Originally posted 16-05-2009

Its saturday morning. I have a hangover. i have a cup of tea. the smell of bacon is wafting out from under the grill, warburtons is in the toaster and soccer AM doesnt start for another half an hour so i thought id go through some of my results from the past few days.

Aside from a few unranked defeats ive managed to clock up a few wins against other players from the league, which is such a confidence boost. I managed a win against webb95, who is a really good player but i think over the course of the season his team selection might let him down. He is leeds who arent really strong enough to compete with 4* teams, mind you LA Galaxy have been an exception to that rule so far.

I found it very easy to knock him off the ball with stronger players and it ended 1-0 to me.

I Knocked out 2 wins against Kappa. nothing fancy, cheeky goals mostly.

And last night i played a quality game against Wexi. Just for randomness he was St Mirren and i was the mighty blades. great game, he gave me loads of trouble throughout and scored first. my equaliser was probably the best manual goal i have scored. it wasnt really that special, i found space wide of the box and as i was coming inside a i noticed him start to bring the keeper then hesitate. whilst the keeper was stranded i quickly chipped a neat ball from the edge of the box into the far bottom corner. Without wanting to harp on about it, it would have been a peice of **** with assisted controls and wasnt with manual. Enough said.

Another thing. I MADE IT THROUGH TO THE NEXT ROUND OF THE CUP!
i played xfox6 last night and won 1-0 to get through. He caused me a lot of problems and is a proper decent player. and a decent bloke too.
You can read the match report here.

Something else quite interesting happened last night. I went into an unranked match online. The guy wont move from liverpool. so i chose fenerbahce anyway. Turns out he is an abuser in every sense. 6 at the back. throughballs to torres up top the whole time. how original. anyway as you would expect i got ripped to peices. i have seen ping pong type players before, but this guy was another level. one touch passing all the way along the back line, then one pinged pass, straight to the strikers feet. Yawn. But the more he scored against me the more i just thought, i want one goal. i did eventually get it. i stuck a corner to the edge of the box, one touch and drilled it into the corner.

it ended 10 -1 to him. i was a bit annoyed, and then he sent me a message. "good game, well played"

***!!!

The bottle of wine inside me had removed all sense of being nice. my reply was along the lines of "you're style of football is butchering online play. the way you use assisted passing is terrible. too much like ping pong. and the worst thing is the game rewards you for it with easy goals"

The conversation then followed this route.

"you use full manual controls?"

"yes"

"is it hard?"

"not once you get your head around it. and it opens the game up. makes it less rigid."

"cool, i liked your passing, i think ill try it."

Not only had this ***** spanked me. now he had the audacity to be nice to me , and he continued to ask for manual advice all night.

Oh well. thats one less ping ponger online and one more manual player. All good.

Since the last time i posted some more league games have been played. im now 5th. and the teams above me still have one or two games in hand. You can view the tables here

Right. Shower time.

Originally posted 14-05-2009

It would appear that my new found confidence in my shooting abilities wasn't misplaced.

Last night i racked up my first league win, And i was very pleased with my performance, although a few considerations must be made. Wexicoish had replaced his controller and had probably not played for at least a few days. So he was probably not exactly "match fit" and i think his game against me was the first of the night whereas i had played one QRM before we played each other. That aside it was a great game. i could tell early on he wasnt causing me the problems he did in our first and only other game against each other, again probably a combination of him not playing for a while and me having another 2 weeks of solid manual experience under my belt. The game ended 1-0 to me. Although i did get a hairy moment in the 89th odd minute when he took my defense to peices and thankfully shot wide. It was nice to get a win on the board. The beauty of manual is not knowing what to expect from your opponent. last time we played each other wexi beat me 2-0. This time i won 1-0. I guess that suggests that we arent worlds apart in the skills stakes, but when we played that first game it certainly felt like it. i must be developing faster than i think. In the last 15 minutes i was pinned back quite badly, he needed a goal and he really wanted to get one. Although my goal was only really threatened that one time in the 89th minute i was still not able to get forward at all, and conceeded to defending my lead.
Which brings me neatly to the next topic i wanted to cover. defending leads.

After my game against wexi i played a friendly with Liverpool_fifa. as usual we chatted whilst we were playing and i was telling him about the game and how i was hanging on in the last 15 minutes or so. He brought up an interesting point that with assisted controls a 1 goal lead is never enough. i hadnt really thought about it before but i think he is right. with assisted controls you can be pulled apart in a second. whereas with manual because the pace of the game is generally slower, its a little easier to read and anticipate what your opponent is going to try, therefor making defending a lead slightly more bearable. i find this to be the case anyway.

Although i was panicing a bit when under pressure towards the end of that game, at the back of my mind i knew that wexi would still have a lot of work to do to equalise. I think i actually made it worse for myself than it was because i was so desperate to get my first win.

