That’s my usual first team selection above, with an average player rating of 75, it’s not a bad side, but life in the Premier League on World Class level, is frustratingly hard.
I have the worst defence in the league, and the weakest goal scoring ratio in the league, it’s no wonder we are languishing near the bottom of the table.
Josh King, an emergency CF signing from Bournemouth on the final day of the transfer window, has struggled to settle in so far, not living up to his 79 rating, and being pretty anonymous in most matches.
I only signed him because I had a cheeky £16 million offer from PSG for my star striker, Emmanuel Dennis, I did not want to sell, so thought I’d be cheeky back and counter with an ask for £28.5 million, to my surprise, and dismay, PSG accepted, and before I knew what I’d done, Dennis was gone, at least I had a chunk of cash to find another forward.
Second from bottom, just, 2 wins could take me out of the relegation zone, so whilst it looks ominous, survival is definitely doable, it’s just going to be difficult.
I need to hope that the remaining 7 fixtures are against weaker sides whom I may be able to take points from, I know for a fact though that I have to play Man Utd at home and Liverpool at home, so plausibly 5 actual games to save my job.
Another new signing, Zambo-Anguila at DMF had all the stats I look for in a defensive midfielder, strength, agility, ball winning prowess, tackling, but again hasn’t overly impressed with anything he has done so far, usurped regular in that position, Tachtsidis, isn’t happy and demanded showdown talks.
I’m going to have to put him back in the side for a few matches to appease him as I can’t afford a low morale, under-performing player of his quality.
I have about £13 million in transfer funds and around £400k in wage funds left over, the transfer kitty could be boosted to around £15 million by adjusting the wages available slightly, this will carry over to next season and form part of my transfer war chest, should I keep my job.
Have also lost my Captain, and CB, Gurreiro, for 3 matches due to a straight red card, as shown below, which I don’t think was a Red. He may have come in from behind but was a stretch-tackle, and actually played the ball, harsh decision, second clip in the below video is the same match, coming back from a goal down and a man down to equalise through RMF Dion Cools.
Towards the end of my session last night, Josh King finally broke his duck since signing and bagged a couple of goals, the first being a typical goal ;poachers finish, and the second with a scorching mid-ranger. More of that please.
I should finish the season over the weekend so Monday’s post will wrap up season 2 and my fate as Nott’m Forest boss.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – it is a dubious red, the kind of red card they’d say on MOTD was ball-first but endangered the other player regardless and was therefore a justified red. Debatable red card decisions are a great inclusion in the game.
That’s a wicked goal at the end there from 25 yards – side-on run, whipped in… was it an R2 curler?!
It’s a shame the mode might not let you take Forest back up (if you go down). If you do get a Season 3 with the club that’s a nice kitty you’ve got to spend.
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Paul – That second goal by King reminds me of those R2-curlers I’ve seen somewhere else! Great goal.
This is all building to another cliffhanger. I wonder if the game will give you a little boost in the run-in or will it hammer you all the way to relegation?
That is a lot of goals conceded. Do you feel the flood of goals conceded can be stopped with better players or is it a case of changing settings/sliders?
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NG – the Player I tackled just got straight up, he wasn’t endangered, I may lodge an appeal. Actually it would be a nice inclusion of you could appeal dodgy reds, with the risk of having the ban increased if you lose it.
That second King goal was FIFA’s equivalent of an R2 Curler, its R1 for finesse shot, but was more of a whipped shot than a floaty curler that we have been seeing a lot of in PES.
The £15 mil transfer kitty wouldn’t go far, not to sign anyone any better than what I currently have.
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Shed – I’ve stayed away from touching sliders so far, partly because the game play is very good and competent without them, and secondly, once you start fiddling, its a slippery slope to nowhere.
I may have to look at a few tweaks at some point though, as Professional level is too comfortable, and World Class is extremely challenging, tracking runs, cutting passes out, maintaining shape etc, I do all that, but seems that when the CPU wants to score, it usually does.
