Daniel Evensen

On another note, I try to back up my save once a week or so just in case something awful happens to my computer.

Yeah, I've run into the exact same issue with hitting the woodwork. I think I'm averaging 3 times a game since the update.

I played around with this in an old save that was unfortunately abandoned due to computer errors. I strongly believe that staff personality makes more of a difference than we think. We know that the Head of Youth Development personality has a huge impact on the personalities of newgens that come through each year. However, I suspect that the personalities of other staff members can also have an impact on the overall level of team professionalism, as well as on the type of players that come through. If you actually pay attention to it, you can sometimes get better bargains on staff members with high levels of potential by signing less experienced staff that haven't yet completed coaching courses. The attributes of your staff grow similar to how your attributes grow. As far as coaching attributes are concerned, Evidence Based Football Manager has shown that they do have an impact on player development, though it's not as powerful as that famous combination of player Determination, Professionalism, and Ambition.

In my mind, that's part of the fun of it all! And, yeah, I don't think that feeling that you still don't understand the first thing about the game ever goes away. I play Action! PC Football to get my American football kick; you can see my meager results here. The more I think I know what offenses and defenses I need to call, the more I realize that I don't know the first thing about what I'm doing. And that's part of the fun of it all: you always feel like you're learning something new. Of course, FM is the best of all worlds, since your in-game character grows along with your understanding of the in-game world and its tactical nature. Personally, though, I still prefer to ignore what the players on my team are actually good at, set up the tactic I want, and sell and buy players until I get something that fits. Maybe that's why my squad dynamics always suck, lol.

Neimenggu Zhongyou This one started off with a bang. We won a penalty in the first 15 seconds of the match, after which Kwon Hyeok-Kyu scored the first goal. And it was downhill from there. We wound up winning 6-1. Mr. Kwon wound up with two goals, and everybody had a good match. Neimenggu did wind up with a consolation goal, due to a really poor piece of goaltending by Liu Shaoziyang. I guess we’ll have to keep an eye on him in the future. It wasn’t quite as bad as some of the howlers that Hou Yu let in, but it still wasn’t good enough for a player of his caliber. Still, we got the victory, and have improved to 29 wins in a row. I can’t complain about that. This was the debut match for João Victor, who looked excellent despite not scoring. I think we have a truly great player on our hands. Goodbye Huang Bowen It’s official now. Huang Bowen has been signed by Kitchee. You might wonder what in the world happened. He scored 17 goals in 19 appearances for us, and suddenly has found himself playing for an obscure team in Hong Kong. The problem was never his skill. The problem was always his attitude. I don’t care how skilled you are. If you’re not going to fall in line and try your hardest, you don’t have a spot on my squad. The sad truth is that he is easy to replace. Oh — Kitchee also came in with a 3.25 million RMB offer for Fan Xiang. He’s still our captain and our most influential player, but he also is not likely to start any games for us. I’m going to let them talk with him to see what happens. We don’t need the money, but I would also rather have an everyday player like Liu Shaoziyang take over the captain’s armband from our fringe player Fan Xiang. Perhaps we will break up the Three Musketeers after all. Shaanxi Guoli We’re back on the road again, this time taking on Shaanxi Guoli. We’ll win this match as well. I don’t think we’ll lose again this season. Also, once Mueanta is recovered from injury, we really will be unstoppable.

