Tenth place finish in the league, simply not good enough. Our league form faltered away by Mid January and we never recovered to pull together enough of a run to climb up the table, far too many draws as you can see, the losses column actually isn’t that bad considering, and to finish with a positive GD in tenth shows we had no trouble scoring, it was just the conceding that bit our arses.
Coupled with the fact that we were actively participating in the final stages of the League Cup, FA Cup and also Europa League, stamina was a factor and our players simply didn’t have enough to be consistent in the Premier league, cup competition was a priority.
After already securing the Carabao cup, and crashing out in the quarters of the Europa league, the season ended with a Wembley date against Everton in the FA Cup final, extended highlights are shown below:
Victory!! Another trophy added to the cabinet and nice to bag the most illustrious domestic cup competition in world football, the last time Forest won the FA Cup was the 58/59 season so our time was due.
Emmanuel Dennis, who was the league’s top scorer last season, has been in poor form for the last few months, not only going multiple games without a goal, but generally not playing very well either, I was in two minds whether to start him for the final or go with Youth promotee Price, who has developed into a 82 rated very competent CF, I went with Dennis and he came up trumps, bagging both goals to sink Everton and help us lift the cup.
As you can see, Dennis is only 9th in the top scorers list this year with just 13 goals from 30 appearances, just glad he stepped his game up when it mattered.
I was also complimented for steering the club to superb growth and profits, and as a result of the cup wins and league placing, was hand a £140 million transfer budget by the board.
I spent £120 million of the budget with ease, signing 4 new players, in the form of a new LB, RB, CDM and CF, shown below:
The board have also been very harsh with their season 8 objectives:
- Reach the Europa League Final
- Reach the FA Cup Semi-Final
- Seal a UEFA Champions League position
No pressure then.
I’ve also tweaked my team shape and formation/tactics, with more in-depth player instructions for each scenario, and setup multiple team sheets for varying situations, a new season, new hope, new optimism, 8 seasons in and this CM just gets deeper and richer and more enjoyable.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – have you used a variation of Anyone For Dennis? as a post title yet…
I was shouting ‘offside!’ for your goal 1 in the highlights.
Our careers on different football games are on a weird parallel development course indeed. I have just played my own FA Cup Final (albeit the invisible trophy kind – I’ll notify the result in due course) and I’m pretty sure my Season 10 goals-scored/goals-against tally was pretty similar to yours.
It’s so encouraging to see you motoring through these seasons, now heading into number 8 and still going strong. As you already knew, just sticking with it generates its own momentum.
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NG – Not yet! 😉
I used posts with Dennis’ name in before, such as ‘Dennis The Menace’ …. will put that one in the keep locker. Cheers.
I’d say my squiggly line shows it was level – onside 🙂
I seem to be developing into a cup team. In PES difficulty is ramped up in cup tournaments later on, in FIFA my experience so far has been that I’ve had an easier time in the cups, certainly not been easy matches but I’ve fared better than in the league, the Premier league games are very tough, I started the new season (8) with lots of hope. only to be brought crashing down again in my first match.
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Well done on another cup victory. It appeared a tough game from the highlights, great save by your GK early on. What basic tactic do you use to start off with and do you make changes depending on home/away or tougher opponents? First goal does look dodgy to me and I find some FIFA decisions are not as clinically correct as PES. It appears to me they use the centre of mass rather than furthest part of the body, may just be my perception though.
I had a devastating end to my last season with a loss in the play-off final. Two goals from Sheff Wed in the last 10 minutes. An early game high press left my players too tired stop the late onslaught. 49 game season decided by 10 in-game minutes, I couldn’t believe it. Onwards to season 6 and desperately seeking promotion. The board have asked for £20k per week wage reduction so I’ll struggle to strengthen. I’m going for a tight 4-5-1 and looking to win 1-0 more often.
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Cook – I play a 4-2-3-1 as below:
I have seperate formations and tactics setup for each of the att/def levels so i can switch to be tighter and more compact or more wide and attacking on the fly.
I also have 4 separate team sheets setup, so depending on who I am playing i can flick to that formation and team before a match.
I have a team sheet for my default, one for Defensive midfield which plays 5 across the middle, useful for snuffing out strong midfield teams, one for wide attacking 4-3-3, and a B-Team sheet, where I play all my youths and fringe players, usually for early rounds of cups.