No different to PES here really, same thing exists over there, but I’m finding with FIFA, each team attacks so differently and in such varied ways, with players actually dribbling at you, that it’s still very hard to compete against the bigger teams.
That King 25 yarder came against Spurs, I was second bottom, they were top, Champions elect, that goal put me 1-0 up until the 85th min, then they equalised via a close range header, so I can hold my own, just seems that once I let one in, and try to attack, the floodgates open, I regularly concede 3 or 4 goals.
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Paul – Well, it all goes to show that FIFA is where it’s at if you want realism. Your team’s struggle would surely be similar to that of the real world Nottingham Forest were they to make it back to the top division again.
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There is that Shed, but it’s very frustrating losing week in week out, with that being said, if I was suddenly challenging for European places on World Class in my first Premier league season, it would seem unrealistic.
A lot of the teams are dropping back and packing defenses when I attack, meaning I have to try to pass or dribble around 8 players in and around their penalty area, which is almost impossible.
Maybe a tweak of tactics and build up instructions is needed.
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“the Player I tackled just got straight up”
The computer ref called it correctly purely on the basis of the incident, not the fouled player’s reaction. Whether there was endangerment depends on the foul, not its effect. The view that if a player gets straight back up, it’s OK, is one of my many bugbears with real-life football. That’s what makes players feign injury and roll around screaming – and managers – if you haven’t seen the footage of Neil Lennon being hit by a coin from the crowd, and dropping to the ground, for example. There’s no need for him to lay on the ground as if he’s been grievously injured, but he knows if he doesn’t then he won’t get whatever action he wants the SFA to eventually take, etc
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I know that NG, and agree with you, was just hard to take the red when it was a ball winning challenge that didn’t injure a player, and wasn’t feet off the ground or malicious, it put me a man down, whilst already a goal down against a Stoke side that were also scrapping to get out of the relegation zone.
It was also that players first tackle, fairly early in the game, and a straight red – Harsh !
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It’s great that you’ve got the possibility of dubious red cards and ‘injustices’ though. Things are better than they were on ‘the other side’, but not much better. Think I’ve seen one red card for the AI in 200 matches and I really, really have to get ridiculous to get one myself.
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Check 1min 50 !!!! Hilarious.
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NG – I’ve seen COM red cards in my 2 seasons on FIFA, one thing I absolutely do miss from PES though, is the fouls, I counted, I had 3 FK’s, in 23 matches. Absurd.
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Paul – I have wondered myself about touching sliders for the reason you mentioned but as NG points out this is usually the beginning of the end as there is a temptation to keep tweaking them. But I can’t see how I am going to regularly win on WC as it seems to get even tougher with better players. Another caution is when you follow the Operation Sports sliders thread they have kept a lot of the slider values at default (50). The reason behind this is that Matt rightly points out that EA sports have really done a great job this year with team individuality and the sliders did have an effect of diluting this
As for me I finished season 3 in 14th on my return back down to league
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Darryl – I tinkered late last night and think I may have stumbled upon a few minor tweaks that enhances game play. Still very difficult but IMO balances the playing field on world class.
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Paul – you have entered treacherous ground! Sliders are a great idea, and I would LOVE to see them introduced in every footy game for things like fouls and penalties etc. – but, well, you know… Next time you have a difficult session or two, what happens? That’s the danger. If you can find a way just to use them as a gameplay difficulty adjuster, great.
Re. the simulation vid you posted, every single one of them annoyed me, the most annoyign beng the one where a GK rushing to get a loose ball brushes past a substitute and the substitute falls over. He should be sent off for that. But refs fall for it over and over. Well, the psychology is interesting, as I don’t think refs are fooled per se, I’m sure they know it’s fake just like the rest of us, but they think that they’re forced into awarding the card/FK because if they don’t they’ll lose control of the match.
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Paul – Time to hunt for some pre-contract players. As I’m sure you know it is very useful when you have a limited budget.
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NG – the whole video was full of tossers, players that act as if they have been shot by an air to ground missile, when there’s barely, if any contact, this should indeed be a straight red for bringing the game into disrepute.