Liaoning FC Maybe I brought in too many players at once. We beat Liaoning FC. That was never really a question. But we didn’t do it with our normal Yanbian style. The match was scoreless until the 67nd minute, when Andrija Kolundžić came on. I haven’t said much about the 20-year-old Kolundžić, who was kind of rotting away in the under-21s at the start of the season. I was worried that he couldn’t survive playing at this level. Well, I was wrong. I gave him a chance in the first team after he spent a quiet year in the under-21s. This was in part because there were rumors going around that he was upset at his lack of playing time. He came on as a substitute, and promptly scored a goal. Rovaglia followed up with one in the 75th minute. That set the stage for Cheng Binbin, one of those new signings that I haven’t mentioned yet. Cheng Binbin’s story is even more amazing than Kolundžić’s. Cheng Binbin was on Liaoning FC until coming to us at the beginning of the transfer window. Cheng Binbin wound up with the third goal, scoring a real wonder in the 88th minute. He ended up being name the man of the match, with a goal and an assist in what was otherwise an ugly match. There were 14 yellow cards in this match. Liaoning striker Wang Zhiyu was finally sent off with a second yellow card in the 90th minute. This really wasn’t a great mach for casual observers. Liaoning isn’t a bad team. They’re in a solid position in 4th place in the table, and probably could beat us if we had to keep facing them. I’m happy that we got away with this one. The Huge Signing I love my scouts. However, they don’t always know what is right. I’ve had my eyes on Suphanat Mueanta for a long time now — even since before I came to manage Yanbian FC. I kept my scouts looking at him constantly to see if he would be willing to come down to our level. He’s been in pretty poor form recently, and Buriram United seemed willing to sell. I made a 12 million RMB offer and kept my fingers crossed. Well, we got our man this time. Mueanta is a 20-year-old full Thai international who is a wonder to watch. Check him out on YouTube if you don’t believe me. He’s got incredible potential, and is clearly the best striker on our club. He’s also got 8 caps and 3 goals, which itself is quite impressive. Even with concerns about his recent form, Mueanta has played incredibly well in Thailand. He is injured, though, and won’t see his first match for a few weeks. That might pay off in the long run, though, as it gives us a chance to get him more fully integrated with the squad. The catch (and there always is a catch) is that Mueanta thinks he’s going to use Yanbian as a stepping stone. We did have to include a minimum release clause. My plan is to try to sign him on more money once the season is over and we’ve been promoted, hopefully with that clause gone. I want to take him to the Champions League, and would feel devastated if some European side came in to get him. However, Mueanta wasn’t exactly a popular signing with the squad. Pietro Rovaglia started making noise about how he might be replaced by the new guy. I tried to get Fan Xiang to calm down Rovaglia, but it didn’t quite work. I know that Fan Xiang has those great leadership traits, but I’m worried that his relative lack of skill compared to the rest of the squad makes him the wrong player to ask in these situations. I really don’t want to break up our Three Musketeers core, but that day might come. Anyway, I talked with Pietro, who expressed his concerns quietly, and then backed down in the end. This is why it’s important to cultivate good relationships with your players. The Other Big Signing I give myself the credit for Mueanta. Our next signing, though, is entirely due to our scouts. I kept hearing rumors from our scouting team about a 20-year-old Brazilian left back named João Victor. Now, I’ve been under a bit of pressure from our more hardcore group of fans for not having a proper left back. And I really heard it at home the other day when I was forced to use Lee Jin-Yong in that position. It turns out that the ladies in the Lee Jin-Yong fan club really don’t want to see him filling up fullback holes, even if there are offensive overlapping chances. Anyway, the scouts loved Victor, and so I went and bought him. It only cost me 7 million RMB. Victor’s not quite the massive signing that Mueanta is, though he does come in with quite a bit of potential. It’s not quite as easy to make the Brazilian international teams as it is to make the Thai teams, apparently. However, Victor’s form with Red Bull Bragantino in Brazil has been more than good enough to impress me. And the best part, of course, is that he’s fast. We like fast players in the back. We need more. New Faces I should introduce you to at least some of the new names that I haven’t mentioned yet. First up is Andrija Kolundžić, the 20-year-old Croatian right winger who has put in his time in the under 21s. We bought him in the summer from GNK Dinamo Zagreb, where he was also stuck in the youth team. It only cost 400,000 RMB; I think we likely got a bargain. The best part about Kolundžić is his fantastic pace, which is exactly what we need in that position. Second is the hero from the Liaoning game, Cheng Binbin. He’s a 25-year-old Chinese striker who originally comes from Langfang in Hebei Province, and he’s stayed in northern China for his entire career. He scored 18 goals in 20 appearances for Liaoning this season, and was one of the best players in our division. That’s precisely why we signed him. And he only cost us 850,000 RMB. My one complaint about Cheng Binbin is that he’s slow. He’ll probably wind up being a 4th or even 5th choice striker for us. But at least he’s got a better attitude than Huang Bowen. Next up, and last for today, is Elias Dahle Haugland, another player I brought up from the youth team. Haugland is a 20-year-old Norwegian centerback (told you we had a lot of Norwegians) with a great attitude and a lot of potential. Haugland came to us from Molde, where he had been rotting away on the reserve squad. The real kicker here is that we got him for free. That’s right: with all of our wealth, we didn’t pay anything in this case for a kid who is now on our first team. Haugland has a great attitude, has trained well, and is a great asset for our squad. Going The Wrong Way Sadly, some players I’ve mentioned before are moving on. We’ve wound up loaning a number of players out to April 25, our North Korean affiliate club. This includes Gustavo Rico. And this is a fascinating story. Rico is a 20-year-old Mexican right winter who is actually a good player. He’s played about 7 games for us so far, and has done well in his few appearances. However, he really isn’t going to get any playing time at the moment — not with the squad that we’ve built. The hilarious thing here is his career trajectory. We found him playing for Ballard FC in the United States, and signed him on a free transfer at the beginning of the season. That’s right: in 6 months he went from playing in the United States to playing in North Korea. That’s got to be a first. Goodbye Huang Bowen? I’ve been trying to offload Huang Bowen, whose morale keeps declining. Kitchee Sports Club in Hong Kong finally made an offer for him. They’re offering 3 million RMB, including fees after installments and a certain amount after league appearances. Kitchee are one of the most successful clubs in all of Hong Kong, and have a bit of money to throw around — though clearly not as much as we do. I can’t say that this would be a step forward in Huang Bowen’s career, but I also can’t say that I foresee a bright future for him here. Anyway, I accepted the offer. Rumor has it that Eastern, another Hong Kong club, might also go in for him. We’ll see if that pans out or not. Neimenggu Zhongyou In the middle of all this chaos, we’ve got another match: this time against Neimenggu Zhongyou. There’s simply no way they can compete with us, even if our cohesion is in question.

