Firstly, apologies for the late post, I was away all weekend and only back Monday afternoon so hadn’t had time to prepare Mondays post, but here it is a day later.
As the league table above shows, we have mounted a resurgence, and thanks to a run of 6 wins from 8 games, have climbed up the table from 20th to 8th.
The only defeat in that run was a 4-0 Quarter final defeat away to Everton, to send us crashing out of the FA Cup.
Everton were just stronger, faster and more organised, you could really tell the difference in quality and the game really felt like an away FA Cup match against a big side, I love that about FIFA 19, the games all feel different.
During that run of 6 wins, we scored 3 several times and even a 4-1 win against Blackburn Rovers, we are playing well, scoring, and most importantly I think I’ve got a handle on FIFA’s defending.
Up until now defending has felt clunky, using the tactical defending system, has often felt like I was never in control of my defenders and just couldn’t get close enough to opposition players to defend effectively, but the key is not in pressuring all out and jumping in to tackles, but more jockeying, covering passing lanes and runs, and good timing of the tackle button, I’m getting much better at this as the goals against ratio during the 6 wins would show.
One of the teams despatched was Hull, grabbing a 3-0 victory, highlights of the best goals are shown below, a nice stretched chip shot from my CAM Goncalves, who is keeping Bojan out of the side, and the other goal was a well taken volley from Emmanuel Dennis, who is proving to be a great signing with his potency on front of goal.
The next match was against Sheffield Wednesday, the team placed level with us, on equal points and the other team in contention for a possible play-off place, in this respect it was a 6 pointer, and the commentary team hyped that match top by mentioning that it was a vital game in respect of play off positions.
We won that game 1-0, followed by wins against Blackburn and Villa, goal highlights can be seen at the bottom of the post.
It appears the board still aren’t happy though, despite achieving my objective of signing youth players to each of the outfield positions, and signing a crucial attacking player, my other key object was automatic promotion, and that is not possible, my trust rating currently sits at 60, and I have been notified that the board will soon be reviewing my position as their faith in me wanes.
I’m hoping to see out the season, there are only 4 games left, I can only finish 6th at best, it will be tough clawing back the 4pt deficit that Norwich have over us in that 6th, and final play-off position, but if we can achieve play-offs and promotion, I might just get to keep my job.
FIFA 19 continues to play a solid, enjoyable and very realistic game, you are rewarded for patient play and punished if you don’t focus and concentrate, and this is only in the EFL Championship, I can only imagine the big match atmosphere and carrying team play styles and skill levels are exponentially heightened in the Premier league and Europe.
Goal highlights from Villa, Blackburn & Sheff Weds games:
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – good run of form there. Yes I totally agree about defending as it has taken me a whole season on Pro to get to grips with it. Once you do the defence side of the game is fantastic. You have to defend as a unit and maintain your shape. It is all about jockeying and positioning your defenders, in particular your midfield. If an opportunity to tackle becomes available then go for it but for most part it is about forcing errors from the CPU.
My first objective is complete and that was to get promoted on Professional without changing the sliders. Mighty Fleetwood were crowned champions last night. Next season it will be World Class on default sliders. Played out the last two matches on World Class to get a feel of things and was mighty impressed as the CPU was less direct and played with more intelligence than one Pro. Looking forward to the challenge. First objective is avoid relegation.
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Great achievement Darryl. Yes, it’s so easy to just fall back on the old PES muscle memory when defending, just clamp X and wait for your defender to auto-home in on the player and take the ball, which is very crude, FIFA doesn’t allow that, as you say, you have to defend realistically, it’s coming, just takes discipline.
World class is very good. The CPU does punish you for the slightest mistake Though, but fairly.
Four games left, I need to win all four and pray Norwich slip up, not once, but twice. It’s a big ask, highly unlikely but I’d consider a 7th place finish and FA Cup quarter final a decent platform to build on, just hope the board feel the same.
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Paul – That lobbed goal is a lovely finish. Unusual technique by the player there though.
It’s going to be interesting to see what fate the board decide for you. How will you feel if you get sacked? Will you start over or pick up another job?
Darryl – That’s the kind of CM I like on FIFA. Start rock bottom and see where you can take a minnow of a club. Those seasons are long though what with 46 league fixtures and whatever they call the Paint Trophy these days. Does FIFA replicate the Premier League under 23 teams being allowed in that competition?
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Shed – No Restarts, If I get sacked then I will take whatever best suited job comes up, all aiming towards the ultimate goal of managing in the Premier League.
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Paul – I was hoping that would be the case. It’ll be interesting to see what jobs you are offered. Might you be tempted to move clubs anyway given how the Forest board don’t seem to appreciate your upturn in form?
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Shed – The deciding factor will be if I manage to achieve a play-off place, which isn’t likely.
The Forest board set me the target of automatic promotion in y first season, which I felt was probably realistic for a club of Forest’s stature, but harsh considering it was my first season.
