Stupid blondie challenge

[nully29]

You are not the only one who starts out with no badge and no past experience. However, what makes you stand out from those FM vets, who begin their journeys from the bottom, is that you genuinely have no clue. You are a blondie with no idea about tactics, training and player evaluations. You are not a football manager, you are just Manager. As such, you do three things that every manager does:

 

1. Communicate with higher-ups to keep them happy and get the most out of them. It's ok to throw a fit if they don't fund youth facilities.

2. Communicate with those below you to keep them happy and get the most out of them. Feel free to put your hands up, you are a blondie after all.

3. Hire people to care for football part of football manager job.

This is a fairly flexible framework which results in rules that are sorta like the following:

1. Your formation is either the favorite of the owner, the favorite of Assman or whatever he suggests.

2. You can't make any tactical changes unless suggested by your staff.

3. Delegate training or use pre-built schedules and follow the advices if your staff.

4. Let DoF initiate all the signings. This, however, makes scouting irrelevant. So you can as well task your DoF to sign whoever your scouts recommend at 80% or higher. It's ok to play around it, like you can let your Assman scout a recommended player to make sure that he would love the signing.

5. Your match line-up is whatever your assistant suggest. Within match you have only do what he says, but you may also ignore his advice.

6. You transfer list and loan list whoever your staff advise, however you can ask DoF to sell a player if you don't like him or he is unhappy. Similarly, you can only re-sign player if DoF tells you to re-sign him, however you may set a player for release if you don't like him.

7. All the contract negotiations are to be handled by DoF. However, it is fair game to disapprove signing if it puts you over the budget, as it does not require football knowledge

 

The basic idea is that you assemble a strong backroom staff and let them win for you, which is actually the way real life management works.

Edited December 23, 2020 by nully29

[nully29]

So, a 38 years old lady from Cardiff has decided to try her hand at managing a football club. She is preparing to apply for local amateur clubs.

 

The goal:

 

In ten years become the highest paid manager in the game and have a job in London. All while learning nothing about coaching. 

 

The plan:

 

1. Every move should be made with reputation in mind. Reputation is boosted by badges and titles/promotions. Problem is, teams that are primed for promotion don't usually have a coach vacancy. Unless, of course, the team has relegated and is looking to bounce straight back up. So, she should eye teams that are about to get relegated, yet have potential to bounce back, and try to get a job there. The key is to join them after the season so she won't have relegation on her resume.

 

2. For this particular play style it is critical to keep roster small. Assmen are awful at rotating squad, so players who don't crack starting line-up become unhappy fast. Besides reputation, roster's manageability is another core value.

 

3. Asking influential players to recommend star players for the team should be a go-to move. It's perfectly within "I have no clue about football" roleplay and it immediately makes her player's favorite staff, improving manageability of the squad.

Edited December 23, 2020 by nully29

[nully29]

Getting the first job is never particularly hard in this game. As soon, as the reporter asked her about struggles of Llantwit Major's head coach, the blondie wasted no time stressing that she would be flattered to work for Llantwit, which is merely 39 minutes train ride from Cardiff. The fans immediately proclaimed her the leading candidate for the job and the next day the poor dude was fired. The news article said, that the firing was in part caused by blondie's interview.

Blondie has discovered, that she is unable to use any gestures in the job interview. She figured that's how SI simulated nerves and jitters of the first job interview. She was so tight, she couldn't even smile. Nonetheless, she did land a job by promising that she would gain players' support. 

Once she entered the dressing room, it has become clear why the previous coach had failed. The roster was way too large. Half the players were concerned about playing time and three were expecting to start next game because of such concerns.

She set three tactics that were thumb upped by her assistant upon learning that in FM21 board members no longer have favorite formation. Then she posted an advertisement for general manager. She then took a break to consider next steps. There's no room in the budget, so releasing unhappy players might be problematic. Playing them is not possible either because of the role playing restrictions. The girl has her back against the wall from the get go.

Edited December 24, 2020 by nully29

[nully29]

Starting as low, as Cymru south results in decent manager support from the start. Still, there has to be a plan to earn more support from the squad. The most effective way to do it was to promote highly influential players. Every time you increase player's squad status, he supports you more, which is a useful tip when dealing with mutinies. So, she went on to promote two of the three highly influential players. Third one was a star player already and there were no team leaders on the team. This is very realistic, as new bosses often promote key members of the inherited team to buy their loyalty (while having no clue whether they deserved said promotion).

Second step was to talk with veterans about their future non-playing roles. It helps to learn that a player wants to become a scout, for example, and to suggest him to become a scout.

And the third is a ubiquitous praising conduct. The key thing is not to talk with players too frequently. In FM20 one could use Conversation history menu to find out what and when was said to the player so that you won't repeat yourself too much too soon. Apparently it is removed in FM21, so the blondie had to rely on her memory.

Edited December 24, 2020 by nully29

[nully29]

One of the positives of this playstyle is that it explores less traveled avenues within the game world, thus encountering some bugs and reporting it to make the game itself better. For instance, upon examining the work of previous manager, Stupid Blondie learned that AI transfer lists players on 0 wage contracts instead of releasing them outright.

Edited December 24, 2020 by nully29

[nully29]

After Blondie set three tactics as advised her to best suit the squad, the next thing she saw was a contextual advice telling her to switch from 4141 to 4231. Seems like advice in tactics screen and contextual tactics advice are driven by different logic and probably have different classes of code executing them. 

[nully29]

Given the size of the inherited roster, the first thing to do was a major cull. Everyone, who had ability of 2 Stars and below, and had a 0 wage contract was released. Except for the captain. Yeah, previous regime made 1,5 stars guy captain. She didn't feel confident in changing captains until she develops a feel for a team, so she kept him. About 20 players were cut. 18 remained. Somehow this resulted in "park the bus" style no longer suitable and "controlling possession" now suitable. Probably because the team now has no central defenders at all. Ironically, only one player on the squad is worried that the team is "lacking depth", as he politely put it, at center back. Others don't care. 

Edited December 25, 2020 by nully29