Huge Win We didn’t just beat Jiangsu FC. We absolutely torched them. The 6-2 final score looks closer than the match really was. After a nervous scoreless first half, new signing Younes Delfi pushed one across, followed quickly by a goal from Rovaglia. And that opened up the floodgates. In all, both Delfi and Rovaglia wound up with two goals. Dutra, a youngster who had been on the under 21 squad until the day before this match, chimed in with two goals of his own, both from free kicks. Jiangsu did manage to score two, both from their target man Xiao Jinqing. We wound up starting new signing Chen Wei at goal, as I mentioned yesterday. He didn’t look good on either of those Xiao Jinqing shots, though I will note that he seemed to fare better than I think Hou Yu would have. They gave the man of the match award to Rovaglia, though I think Delfi might have been more deserving. We’ve got some really good strikers on this team now. Rovaglia is fortunate to get the start, of course. Parra is still my personal first choice among the two, though Rovaglia seems to have made better progress recently. The press grilled me a bit for taking Rovaglia off around the 60 minute mark. He was sitting on a potential hat trick, and I probably should have left him on. He looked tired, though, and I didn’t want to overuse him in a match that we had basically already won by that point. We’ll see if he complains, though I doubt he will. Anyway, all of that means that we still are undefeated and untied in all competitions this season. We’re also made it to the quarter finals of the Chinese FA Cup, which impresses even Chairman Guo. We’re moving up! More New Faces I’ve got two new players to introduce you to. First is Jung In-Gyom (정인겸), an 18-year-old South Korean attacking left midfielder from South Korea who looks incredibly good. I think he might turn out to be a real bargain. We paid Bayer 04 only 275,000 RMB for him, which is an insane steal in my opinion. He never made any Bundesliga appearances, but I’m certain we’ll be able to put him to good use right away. He’s consistent and has the potential to be a Chinese Super League player, which is what I care most about. I think he also could become home grown at club, assuming he stays for the long term. Second, of course, is Liu Shaoziyang (劉邵子洋), a 19-year-old Chinese goalkeeper who is going to become our long-term keeper. He was capped at the under 23 level, and I’m pretty sure he’ll make it to the Chinese national team before long. We paid 3 million RMB to take him off of the hands of Bayern München. Yes, you read that right. We’re raiding the Bundesliga of its young talent now. Liu Shaoziyang has a great professional personality, is a natural leader for the squad, and has the potential to be very good. He’s the best Chinese goalkeeper our scouts could find. Liaoning We host Liaoning FC again in our next match. Liaoning is in 4th place, but they don’t stand a chance here. We bought their best striker, Cheng Binbin, from them before the start of the transfer window. He’s with us now, which means that they don’t really have much of an attack. We’ll get to Cheng Binbin in a future writeup. For now, we’re going to focus on beating Liaoning and keeping our streak alive.

That's the Football Manager way, after all!

I mean, in this case it's not because of a promise. You have to agree to playing time when you offer a contract; either you offer them something or you don't have a contract. This problem really drives me nuts when you play in leagues that have two games a week, in which it would be physically impossible for the players to play in 75% of matches or whatever the limit is. And, as noted in this post, it's really infuriating when players get upset when they are receiving the exact amount of game time that was originally agreed to. However, I think that something else might be going on. I recently sold a few toxic players on my squad, and suddenly the complaints went away. It might be that one or two bad apples were spoiling the bunch. This is why Professionalism is so important.

I just wanted to point out as well that the newer Mentoring system is also a lot more realistic. There were a number of well-known exploits for the Tutoring system that would allow awful players to become stars very quickly.

We were undefeated before the new update came around. We're still undefeated. My guess, though, is that my squad is a bit stronger than the average Chinese third tier squad.

