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[WeWonItAll(Most)]

On another note, I'm getting FIFA 16 tomorrow, have any of you done any challenging manager modes that you've enjoyed? In FIFA 15 I made Newcastle a powerhouse, so in this one I was thinking about taking a League 2 team and trying to get them up to the Premier League. Would doing it in a different league be more fun? Is there any other idea that would be better?

[War Machine Dawg]

On another note, I'm getting FIFA 16 tomorrow, have any of you done any challenging manager modes that you've enjoyed? In FIFA 15 I made Newcastle a powerhouse, so in this one I was thinking about taking a League 2 team and trying to get them up to the Premier League. Would doing it in a different league be more fun? Is there any other idea that would be better?

I'm still rocking FIFA 14. Love FUT, but the market has gone to hell since '16 came out. I've been focusing on a couple of career players. Got a CAM that's worked his way up to Man U first team and a striker trying to make the Arsenal first team. The striker is currently dominating the Championship at Bournemouth. I should probably up the difficulty, considering I'm on pace to score an insane number of goals. And by insane, I mean 60+ is within the realm of possibility. I'm already over 50, if I'm remembering correctly. The problem is there just aren't as many achievements for strikers to complete as midfielders. Plus I suck at using skilled dribbling. If I could do that, I'd be completely unstoppable.

Btw, here's a helpful trick to make your career player progress faster: Start him off at an MLS club and decline loan options during the summer window. Odds are your team will suck early and the manager will give your player a shot. You'll likely find yourself starting really soon. Then play through the MLS season and gain ridiculous experience against a fairly bad league. Request a transfer or loan during the January window and join a lower division Euro league team. You could be mid-70s easy by the time the second summer window rolls around and have a legit shot at playing for a club in one of the top Euro leagues.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

I'm still rocking FIFA 14. Love FUT, but the market has gone to hell since '16 came out. I've been focusing on a couple of career players. Got a CAM that's worked his way up to Man U first team and a striker trying to make the Arsenal first team. The striker is currently dominating the Championship at Bournemouth. I should probably up the difficulty, considering I'm on pace to score an insane number of goals. And by insane, I mean 60+ is within the realm of possibility. I'm already over 50, if I'm remembering correctly. The problem is there just aren't as many achievements for strikers to complete as midfielders. Plus I suck at using skilled dribbling. If I could do that, I'd be completely unstoppable.

Btw, here's a helpful trick to make your career player progress faster: Start him off at an MLS club and decline loan options during the summer window. Odds are your team will suck early and the manager will give your player a shot. You'll likely find yourself starting really soon. Then play through the MLS season and gain ridiculous experience against a fairly bad league. Request a transfer or loan during the January window and join a lower division Euro league team. You could be mid-70s easy by the time the second summer window rolls around and have a legit shot at playing for a club in one of the top Euro leagues.

That was always my strategy. The MLS, Australian League, and Brazilian league I believe all kinda straddled the big Euro seasons and you could do that with any of them. I always got bored with My Player though because it was either too easy (scoring 50 goals a season) or upping the difficulty and making it too real. I've always had more fun being a manager and playing in the transfer windows to create absurd teams (my Newcastle team was ridiculous after 3 seasons).

I think I'm going to do what I mentioned previously, taking a League 2 team and work them into the Premier League. But to add a shade of realism I'm going to limit the # of foreign players I can sign until I get up to the 2nd tier. Otherwise it's too easy to abuse the free agent system.

[War Machine Dawg]

That was always my strategy. The MLS, Australian League, and Brazilian league I believe all kinda straddled the big Euro seasons and you could do that with any of them. I always got bored with My Player though because it was either too easy (scoring 50 goals a season) or upping the difficulty and making it too real. I've always had more fun being a manager and playing in the transfer windows to create absurd teams (my Newcastle team was ridiculous after 3 seasons).

I think I'm going to do what I mentioned previously, taking a League 2 team and work them into the Premier League. But to add a shade of realism I'm going to limit the # of foreign players I can sign until I get up to the 2nd tier. Otherwise it's too easy to abuse the free agent system.

