A Problem Shared

When I started out with this Blog I couldn't find any useful tips pages. Many sites claim they do but only have a blank page awaiting you to post your advice for others. I guess if you have taken the trouble to search for tips you are not in a position to give them.

Then I found a couple of messageboards which have helped me no end. This will no doubt make my page obsolete but here you go...

The best one is the Official board with the creator giving his views. I also have a soft spot for The Dugout Community as someone had found my page and linked it back so I get a fair few visitors from them.

Make sure you come back though!

Off To Lula Land!

I must be. My team is trapped in a run of bad form brought about by several injuries to midfield and losing my best left back so in the transfer window (brought in to stop panic buying!) I splash out £25m on the Brazilian midfielder Lula.

I had heard he was one of the best around from a few sites so too the chance. He hasn't done much yet but his value jumped from £5.5m to £10m on purchase and has risen to £12m after three games.

Lets hope it works out...

Cranie Flys

Last night I won the FA Cup. Not bad considering it was only my third year in charge and only my second back in the Premiership. To top it off I finished 5th in the league.

A fair bit of it has to go down to some of those cheap signings I picked up, especially the two defenders but the major part was down to three home grown players. Cranie, Baird and Blackstock. The latter rose to £21m after he scored the winning goal.

With success comes the poaches and my leftback, Cranie, was snapped up by Arsenal for £14.25m. What was disappointing was in previous PC games if you didn’t like the price you could insist on a tribunal but here the price offered was the final one. Not that I was disappointed as he was only worth £7m.

Potter Training

I have been looking around various hints and tips and I have come across what could be a coincidence or a designed part of the game. A number of people managing different teams claim to own an Andrew Potter they developed through the Youth Team who is amazing. Sure enough I have one too!

I have yet to see how good he is as he is only just turned 18 and competition for AM C players is high in my team but I advise you on the meantime to loan him out at worst but not to sell him…

Great Players

On most Hints & Tips forum you will see the question; Do you know any good players?

The answer that seems universal is Ricardinho, a player I have actually watched out in Brazil. He certainly has done the business for me too getting into double figures when Kenwyne Jones is injurred (still haven't off loaded him yet!). I got him for £1.7m and he doubled in value over night.

Other players I know, from my time with Southampton, that will do a good job for anyone is Baird as a captain. He led my team out of the Championship and we are pressing for top 6. Dexter Blackstock looks like he could go all the way too. The biggest surprise to me was Craine, he played for England even before I picked him!

Looking outside my club, Cisse isn't quite the brittle boned player he is in real life and wins the Player of the Year competition reguarly.

On The Cheap Side

I have won promotion with Southampton and now need some Premiership quality to help me survive. Being a relegated club funds are an issue so I dipped into the bargain basement. I have also found that by not spending the Chairman's money you can survive longer when things go south...

Bosman players
These are few and far between and obvious don’t hang around so make sure you get in as soon as the window opens and their contract ends. I have never gone as far as to track players whose contracts are ending as an unrealistic feature of this game is that contracts are dealt with in the closing stages rather than two years prior as they are in reality.

I got Melchiot from Birmingham to help boost my defence, and to be fair he did a good job but come the second season he became very average and was dropped.

Unsettled players
Keep an eye out for sulky players that want to leave because they are dropped from bigger sides. These often have a lower value to the lack of playing and also you can offer up to a third of their price as the club either doesn’t want them or knows they’ll never get a decent days work out of them again.

I snapped up Vidic from Man U for £1.7m. As a tip, look at their history to see what transfer prices they commanded in the past as an indication of what they could rise to. He went to Man U for £7m and although he has yet to reach that height I almost doubled my money just playing him a handful of games.

You're My Best Friend

Can anyone tell me what difference the Favourite Person of one of your players makes to your club. As Mamady Sidibe was going to be a fringe play this season I looked up his favourite person, lower league ‘keeper called Bertrand Bossu, and seeing as he was cheap bought him for a laugh.

I have tried playing them together, dropping both of them so they can play golf together or just playing the favoured striker but can see no tangible benefit.

Part of me hoped for some press coverage with some words of gratitude etc but not a bar of it.

In short, don’t bother with it unless they are going to be an asset to the club in their own right.

No Room For Sentiment

Injury prone players are nothing short of a waste of time and every attempt should be made to off load them. Every Southampton fan has a soft spot for Marian Pahars for example, so it broke my heart to have to sell him for about £1m.

It was for the best as in end as I bought Mamady Sidibe from Stoke for just £220k. He was being left out the side and came up on the messageboard as I had him on my shortlist after he had a good game with another club. In just half a season he was in double figures and helped secure our promotion.

Kenwyn Jones is the next one to get it!

The Winning Way

This may only be of use if you are taking over a team in the lower divisions, but as I was fishing around for some tips I found some advice for Championship Manager for the PSP and applied it... but it worked.

Coincidently the advice was about managing Southampton in the Championship. The advice was to buy any three players that were in the same league. This ensures you have the quality to compete in that devision. I bought;

Alexis Nicolas (DMC) £85k
Steve Jones (AM/S C) £220k
John Paul McGoven (AML/R) £200k

Steve Jones for example became my top striker and played half the season in the AMC position. Try and play all three together and watch the points rack up!

Sven Syndrome

Formations. Being lazy I tried a season with the classic 4-4-2 with no joy, although I did have some success beating good sides with 4-4-2 defensive and mixed for playing attack for weaker sides.

After being sacked once and heading for another sacking I resorted to the playing style that was so devastating in the 1996 computer version. 5-3-2 Attack with passing set to direct. Although the damage was done at this point and the fans were already protesting outside the training ground the signs were that this was the formation to play...

A new adventure...

So the PSP was a leaving present and there was only one game I was going to get... time to rekindle my love of the Championship Manager game I used to hunch over a slow computer when I should have been studying.

This game, although on the PSP, is made by the same guys who designed the original with many of the same features. Luckily for me, they have dumbed down a lot of the features that the PC version to fit the format so that means you can just get down and pick players and play them. It is beautiful in it simplicity.

I am picking up a few hints, tips and players that turn out great. Hopefully you can share some of them too!