fifa 12

[fifa09don]

whats ultimate team? have not played fifa for about 5-6 years and am considering getting it when i get PS3 this month

sounds like you bought world of warcraft 5/6 years ago mate.

ultimate team is like the card game version of fifa, where you built your team using the player cards (which you get in packs and can trade/buy/sell in the auction house, build your formation and manager to achieve team chemistry and play either online games or the computor to gain coins which you use to buy more player cards, spend on player packs etc.....

[villarule123]

oh dear, i dont normally but i had a mini rage when losing in the UT final against a german guy, so i slammed my controller to the floor and smashed the back of the controller open

need to buy a new one now!

[LincsVilla]

oh dear, i dont normally but i had a mini rage when losing in the UT final against a german guy, so i slammed my controller to the floor and smashed the back of the controller open

need to buy a new one now!

I used to do that when i was about 16, got through two controllers and a headset. Six years on i've mellowed a bit now!

[rhyscartwright_avfc]

Luckily I have a soft bed where I can just bounce it off and catch it again without any harm done.

[Tayls]

^^ haha - I do that. It's normally whilst swearing at the same time though...

[TRS-T]

On FIFA 12 when you first play the game you are asked which team you support and this is linked to your online profile.

Here is how the Midlands looks in terms of total fans for each club on FIFA 12 on the PS3:

1. Villa - 34,294

2. Wolves - 13,791

3. Blues - 12,059

4. Forest - 10,217

5. Stoke - 10,162

6. Albion - 8,692

7. Leicester - 8,400

8. Derby - 6,699

9. Coventry - 4,265

[TRS-T]

whats ultimate team? have not played fifa for about 5-6 years and am considering getting it when i get PS3 this month

http://fifasoccerblog.com/blog/fifaralle-fut-q-and-a/

[Stevo985]

oh dear, i dont normally but i had a mini rage when losing in the UT final against a german guy, so i slammed my controller to the floor and smashed the back of the controller open

need to buy a new one now!

I used to do that when i was about 16, got through two controllers and a headset. Six years on i've mellowed a bit now!

When I was at uni we used to have "Controller Corner". We piled a load of cushions and pillows into a corner of the lounge and when people got pissed off with the game (Although we played PES in those days, not FIFA) it was a nice safe place for them to sling their controllers as hard as they could!

[Troglodyte]

I feel dirty. After two seasons getting nowhere with SC Freiburg (no money to improve the squad, ageing and underperforming players) I took the only decent job offer coming... 1.FC Köln.

They didn't have much money either, but after clearing out the dregs of the squad (and with Real Madrid deciding to make a stupidly huge offer for Aaron Hunt) I managed to cobble enough together for a nice little spree.

•••••••••••••••••••••Thomas Kessler

••Daniel Opare••••Manoel••••••Pedro Geromel••Sebastian Boenisch

•••••••••••••••••••Jean••••••••Seydou Keita

Christian Clemens•••••Lukas Podolski••••••••••••••••Adil Chihi

•••••••••••••••••••Emmanuel Emenike

Board wants a mid-table finish, with that team I reckon I can muster a push for a Europa League spot.

Go and have a wash. And think about what a disgusting person you are.

[GarethRDR]

I know, I know. :cry:

[Demitri_C]

sounds like you bought world of warcraft 5/6 years ago mate.

ultimate team is like the card game version of fifa, where you built your team using the player cards (which you get in packs and can trade/buy/sell in the auction house, build your formation and manager to achieve team chemistry and play either online games or the computor to gain coins which you use to buy more player cards, spend on player packs etc.....

was more of a pro fan mate but ive decided to come to the darkside. bought it on weekend but ahvent had a chance to play yet. will play tonight and give my review later

[jacketspuds]

My German scout on Career Mode has just advised me to sign a 15 year old keeper from his homeland.

His name is Ron-Robert Cuntz.

Gotta love the creative skills of EA.

[GarethRDR]

That'll be + then.

[Dodgyknees]

Guys, how do I download replays this year?

[Don_Simon]

Last night was a glorious night in the history of AVFC, the Premier League title was won (on professional level no less!), during a nail biting last day of the season ding-dong with Wigan Athletic at the JJB. I won 1-0. At the same time, Citeh lost away at Black Armband FC (Liverpool), and the streets of Birmingham were awash with Claret and Blue.

However, whats pissing me off is I never get offered other player manager jobs, the transfer "warchest" the board have given me is more akin to my three year olds toy cupboard, and its all getting very repetitive.

Have brought in Reus from Borussia Moenchengladbach (please check spelling @GarethRDR), and im now skint. Have a few players in my youth squad though, do they ever come good? Roll on the weekend and my assualt on the Champions League! Schalke dumped me out this season, I demand revenge!

[GarethRDR]

Boy's own stuff.

And your spelling's spot on; if you can't umlaut (Alt+148 = ö) then "oe" is the way to go.

On youth players/the academy, I wrote a near-thesis a while back that might be of some use, it's buried somewhere in this thread so I'll try and dig it up.

[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)

As it transpires, whatever EA did in their last patch "fixed" the little wage trick (the paragraphs highlighted in red above) so you will have to keep some spare change in the wage budget. Annoying! :x

[Don_Simon]

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)

As it transpires, whatever EA did in their last patch "fixed" the little wage trick (the paragraphs highlighted in red above) so you will have to keep some spare change in the wage budget. Annoying! :x

Thats brilliant cheers matey!! Will invest in more experienced scouts as a matter of urgency. Top notch stuff Mr RDR.

[Dodgyknees]

Guys, how do I download replays this year?

Anybody know?

[Rino8]

Re-reading your scouting thing reminded me Gareth, I'm not really sure youth develop all that well, if you're lucky you'll get an increase of +3 a year presuming they play consistently and do well, and considering most are low-mid 60's by the time they're about 18 you'll be lucky for them to get within about 8 of their potential rating. At least if you play games, I did notice a dramatic difference when you sim games, but well, I don't want to play FM and everytime I sim I lose.