5. Stoke City - 6,975

6. West Bromich Albion - 6,062

7. Leicester City - 5,989

8. Derby County - 4,777

9. Coventry City - 3,069

10. Notts County - 855

11. Port Vale - 838

12. Chesterfield - 828

13. Walsall - 816

14. Northampton Town - 699

15. Shrewsbury Town - 693

16. Burton Albion - 416

17. Hereford United - 412

[Stevo985]

Right I now own this game in an effort to not be pathetic at it.

Not doing too badly online. Won my first 4 in a row. Then decided to play a few games not as Villa, and lost them all (4), so went back to Villa and have won all of them since.

Need to win one more game to get out of Division 9 on the first attempt.

To contrast that, I've started a manager mode with AFC Wimbledon. It's impossible. I'm only playign on professional (I'd have gone with World class on Fifa 11) and I've played 6 games. I scraped a 1-0 win in the league cup game I had vs Barnet, but I've lost all the others without scoring a goal.

I really suck!

[Biskitt]

Right I now own this game in an effort to not be pathetic at it.

Not doing too badly online. Won my first 4 in a row. Then decided to play a few games not as Villa, and lost them all (4), so went back to Villa and have won all of them since.

Need to win one more game to get out of Division 9 on the first attempt.

To contrast that, I've started a manager mode with AFC Wimbledon. It's impossible. I'm only playign on professional (I'd have gone with World class on Fifa 11) and I've played 6 games. I scraped a 1-0 win in the league cup game I had vs Barnet, but I've lost all the others without scoring a goal.

I really suck!

I'm doing a career mode as Crawley on world class.

I sold most of my squad and replaced them with loads of free agents or quick cheap players. Couple of bargains i got were Terrell Forbes ( CB ) and Paito ( LB ) who are both quick and cost less than £100k each.

It's a challange but i've only lost 2 games out of 18 and got a 5 point lead at the top of the table.

[Stevo985]

I just find it so difficult against the AI.

They never seem to make a mistake. None of the defenders ever move out of the line of the back 4 meaning they're really hard to break down.

Been relatively quiet in the transfer market. Only made 2 signings, a good DM and a quick striker.

Also, people play manager mode without playing the actual games? Doesn't that kind of defeat the point of FIFA?

[TheSufferingVilla]

My Career mode got corrupted including all the extra saves I made to avoid potential corruption. Extremely pissed off! It's to do with custom formations. Other players beware.

[lapal_fan]

People who use custom formations should be shot in the face with a rifle!

They ruin online.

[Stevo985]

Getting better.

up to division 8 online, 2 straight promotions. Should start getting tougher.

Manager mode I've stemmed the conceding goals problem. Still struggling to score so had a few 0-0s but slowly picking up victories. Beat Everton in the league Cup on penalties too. That was fun!

[Condimentalist]

Tried playing this again for the first time in a couple of weeks, have played three UT games and been disconnected from the servers every time, which is not only frustrating and a waste of my time, it's also going to me my 'dnf' modifier will be shot to pieces meaning I'll get about half as many points from future games. Glitchy as ****, shameful.

I wouldn't put up with this shit from any other game, I don't see why I should with this.

[Stevo985]

Slowly climbing the table in Manager mdoe. Still not scoring many but not conceding either. Dull football but it's working.

Got Man City in the cup after knocking out Everton.

It was one of those games. They scored after 5 minutes. I spent the next 80 minutes hammering them. Finally scored in the 86th minute, they kicked off kept the ball for 5 minutes and spanked it in the top corner.

Heartbreak.

[GarethRDR]

Cheap goalkeeper tip for Manager mode: Genk's Grzegorz Sandomierski. Starts really cheap, grows into an utter beast (6'5 too).

[Stevo985]

How cheap?

[GarethRDR]

Under £3m. Starts at 69, peaks at 80 I believe.

[Stevo985]

That's about £2.9m too much for me

[Stevo985]

That's about £2.9m too much for me

[The_Rev]

You can say that again!

[GarethRDR]

Prologue: I've just spent the last 3 hours typing this, and on reading it back I fully realise it's a big ****' wall of text, but trust me it's essential reading.

Actually, for anyone starting out with a lower league team/tight budget, the youth academy is definitely the way to go (and not just for the obvious reasons)...

Start a new game as whoever. First, generate some quick cash by selling the deadwood and replacing with equivalent/better players from the free agents list (should be plenty o' candidates if you start as a really low-rated team). Once done, you should also give your transfer budget an additional boost by diverting all bar £10k in wages using the budget allocation slider. Bear with me here, because though it sounds crazy you're not actually going to be needing any more than £10k in wages for what we’re going to do, and at this point the more money you can spend on scouts the better (though make sure to hold back at least £800k to be able to afford to set up the scouting networks once your staff are in place and pay the miniscule sign-on fees for youth prospects).

That said, you don’t have to spunk away cash on the most expensive scouts with the highest star ratings. An even spread of good scouts is far better than one double 5-star scout (and costs considerably less). When hiring a scout, “experience” is the attribute to attach value to. The more “experience” stars, the greater number of players the scout finds and puts on their monthly reports. It makes sense then to have this attribute as high as you can feasibly afford (though 4 stars is generally more than enough to get you a decent spread of youth players to work with, especially if you can afford more than one scout at this point); the more prospects, the greater chance one of ‘em will be top quality.

In my experience, the “judgement” attribute counts for pretty much sweet **** all from 3 stars up. I’m not even sure what exactly this governs; if it merely determines which players the scout recommends from their monthly report then it’s a next to useless attribute as it’s far more effective to use your own judgement (more on this later). If it determines the likelihood of getting better youth players in the monthly report, then it doesn’t do a very good job of it as in the numerous career modes I’ve been running, I’ve had as many quality prospects come through 3-star “judgement” scouts as I have through 5-star ones.