Gansu Tianma We absolutely destroyed Gansu Tianma. We won, 7-1. No surprises there. Pietro Rovaglia had an absolutely amazing match, scoring 3 goals quickly and simply dominating offensively. Gansu simply had no answer for him. That makes 27 straight league wins for us, and an amazing run of 30 wins in a row in all competitions. You’d think that I would be over the moon with delight. Of course, I’m not. Hou Yu, who has one foot out the door, gave up a ridiculous goal by playing completely out of position. I don’t care that we were up 5-0 or 6-0 or whatever it was at the time. He’s not going to be able to survive at higher levels if he’s letting in awful goals like that at our current level. Rovaglia is going to get more game time now that Luciano Parra is injured. Parra has injured ankle ligaments, which will open the door for Rovaglia to score even more goals. My assistant managers think that Rovaglia is the better player, though we’ll see if they change their tune in the end. All I care about is scoring goals, and I hope that Rovaglia has worked in training on staying onside. I do think we will be fine, though. You’ll think so, too, when you see the sort of players we brought in. Transfers We brought in 108 new players. I’m not kidding. Most of them are young, though, and a whole ton of them are goalkeepers. I went kind of nuts once I realized that all Chinese clubs are required to use only Chinese goalkeepers. We don’t necessarily have a monopoly on talent, but at least we can sort through them and figure out which ones are good. And we still have over 100 million RMB to spend in our transfer budget. Chairman Guo keeps telling me to spend, so I’ll keep spending. Players Out Only two noteworthy players have left. As I mentioned before, Adrian Sander, our 21-year-old Brazilian center back, was signed by Jiangsu FC. We might see him again really soon, actually. Our fans are a bit skeptical about this deal. The truth, though, is that Sander simply wasn’t good enough to compete with the likes of Rovaglia and Torres. He was upset that I wasn’t starting him, and I likely wasn’t ever going to start him. Selling him was simply the best option. The other one, of course, is Hou Yu, who joins Shandong. The fans are understandably furious about this deal. Hou Yu never lost a match for us, and gave up only 2 league goals during his time with us. I’ll never be able to forgive him for giving up 4 goals in that awful match against Qingdao Hainiu, however. I’m convinced that he would only play worse if he stayed on as we move our way up the ranks. We’ve got better goalkeepers now anyway. Hou Yu will likely be a fringe player at best with Shandong, and I doubt we’ll hear more about him again. Players In It would take me a long time to go through each of our signings, even if I limited myself to first team players only. Instead, I’ll go through the players that are going to start our next match. I’ll introduce our new players before they appear, and will try to make it easy for you to keep up. In goal for our next match will be Chen Wei. Chen Wei is a 24-year-old Chinese backup goalkeeper who is only starting this match because our new first-choice goalkeeper is fatigued. Chen Wei comes in from Shanghai Port in the Chinese Super League. We bought him for a cool 4 million RMB. He wasn’t getting a ton of game time with Shanghai Port, and will likely ride the bench for us as well. He’s good enough for this level, but will likely be a fringe player until we can find some good young goalkeepers with high potential and good personalities. Rafaël Jire Rafael is an 18-year-old Belgian right back who is only starting our next match because Pak Myong-Song is still on international duty. Rafael comes in from Jong KV Mechelen in the Belgian lower leagues. We got him for only 400,000 RMB, which I think is an absolute bargain for a player with his potential. Rafael is probably not quite good enough to be a starter, but slots into our first team nicely. George Hall is an 18-year-old English midfielder who we stole away from Birmingham. Hall cost us a cool 10 million RMB, which is our biggest transfer ever. That might give you an idea as to why I’ve had a hard time spending the 350 million RMB I’ve been given. He wasn’t quite good enough for the Championship, but he should be more than good enough to play in China. I’m wondering if we can make him home grown at club. Jacob Dicko Eng is an 18-year-old Norwegian attacking left winger who we bought from Vålerenga. We’ve actually got quite a Norwegian presence on this squad now — almost as significant as our Korean boys. Eng cost us 7.5 million RMB, which I think was another good bit of transfer business. Vålerenga are in the Norwegian top flight, and he had managed to crack the first team before we convinced him to come be a star in Yanji. Eng comes in as our best left winger by a long shot. Our squad is starting to look a lot more professional. Camil Jebara is a 19-year-old Swedish attacking right winter who seems to have come in completely under the radar. Jebara cost 7 million RMB from Landskrona Boll och Idrottsällskap, down in the Swedish lower leagues. He played well during their 2022 season. At only 19, Jebara is clearly the best offensive player on our team, and looks like an absolute wonder signing. Finally, Younes Delfi is our Huang Bowen replacement up front. Delfi is a 22-year-old Iranian striker who looks absolutely awesome. We picked Delfi up from Foolad for only 470,000 RMB, which is an absolute bargain. He had previously played in Belgium and Croatia before returning to Iran. Delfi should help us forget about Huang Bowen in a hurry. He’s far too good to play at this level, and might be the long-term striker we’ve been looking for. We’ve got more first team players coming; stay tuned. Monthly Review We’ve hit January 2023, which means we can take a more broad look at how things are going. We’re still rich, of course. Our finances are doing just fine, thank you very much. The board is generally happy with everything, though I think my transfer spending spree made them upset. I went a little bit nuts, signing every young Chinese player I could find who didn’t seem like a disaster on first sight. In hindsight, I regret doing it, as many of those players came in with the inconsistent kiss of death. The fans are generally happy, though they are concerned about some of those transfers. They’ll forget about Hou Yu soon enough. Our squad dynamics didn’t take much of a hit, despite the crazy transfer season. A number of previously influential players are now on the under-21 team, unregistered and waiting to leave the club. We did bring in a few older Chinese players with extremely professional personalities to try to help establish more law and order in the dressing room. In fact, I saw that right away. I made a few adjustments to the playing time for four of our players. Each of them felt upset, and yet each of them left their meeting with me feeling content with what I decided on. Maybe there is something to this morale thing after all. The Big One Our next match is the big one: a Chinese FA Cup game in Nanjing against none other than Jiangsu FC. The media are convinced that we’re going to win this one without any problems. I’m not quite so optimistic. 6 of our 11 starting players came in the day before this match, for example. Our squad cohesion isn’t abysmal, but it also isn’t all that great. The players haven’t even had time to shake hands before being asked to go out and put on a show. And, of course, we’ll see if Adrian Sander winds up playing against us. Chairman Guo called in to tell me that he expects me to win. I guess I’m thankful for the confidence, though it would be nicer to hear some moral support rather than “you will win at all costs.” Charlotte is going to be disappointed that Lee Jin-Yong won’t start. Hall is much better than Lee Jin-Yong, but he’s not quite as handsome, I’m afraid. I hope for a win, but I’m feeling nervous.