I’ve formed a sturdy looking youth setup, filled the team with promising players, reached the FA Cup quarters beating 2 premier league sides along the way, and improved the quality of the first team, that should be enough to keep the job but depends how tightly your role is tied to the objectives.
We will see.
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Death by a thousand passes with some of those goals. I’m top by 3 points on 1st January and have signed a left back and CB to sort Villa’s weaknesses out. I think if you had picked them at the start you’d be easily automatic. There’s an embarrassment of individual talent to pull you out of a hole when you aren’t playing well.
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That’s my Play style PRS, even in PES I’ve always been a pass and move style player, fast counter attacks, but also like a dribble now and then.
I’ll take a well constructed 20 pass move and finish every day over a ‘try from 30 yards and hope for the best’ goal.
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Paul – good luck with the 6th place finish. If it was ML the other teams would ‘cooperate’ of course but in CM, you genuinely will need good fortune with results elsewhere.
Re. goal types that’s the vast difference between us. The 30-yarders are so satisfying in ways that the team-goal types never can be, E.g. last weekend at work I heard all about Ramsey’s ‘Goal of the Season’ contender for Arsenal. What did I see on MOTD but a 4-pass move (that the commentators gushed about) that ended with an 8-yard heel-flick along the ground into the net. Barely even Goal of the Day for me and I suspect it won’t be GOTS.
Darryl – very encouraging to see you sticking with anything this long, so that speaks volumes for the game’s quality.
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NG – all down to personal preference.
For me, having played the game properly at a high level, to see a team worked goal with a number of passes, where players have to be patient, use intelligence to make the right runs at the right time, the right decisions at the right time, and finish it off with creating an opening and finishing it, is more skillful and aesthetic than seeing someone pick the ball up 30+ yards out and larrup it towards goal hoping that it will go in.
Very, very few players in world football possess the ability to pick the ball up at that distance and pick a spot of the goal, and hit it so true that it actually hits the intended spot, and is accurate enough to beat the keeper from that distance.
75% or more of all shots from that distance are hit, with power usually, towards a spot on the goal and its pot luck whether it actually goes in, in the manner intended.
Everyone likes a barnstormer now and then, but they are rare, and for a reason.
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Paul – I always like a snooker analogy when it comes to distance vs team goals. The snooker professionals and commentators and pundits all adore a century break for similar technical reasons, but for me and I suspect for most spectators, a frame with a century break is a deathly dull affair (unless it’s an O’Sullivan or a Higgins etc.). A frame with single crazy long pot in, with a wildly improbable positional shot that actually works, is worth 2 or 3 frames with century breaks to me.
I hear FIFA19 is a very long-range-friendly game for AI and human players, and long may it last!
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I see your analogy NG but don’t think its a good fit as football and snooker are very different sports.
Both to some degree are about being patient and making your opponent make the first mistake then capitalising on it, but a frame of snooker is not comparable to a half of football.
Most snooker pro’s wont take the long shot with great positioning after on, purely because they know its an unlikely shot, and no matter if you’re a Hendry in your Prime, a Ronnie O Sullivan or a Judd Trump, a long shot from balk to top corner is more often than not, not going to go in, so the amount of times they are attempted is rare, when one does go in, yeah great, but whats more skillful, taking one long range pot, or being able to systematically build up a 100+ break by making the right decisions and playing the right shots?
There is no right or wrong answer, again its all down to what you prefer, I like a good long ranger, love them, but get more satisfaction from a well worked team goal, you are the opposite, you’d rather see 5 long rangers go in every match rather than an ‘Aaron Ramsey-esque goal’
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Paul – that touches on one of my long-term bugbears with PES that is never spoken of. As a long-ranger fan I can confirm that ‘5 long-rangers per match’ is never happening. Not even 2 per match have ever happened. If I score 1 long-range goal, I am not ‘allowed’ to score any more in that match, and usually not for another match or two. One of the many ways that the game’s hidden hand control everything from behind the visible scenes.
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Which is in itself wrong NG.
If a player is capable of scoring from 30+ yards in a match, why should he then be handicapped from scoring another in the same match?
If the culmination of the players position, agility, ball control, dribbling, shooting and power stats dictate that there is a high probability % of a shot going in, then if that ‘perfect situation’ arises again in the same match, surely the outcome should be the same.
To nerf, or handicap, or disable a players ability in the name of ‘normalising’ something is poor.
It should be down to the AI being good enough to detect that a player with a high scoring chance from long range needs to be closed down quicker, or man marked, or shown on to his weaker foot, where the ‘perfect situation’ doesn’t arise for him to score from long distance.
Not just blatantly handicapping a shot so that it doesn’t go in because he’s already scored one already.
#AIThatWeDontNeed
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NG – Long range goals are a thing in Fifa 19 for sure but not to the point of being overpowered. This is one of the many reasons I love this game and went over. It is no coincidence that PES 2015 is still one of my favourite games for this reason. One of my Fifa ambitions has always been that I would love just one year to say I have played a full 15 year career, which I think is still the maximum. With the length of seasons it would be a fair old achievement as you would play nearly 900 games.
