My Luton Town career on FIFA 21 has so far, been a right struggle.
Mid table was the board objective, but currently languishing several places below that, as can bee seen in the league table screenshot below.
FIFA 21 on World Class level is much harder than FIFA 20 was, fact. The difficulty levels and the AI have been improved, I am also running with the Operation Sports sliders, with a few adjustments of my own, to make things a little harder, we draw far too many games and are without a win in seven matches, this season will have to be a consolidation season, with a view to strengthening the squad in January and over the summer to try to compete next year, if I am, still in a job of course.
The squad just isn’t good enough, there are a few standout players such as Mpanzu in LCM, and Cornick at RW, but most of the other players just blur into the background, I could not name them now if you asked me.
One adjustment of the OS sliders is to increase injuries, so far I have lost my first choice 70 rated CF, Collins, to a broken leg and he’s out for four months, backup striker Lua Lua was sidelined for 6 weeks with an ankle injury, I’ve had several 5 days injuries here and there, and just last night, picked up a double injury to my two CB’s, one for four months and one to 2 months.
We have around £million in the transfer kitty, and about £50k p/w wage budget, it is very difficult to sign anyone as good or better than what we already have with that kind of limited budget, we are just approaching January, so i have been pre-scouting for players inside the last 6 months of their contracts and will try to add some cover to the squad in terms of free signings, quantity over quality this time round.
I’m on the fence between really liking FIFA 21 and being completely underwhelmed by it, i still haven’t decided, but for a next-gen PS5 edition, I did expect more.
I know the PS5 version is just the PS4 version glitzed up a bit and we wont see a truly next-gen edition until FIFA 22, but I just expected, and wanted more.
The turf for example, is like playing on a snooker table, an old washed out one, it feels rock hard, there’s no texture to the grass at all, it doesn’t feel 3D, or alive, saying that, the ball does bobble and bounce a lot more realistically across the turf, hits divots, and moves around during passes, just a shame the graphical levels don’t match the animations, of which there are a ton more in F21, players do move about quite realistically, and some of the build up play, meleés, and midfield battles do look ultra-lifelike, but overall the game does not feel PS5 level, graphically at least, and I have experienced a few crashes too, with the game freezing and having to be exited out of.
Most of the decent changes have been made off the pitch, and really do impact the game in a positive way.
We now have development plans for players, s you can train players in specific skillsets, such as assign a ‘Box to Box Midfielder’ plan to a CDM or CM, or a ‘Creative playmaker’ plan to an AMF etc, your staff will give you updates on how the player is progressing and you can see changes in their stats and how much they are developing.
Player interactions have been remodelled too, just last night I had an email from Leeds saying they were unhappy with how much game time I was giving to a player, O’Kane, that is on loan to us, and that they hoped he would develop by playing for us, and if he doesn’t get more match time they will consider recalling him.
Also my own players coming to regarding tactical decisions, Lua Lua came saying that since we changed formation, I’ve been asking him to play a different position (wide left winger rather than CF) and that he’s happy to play wherever I need him too if it benefits the team.
You then have several responses you can initiate, praising his attitude and maturity, or being more assertive and telling him he’ll play where you choose, each one affecting the players morale and match sharpness, its these little interactions that always set FIFA apart, making it feel much more like managing a football club.
Speaking of formation change, I recently switched from the default 4-2-3-1 formation to an attacking 4-4-2 as I always felt we was being overrun in midfield, and didn’t have much support when the lone CF received the ball, this culminated in ending the losing streak with a 1-1 draw at high flying Bournemouth, who only equalised in the last 3 minutes.
We are far from free scoring, but here’s a short comp of a few goals scored in the last few sessions, nothing outstanding but a few nice build up goals.
Don’t forget, if you are playing FIFA 20 or 21, post your updates, goals, clips, pics etc in the comments.
Cheers.