Im not suggesting that once you score you should shut up shop. In some situations attack is the best form of defense (liverpool_fifa CERTAINLY employs this tactic!) But in those situations where you have only a little time left, its a viable option to slow the game down, and soak up pressure, without needing to worry about getting forward. you no longer need to score to win, so the pressure switches to your opponent, they have the work to do, and in some cases trying to push forward too much will open up gaps that you really dont want. i guess im saying that tactics like this have their place, and it worked well for me last night.

in the game against Liverpool_fifa i opened the scoring early on, which must have surprised the life out of him because he always beats me. From kick off the ball was pushed about a bit, i got forward and won a corner. I Swung it in neatly, and got a clean head on it. 1-0. 4 minutes played. I think he was just having one of those games, i wasnt exactly playing out of my skin, but nothing was really coming off for him and he seemed to be struggling. My short term memory is letting me down today and i cant really remember much about the second goal, apart from the fact that i scored it .

The game ended 2-0 to me and i felt a bit guilty when he said over the mic "cheers for that, just what i needed before i play my league game". I havent checked his result yet. i hope it didnt affect him too negatively.

So two full manual games played, 3 goals scored. i was pretty happy. Kappa fancied a game so we played a friendly as our league teams psv and fenerbache. As always it was a tight game. We both play fairly slow build up play, although with my new formation im able to get forward fairly quickly. 0-0 at 90 minutes i was almost thinking about penalties, extra time kicks off and this happens.

I heavily reccomend you watch the video (if anyone is actually even reading this?) it is a beautiful example of what you can do with manual controls. Kappa cut me to ribbons with one killer ball and an epic first touch to round the keeper, ironically at a point when my formation should have had its best shape.

So it ended 1-0. which wasnt bad. as usual i enjoyed the game which is the main thing. and any practise is good.

I have noticed lately that i seem to be more capable of using the wings. when i was using assisted controls i very rarely used the wings. sounds stupid really but as i played with arsenal a lot of the time, playing on the ground was their strength and with fabregas, nasri, denilson and arshavin, playing up the middle seemed to produce better results for me than playing wide. it might be because Fenerbache have good options on the wing. both boral and kazim kazim are quick and strong and playing against manual players gives you that little bit more space. Im also hoping that Kezman gets called back into the fenerbache squad, just to give me a little more punch upfront.

So at the moment im up to date with all my league games. Played 4, Won 1, Drawn 2, Lost 1. Sitting third in the league with 5 points and a goal difference of 0. Nothing to look forward to until the next fixtures go up, which will probably be sunday if i remember correctly, apart from my Cup game against xfox6's Newcastle. the scout report on the league website
http://www.globalfootieleagues.co.uk tells me that he has won 2 lost 2. so not really sure what to expect, other than another slice of all manual goodness.

Cheers for reading

Tom

Originally posted 13-05-2009

Gentlemen. Last night. I made. A Breakthrough.

I think i am finally understanding the shooting controls. Properly.

Lately i have noticed a significant improvement in hitting the target. Now when i am 1 on 1 with the keeper and it goes out for a throw in (this has happened) it's because im either not concentrating properly or i panic and dont stay calm. The first game i played last night was against liverpool_fifa. He has just joined the manual league as marsielle and wanted to get some practise in with his new team so we had a friendly, as always with manual games it was pretty open. we both had some solid chances, but one Key thing for me was an incident late in the first half. I cut inside from the right wing and hit a hard low shot into the bottom corner. the keeper got down for it, but was only able to push it back at my striker. i took a touch and then fired another shot, this time from a tighter angle. the keeper had come across to cover his near post and easily got in the way of it, but again it fell back to my striker, now only a few yards from the touchline. Third time lucky? No. i fired in another low shot, keeper gets down low and pushes it round the post for a corner.

"wow. well done. you had three bites and still didn't score."

No i didn't. but i managed to make three shots, in VERY quick succesion. ALL on target. all good shots, but tight angles and good keeping stopped them going in. call me sad. but, this was exciting to me.

so, suddenly it looked like i might be able to pose a threat in front of goal. Just in time for my league game against Kappa.

It actually turned out to be a fairly uneventful game. there were a few chances here and there. nothing really conctrete, apart from one chance i had very late on, i cant even remember how it came about, but i ended up chasing down a loose ball 1 on 1 with the keeper. the keeper JUST got there first and cleared it. Then Kappa went on a 5 minute tear and penned me into my own area until the whistle went. 0-0.

So after 3 League matches i have drawn 2 and lost 1. Sat in 6th place. Although i have one game against Wexi still to play, and a win would put me third pending other fixtures. unless i won by 4 clear goals (unlikely) then i would be 2nd on GD.

