Hi there!
Long time no see, I think the last time I posted here was almost 3 months ago! Well the time has come for my first attempt at an FM12 story, however you may have noticed the club crest for the post was not what you expected so I figured these may be some questions you could want to ask…
What happened to Blackburn?
Well I have an answer for that question, although a slightly wimpy one. I tried to be Blackburn 3 times on the demo and lets just say it wasn’t happening, lack of funds, stingy owners, and in all truth a team that was woeful (no offence to any Blackburn fans reading). In the end I decided that there was no way that I would stick with Blackburn if things didn’t go well right from the off (which they rarely do for me in FM).
Why did you choose Celtic?
Well I have no clear answer for that, I tried and failed with Rangers last year so why not try Celtic this time around. Plus it has something to do with the fact that I’ve been inspired by Celticman whom I’m sure a lot of people have after reading his blog.
Couldn’t this turn out to be a really boring story?
It could but I’m hoping that won’t happen. Although Scotland is pretty much a 2 horse race each season (although not so much this season) I think that the challenge of Rangers is a good one, plus I’m sure you guys will enjoy all the blood, sweat, and tears that are guaranteed when I struggle against the odds in Europe.
Well with my reasons out of the way, we’ll get down to it. Yesterday afternoon I decided to download FM12 and thanks to Sky offering no more than a 1.8MB download speed it took a while, 3 hours 23 minutes to be exact. That wasn’t the only problem, after about 1 hour 30 minutes Steam decided to go mental, and crashed, I restarted the computer and then 20 minutes later Steam crashed again! Anyway I pushed on and after 3 hours 23 minutes, 2 Steam crashes, 2 computer restarts, and seeing Newcastle crash out of the Carling Cup, despite looking something like this:
…I persevered and finally downloaded the game, problem being that I then couldn’t be bothered to play on it so guess what I’ve done all day today! :D
So onto the actual game. As you’ve probably guessed by now I’m Celtic, if you haven’t already guessed then now you know. Inspired by Celticman’s blog on FMCrowd I’ve decided to see how far I can go with Celtic and hopefully that means lifting a European Cup at some point. So here’s what you first get when you look at Celtic…
Not bad. I’m actually quite surprised to see them predicted 1st since Rangers really seem to have opened the gap between them this year. The club also possess top training facilities and good youth facilities. You can throw well established youth recruitment and good junior coaching into that category too. The club also finds itself only £525K in debt which will be wiped out by the season end and also find themselves (although rather fortunately) in the Europa League.
For the first season, just for speed purposes I’ve only selected 2 nations which I will add too as regens begin to appear during the 2nd season. Those leagues are…
Along with this I’ve also enabled attribute masking to add to the challenge and I have France as view-only since there were a couple of players I wanted to sign but that never actually happened. I’m not using the real fixtures either just in case anyone was interested in that piece of information.
Now let’s look deeper into the green side of Glasgow…
Certainly not a bad record, 92 competition wins, 1 Champions League title, and 1 EURO Cup final appearance shows me that this is possible since the club has more resources available to it now that it would have done back then. The club has also lifted the Scottish Premier League Trophy no less than 42 times and finished runners up 31 times! These numbers are quite incredible.
So onto the team that will be aiming for domestic glory this season and maybe even Europa League glory with a bit of luck…
The team is very strong through and through and while it looks as though we may need a goalkeeper I’m going to keep faith with Forster whom will hopefully join us permanently some time in the near future. The centre of defence looks very strong too with experienced players such as Majstorovic and Wilson mixing with less experienced players like Rogne. At right back we have Adam Matthews who I’m excited about for the future yet the left flank is tricky, although El Kaddouri appears good enough, he inability to dribble or cross is making me doubt whether he fits in, and due to his high wages I may look to cancel the loan.
Midfield is clearly the strongest area of the squad. We have extremely gifted players such as Kayal and Ki Sung-Yong mixing with hard working, versatile players like Brown and Ledley. The centre of our midfield is so good that 3.5 star Ki Sung-Yong doesn’t even get shown on the team report! Also some young talent is coming through in this position with Forrest on the right wing and Wanyama in central midfield.