Beijing Renhe We defeated Beijing Renhe again. It wasn’t anywhere near close this time. Luciano Parra got another hat trick in the first half. Huang Bowen, who is furious with me, still managed to score a goal. And Han Jin, who my coaches say isn’t good enough for our team, scored another one after a mistake by their defenders. We looked absolutely awesome out there this time around. I wish we could play like this every match. This means, of course, that we’ve now won 26 matches in a row in the league. It’s also helped a little bit with our squad cohesion and overall mood. With the schedule slowing down a bit, we can rest our actual starters a little bit more. It’s going to be a shame for the players who aren’t quite good enough to actually start for our first team squad, of course. And we’ve got a lot of players coming in once January rolls around. Things are about to get really crazy around these parts. Xia Xu, who I sold not long after arriving, actually had a pretty good game for Beijing. But there was simply nothing he could do about how awesome Parra is in the attack. The media asked me whether I thought we could part with Hou Yu after he turned in yet another clean sheet. They don’t know yet who I’ve signed to replace him in goal. Don’t worry: we’ll be just fine. The Huang Bowen Saga Huang Bowen has been unhappy with me all season. And things finally came to a boiling point this week. It might be because of the frigid Yanji temperatures, or because he’s not scoring goals the way he was. Whatever the reason, I’ve had enough of Huang Bowen and his reluctance to try. His most recent training performances have been nothing short of awful. I got in an argument with him afterwards, and warned him that I would be forced to get rid of him if he didn’t shape up. After his flippant reply, I put him on the transfer list. Nobody wants him, interestingly enough. The general feeling is that his wages are too high for any other Chinese club. And, interestingly enough, no foreign clubs seemed interested in him. I also offered him out for a loan until the end of the season, but nobody seemed interested in that, either. He might wind up being a real thorn in our sides. Left Back Issues We signed a 25-year-old named Zhang Jianyi back at the beginning of the season to help fill a hole in left back. We’ve got a problem now, though. Due to injuries, international duty for Pak Myong-song, and a suspension Zhang Jianyi picked up for accumulating too many yellow cards, we now have no actual left backs to play our next match. It looks like Lee Jin-Yong is going to wind up playing in that position. I haven’t been happy with Zhang Jianyi ever since he arrived. I really wish we had a good young Chinese leftback to take his place. We’re not going to renew Zhang’s contract at the end of the season. However, I’m not certain what we’re going to do for a replacement. And I really don’t like playing our baby-faced midfielder at left back. But we have no choice. Coming Back Home Speaking of Lee Jin-Yong, he’s back. Charlotte is thrilled, of course. The whole Lee Jin-Yong fan club is happy to see their hero return. He seems refreshed after taking that month to recuperate in South Korea. It’s not great for his development, but at least he’s been able to clear his mind a little bit. I really want to keep him here for the long run, and am more than happy to cater to his desires, no matter how strange they might seem. Aidan Quinn is also back from his month in Scotland. The sad thing is that I’m not sure I even noticed he was gone. Luciano the Great I know I’ve spent a lot of time talking about Huang Bowen and not quite as much talking about Luciano Parra. It turns out that Parra is on the verge of breaking the Yanbian FC record for most goals scored in a season. The old record was set by Ha Tae-Goon (하태균) back in 2007. Ha had scored 27 goals in that season, back when Yanbian FC was in the old Chinese Super League. Ha’s career sadly faded away after his Yanbian days. He found himself playing for a smaller side in the Chinese First Division, and then wound up back in South Korea in an emergency backup situation. Parra’s career is going to be different, though. He’s got real talent. Youth Intake It’s not quite youth intake time yet, but we did have a preview come through the other day. Our Head of Youth Development seemed a bit perplexed by the whole thing. He told me that this looked like a real golden generation for our team, and yet he also said that none of the players coming in look like they will ever have the ability to play for our first team squad. My guess is that the presence of so many talented players on the first team squad is skewing his thinking a bit. I’ve got a feeling that one or two of the new boys will probably wind up good enough to hold down squad positions once we’ve trained them up well. Of course, if they don’t work out we’ll just buy good young players from other teams and call it even. Gansu Tianma We’re playing Gansu Tianma again. We’re going to win this match. The question is whether we’ll score 10 goals against them again.