I rounded the evening off with a blinding game against Shorty Alien X2. i didnt know what to expect after our league game ended 0-0 but it turned out to be a really good game. I scored first with what might have been considered a cheap goal on assisted but hopefully not on manual.

I had both strikers bearing down on goal, shot from the edge of the area as the keeper rushed out, hit the bar and it fell back to my other striker with plenty on space on the other side of the area who smashed it into an empty net. Again 2 shots in quick succesion hitting the target, (its a shame Kappa didnt let me get close enough to really try that against him) Shorty equalised quickly with a good header and we went in 1-1 at half time.

More of the same in the second half. Loads of chances, plenty of good efforts from both. Shorty went 2-1 up with what can only be described as defensive error of the millenium. he broke down the right, tucked inside. fed a lovely low pass across the box that would have found his striker in space around the penalty spot, if my centre backs hadnt decided to both go for it, then confuse each other. it pinged of a shin and past the keeper. It was too funny. i equalised with a clear break on goal, and tidy shot into the bottom corner. and eventually won 3-2. i cant remember what my last goal was like, i was so pleased to have scored it. Great game. I scored 3 which i was really really pleased about. hopefully i can keep it up. but the prospect of starting to put my chances away is brilliant.

Gotta keep it short today. quite busy.

As always cheers for reading.

Tom

Originally posted 12-05-2009

In the last 2 weeks i have noticed so many players switching to manual and i think its fantastic. My friends list is swelling with manual players, and best of all they arent all from the manual league. i have added a bunch of people recently, all solely for us to play manual games and practise against each other.

I think in fifa 10 EA need to accomodate the growing number of manual players in some way. wexicoish started a thread earlier which quickly deteriated but still managed to get the point across that manual players arent thought about when it comes to online play. which is strange considering how much effort the controls must have been to implement. there is one central ranking system and manual players cant realistically compete with the table tennis that is online ranked at the moment. we dont want to and we shouldnt have to.

a manual ranking system would be very much appreciated. if people want to play one touch passes all the way into the net fine. but i dont and neither do any of the other players that have switched to manual, the control system allows you to play beautiful, creative football, but it doesnt allow you to really challenge fully assisted players. so lets seperate the two.



I have seen a few people on the forums getting the bumhole with the growing number of manual players that have been popping up recently. it seems they feel that manual players are acting a bit "holier than thou" which couldnt be further from the truth.

If i think back about a month, all i remember seeing on the forums was complaints about gameplay issues, lag, abusers, yada yada yada. Since i have been playing manual games, i havent been concerned by any of that. i play manual games with decent people from my friends list and i dont have to worry about formation/tactic/ronaldo abusers. we are just really really enjoying fifa again. i feel as enthusiastic about the game now as i did when it first came out, which is great! the issues are still there, you just have to find your own way to side step them.

so i think the enthusiasm is misenterpreted as arrogance. i have not seen one manual player claim that we are better than assisted players in any way. But i have seen manual players encouraging people to try it and freshen the game up. too many people claim to not have the time. i think its more that they dont have the inclination. i play a maximum of three games a night. usually two. i have been using manual controls for about three weeks now maybe? but i wouldnt be scared of playing anyone with full manual controls, and i was never a total demon with assisted, i think i hit level 13, so very mediocre. the point is it doesnt take long to understand and grasp, a little longer to get good, and when i master it ill put up a timeframe for that too. the effort involved in learning the controls is a miniscule trade off considering how much more enjoyment can be had from the game. i have played awesome manual games that have ended 0-0. hardly a thrilling scoreline, but to still enjoy a game when there were no goals scored? obviously there is something in that. i guess the point i am trying to make is people shouldnt knock it until they have tried it and they shouldnt misunderstand what the manual players are trying to achieve. its not about acting like we are better or trying to put people down, its about having more people using manual controls so we have more people to play with!

So now that thats off of my chest i can concentrate on MY manuals performances recently.

played another league match since i last posted, against Shorty Alien x2. drew 0-0 so at least thats one point up on the board. it was a close enough game, but i missed a clear cut chance that should have meant i took all three points. As the result of an attack from SAx2 my keeper threw the ball wide to my right winger, who took a few touches and slotted it inside to one of my centre forwards who was pretty deep. i spotted that his RB was keeping my striker onside so slotted a ball forward to him, and was effectively 1 on 1 with the keeper even though i had only just got into his half. i sprinted up the pitch and for some unknown reason (no pressure of note from the defenders) tried to shoot from the edge of the box. he hadnt brought the keeper out, and i could have taken an extra touch into the area and got a decent low shot in. instead i went for the top corner and the result was "high wide and not at all handsome".

its taught me that i need to think a bit quicker and asses my options faster. i will work on that this week.

so after 2 games im 7th, played 2, won 0, drawn 1, lost 1.

hardly setting the world alight, but as i mentioned before, mid table will be good.