Commiserations on the playoff defeat, those Championship seasons are a slug.
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Hi Paul. To answer your question from the last post 1920 x 1080 which is a fairly standard resolution. Here is what I’m seeing https://i.imgur.com/vdLv3mN.png
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Hmm, how do you cool kids get your imgur links to embed? Let’s try
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Hmm. How about embedding the HTML
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Just pasting the imgur link In should work fine Chris
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Chris99 – that image you posted shows the theme how it is, there is no formatting error.
Most WP themes use a thinner column style layout, as the post date,author etc is indented on the left the actual text area is pushed in, this is perfectly normal.
The only way to change the width of actual text/content area is to amend the CSS code, and that requires a premium upgrade at another £60 a year.
Might be something i consider later.
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Thanks Paul, you’re scoring is good with this, do you play wide midfielders or wingers? how about play style i.e. possession/balanced/long ball and which pressure setting for defence? I (nearly) had success with a 4-4-2, pressure on heavy touch, balanced attack and maximum width but have resorted to a flat 4-5-1 with balanced defence and get forward quickly, with a 4-2-3-1 when I need to attack more. However, the season hasn’t started well, in the last game I was humiliated 4-0 at home against newly promoted Coventry! I like a challenge, but I had to walk away after that result. I will try and 4-4-2 again but I have
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Paul – congrats on the cup win! The game seems to get better and better for you which is the hallmark of any great footy game. Just a shame that the game enforces that “no-results spell” on you every season… I would be quite annoyed at that. Back over on the other side things have well and truly completely fallen apart for me.
Like the new theme as well, much easier on the eyes!
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By the way – anyone know if there’s any way to replicate a “master league experience” in fifa? I’d like to try career mode as arsenal at some point, but with a shit team and shit finances. Is that possible at all? I know you could do it in one of the older fifas… 14 maybe? Dunno.
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Cook – As that formation above shows, I play the wide players as LKMF and RMF, not wingers as such but wide midfielders, I have them set to stay out wide, rather than cutting inside centrally.
I also play a pressure on heavy touch setting, with defensive depth just inside own half, medium settings for compactness and fast build up attacking play.
I have my midfield and forward set to aggressive interceptions, and my CAM set to free roam.
This is all for my default (balanced) formation, I have varying formations and tactics setups for the defensive, ultra defensive and attacking and ultra attacking tactics.
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#1 – I believe the best way to achieve the ML ‘feel’ within FIFA would be to edit squads before starting a CAM, and transfer out Arsenal’s players and transfer in players from various other low league clubs and then start a Career Mode with those players.
I dont think your budget will adjust accordingly, but you could impose house rules and only spend x million per season, or adjust the transfer/salary budget slider to give yourself only a few million transfer and the rest in salary, the huge salary budget will be irrelevant as you wont have much to spend on actual signing fees.
Could work that way?
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Paul – I actually quite like that idea. Didn’t know you could transfer players around in edit mode yourself? Will get on that in a bit. Appreciated!
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#1 – No probs, its a nice idea, one for the future for me too.
There’s actually a guy on YouTube that does a CM with transferred in players, so its definitely possible.
Shows you how to edit transfers here:
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Paul – just a heads up on the cup image in your post. you could get a copyright infringement slapped on you pretty quickly. there are assholes out there with software, employed by media agencies, that can detect “unlawful” use of these images and will force you to buy the license if you don’t have it.
I had no clue a while back but been there myself with my MMA blog. Cost me 600 euro’s, for a lousy 2 pictures on a website with about 2000 visitors per month and me not making a dime off of it. not amusing at all. Couldn’t do anything about it and there are cases known upwards of 5000 euros, one example being just for posting a picture of an omelette on a bed-and-breakfast website here in the netherlands.
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Cheers for the vid Paul! Much appreciated.
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#1 – I’ll take my chances!
There are hundreds of websites all showing pics of the FA Cup all over the web, bet none of them have paid to ‘license’ the use of the image.
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Okay Paul. It seems as though that column has a fixed pixel width rather than a percentage of the screen width. Means on a decent resolution it looks narrow. Never mind, still readable.
Out of interest have you tried playing Price behind Dennis to see how that works?
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Hey Chris99 – I’m running my monitor here at work at 1920 x 1080 and it looks fine.
Also on my Macbook pro at home, that is a super retina display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 and it also looks fine in both Safari and Chrome.