Yeah, I'd up the difficulty, but when I play it's just to chill. So scoring 50+ goals in a season doesn't bother me.

[Liverpooldawg]

On another note, I'm getting FIFA 16 tomorrow, have any of you done any challenging manager modes that you've enjoyed? In FIFA 15 I made Newcastle a powerhouse, so in this one I was thinking about taking a League 2 team and trying to get them up to the Premier League. Would doing it in a different league be more fun? Is there any other idea that would be better?

The Championship Manager/Football Manager series (for PC) is the ONLY football manager type game that is even worthy of consideration. I've been playing it for nearly 20 years. The FIFA garbage is child's play. I don't have the most recent version but they are ALL fantastic. The depth of it is amazing. You literally can start wherever you want. Whatever league interests you is there. It is playable down to the Blue Square North/South in England in the version I have. As I said mine is a few years out of date. I LOVE where I have Liverpool in it so I haven't updated in a few years. Let's put it this way, if my game was reality, who the heck is Shankly? LOL. My son has a later version. It's even better, as they always are.

[War Machine Dawg]

WWIA, your post got me curious enough to start a manager league. You'll have to give me some tips on how to make my team awesome. Decided to start out with Football League 2 team Fleetwood Town and have them work up to the PL. No idea what I'm doing, but I guess I'll learn on the fly.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

The Championship Manager/Football Manager series (for PC) is the ONLY football manager type game that is even worthy of consideration. I've been playing it for nearly 20 years. The FIFA garbage is child's play. I don't have the most recent version but they are ALL fantastic. The depth of it is amazing. You literally can start wherever you want. Whatever league interests you is there. It is playable down to the Blue Square North/South in England in the version I have. As I said mine is a few years out of date. I LOVE where I have Liverpool in it so I haven't updated in a few years. Let's put it this way, if my game was reality, who the heck is Shankly? LOL. My son has a later version. It's even better, as they always are.

I've considered getting that game. I played a free, lesser version of it and loved it. But it burnt me out of just doing the managing with no actual playing. I'm sure in a few months I'll give it a shot.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

WWIA, your post got me curious enough to start a manager league. You'll have to give me some tips on how to make my team awesome. Decided to start out with Football League 2 team Fleetwood Town and have them work up to the PL. No idea what I'm doing, but I guess I'll learn on the fly.

I assume you're looking for tips on building a team rather than tactical tips since you've done Ultimate Team before. The transfer system isn't hard to abuse, just based on my personal experience you should be able to sell your strikers and goalie every season for well above face value just by playing the game. If you have a mid fielder score a lot of goals (10-15) and get a good number of assets you can sell him at a lucrative price (I sold an 81 overall, 22 year old CAM to Real for $60 mil after scoring 12 goals and getting about 15 assists in the 1st season of my Newcastle season. His value face value was ~$18-20 mil).

I've only played half a season as a League 2 team before the season I just started, so I don't have many tips for building a League 2 team. I do know that you can build a strong team while avoiding transfer fees by signing a bunch of free agents. But this is a relatively short term solution b/c they will either be old, or won't improve much more beyond where they are when you sign them. What I've been trying to do in my current career is try to buy 2 or 3 young 17-20 year old players that are about equal to my current squad that will hopefully improve over time. When I'm trying to actually bring in a player that better than the rest of my squad I usually loan a young player from a top flight team.

There's a website I will link next time I'm on my computer that has a data base of each player's overall in the game and how much they're expected to improve. It's kinda against the spirit of the game, but if that doesn't bother you, it's an awesome source for finding young players that are going to be studs in the future. I used it in FIFA 15 to sign a 68 overall 17 year old striker off a German team for about $800,000 who was an 86 overall at 21 years old.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

Halfway through the transfer window, how do you feel about what your team has done so far?

Newcastle has signed 2 center-mids in Jonjo Shelvey from Swansea for $12 mil and Henry Saivet from Bordeaux for $5 mil. And it appears that they have all but finalized a deal with Tottenham to get Andros Townsend for $12-15 mil.

