![]() ![]() Six months after I left Leicester, half an in-game year spent perusing the job boards, applying for jobs at clubs from Brazil to Bray Wanderers, I landed my second role – at Irish Premier League outfit Galway United. I could've started fresh, elbowed my way into a new team to fuck up in more interesting ways, but I decided I needed penance. The job market is tough for an ex-Sunday league footballer with six months of management and an unceremonious sacking on his CV. ![]() With morale for my entire team 'very poor', I went on a sixgame losing streak, the longest in Leicester's history. I started lashing out wildly, fining players for getting yellow cards and screaming at them in the dressing room. With so many variables, I got disheartened and flitted between concepts faster than my players could adapt to them. The only direct feedback is victory, a very specific event that – if read wrong – could cement a bad tactic. Against narrow teams, I flipped my game to play wider and still lost against high tempo gangs I went for a containing philosophy, to frustrate opponents into knackering themselves. The natural reaction is to head into the team instructions tab and jiggle the gauges. ![]() Prior to and during a match, you're offered single-sentence snippets of advice: “Cardiff don't do well against 4-5-1 formations,” or “Aston Villa do well against high tempo teams”. Adding these agents adds a touch of realism to proceedings, but the general overhaul of the transfer system is a bigger update, managers now getting responses from prodded players with comforting speed and believable pay demands.įM 2011 doesn't do a good job of explaining how a problem can be fixed. My few successes came in the transfer market – FM 2011's new agents are set up with their own traits, but all those I dealt with seemed to be easily bypassed by the simple act of asking what they wanted for their client's services, knocking the wage slider down a few notches, then pressuring for a deal. I started losing, and morale slipped as I sent my assistant to deal with the press. ![]() Bruno had identified an endemic problem, and my next few weeks were spotted with players complaining about discipline issues. It was the beginning of the end for my Leicester squad. ![]()
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