My meager suggestion to OP is to try playing without stars or player attributes for a change. You can use skins like this one to try it out. Opinions may vary, but it's honestly become my favorite way to play the game. Hiding away the stars and numbers helps turn the players from pixels and computer data into actual players in my mind, which helps a lot with immersion. Plus, then you don't have to waste time asking questions like exactly what impact the finishing number has on a player's ability to score.

I've had this exact thing happen with over half my squad, lol. The problem existed before the update, but the players got really mad right after the update came through. My guess is that it might be a bug.

Yep, you're exactly right. The point of this game is not necessarily to recreate football as precisely as possible. If that were the case, you certainly wouldn't see so many lower league teams that wind up winning the Champions League within 10 to 20 years or so. Instead, it's all about providing a realistic environment in which players can immerse themselves and come up with their own stories. It's almost like Dungeons and Dragons for sports fans — and the game really is a lot better if you slow down and get deep into the story.

I agree that the dialogue in Football Manager is a huge issue. It's one of the few parts of this game that I honestly feel needs to be completely rethought and rewritten. I do want to note, however, that Football Manager is unique among simulation games in having so much dialogue between the human player and various NPCs. I'm unaware of any sports game that does anything even remotely like this. OOTP, which is the closest comparison I can think of, doesn't even allow you to tell your pitcher to calm down - much less to negotiate directly with agents, hold press conferences, and so on. The idea behind these NPC interactions is fantastic, and is one of the reasons why I've concluded Football Manager is actually an RPG. Having said that, though, no RPG would have success for long with such dry and repetitive NPC interactions. If it really wants to see FM meet its potential, SI needs to focus on improving NPC interactions as if this game were an RPG. As much fun as match engine improvements are, the real immersion comes from all the in-game interactions — and that immersion is broken when the interactions make absolutely no sense.

This exact same complaint comes up with every single new version of Football Manager and every single match engine update. The threads usually devolve into some sort of blanket criticism of how the game is irretrievably broken, and how Sports Interactive are simply money hungry scoundrels who don't care at all about the quality of their flagship product. Then it all calms down once the tactic creators figure out what is going on, and we have relative peace and calm before the next round begins. It's the circle of life on these boards. There's a really good chance that it's actually not your tactic. What personalities do your players have? Are they fatigued? Are you playing against stronger opposition? Has morale taken a hit recently? Are their underlying happiness issues that you're ignoring?

2 points in 6 months is actually really good. Mentoring is not a magic wand that turns players with poor personalities into players with good personalities. Frankly, I try to stay far away from players with low determination, low ambition, and/or low professionalism because of this exact problem. You can do small things to gain slight improvements, but you're not going to see magic.