To summarise, you really want to be buying a 4-star “experience”/3-star “judgement” scout. Two of them if you can, they generally cost around £3-4m. If no such scouts are available, simply play through your next week/game of career mode and then come back as the list of scouts for hire changes on a regular basis. Doesn’t matter what country they’re from, that’s just cosmetic. When you’ve got your scout/scouts hired, send ‘em off to work. Where you send them is down to personal preference (I personally like to have my first scout working domestically), some countries are marginally more expensive to send scouts and some are cheaper. Despite the various reviews I’ve read that state that South America is where all the best youth prospects are, again I’ve had as much success scouting Scotland as I have Brazil; it doesn’t seem to matter. Once you’ve settled on a destination, send your scouts on their merry way for a 9 month period (you’ll save yourself a bit of money and you want them out as long as possible anyway) looking for all types of players (I’ve always found that with the sheer amount of players returned each month by a 4-star “experience” scout there is no need to limit them to looking for a specific player type). Now sit back, play on and await the end of the month…

You’ve got mail! When the scouting report/s land on your desk, it’s time to do some scrutinizin’. Prospects that are highlighted in yellow on the report are the scout’s “recommended” players. As I’ve said above, that’s bollocks. In order of importance, this is the criteria you want to be looking for:

• 1. Any player whose current rating range tops out at 60+ (the higher, the better)
  2. Any player who fits the above criteria and whose potential rating range tops out at 85+
  3. Any player who doesn’t fit the criteria in point 1, but still has a potential rating range that tops out at 90+

Any prospect that fulfills the above should be signed to your youth academy. Each prospect signed costs £25k in signing fees and £250 in wages. Leave any prospects you don’t sign to be scouted further, as both rating ranges are fluid and will change as time progresses; you might find that a player that doesn’t match the above criteria after the initial month of scouting will fall into that bracket once scouted further, and then you can sign them up. For that reason, I never ask the scout to dismiss a player from the list unless it’s patently obvious they will amount to nothing (e.g. you’ve scouted them for 6 months and their maximum potential has sunk into the 60’s). The fluidity of the rating ranges is the same for players you’ve signed to the academy; they will go up or down as time progresses and more of their attributes are revealed. Don’t be dismayed if a prospect doesn’t turn out the way you’d hoped, as they can still be a very valuable, lucrative asset (more on that in a bit).

You want to keep prospects in the youth academy for as long as possible. You can’t actually promote them to the first team if they’re under 16 anyway, but even when they do reach that age make sure to keep them in the academy as they will develop faster than they would sat in the first team’s reserves or out on loan.

Eventually, you will get a message stating that the player either wants to be promoted or released as they believe they are ready for first team action. At this stage, you have to offer the player a contract or you will lose them to another club. When it comes to contract offers, you generally don’t have to deviate from the default wage on the contract offer screen (be aware though, if you’ve got a player that’s due to be the next Messi - e.g. current rating as high as the 70’s, maximum potential in the 90’s - then you might want to offer about £3-£5k more than the default wage to seal the deal). Personally, I always go for a 5 year contract and tack on the maximum 20% bonus clause as a) this locks your player in and in the last 4 iterations of FIFA, even when a player fulfills their % bonus clause the money never actually comes out of your budget. Weird, eh? It’s basically a free tool to help convince players to sign (this goes for all other contract negotiations too, seriously; give it a try for yourself!).

“But wait, Gareth, you rassclart-bumbaclart-dickwad,” I hear you say, “you told me to divert nearly all of my wage bill to sign up the scouts; how in the name of almighty Ra can I afford these players’ wages?!”. Fear not, blud. This is where the magic happens! As it transpires, when you promote a youth player to the senior team, their default wage amount isn’t deducted from your wage budget, it’s automatically added to it! For example:

Joey Nunes Bloggsinho wants to be promoted to the first team. My available wage bill is currently £2k, but on the contract offer page for Bloggsinho his default wage request is £4k. I glance up to the right hand corner of the screen to see how this would affect my wage bill, expecting to see -£2k and a note to say I can’t afford him… and yet I see no such thing. My wage bill remains at £2k. Only if I decide to offer him more than his default request does my wage bill drop (say I upped my offer to £5k, my available wage bill drops to £1k), but as I’ve stated above I’ve no reason to do so (unless I knew Bloggsinho was gonna be über-mega-super-duper).

So I offer him the contract (it’s worth noting that on the contract offer page you can also see the player’s projected market value; handy for determining just how good he’s going to be and whether or not you want to cash in on him) and he signs up. I go and check my wage budget in the squad/transfer page, and his £4k in wages has automatically been added to my wage bill (and, as such, has boosted it by £4k). So, say I wanted to take full advantage of this windfall; I simply sell Bloggsinho in the next window and not only do I pocket the money from his sale but I retain the £4k surplus in wages he brought to the wage bill… FREE MONEY!

This is why you keep hold of all your youth prospects, as even the ones that don’t turn out can simply be put through the above process and flogged in order to continually increase your wage bill; an utterly invaluable trick for developing smaller clubs with tight budgets.

Finally, any prospects who you want to keep and have promoted to the senior team should either be put on the subs bench (they’ll generally be good enough for this if you’ve stuck to the selection criteria I outlined above) or loaned out for game-time. If you plan on cashing in on some of the gems you’ve unearthed (again, a good strategy for teams with small budgets), transfer list them as soon as they are in the first team; generally, the younger you sell them the more they go for.

Here endeth the lesson. 8)