Football Manager 2012 guide to win with Malaga

Hey guys, I have a special post for you today packed with lots of FM12 tips and goodies. My ‘Football Manager 2012 guide to win with Malaga’ includes everything that I feel was important to my recent success in La Liga and the Champions League. We have my FM 2012 best tactic, Football Manager 2012 training, how I approach my matches and the all important FM 2012 players. I will start this post with how I start each new save, like my tactic and FM12 training downloads. Then we’ll move onto coaches, players and a lot of FM12 tips. This may be a long post so grab a cup of tea, can of Coke or maybe something a little stronger. :)

Football Manager 2012 guide to win with Malaga

As mentioned I want to structure this guide the same way you should start a brand new save, the number one rule is don’t press continue! OK, you do have to press continue but not until you’ve had rid of the dead weight players and back room staff, then followed my steps below.

Football Manager 2012 training schedules and coaches

FM 2012 training schedules are more important than you might think, don’t just stick with the default settings. You can either look through an abundance of great schedules found by Johnny in his ‘Best training schedules for Football Manager 2012’ post or just download the one I chose. This was made by Maestro Ugo and includes schedules for almost every position consisting of both senior and youth schedules. The development I have seen between using a default schedule and Maestro Ugo’s is simply incredible so download it by clicking here.

After you have assigned each player the correct schedule you should select the most talented and ambitious squad members for some individual attention. Doing this increases wonderkids development like you wouldn’t believe so take the time to do so. One example is Kovacic who I bought during my first season. I always move my best youngsters ‘individual training intensity’ to heavy as they don’t seem to mind the workload and it develops them much quicker. I thought Kovacic needed some work on his dribbling so trained him individually on that and you should also retrain a players position if they are not natural in your preferred area.

Schedules and individual training are nothing without the right coaches and back room staff. I always have at least three scouts, a wonderful assistant manager and then one coach for every single training category. That means two goalkeeping coaches, two fitness coaches, one attacking coach, one defensive coach, one coach for tactics and two technical coaches. I assign each coach one category (their best obviously) and a good indication of that is the star rating each category then receives when you’ve assigned your coaches their assignments. These need to be a minimum of 3.5* but four and above is preferable.

If you are struggling to find the right coaches below are mine, but its all common sense really, just do a filtered staff search for the staff role and attributes you are looking for.

My FM 2012 best tactic

My tactic is a 4-5-1 and almost identical to my Arsenal tactic which provides free flowing football and attacking flair. You can read about my best FM 2012 tactic by clicking here and the download is available at the bottom of that page. Just note the important changes and tips below.

• I always keep the attacking strategy at home or away to opposition I expect to beat.
• I change my starting strategy to counter when I don’t expect victory, or come against the big teams at home and tough away matches. Basically if I’m in doubt I switch to counter. A good indicator is the pre-match odds, if you are favourites you want to be attacking the game, if not it may be better to hang back a little.
• You should assign your striker a role that suits him best, I had RVP as complete forward with Arsenal to suit the tactic and his style…but I only have poachers with my Malaga team so changed the lone striker to poacher role.
• Don’t change any other roles or you will be messing with the dynamics of the tactic.
• Make sure your DCR can pass and the general defence has pace.
• The LW and RW  inside forwards need to be able to score, in fact I would say finishing is more important than crossing as they cut inside and rarely stick to the flanks as you can see below.

Football Manager 2012 guide to win with Malaga — the team

As opposed to droning on about what you should look for in a team, all I will say is the mix needs to be right and you should have two first team XI’s. That is right, every position should have at least two players to fill it. I usually try and get good youth in to be used as backup but you can see my first XI used mainly in the league or against Europe’s elite and second XI used in cup matches and the Champions League group stages below. A little tip, click on the players names to see their profiles.

Malaga first team XI in 2014:

GK — Carlos Kameni — 30 yo — signed for £5.25 million

DR — Sime Vrsaljko — 22 yo — signed for £3.4 million

DL — Jack Robinson — 20 yo — signed for £7.5 million

DCR — Kara — 24 yo — signed for £975K

DCL — Danny Wilson — 22 yo — signed for £8.5 million

MC — Javi Martinez — 25 yo — signed for £30.5 million

MCR — Milan Badelj — 25 yo — signed for £4.2 million

MCL — Mateo Kovacic — 20 yo — signed for £5.25 million

RW — Vladimir Weiss — 25 yo — signed for £11.75 million

LW — Shinji Kagawa — 25 yo — signed for free

ST — Mbaye Niang — 19 yo — signed for £6 million

Squads average age: 23

Squads total cost to purchase: £83.33 million

Malaga second team XI in 2014:

GK — Sinan Bolat — 25 yo — signed for free

DR — Romario — 20 yo — signed for £1 million

DL — Natxo Monreal — 28 yo

DCR — Dedryck Boyata — 23 yo — signed for £5.5 million

DCL — Manuel Reich (regen) — 18 yo — signed for free

MC — Ignacio Camacho — 24 yo

MCR — Sergio Canales — 23 yo — signed for £9 million

MCL — Nicolas Lodeiro — 24 yo — signed for free

RW — Matias Scheletto — 25 yo — signed for free

LW — Raheem Sterling — 19 yo — signed for £5.25 million

ST — Carlos Fierro — 19 yo — signed for £1.3 million

Squads average age: 23

Squads total cost to purchase: £22.05 million

Football Manager 2012 guide to win with Malaga — general hints and tips

• I always ask my assistant or best tactical coach to do the pre-match ‘opposition instructions’ for me. While this leads to a lot of commands it seems to work very well with my attacking tactic and strong team.
• Team talks are very important and I have written an FM 2012 team talk guide that you can read by clicking here.
• If I expect to win but my players aren’t showing much attacking threat in game I use touchline shouts ‘get ball forward’ and ‘get stuck in’.
• If I am holding onto a lead I switch to ‘counter’ strategy’ and shout ‘pass into space’ and ‘hassle opponents’. I only do this with a maximum of 25 minutes left.
• When I reach the last three months of a season I tend to call a team meeting. If we are up for a lot of silverware I encourage the team by saying they have done well but we need to keep going. I then ask the captain and room what they think followed by saying I am happy with the reaction (assuming it all went well.) This usually gives the players one last boost to perform well.
• 85% of matches won from a losing position in the second half are down to super subs. I reckon by using the correct substitutes I gain an extra 10 points a season minimum. If you need that impact, change a winger, striker and advanced playmaker for players that are explosive around the 60-65 minute mark.

Well I think that’s about everything, I’m sure I’ve missed something but we’ll call it a day here. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask and I look forward to reading your comments as always.