Up front we also look strong but I have my doubts about Stokes and I’m not sure why. Hooper is our best forward at 4 star but I think that Bangura might actually be better than him since he’s more adept in the air. We’ve also got some talent coming through in this area of the team too but their names evade me at the minute.
With all this information in mind I decided to get to work on my 3 formations for the coming season and this is what I came up with…
Celtic 4-4-2 Attacking — For Domestic Competitions
As much as I dislike 4-4-2 I felt as though this was the way to go in domestic competitions, straight forward and ruthless. Please remember that none of these are set in stone and will probably have changed by my next post since they’re in the early stages of testing. Anyway, like I said this is the main formation for my team and this is how I expect them to be spending most of their time playing…
Attacking emphasis with a hint of control since I’m better than most opposition I’ll be facing. We don’t want to be losing possession constantly but to be honest I’m not too bothered with possession domestically since I think my strikers are more capable of scoring than most other strikers in the league.
My other 2 formations are as follows…
Celtic Controlling 4-3-3 — When 4-4-2 Fails to Work
Although I have faith in my 4-4-2 formation, at the end of the day, it’s only a 4-4-2 and many teams are now capable of playing against that formation. So, when that fails to work I’ve got an answer in the shape of this formation…
Much like the formation we saw when I was Hull, in fact, almost identical but hopefully with a higher class of players available this version will work better at a higher level including against European opposition. Again the emphasis is on short passing with a target man up there with 2 poachers to mix things up a bit.
Celtic Cautious 4-5-1 — Mainly When I Think We’ll Get Hammered
This formation was made just for those instances when I think we’ll get the proverbial kicked out of us against much better opposition…
As you can see this is very cautious in the fact that a lot of players have a supporting role in order to help out when the likes of Messi are tearing my full backs apart. Not much to say other than I hope that I don’t need to use this formation too often.
As for set pieces I’m using Darren’s Stoke designs but they’ve yet to have the desired effect with Celtic and I’m not going to bother with screenshots since I’m sure all of you have already seen that article and are putting it to good use :)
Well that’s all I’ve got for you today. Just a short post to get you guys interested (hopefully) and get myself back into the swing of things. My next post will be an in depth look at the clubs pre-season, squad, and finances before we kick off the campaign.
Thanks for reading!
Darren Smith
27 октября, 2011 at 21:50
Well there isn’t much point in writing about a team you struggle or don’t enjoy managing mate so its best to change teams. Will be interesting to see how far you take Celtic and what sort of budgets you get.
p.s. I am playing with Malaga and used similar set pieces to my Stoke setup but aim the cross to far post with my best header attacking far post and other CB marking the keeper. That has worked a gem and better than the original due to my team not been strong nor tall enough.
Dan
27 октября, 2011 at 22:31
Cheers Darren,
The reason I chose Celtic was because in one aspect (Europe) they’re a challenge, while you can generally relax when it comes to domestic comps. Thanks for the set piece advice, I’ll change that tomorrow :)
MRDNRA
27 октября, 2011 at 23:13
Great to see you chose Celtic this time around. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s the easiest of challenges, there are a few teams that can surprise you even in the domestic comps (on FM2011 I was doing a story on the forums here and never got the final post of the first season up due to the number of screenshots I was using, but had a disastrous end to the season, finishing 3rd and then getting thrashed 4-0 or 4-1 by none other than Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup Final! Even on my Leicester game I’m still running 7 seasons in Inverness, Aberdeen and another club have all won the league, Rangers and Celtic winning only twice each. Anyway that’s plenty of warning surely). So, best of luck to you, I’ll definitely be following this one avidly.
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:44
Thanks MRDNRA,
I’ll firmly remember not to underestimate Inverness and Aberdeen! I’ve got a feeling Dundee Utd won’t be too easily beaten either.
MRDNRA
28 октября, 2011 at 14:12
Hibs can be awkward too.
Stromson
28 октября, 2011 at 01:15
I’ll echo what Darren said, and confirm that you made the right choice by switching teams. It’s much better to write about a team you feel a connection with. Looking forward to what you can do with Celtic!
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:45
Thanks Stromson,
Hopefully I can deliver a European Cup before too long, I’d love a good Europa League run in my first season. But domestic competitions have to be my priority at all times, especially the league.