The team desperately needed a decent, PL experienced midfielder. So I think the Shelvey signing was perfect. We also desperately needed a true winger, as both of the players we are putting on the wings now are actually center mids being forced to play out wide. People have their doubts about Townsend's ability, but if he's even average, he'll make our team significantly better in so many aspects.

Overall, I'm shocked by how well Newcastle has done so far. Right now I would give them a B+, which will jump up to an A if a decent left back is signed before the end of the window.

[Liverpooldawg]

Halfway through the transfer window, how do you feel about what your team has done so far?

Newcastle has signed 2 center-mids in Jonjo Shelvey from Swansea for $12 mil and Henry Saivet from Bordeaux for $5 mil. And it appears that they have all but finalized a deal with Tottenham to get Andros Townsend for $12-15 mil.

The team desperately needed a decent, PL experienced midfielder. So I think the Shelvey signing was perfect. We also desperately needed a true winger, as both of the players we are putting on the wings now are actually center mids being forced to play out wide. People have their doubts about Townsend's ability, but if he's even average, he'll make our team significantly better in so many aspects.

Overall, I'm shocked by how well Newcastle has done so far. Right now I would give them a B+, which will jump up to an A if a decent left back is signed before the end of the window.

You will be fine with Jonjo unless Harry Potter shows up.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

You will be fine with Jonjo unless Harry Potter shows up.

Hahaha people on the Newcastle board have been making loads of Voldemort/ Harry Potter jokes. I think he has some form of alopecia like Josh Dobbs

[Liverpooldawg]

When he was at Liverpool a few years back they were playing at West Ham. The West Ham fans chanted "Harry Potter is coming for you" at him for most of the game. Word was he loved it. He DOES look like Voldemort.

[War Machine Dawg]

Arsenal finally completed the Elneny deal. Word is he could debut tomorrow. Definitely gives us some quality depth. Still need a striker, but I don't know if it's going to happen. Plus Giroud is playing out of his mind, so I wouldn't put it past Wenger to try to ride out the storm until some of the injured players come back. I'd give us a C right now, but it could move up depending what happens the next couple of weeks.

[WeWonItAll(Most)]

Jonjo Shelvey was fantastic today in Newcastle's 2-1 win. Both goals were set up by beautiful passes from him. It's amazing what a center mid with a little vision and the ability to make a forward pass will do to a team. We looked totally different today, of course we've been up and down all season too though.

[Liverpooldawg]

It was a bad loss for Norwich at Bournemouth today. Tomorrow is the Northwest Derby. THE derby in English football. I've had a late night tonight, for me, with some really decent beverages involved so I doubt I will get up early enough to watch. I hate these early KOs, esp on Sunday. Play them all on Saturday @ 3pm GMT as god intended. They don't even have the bad excuse of European games to use this week. COME ON YOU REDS!

[BrunswickDawg]

Well I'm up Liverpool, so at least someone is awake trying to pull the Reds through!

[Liverpooldawg]

I'm up too although I did miss some of it. I thought it was the usual noon KO for derbies over there to cut down on the pre-match drinking. That's 6am here.

[TheRef]

Leicester City had an early lead via an Okazaki knock in off the rebound of a Vardy shot save. We looked good until about midway through the second half when Aston Villa fought back well in order to score a goal. On another note, that was the worst officiating I've seen in a PL game in a long time. MULTIPLE handballs on both sides that weren't called. Leicester City's Robert Huth put some good arms into some Aston Villa players in the box that weren't called, and should have been. Needless to say, both crowds were livid. One handball by Aston Villa that wasn't called directly led to a goal.

[BrunswickDawg]

I'm up too although I did miss some of it. I thought it was the usual noon KO for derbies over there to cut down on the pre-match drinking. That's 6am here.

Have I ever mentioned how much I ****ing HATE Wayne Rooney??

[Liverpooldawg]

Have I ever mentioned how much I ****ing HATE Wayne Rooney??

A Toffee and a Manc. Him, Fellaini, and Phil Neville, the b@$tards.