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Darryl, you can definitely see the player stats at play when long range shooting in FIFA.
The amount of times I’ve tried one with my clunky DMF and seen it fly miles high or almost out for a throw in, or just limps into the keepers hands.
I prefer the fact that you can pretty much pull off a long shot anytime but stats and situation determine how successful it is, vs PES whereby you either cant get a shot off as its always blocked, the COM always slide tackles you anywhere near the box or the ball follows the same usual trajectory most times, either an inch wide, or the keeper flies across the goal and catches it.
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Paul – did you get the guide I drafted up on the Global Scouting Network?
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Paul – re. the strange way you can only ever get 1 long-ranger er match (in PES – possibly FIFA too): I always think of it as Scoreline Management. The most common way this manifests is scoring 4 or 5 in one match and then mysteriously not scoring many (or any) for a few matches after. Decades of footy gaming have convinced me that this can only be a deliberate choice, much like the ‘catch-up (NOT A) bug’. Imagine you’re a footy game developer. You, too, would load the code with all manner of artificial restraints on player experience, to give the experience longevity. Ultimately we’re all playing make-believe, and the quality of the experience depends on how well or ill they make us forget that.
Darryl – time was you’d have moved onto ice hockey or GTA or something or other by now, but I would love to see you do the 15 seasons. 900 matches is easily within your reach over the course of 10-11 months.
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NG – I have scored two goals in the same match from about the 30 yard mark with the same player (Holt) so it can be done in this FIFA.
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Yes I did thanks Darryl. In 2 parts. Plan to finish this first season which should be represented by Thursdays post and run your guides during next week.
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Soooo.. finished my first season on 4th position. Couldn’t complain. My second season is going really interesting so far. Sold couple of players, bringed few new from transfer market and few new from my youth school. And my squad was looking a bit better for second season than for the first one. Although beginning seemed pretty hard for my, got my ass kicked big time from Ranges 2-5, then was PSV in Europa League Qual. got my ass battered 1-9 in aggregate :o. First 10 games was something like 2w-4d-4l … Now, when the season is coming to half, i’m in the middle of December, started coming back with a better form, kicked Ranges 2-0, Celtic 1-0 and couple few more good results, so currently from 12th position i jumped up to 4th. (but my rating fall down from 80ish to 45-50 now, if i’m a bit afraid that St Mirren can get rid of me during the winter transfer window. That’s another interesting aspect of a game, we will see what’s gonna happen :).
I have no idea if EA implemented something similar to Team Spirit from PES to their game or what, but beginning of the season seemed pretty hard to me, till the team gelled. Now it seems like i’m bouncing back – and I LOVE all this situation, it’s exactly how it supposed to be, and how it is in a simulation games like Football Manager. No easy start, even with better team, if most of your first eleven never played together before.
Just can’t stop playing this game, it’s so so good :).
Finally accepted National Team to lead as well, cos finally it was something better than New Zealand or some other craps they offered me so far – here i am, with Ecuador and first 3 wins plus 1 draw against Argentina, which was a really hard game. Enner Valencia is banging goals like a crazy for me, thanks to him i got such a nice run.
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Good Stuff Abbes, and I’ve often thought there is some invisible ‘Team Spirit’ like factor at work in FIFA, as in certain games you can play free flowing football, and in other games your players are just off the boil, this is to replicate swings in form.
You can see which players are in form by the pre-match team selection screen, they will have arrows next to their names, up pointing arrows mean in form, there don’t appear to be any down one though so it looks like its either in-form, or not.
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To be honest those arrows look like a bullshit to me, any player i am giving to play got an arrow up, including subs i’m using most of the time, but no one ever got arrow down.
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Thats because it only shows players in-form, if they dont have an up arrow of some kind they are just at ‘normal’ level.
Don’t think we know enough about the mechanics of them to pass judgment on how they work, its not a well documented feature of the game.
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Paul – have you got any full HDR footage of FIFA19 in action yet? Very interested to see. And how are the fouls coming along in the game?
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On the PS4Pro NG – Not uploaded. I will upload some tonight.
When its a foul, its a foul. I’ve had 2 penalties, and one against me, red card (straight red) several bookings. but on the whole, foul counts in FIFA are very poor, id say less than 0.5 fouls per match currently, its the one poor element of FIFA’s game play.
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Paul -When you said ‘Team Spirit’ like factor at work in FIFA, as in certain games you can play free flowing football, and in other games your players are just off the boil, this is to replicate swings in form.
This is so pronounced in some games it can be a bit offputting. It’s like your players can’t sprint, pass or shoot. You can tell nearly straight away. I also notice the AI have 3 mean pressuring the ball carrier in these games. You really have to dig in and hope for the best
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In all honesty PRS I haven’t really noticed it that much in my game so far, I have no doubt that it’s there though.
Both games have their own ways of simulating ebb & flow, form etc, its pretty crude at times but is needed in order to provide some realism and variation to matches.
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Great blog you have herre
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