Lye
28 октября, 2011 at 02:17
Hi Dan,
Darren has made a good point. If you are enjoying your Celtic game, i believe your writing won’t be boring. All the best with your Celtic career. Good luck.
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:46
Hey Lye,
I’m glad people are happy with the choice and I’ll try my hardest to keep things fresh and interesting :)
Johnny Karp
28 октября, 2011 at 08:51
Good choice mate, enjoying the game comes first! Good luck!
P.S.: That’s probably the ugliest dog I’ve ever seen! :)
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:47
Hey Johnny,
Believe me mate, if you type ugly dogs into Google Images there are quite a few dogs that are so much uglier! :)
Johnny Karp
28 октября, 2011 at 13:54
Good, then I’ll try not to type «ugly dogs» into Google :)
vaibhavc
28 октября, 2011 at 09:36
No point playing as a team you wont enjoy at all. You have a hopeless internet connection. That dogs looks really ugly!
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:49
Hi vaibhavc,
Sky suck! Even when my dad rang them up and complained the guy on the phone admitted their internet speeds were crap! At least they’re honest! As for the dog, that was one of the nicer looking ones!
Laxeyman
28 октября, 2011 at 11:35
Good choice Dan, no point in playing with a team that you don’t enjoy. Hopefully you can do better than Neil Lennon’s done this season :) Good luck!
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:51
Hey Laxeyman,
My aim is to do better than Lennon, although I shouldn’t really find that too hard, Celtic are having a terrible season for the squad they have which is arguably stronger than last season when they kept up with Rangers.
TheZiggy
28 октября, 2011 at 12:16
I agree with the others that it’s important you’re enjoying the game. Celtic are an interesting choice. The big challenge is being able to do well Europe. Financially they’re in a much better position than Rangers. Inverness are my SPL team though, as they are the closest to where I live, and very much underdogs.
Good luck.
Dan
28 октября, 2011 at 12:54
If I’m honest with you I like Inverness too, but hopefully they won’t prove a thorn in my side. Celtic seem to have good finances and even had £19million in the bank at the start of the game, the problem is that after a week we had made a loss of nearly £200k so the finances are a little deceiving. Thanks for the good luck :)
Kevin
29 октября, 2011 at 00:35
Hi Dan
Do what you love and success will come! Hope you enjoy this new game!
Dan
29 октября, 2011 at 13:17
Thanks Kevin,
Good advice :) I think I might remember that for the rest of my life! I am enjoying the new game and your Plymouth story too.
celticman
29 октября, 2011 at 09:16
I’m somewhat humbled that you say that my story inspired you. After all not long after I started blogging I was reading your blog hoping I could do as well as you are.
I’m absolutely delighted you chose Celtic. I think it will be great to see what you do that will be different from me. In fact I’ve always wanted to read a Celtic FM Story and I’m glad it was you who chose to do it.
We’ve had a few similar ideas thus far though you probably have better formations than I do. You never know, I may steal and idea or two from you ;)
Personally, I think you’ll win the race to Champions League Glory!
Good luck!
celticman (http://celticman.fmcrowd.com)
Dan
29 октября, 2011 at 13:22
Hey Celticman,
Everything goes round in circles I guess, I inspired you at the start and later on you inspired me :)
I was looking forward to your comment, I guess we could have some friendly competition going on ;) and feel free to ‘steal’ any ideas, although I’m an art student so we prefer to call stealing ideas motivation instead! :D ;)
Besides I’m already using some of your ideas from the last game since I remembered what you said about 4-4-2 being good for the SPL.
Champions League glory is a big ask but I’m not sure I’ll win the race, it’ll be a close fought thing since I believe you were only a few seasons away last time.
celticman
29 октября, 2011 at 13:53
I think I was quite a bit away from it — but here’s hoping this time one of us will do it.
Sears
29 октября, 2011 at 13:42
Yay! Celtic! Must say, weird to see a Rangers man manage Celtic…. Good luck anyhow! :P
Dan
29 октября, 2011 at 17:22
Not really a Rangers fan as such, I support Newcastle just Rangers are my favourite Scottish team :) I like Celtic too, as well as Inverness and Dundee Utd.
George Dobson
31 октября, 2011 at 17:21
im a bit gutted you decided not to manage Blackburn but I will be reading none the less.