Also airplaying to my 55″ 4K Tv at 3840 x 2160 again looks fine, so not sure why you are seeing something different.
I play Foden in a free roaming AMF position behind dennis and he’s superb, so Price doesn’t get a look in, he’s usually a sub in a like-for-like with Dennis.
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Cheers Paul – just thought I’d give you the heads up as a few of my colleagues (I work in online marketing so blogging is pretty common in my workplace) have been hit by it as well. Maybe not as much of an issue in the UK.
Transfer trick works a charm by the way – really easy to do. Gonna give it a go with arsenal this weekend.
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I appreciated the heads up #1 – and i did have a look around for an alternate image, but couldn’t be assed to change it when I saw hundreds of blogs all using FA Cup images.
if they filed a complaint against me i’d just point them to all the other sites too.
Furthermore, the FA Cup is a licensed image included in the FIFA 19 game, EA own the license to use the FA Cup and its image in game, as I bought FIFA 19, I also purchased an inclusive license to use any pre-licensed content within the game as long as its not for commercial use or profit.
Glad the Transfers worked out for you, post some screens up here showing us your squad.
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Paul – will do! Going with various low rated youngsters from all over Europe. Should be good fun.
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This is what I’m going with. Lichtsteiner is the only one that stayed, transferred the rest away. I’m roughly equal in strength to Swansea City now (my previos CM save). Only bought Ziyech, Renato Sanches and Van Persie to ‘waste” money. They are worse than the Arsenal originals but made a serious dent in my finances. Van Persie is fitting looking at history. Only Sanches stick out, the others a bit anonymous.
Played 4 matches thus far – 2 draws, 1 loss, 1 win. just 1 goal scored by me. Faced Chelsea and Manchester city among others. Good tough games though AI a bit tame. Goals and commentary are adjusted to reflected my weaker team strength , news bulletin as well. I’m lucky to finish midtable and avoid relegation or so I’ve heard, I assume normally the game expects Arsenal to win *something*. I like that! It makes sense and shows attention to detail. I really have to de-PES, have to get used again to the ball physics and bit more herky-jerky animations.
The squad:
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#1 – Your team is worse than mine and I’m stuck in the Championship, best of luck.
This season has to be the one though. Brighton are storming away in the league, currently heading for at least 100 points so I’m aiming for 2nd spot which I currently occupy. I can’t face a 4th play-off defeat in a row so it’s win at all costs. I’ve just spent £25 million in the January transfer window on a LB and CB to ensure clean sheets, first game for both players and I’m 2-0 down in 15 minutes, FFS. Ended up 2-2 but another 2 points dropped and now only 1 point clear of 3rd place Huddersfield. I’m loving the pressure, keeps me engaged and the customisable difficulty level via sliders ensures I don’t have the problem of it all becoming a bit easy, a la PES.
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Cook – yeah I may have overdone it a bit; struggling to get any result really though defensively i’m finding it very easy, the CPU is quite tame thus far (I’ve faced Chelsea and Man City one after the other; almost zero attacking threat). Holding is out with a 7 month injury (YES injuries! missed those) so my defense is even worse now. Hope you get that promotion! 4 in a row would be disastrous to say the least…
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#1 – That’s still a squad full of mid to upper 70s and 80’s rated players.
What level are you playing on? As Man City are the most potent team in my game, league champions last 2 years, and definitely provide a severe attacking threat.
Are you using sliders?
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Paul – yes indeed. wanted to go the absolute shit-team route but decided otherwise as it would be too much of a slog, normally I’m up for that but currently not.
Playing on World Class – OS sliders. Found both top teams really easy to contain. Couldnt get much going either but there was zero threat. Conversely I lost the first round of the Carabao Cup 1-0 to West Ham. Controlled the game and had the better chances , conceded in the 94th minute (literally). Great AI goal though.
I dunno, maybe it’s because I’ve started in the Prem as opposed to you going up the ranks? My CB’s especially are average at best – Zagadou at 75 and the standin for Holding is 69 rated.
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#1 – maybe you’re just a very good defensive player? The top teams always give me a hard time.
What’s your settings? Legacy or ya tidal defending? Do you use manual or auto switch ?
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Paul – hmm I don’t reckon I am but maybe? I’m on legacy defending, for the life of me I cannot get used to tactical. Using manual switching. Can’t score worth for shit though… Van Persie is useless in my hands.
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