In my opinion, if it's possible in-game, it really shouldn't be thought of as "cheating." In fact, there was a fairly well done recreation of the 1991 Red Star Belgrade tactic that was put together during FM21 - you can find the video here. If an asymmetric formation is needed to recreate a real-life tactic, I see no reason why it should be thought of as "cheating." I might be biased, though - I'm also very much in favor of using downloaded tactics, which I know is not a very popular opinion...

A New Rivalry Is Born We defeated Jiangsu FC handily, 3-0. Everything went our way. Luciano Parra scored in the 29th minute. Mr. Kwon scored a penalty at the start of the second half. And Kristoffer Paulsen finished it up with a third right before full time. Jiangsu had a player sent off in the 53rd minute for a horrible tackle on Mr. Kwon. It was the sort of play that you usually see in an intense rivalry game. This hurts Jiangsu’s chances of being promoted. However, I’ve got good reason to believe that this is the beginning of a serious rivalry. The Adrian Sander Story We signed a 20-year-old Brazilian kid named Adrian Sander for free near the start of the season. He looked good, but has never been quite good enough to start for us. He’s played a total of 2 matches for us, neither of which were all that spectacular. For the most part, he’s been on the bench as an option in case somebody gets hurt. And, well, he’s not all that thrilled about it. It all started a few weeks back, when Sander started talking with the press. Articles started to come out about how he was going to force me to move him on to a different club. Finally, I wound up answering a question from Tang Fei of Sports China about the situation. I told him that we were continuing to discuss the problem with Adrian and that we would solve it internally. For some strange reason, Adrian thought I mean that he would get more playing time. Now, I’ve done my homework on this one. Fan Xiang told me in private that Sander’s endless concerns were starting to get on the other players’ nerves. Nobody seems to care whether Adrian stays or goes. Sander’s biggest problem is simply that he’s not good enough. Paulsen is 2 years younger than him, and is already better. There’s simply no way Sander is going to start at centerback as long as we have Paulsen. Sander can technically also play in defensive midfield. However, Lee Jin-Yong is the same age, and is already a much better player with a lot more talent. Sander simply didn’t fit in. And so I decided to sell him. Guess who bid on him? Jiangsu FC, of course. And we ended up selling him, for a measly 630,000 RMB. Adrian Sander will be a Jiangsu FC player on January 1st. Told you we are now rivals. Goodbye Hou Yu Hou Yu has been sold as well. Hou Yu never got over me fining him for giving up 4 goals to Qingdao Hainiu. That was the match that caused me to bring Wu Ping back up to the senior squad. I was just about ready to sell Hou Yu then. He never got over his upset feelings, and has been training extremely poorly. And so I decided to cut him loose before things got worse. Shandong Taishan in the China Super League made a 1.15 million RMB offer for him. That sounded about right to me. I accepted it, knowing full well that we have a whole host of goalkeepers superior to Hou Yu coming soon. It took only a few days, and it’s now official. The Hou Yu era of Yanbian FC will come to an end on January 1st. Beijing Renhe We’re facing Beijing Renhe again. You probably don’t remember what happened last time. We made short work of them, winning 4-0. The newspapers are buzzing about our former player Xia Xu facing us again. I sold Xia Xu to Beijing Renhe not long after arriving. I fortunately still have my notes from those days. Xia Xu let us for only 6,000 RMB, which strikes me as an incredibly low amount. He is a defensive midfielder who I knew would never play a major role with our squad — particularly not when we had the big Koreans coming in. His biggest weakness is his unambitious personality. We had a lot of that on this club when I first arrived, and there are still some remnants of that problem hanging around here and there. I’m happy that I sold him. I just hope that we win again.

Flipping the Calendar We’re up to the 24th game of this season, out of 46 total. We’ve already played against every team in our division once, and are undefeated. I’d say that’s a pretty good start. We kept it going in our home match against Wuxi Wugou this tme around. We wound up with a 2-0 lead after 23 minutes, and just coasted to the end from there. Song Wenjie scored one penalty and missed a second. The second one really shouldn’t have been a penalty to begn with. It didn’t matter much in the end, though. Our defense looks great. Wuxi managed only 4 shots all game long, and didn’t seem to ever present a challenge to us. The offense, meanwhile, was slipping and sliding around on the snow and ice all game long. This might be a long, cold, and dark winter. Huang Bowen had a particularly bad game, which makes me worry for his future at the club. We’re not going to wait patiently for him to remember how to play. He’s got to start showing up to these games if he stands a chance at staying here. The Big One We host Jiangsu FC again. They are in 3rd place, and are a good team. You’ll remember that we barely beat them last time, 3-2. That was the game that finally convinced me that Wu Ping was not a viable option in goal for us. We face Jiangsu again at the beginning of January in the Chinese FA Cup. This might turn into a rivalry in the end, especially if they are promoted along with us. Song Wenjie has the flu and has been sent home. I think we should be good to go otherwise. I just hope that the boys turn up this time around.

