The board aren’t happy with me, as the above warning shows, fortunes have taken a severe nosedive here in season 3, after reaching the Europa league final, FA Cup semi-final, and securing 7th place in the league last season, we continued the good form by winning the pre-season International invitational cup, but from there on in its been a struggle.
I put this down to the implementation of the FIFER Realism Mod, which was updated to v2.1, it has substantially increased the Professional difficulty level, ramping up the AI pressure and tackling, making it much harder to break teams down, things that worked before, just don’t now, it will take a season of adjustment, and ultimately it may cost me, I will do well to last the season without being sacked, the board is now used to some relative success and have demanded a Europa League qualification place, and decent FA cup run, we are still in the cup but the EL place seems far off now, we have lost too much ground.
My board confidence rating was 82 heading into season 3, its now a measley 59.
As any under pressure manager would do, I panic bought in the January transfer window, out went Toko-Ekambi, a fairly reliable CF who had only been bought the previous January, and in came Max Gomez, an 86 rated CF, from Valencia, who, despite our shaky form, has started well, with a substitute appearance and a goal in a 4-0 rout of Swansea in the FA cup, then a brace in his first full EPL debut, in a 3-0 win against the Saints, he also seems to be a firm fan fave already, selling a lot of replica shirts with his name on.
We also brought in Adama Traoré from Wolves, hoping his pace and power can replicate real life and give us more options down the right wing.
I’ve also been tinkering around with the mods side of PC FIFA, and have designed and imported in my own alternate EPL match ball, as can be seen on show in the small clip below:
Despite the current sad situation of a country-wide lockdown, I haven’t had any more time to binge play FIFA during the day, both my wife and I are working from home, commandeering the living room and kitchen as makeshift offices, and in an attempt to maintain some form of routine and normality, its been work all day, some exercise in the garden, and bike rides in the evening, its a worrying state of affairs with more seemingly normal, healthy people perishing at the hands of COVID-19, how long this lockdown and isolation period will last, no one knows, and whilst its nice to have the escape of books, films, video games etc to keep us entertained, it all seems a little bit underwhelming right now with so much serious stuff going on around us.
I hope you all abide by the lockdown and don’t make any silly judgments about going out needlessly, and stay safe and healthy, and look after eachother and loved ones.
Just a few normal-esque goals to finish off with, the Kramaric smasher in the middle was the best effort, although I quite liked the first goal for its cheeky finish.
Take Care!
FIFAFX.com 
Paul – a little bit of struggle does any football gamer good as it makes the matches so, so significant and tension-filled. What was always the best part of (old-school) ML? The part near the start where you were never sure what the next match was going to bring. I find CM is doing precisely that for an extended amount of time.
I’ll be starting a period of work from home soon, members of my team taking it in turns, as there has to be at least one person physically at the office, but the rest of us can indeed ‘work from home’. The good thing is that I can do in 10 minutes what it takes me 1 hour to do at the office with all the distractions there. I will have to alt-tab frequently to FM2019 (or even FIFA20), or there’s just no point.
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NG – definitely enjoying the challenge. And will not revert to any previous save. If I get sacked, its on to a new club wherever that may be and take up the challenge there. Hoping for a stay if execution though as I’ve put a lot of work into next seasons kits and all my custom adboards.
So are you back on the Leeds CM now for good ?
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great post Paul, including the dual symbolism of ‘Clipped Wings’. Hope working from home is going ok for you. Personally I’m quite enjoying it so far having repurposed the spare room, brought in a desk and a couple of monitors, nice view of the garden and birdsong coming through the window, more time to spend with the family. Suspect the appeal will wear off soon though
proud moment last night at the end of season 8 when my Exeter City won the FA Cup, our first major silverware, it was a great feeling to see some of the players who had been there from the first season in the youth team celebrate with the trophy. We had lost the Carabao cup to Man City on pens after a thrilling 2-2 so I was particularly determined. 4th in the league so Champions League football coming up too. Planning a big squad revamp to get ready for the next phase of the career – shipping out some of the players like LB Reid, DMF Roberts and CF Baker who are really good but have levelled out their development at around 80 OVR to allow some lower rated youngsters with higher long term potential space to develop. They did all play in the cup final as a fitting send off. Still nowhere near tired of the game
meanwhile my son is addicted to player career mode on FIFA20, in his current campaign he has started as a goalie at Villa but after limited first team opportunities in the first half of the season has requested a loan move to a lower league foreign team. Can’t imagine anything more boring than goalie in a player career but it’s good that he is enjoying it
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abbeyhill — I wonder if we’ll go back to ‘working from work’ entirely when this is all over. If this is ever all over… I have definitely read too many post-apoc novels (always much better than any post-apoc movie, where the setting is usually just a vehicle for action thrills and spills).
I know you’re still on FIFA19 and I have it on PC as part of my Origin subscription thing — still as good a game as I thought it on PS4 last year, but ’20 is that crucial bit better IMO.
Paul — thank you for the kind offer of doing some FIFA20 kits and adboards etc. I’d welcome a joint PES Chron/FIFAFX scrolling thing if you could put it together. Your blog being a regular weekly affair now is really good. 10am Thursday is a guaranteed post time. And you quickly get into the habit, which is a good one. A few weeks ago all the Corona turmoil made me almost cancel a post but I thought, nope, I’ve brought this baby home for years on end and will do so until Doomsday. Once you’re up and running with a routine.
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Thanks Abbeyhill – The working from home is fine, have the tech and space here to facilitate that no probs, its just the ‘cabin-fever-esque’ elelemnt of it I struggle with.
New bike so plenty of bike riding, and doing what i can exercise wise in the garden, weather permitting, but its not the same as going to the gym, can’t complain too much though, trying to look at it from the ‘Not STUCK at home, but rather I’m SAFE at home’ type viewpoint.
Good to see you enjoying and so invested in FIFA19, I had 11 great seasons on that last year, and as NG says, 20 is so much better so when you eventually move across, you’ll hopefully really enjoy it.
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NG – Not a problem, I need to know whuch stadium you are using as that will determine which adboards are used, we cannot create a new adboard, only edit the existing ones, for the animated ones anyway, so say you had a scrolling type pepsi max adboard, we could edit the DDS files within that to display our own logos instead of Pepsi ones.
Let me know and I’ll produce you a presentation package, kits, adboards, crowd banners etc.
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Paul – Eastpoint Stadium. I had to check as I renamed it to New Elland Road, a naming scheme tradition for me in football games.
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