Fifa Manager Mode: A new way to play

[Rukus44297]

My rules for a more interesting Manager Mode. Meant to add longevity to the game. It's not for everyone so don't trip over your boots about it.
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Transfers

• Buy any player from your league and under
  • (All 2nd divisions being equal.)
  • (English League 1&2 compares to all second divisions except the Championship-EPL’s 2nd division. The Championship is comparable to all 2nd divisions.)
  • (Players from top divisions other than the EPL, La Liga, Orange 1{France}, Bundesliga & Serie A may be bought)

• May buy from any Non-European League including all teams in “Rest of World for Fifa 08”

• May not buy unlisted players from 5 star teams until you are Manager rating 8, in the top division for at least 2 full years & be a 4 ½ star team.

• England: Championship teams may buy listed players worth 1 million and lower, that are reserves on any EPL team. League 1&2 may buy the same from Championship teams (not EPL).

• 1-7/10 Manager rating: 3 transfers MAX in 1 window
• 5 total per year (not including Loans)
• Only 1 player from 1 Unique position allowed per transfer window

*Example:
General=Midfielder
Unique=CDM, LM, CAM

• 8-10/10 Manager Rating: 4 transfers MAX in 1 window
  • 7 total per year (not including Loans)

• Season 1: Buy any 30+ year old under £150k/$300k/ €200
• S:2: under £250k/$500k/ €340
• S:3-5: under £350k/$700k/ €475
  • (These are player’s valued at, not total price paid for)

May Loan in the Maximum amount allowed (2)

o Loan in any 1 player 10 points above your best player
o Loan in any player with-in 5 points of your best player

Free Agents

• S:1-2: Sign any Free Agent up to 5 points above your best player
  • S:3: up to 8
  • S:4: up to 10
  • S:5+: any
• S:1-4: If you choose to sell a player acquired in the Free Agency, 100% of the sale must go upgrades
  • S:5+: 50% to upgrades
  
  

Upgrades

• Unrestricted upgrades for:
  • Strikers/Midfielders/Defenders/Goalkeepers
• Max upgrade to season 6 for:
  • Fitness:7 Stadium:6 Negotiator:6
• Scout upgrade: Starting with original Team Rating (continue with rating at the beginning of each season before any transfers)
  • Half a star(team rating)=1 upgrade
    • Upgrade to 9 only after a 10/10 manager rating is reached but not until the 5th season.
    • 10 after the 6th season

Scouted Players

• Scout only once a season beginning Oct 1st
• No scouting during a Transfer window
• Sign only 3 players max
  • Must keep 1
    • Must keep 1 that is from the country of your team if signed
• Sales of scouted players are unrestricted

Squads

· May not have more than 4 of 1 unique position (not including CB’s, loan outs/ins or scouted players) *see Example above

• S:1-4: Must keep 10 original roster players on squad

-retired

+scouted (counts towards original)

• S:5: 7 original players

• S:6-10: 5 original players

Set a player salary cap: [I like 25K.] Use your own judgment of who should get how much. ie: if your players ratings range from 50-65 and you sign a 70, he should get paid significantly more than the highest paid player.

You are Encouraged but not Required to:

· Play as European/UK Teams (ECC/EAC Qualifiers)
· Play as Second division team (or lower)
· Play as a team rated lower than 3 stars
· Sim Games vs. last 3 place teams after March 1st if you are in 1st place with a 10+ point lead
· Sim the first leg of the ECC/EAC knock-out stage
· Play the 5/6 rule. Must have 5 players from the teams country on the starting 11, 6 from anywhere.



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This is just a guide I came up with to make the game more interesting. Fifa's Manager Mode has very little restrictions so playing it year after year for a long period of time gets stale.

The hardest part i find playing these rules is the 5/6 rule.

This guide works well when using a Created Player in MM to help restrict you from making drastic changes but lets you have more control than in Be a Pro. Further, i never include my created player in any of these rules. He is the exception to all.

Any additions are welcome. Hope you like!

[Scuba Steve]

Nice idea man. I might give it a go whence I reach the Championship with Leeds.