FIFAFX.com 
I’ve really struggled too with my Bolton team on 20. Won both carabao games, and did well in the pre season but the boards priority of me making 900k profit at the end of the transfer window meant a sale of anyone attracting an offer. Brought in a couple of loans but really struggling to score. The soon to retire up front Murphy is big, strong and has the pace of a fridge. I think an absence of pace is the biggest problem on the game, you win nothing with fridges. But as he’s retiring no one will take him away. Maybe things will come good but it’s very revealing that promotion doesn’t even feature on my objectives.
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Turf – if you have a big strong but slow CF, why not use him as a target man?
Set a Long Ball tactic, which just means players get forward quickly, play high balls up to the fridge, use L2 shield ball mechanic to bring it down and lay off to onrushing midfielders.
One of my board objectives to to finish the season £13mil in profit, how the f*&k am I going to achieve that when my transfer kitty is only £1.8mil and i desperately need players?!?
Can only imagine it would come from prize money for league finishing position, which if realistic is only around £7mil (£2.5mil standard prize money per team and £4.5mil solidarity payment).
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I’m on an internal stats course at the moment and have just been introduced to what was described as the nerdiest video game of all time; http://guessthecorrelation.com/
I played it for a surprisingly long time which says more about the course than the quality of game.
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Turf – just played it, i know what correlation is, but, i don’t get what you have to do?!
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looks like you have to guess the R squared?
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score of 88, quite happy with that and no desire to play it again
Paul/Turf – I’ve got the same strategy on FIFA20, 4-2-3-1 with big lump up front in my case Fraser Hornby signed from Everton. Get the ball to his feet, hold it up then through balls to runners breaking into the box or ping it out wide and cross it back in
your Luton career has a nice master league first season (in a positive way) sound to it Paul – crap squad, no money, players all injured, will be interesting to see if you can survive. These board objectives seem to get stupider every time, one of mine in season 1 was to make £13.5m profit in youth player sales within 2 years which has to be literally impossible when starting in league 1. Guess it’s a case of focusing on the realistic objectives and hoping for the best
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It’s to show you what a particular distribution looks like – if they’re clustered together along a line it’s a number around 0.8-1, if they’re scattered it’s down around 0.1. It’s the tricky 0.4 and 0.5s that get you. If you’re bored stupid during an online course!
I haven’t got the injuries but Bolton is very much the same situation. It feels particularly humiliating to struggle to draw with gillingham etc.
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Bit of a long one, end of season 12 and all season 13. Boom!!
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Abbeyhill – its definitely a ML season one type feel, a massive struggle, as you say, very average players, no money etc, I’ve bedded in now though and am enjoying the challenge rather than finding it frustrating.
Turf – I could think of better ways to pass my time whilst bored on an online course, this is one of my fave stops:
https://www.retrogames.cz
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Couple of wins to take Bolton mid table. I don’t feel able to play many games in a row though with fifa, I get to 3 or so and feel quite worn down by the patient side to side build up.
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Turf – My fortunes have swung in my Luton Town career, more on that tomorrow, but I am much preferring the more realistic patient build up of FIFA 21, much better than the gung-ho online-centric style of previous versions where you could be GK to CF in 0.2 secs.
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Lloyd – I didn’t even know that was possible on FIFA, knocking the ball one side then running past the other side of the defender! Was it a right stick knock on, or right stick trick, or something else entirely? And that strike from Farelli just before was something else. Congratulations on the additional silverware, notably the 2 Champions Leagues at last. So are you going to call it quits there, or play the full 15 seasons?
Turf – I’m feeling similar about FIFA20 at the moment, with lower league players there is not much to do other than shuffle it through midfield until the right angle opens up, it is really dull. Obviously, as Lloyd’s spectacular videos show, with the right players the game is transformed
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Yes, him and his fancy Exeter team. Shows the possibility if we stick in.
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Abbeyhill – right stick knock on and fast player combined. Farelli goal felt good. Not sure about playing on atm. Just started mgs 5 and think it could be a long one!!
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Fifas knock and run around isn’t a skill you can just pull off, its just contextual dribbling based on position, and only happens if your player has the right stats.
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@Lloyd – remind me again mate, what FIFA version are you playing? and what camera angle do you use? The game looks different.
Some great goals though, you should capture your vids in 1080, the 720 once compressed by youtube look a bit crappy.
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