Makes you appreciate players like Keane, Viera, Gerrard, Ince, Butcher,and older players such as Kennedy, Souness, Hunter etc who just got on with it and played through proper injuries in an age where anything went.
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Chris99 – I tried the trick where you can search for players with release clauses, as they were a bit broken, in that you could find players with market value of say 10 million, if you enter into transfer negotiations their clubs always want anything up to 50% more, but they have very low release fees, such as 3 or 4 million, meaning you could snap up a fair few players on the cheap, but EA fixed this in the first patch, so doesn’t work anymore.
I will have a look at pre-contract signings, not sure if you can actually search by contract, will check later.
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Paul – go on share those adjustments.
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I will post them here later mate but pretty much all I changed was this:
COM Marking – 49
1pt change just loosens up the COM’s tight marking of all your players a little, gives a tiny bit more space and adds realism so you dont feel so stifled.
COM Pass Accuracy – 48
Just adds a few more loose/stray passes by the COM, as your own are often astray, balances possession turnovers
COM first touch error – 51
Again, just adds a little variance in how well com controls every pass and cross. brings it in line with your own.
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The trick is to find players with less than one year of their contract left. Can’t remember if it is a transfer search or a scouting criteria off the top of my head.
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Paul – just one point is it not Pass Error the slider and if so 48 would help the CPU would it not?
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Darryl – couldn’t remember the exact label. If it’s pass error then 52 obviously would be more error, if it’s pass accuracy then 48 would be more error.
Will screenshot when I get chance.
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Paul – for my new season I have given the Operation Sports sliders a go as the beauty with them is the values are the same for yourself and the CPU. Game feels much less frantic and better balanced. NG is right and if you do go down the slider route then you have got to stick with the same ones.
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Ooh those slippery, slippery sliders. They seem so useful but they have always been the beginning of the end of a FIFA for me.
The ‘Professional is too easy but World Class too hard’ also still seems to be a thing.
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That’s why I didn’t employ a ‘slider set’ per se, just a tweak to one or two values, I will not get bogged down by slidergate, either I use a set, or make a tweak here and there, and it works, or I go back to default. Thats it, not messing around.
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Played a few more matches last night, am now 3 games from the end of season 2. Monday’s post will be a summing up of the end of the season. 50p/5p bumhole time.
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Paul – that will be exactly what I will be doing as it is either the OS sliders or back to default. Those ground rules need to be in place.
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Absolutely Darryl, I want to be playing the game, not fiddling with it WERD style.
If I don’t feel the sliders have made much difference, then I will just revert back to default, the game play is good enough to hold up on its own, just very hard on WC level, the tweaks are an attempt to just balance the fairness a little, as much as a multi season scrapping away in relegation battles is realistic, a lot of us lose interest if we cant win, i’m just trying to offset that a little as FIFA 19 is such a good game that it deserves to get a good run.
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These posts are heightening my desire to play FIFA again this year once I’m done with PES. Hopefully time still allows once the daughter is born.
Hope you survive in the PL, obviously, but am curious to see how the story pans out if you don’t. Have you had multi-club careers on FIFA or PES previously? I always consider it gameover if I’m sacked or I get bored with a team. I have to start afresh. I’m the same on FM and CM.
Agree with general consensus that sliders are a one way street to game-end.
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Jay – I never usually switch clubs, in PES its always a made up ML team and stick with them til the end because well, you cant be sacked unless you play challenge mode which is just so unrealistic its not worth bothering with.
But this year with FIFA I will go with the flow, if i get sacked I’ll look for another team and carry on, quite excited to see where the story takes me.
Hoping to survive relegation too, survive, build, invest, and play on, hopefully keeping forest in the prem. All very realistic, a newly promoted side, with limited funds shouldn’t be mid-table, they would and should be where I am, I guess my long term aim to do a decent job with forest, and hopefully move on to manage a bigger better team.
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Paul – no post today? Got to see if you made it out of the mire…
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Apologies everyone. Post will be up later today. Haven’t had chance to finish it yet as been away all weeekend.
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