[Chelsea11]

I'd try it with Frankfurt, but I already broke it by buying Dempsey and Onyewu

[FifaManager08-09]

Does ur mm have to be on here

[Scuba Steve]

Originally Posted by Chelsea11

I'd try it with Frankfurt, but I already broke it by buying Dempsey and Onyewu

You did not break it. They would be considered your league or below.

[FifaManager08-09]

Oh I get it...
I'll be Port Vale

[Super--Torres]

Good idea but to be honest, its a bit complicated

[Rukus44297]

Originally Posted by Super--Torres

Good idea but to be honest, its a bit complicated

It's easier to remember when breaking it down into pieces when you are doing that specific thing.
Otherwise just use it as a guide, ie. no buying Messi with Dag and Red and no going crazy and changing the starting 11 every transfer period.

This guide is to keep you from being a 5 star team too soon.

Also this works very well when only Simming games.

[wolvesloyal]

I did something different.
If I play as my club wolves I sign and get rid of players as they do in real life. Use all money possible to upgrade coaches and fitness.
By the end of season 1 I have won the FA Cup and championship playoffs and fitness is at 10, strikers 10, defence 10, midfield 9 and goalies 7.
Players such as ebanks-blake have gone from 74 to 80, and this means more of a challenge.
I am mid-table in the prem with a 3 and a half star team and I know I won't win every game.
If i play as another team I play as normal, signing who I want.

Not for everyone, but it works for me.

Any opinions ?

[wolvesloyal]

I did something different.
If I play as my club wolves I sign and get rid of players as they do in real life. Use all money possible to upgrade coaches and fitness.
By the end of season 1 I have won the FA Cup and championship playoffs and fitness is at 10, strikers 10, defence 10, midfield 9 and goalies 7.
Players such as ebanks-blake have gone from 74 to 80, and this means more of a challenge.
I am mid-table in the prem with a 3 and a half star team and I know I won't win every game.
If i play as another team I play as normal, signing who I want.

Not for everyone, but it works for me.

Any opinions ?

[Rukus44297]

The reason i put restrictions on some upgrades is to limit the power you have to soon.

Fitness at a 10 is great for simming but it enables you to only have to have 18 players.

Theres no restrictions on the player upgrades cause they need to develop.

[antc1975]

No no no no

[LFCFOLIFE]

i only sign 1 player 0r 2 for every season. i hate loading teams up with superstars.

[thanvar]

This is a GREAT thread...
I play co-op with a buddy of mine and we are on the 4th year of 'our' career in MM, and we just changed teams. We left Bellinzona (a weak swiss team which we turned into champs after 3 seasons, but without applying your "rules") and took a spanish second division team called SD Huesca. We have Manager Prestige 6/10 and we are willing to follow your well-thought rules (congrats on them!). Well, we have 2 questions that you may have a solution to them.
1) How do you propose we apply the rules exactly, now that we changed teams and after our first 3 years in the previous team? Is anything changed now that we have a prestige of 6/10?
2) (Actually this question is a bit tough if you haven't thought of it before so sorry if i trouble you with it...) Me and my buddy want the most REALISTIC career for our manager. So we were thinking of applying a plan that explains on which teams we can move to at the end of each season, e.g. We start our career, therefore having Manager Prestige of 1/10,from a half star team and can not move to Man Utd or AC Milan if we havent reached Manager Prestige of 10/10. So on with the Question... Do you have any proposals or ideas on that matter? What do you think is the best way in your opinion to make some "fake" offers from other clubs at the end of each season? i.o. what do you do when playing?

[Liverpöol]

this is an intense OP. so much effort

[Rukus44297]

Originally Posted by thanvar

1) How do you propose we apply the rules exactly, now that we changed teams and after our first 3 years in the previous team? Is anything changed now that we have a prestige of 6/10?

You still fall under the 1-7/10 Manager Prestige but I'd suggest something a little different in this case.
We can't "fake" our skill and we can't fake winning or losing.

So instead of "fake" offering a plan to the club: e.g., Promotion in ___ years, Europe in ___ years, offer to keep the team core National. Play the 5-6 rule or even make it the 6/5 rule.
To make this a bit easier to decide on who to buy, pick a country, close in relation, for secondary player imports. For Spain: Portugal/Brazil may be an option. A second option would be the nationality of your Manager if intended to be the same as yours.
Many Managers bring in players of their home country: Mourinho brought in a handful of Portuguese players, Wegner/French players, Rafa/Spanish.
I do this often with American players.

