This week has been busy, what with work, gym and my ongoing office to Games/movie room renovation, so have had little time for gaming, but did manage to squeeze in a couple of matches to progress season 8, slow and steady wins the race.
You may recall my signing another top rated CF pre-season, Illavascueta for £62mil from Inter, 86 rated, due to Emmanuel Dennis’s sudden fall from form for the last 2 months of last season. Well Dennis is well and truly back, and proving a point, so much so that Illavascueta has been limited to late-sub appearances and cup matches, Dennis has been firing in the goals for fun, scoring 9 in 11 Premier league appearances, and 4 in 3 games in the Europa League, he’s also scored in his only appearance in the Carabao cup (I’ve been playing my B team for those matches), and also got the brace in the 2-0 Community shield win over Man City. so currently boasts a 16 goals from 16 games record, pretty impressive.
Our B team created chance after chance in the Carabao cup last 16 tie vs Birmingham City, 14 chances in the first half to be exact, all of them going begging due to the fringe and youth players lowly stats, shots just skewed wide, or ended up in the hotdog stand, so we needed a goal, cue the 72nd minute and I bring Dennis on for Illavascueta, 4 mins later, this happens:
He only needs a sniff of goal and bags us a 1-0 win with his first shot. On fire.
Those goals along with a few from Foden have helped us maintain pace at the top of the league.
Last up was league leaders Wolves, I checked their team formation before the match and found they played the same 4-2-3-1 formation that we do but with their RMF & LMF pushed forward playing more as RWF and LWF.
I wanted to counter their threat by bossing the midfield, so switched to an alternate team sheet pre-match, which I copied from Burnley’s default setup, adopting 5 across midfield and one up top with high pressure and aggressive tackling, it worked an absolute treat.
We was 3-0 up half time with who else but Dennis having scored 2, and opening the scoring in just the 2nd minute, it finished 4-0 and was a tactical triumph.
We also lead our group in the Europa League after 3 games, one more win would guarantee qualification.
Finally, a short compilation of some well taken Dennis goals from the opening matches.
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – bottom video unavailable at time of typing?
I’m having one of those weeks myself, doubt I’ll have more than 3 matches to write about. But it all adds to the incremental progress as you know. I think the serial restarters of career modes (on the forums, I’m thinking of, not so much other commenters) are expecting it to be always intense fireworks and the like, but a season for those who just play on no matter what is probably 90% routine.
Dennis has to be your FIFA19 MVP, surely?
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NG – Both videos display and play fine here, try refreshing browser.
Yeah Dennis has transformed the team ina way that I hoped Suarez would, but Suarez was at the end of his career, could finish but not much else.
Dennis has pace, strength and deadly finishing, so gives us many more options
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Paul – I’ve looked on Chrome and double-checked with Safari and it’s still unavailable.
I triple-checked using Browserling, one of those online services that shows you any webpage in every browser, and it’s unavailable – e.g. Internet Explorer on Windows:
The vids probably still on Private, and you’re seeing it because you’ve got the YouTube logged-in cookie in your browser.
And you’ll be remembering Dennis fondly for years, probably forever. Another reason why the long game is the only game!
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NG – Thanks for the heads up, it was scheduled but id selected the wrong date, tomorrow instead of today for it to go live, probably because I was composing the post after midnight last night, well this morning, so i clicked, by habit, the next day to schedule.
Should be fixed now.
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Paul – I loved that Dennis “sensed” he was getting traded out or at least benched and suddenly was on fire. I doubt the game is that cleverly put together but regardless it makes for a nice CM story.
BTW – do you not find it hard to play on broadcast in terms of placing your passes and shots? I’m playing on custom cam sometimes on PES (fixed broadcast cam), it looks the business but I keep misplacing passed in particular.
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#1 – I doubt that’s built into the game intelligence either but either way, the narrative we make up in a career mode or master league over the seasons is what makes it, and adds to the story and immersion, or affinity with players.
Not really, the odd pass goes astray when it seems a simple pass but I put that down to the game nerfing certain attacks now and again all in the name of ‘balancing’.
My Pass completion % is up there with any other team, not sure what the actual figure is but I’d guess high 70’s – mid 80’s.
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Paul – I’ve always suspected in ML’s case (and knowing what we know of the high regard FIFA’s CM team had/have for ML, probably them too) that they do implant some ‘x’ factor into a dropped player (not injured, not fatigued, dropped) to give him a boost for the next time he’s picked. They could also do this to any player whose transfer settings you’ve altered. Over in Football Manager there’s a lot of lore about how players perform if you go in and change their transfer status to ‘not needed by the club’ and then back again, for example.
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NG – quite possibly, we’ll never know what goes on ‘under the hood’ of these moods, what intricacies they do or do not have but as long as its fairly realistic and adds to the longevity and enjoyment of whichever mode, then it can only be a good thing.
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NG – i’ve seen this too many times in even this years’ ML for it not to be true. As soon as i transfer list someone they are bound to go on a downward arrow. A while back I brought in an additional AMF when I already had three – here comes the downward arrow for my starting AMF. pretty clever. i’m sure it’s there somewhere, in some form, in CM as well.
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😀
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Is that a mink carpet?
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Chris – its actually a large rug 😉
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Love the t-shirt Paul and that is an impressive pile on the rug, must be lush walking through that with bare feet. Great start to the season, you appear to be serious contenders at the moment but it’s tough to keep the consistency over the season.
I finally got promoted from the Championship with a fantastic season but Brighton had an even better one unfortunately so no title to add to my League Two trophy. League table and top scorers charts below, gotta feel sorry for Hudderfield who lost in the play offs.
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Thanks cook. – mainly the missus who loves the deep pile rug, we have a bedroom which is a dedicated dressing room. Deep pile carpets and wall to wall wardrobes. Guess who spends most time in there ?
Good start to the season but it will get very tough. As I learnt last season, being in 3 cups and pushing for the league takes its toll. Fatigue is accumulate and very much a proper thing. I had to field several teams on 40% stamina after having a europa league game Thursday, league game Sunday, cup game Tuesday etc …..
I won both cups last season, would love a title push and a europa league win this season, quietly confident, but that had always bitten me in the arse so we’ll see.
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Paul has never experienced bare feet as there is always a flunky to place a Turkish slipper on a sole.
I now feel like one of those labour MPs – I’ve crossed the floor and taken up a place on the FIFA bench. I won’t play immediately but use the time to red dead etc, it’s not as if 18 is going to burn a ‘just out’ hole in my gaming. I will not be back to pes (chronicles I will of course) because there is no way even the greatest release will survive the patches and updates demanded by their onliners. Just scanning bhatti’s twitter it’s clear he gave up years ago.
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Turf – Surprised it took so long to realise how dead PES is, you was holding on for dear life hoping for a miracle.
Only god can perform miracles, and seeing as i don’t believe in god, I gave up long ago hoping for a PES miracle.
It’s perfectly clear that player of the week cards, boosted stats player cards, e-sports and PES league is all that konami care about now, PES as a game, as morphed int MyClub the business, the 2 are no longer connected but totally separate and different entities altogether.
Are you playing FIFA 18? 19 is available now sub £20, worth the few quid extra for the much improved game play, 19 is much more sim like and stats really do matter.
Slow Speed, OS Sliders and broadcast cam is where its at.
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