Approaching the half way point of the season, and a run of 6 games without a win has put the brakes on the playoff places push.
Defeats to Ipswich Town, Derby County, Sheffield Wednesday, Rotherham and Preston North End have seen the Trees slip way down the EFL Championship table, the current league table is shown below, we languish in 16th place, 8pts off the bottom, but still only 5pts from the play off places, still lots to play for.
That is if I manage to survive the season, the board are not happy with me, as shown by my current trust rating below, I still have several objectives to fulfil, which is reflected in my low rating, managing to scout a few decent youth players to sign to defensive, midfield and attacking positions will help with my rating, but easier said than done, the rating for youth players is quite broad, so theres some guesswork needed to decide if a youth player may come good and fulfil their potential, any youths signed will immediately go out on loan to gain match experience, at the moment I need to do a Mourinho and just buy for the here and now, rather than building for the future.
I’m gagging to play in the Premier League, with all its realistic real world stadiums, and big match atmospheres.
Yes, I have gone for the middle-ageing, bald, suited and booted managers avatar, there isn’t much choice in FIFA for personas to choose, I just fancied a Tony Pulis type character over the usual Damian Lewis lookalike.
Since my last post, over-performing Bojan has gone off the boil, he hasn’t scored in 5, and usually runs out of stamina around the 70 min mark so hasn’t been finishing many matches either, the club are devising a specific fitness regime for him with the chief fitness coach, in the hope of building upon his cardio base and helping him feature more prominently in the latter stage of matches.
New signings are needed, on a very tight budget, I did manage to put together a loan deal for a player I scouted heavily using the in-game search function, searching for young players with good finishing, and attacking prowess stats.
18 year old Jonathan David will be joining us in January on a 2 year loan deal, hoping he can provide some much needed firepower.
I have also switched my camera from the fixed custom Broadcast camera to the default broadcast camera, which is much more dynamic.
With the custom angle it stayed fixed that way for every match, with it set to default, the broadcast angle changes slightly depending on the stadium, which is a nice effect, every match feels slightly different and it adds to the atmosphere and experience.
The last match of my most recent play session was a Midlands Derby match, against Derby County, was great to hear the commentary team elude to this and provide location specific comments during the match, I lost that game 3-1, after levelling at 1-1, I was done on the counter attack twice after chasing a goal, World Class CPU will punish you if you don’t focus.
Below are the highlights from the Derby Match.
I was truly battered in that match, apart from the one goal we struggled to create anything of note, Soudani up top (the goalscorer) is a great finisher, but with Grabban and Brewster as the other two CF choices, we are short of firepower, since this session, Jonathan David has signed on a 2 year loan deal and scored on his debut.
My next 3 matches provided one of the best sessions I’ve had on any football game, ever,
it truly was ‘the beautiful game’.
After 18 games we currently sit 8th in the table, only 7pts off top spot. My objective for the season is to win automatic promotion, that’s a top two finish, the board expect a lot .
As you can see, fatigue plays a much bigger part in this years game, in previous FIFAs, as in PES, players were largely able to run around for the full 90 mins and be fine, and be ready to go on full stamina for the next match, not so much this year.
I have also setup two youth scouts, and recommendations are filtering through, its tough to gauge just how good a youth player can be at 15 or 16 years old, as even the most advanced scouting report only gives a broad range for overall rating and potential, but with another of my objectives being to sign a youth player to a professional contract in each of the 4 positions (GK/Def/Mid/Att) I will have to take a punt, and have just signed 16yr old attacking player, Jobson, to a deal.
I will be playing on World Class difficulty, 5 main halves, and early signs are that the game plays very nicely indeed.