If you can gain promotion while playing the 5/6 or 6/5 rule, and make it into Europe with it too, then you might feel some satisfaction instead of saying "I will win promotion" or "I will win the domestic Cup." Of course you will or why would we be playing Fifa?

The only porposefull negative thing i'd suggest is for every foreign player bought combined with the selling of a national player, pick an answer to a question that you know will have a negative affect on Fan support. Just to balance it out. Let the wins make them happy.

Originally Posted by thanvar

2) (Actually this question is a bit tough if you haven't thought of it before so sorry if i trouble you with it...) Me and my buddy want the most REALISTIC career for our manager. So we were thinking of applying a plan that explains on which teams we can move to at the end of each season, e.g. We start our career, therefore having Manager Prestige of 1/10,from a half star team and can not move to Man Utd or AC Milan if we havent reached Manager Prestige of 10/10. So on with the Question... Do you have any proposals or ideas on that matter? What do you think is the best way in your opinion to make some "fake" offers from other clubs at the end of each season? i.o. what do you do when playing?

Well, here's what i did, actually before i came up with these rules.

Over the course of a few seasons playing as HSV, I looked at a bunch of teams (4 1/2-5 star) to see which ones weren't doing well in Europe (ECC) and which ones had a low number of players and a lot of aging players at that.

Real Madrid and Milan will win this every time but you could find many other teams too, maybe under 5 stars.

My goal was to bring in the young players and bring my tactics to their club.
You could do something a bit different and play to what they have at first.

Real Madrid had just 1 CB when i took over so i played with only 3 back. The result was some high octane offense.

I got them the players and the Silverware and left after 3 seasons. An aging Milan was next on my plate.

As the Italian season normally starts after the transfer window is closed i only had 1 game to buy players. They needed everything. I got decent GK and some back up Mids. Playing with such a thin squad and an underpreforming, old Kaka, i struggled until January. The introduction of Nasri was all the team needed. I switched to a 1 ST formation and everything went through Nasri.


One main thing to do, or not do, is on;y upgrade your fitness to 6 or no more than 7. You want to be forced into playing the subs even though players can play well when they're in the yellow.

Hope i could help!

[thanvar]

Rukus i can only say one thing... THANK YOU!
Thank you for showing us your way of playing the MM (which rocks!) and for your VERY helpful and thorough reply!

Just so you know, we made a list of all the teams in relation to their rating and the manager prestige. So, for example, any team of half a star rating is for managers of 1/10 prestige, any team of 3 and a half stars is for mangers of 7/10 prestige and so on! At the end of each season, according to what is the manager's prestige we look at the list to see which group of teams is applicable to us. Then we make a lottery that draws 4 teams from all the rest (usually using Excel or some site on the net) and these are the (fake) "offers" we get. If we like any of them 4 we accept and move on. If not we stay put. That is what I meant in my earlier post when i wrote of "fake" offers!

Hope you like our little idea. It has some flaws, such as the teams' dynamic usually changes each year so some can argue that Real Madrid (as in your Manager Mode for example) won't be the same powerful team as it is right now 10 seasons later! But it's also about Team Prestige as well. Barca, Madrid, Man U, Liverpool and other 5 stars teams are also Teams with enormous Prestige in Worldwide Football History! They will always be the top teams the managers prefer to coach...

Anyway once again thanks for your help buddy! I will continue to make the best of this Manager Mode (with tweaks here and there...lol) until FIFA 10 comes out and hopefully realise the dreams we have for playing the most realistic Managerial/Player Career we can!

[Liverpöol]

this thread brings so many great points

[thanvar]

Yes it does! It's so much more fun to play this way

[SBFC-Chris]

good idea, I might try it with a championshipteam

[Liverpöol]

what a bump

[fifa09worshipper]

I've never seen this before but it's a great idea

[MarkusParkus]

It's about time someone thought out a set of rules.

I'm prinitng this up and placing it by the xbox 360.

good shyt mang.

[SAFC_Broady]

I have tried this before...It seemed pointless at first, but was OK in Season 3

[thanvar]

Nearly finishing my career(15 seasons)! This thread helped me a lot!