Are you managing in the A-league? How is it going?

Victory We won another one, this time against Liaoning FC in Shenyang. It was a cold evening at Tiexi Stadium. We played somewhat mediocre, once again scoring 3 goals early in the 1st half and then letting our feet off the gas in the 2nd. Liaoning FC are in 4th place in the league, and I was worried that they might come back to make life difficult for us. A striker named Wang Zhiyu scored a goal for Liaoning in the 84th minute, and I started to wonder if we might drop points for the first time this season. We were able to see it out until the end, though. Kim Yong-Il continued to make a good argument for staying in the team, scoring 2 goals and adding an assist in this match. If he keeps playing like this, we’ll keep him around. However, he hasn’t been as consistent as he could, which has me concerned. December We’re in December already. We’ve only got a few games before the January transfers come in. We should also be clinching our ticket to the 2nd tier before too long. We remain in excellent financial shape, which is not really news, of course. Chairman Guo would dump money into the club if things started to go wrong anyway. It won’t surprise you to know that we have the best attack in the Second Division North. It might surprise you to know that we are scoring 5.61 goals per game, that our non-penalty expected goals per game is 3.64, that we’re getting over 30 shots per game, and that we’ve complete over 25% of our crosses. This offense has been absolutely stellar. But I still want to improve. We should be better than this. Chairman Guo was actually very impressed with that 3-1 win against Liaoning FC on the road. I suppose he considers them to be our rival. I honestly don’t think we have a real rival in the entire country, but that’s just my opinion. The fans also seem to be warming up to me, though they are a bit confused by all the rotation we have to do. We’re going down to one match a week from here on out, which means that the crazy rotation issues will probably subside. Player Issues Much to Charlotte’s chagrin, Lee Jin-Yong has asked to take a month off to return to South Korea and collect his thoughts. Lee Jin-Yong is clearly a star on this team, but has had difficulties settling in. Being injured with those broken ribs didn’t help things, of course. We want to do what we can to keep him happy, since he’s pretty clearly one to hold onto for the long term. Huang Jianwei, a right back from Yanji who we barely ever play, has gone public with playing time concerns. This one kind of caught me off guard, but we’ll figure out a way to handle it. We’ve only played him in 5 games so far this season, and he’s been less than spectacular in each of those appearances. I went to the trouble of offering him out to other clubs, but, unsurprisingly, nobody seems interested. He might find himself rotting on the under-21 roster, awaiting the end of his contract. And, in the only bit of good news I’ve seen over the past month, Huang Bowen finally dropped his playing time concerns. That’s excellent news. We want to build this team around Huang Bowen. Wuxi We’ve completed the first round of the season, and are back to Wuxi Wuguo again. We’re playing them in Yanji this time around. We should be able to win this one easily, though our recent form does have me concerned. It feels like ages since we last scored a second half goal, for example.

Disappointing Win Yeah, we beat Yantai Yintai. Everybody knew we were going to win. We won 4-0, which meant another clean sheet for Wu Ping. But I’m still not happy. Two of our goals came from penalties by Kwon Hyeok-Kyu, who was on his way to winning Man of the Match. The other two goals were a little tap-in by Kim Kuk-Jin after 11 minutes and an easy shot by Pietro Rovaglia in the 25th minute. We didn’t score at all after the 43rd minute. We basically cruised our way to the finish line. That’s what I’m worried about. We can’t expect to win against better competition when we don’t have it in us to dominate the easy ones. Maybe it was because of the snow - I don’t know. I do know that Yantai had a player sent off in the 55th minute, but that didn’t seem to help our goal scoring at all. We can’t expect to continue to have success if this is our approach. I know we are undefeated and that we set new records with each goal we score. However, I can’t help but think that a shakeup is in order. Playing Time Concerns Over half of the squad is upset with me about their playing time. Nobody will listen to reason. We have two matches every week. The tactic we use is somewhat intense. We simply can’t put the same 11 men out there every single match and expect to do well. Some players are receiving regular starter playing time, as we agreed to, and are expected regular starter playing time — and yet are still upset with me. It makes no sense. My feeling is that we have a number of unprofessional players on our squad who are coasting because they happen to be better than our woeful opposition. Again, this is convincing me that a change is in order before we make it to higher levels. Maybe Chairman Guo was right to be skeptical all along. Liaoning FC We’re up against Liaoning FC next. They’re having a good season and are in 4th place in the league. We should be able to crush them, though. The trip to Shenyang should be enjoyable. We’ll see if it’s snowing there.