Cheers for reading

Tom

Originally posted 10-05-2009

Well. I said i needed practice with manual controls, so thats what ive been doing.

I played 3 Great games against Kappa this evening. first was his PSV vs My Fenerbahce. Good game, really open, Just as Kappa was telling me about a near miss manual bicycle he had hit earlier on in another game, he did it against me. thankfully it didn't go in, but it was a sight to behold none the less. i managed to nick a 1-0 win, but even if i had lost 10-1 i would have been happy to have tucked one away.

second game I was my local club (closest team thats actually on fifa, and its only about 4 miles away) Aldershot against Accryington. Although i lost 1-0 it was probably my favourite game of the night. both 1/2 star teams and manual controls means loads of space and loads of time on the ball. the tempo of the game was really chilled and wasn't rushed at all.

Third and final game against Kappa was with two random 1 star Korean teams. wicked game, plenty of chances and again lots of time on the ball. i ended up nicking a win on penalties, which never feels like a real win to me. weirdly i love shootouts in real life, but its all down to luck in fifa. i have won shootouts where i was the worse player over 120 minutes and it just feels a bit ****. maybe im too honourable or nice or whatever.

so three games into the evening and only one goal scored (besides the penalties). not cool.
but at least im putting the time in.

next i played an interesting game against liverpool. i used fenerbahce again as i want to play with them as much as possible. now this was an unranked game online against some guy who also had a guest, and it would become apparent early on that they were both total dicks. hacking the **** out of me all over the park and screaming down the mic. tv muted after 10 in game minutes. sadly the scoreline shows that i got demolished 6-3, but in reality i bossed the game. all of their goals were the kind of rebound tapins that annoy me with fifa. keeper parries a nothing shot straight into an oncoming striker x6. one of mine was a penalty and the other two were well worked neat finishes. I have found with manual controls that you seem to have a little more control over the players. i would be interested to know if others who have used manual would agree, but the players feel lighter and more manouverable, so i took great delight in dancing around the pitch, watching them slide around in space i used to be in, its just a shame i couldnt score more and lost.

Then i played a couple of manual games against a fella called DuduIsMoff. i think he must be from the manual league because he just appeared on my friends list and asked me for a couple of games.

First we played as Fenerbahce and Sporting Lisbon. pretty slow tight game that can be summed up by the fact that the first shot on goal came in the 37th minute. neither of use could find any space to create anything and we went in 0-0 at half time. early on in the second half i scored the opener. nothing special, just a few neat passes around the area, ball into the box, and a shot from the edge of the 6 yard box. i held the lead till about the 75th minute when one of the finest manual crosses i have ever seen made its way over a struggling defender and straight onto the forehead of an oncoming striker. peice of **** with assisted controls but with manual the whole move was a work of art. it went to penalties, i had one saved and lost. not a terrific evening in terms of results.

We rematched and he was AC Milan, i was Arsenal. the game tempo was totally different, much faster, and he had a very good custom formation set up for milan, which was lethal. late in the first half he snuck past clichy on the halfway line, turned the pace on and flew down the wing, cut inside by the touchline and slotted a great pass inside to Kaka who couldnt have missed if he wanted to. i was a bit gutted but i knew i could get back into the game and i did with style. rosicky tore down the left wing with acres of space and i slightly overhit the cross which flew over adebayors head and straight into walcotts path on the edge of the box. chested down, hit on the volley, ****ING ROCKETTED into the top corner. i nearly fell over. the controls had just clicked somehow. as i said in my last blog post here, i have been comfortable with passing manually for a while but that one move proved to me that with time and patience i can nail shooting and hopefully start hitting the net more. My euphoria was shortlived though. almost straight away almunia parried a fairly tame shot towards the touchline and hit the deck. ronaldinho got his head on it from the most ridiculous angle i have seen. There seriously shouldnt have been enough space for the ball to pass the post it was so tight. Even though there was no keeper to stop it i have to take my hat off to DuduIsMoff. it was a quality header. it finished 2-1.

So. Tonight i learned that my shooting IS getting there, and i think im going to just practise unranked online now and take the beatings whilst im learning. i tried practicing against the computer but its not the same. its not really challenging in the same way its is online. i can crank it up to legendary and find it very very hard, but the way the game flows is too different. it feels rigid and unnatural. I also learned that DuduIsMoff might be one to watch in the league. I hope he is anyway, because if he's not then my middle table finish will go right out of the window.

Cheers for reading.

Originally posted 08-05-2009
Firstly, never written a blog before, so this should be interesting, im just going to open my brain and see what comes out. i also wanted to kinda keep tabs on my manual progress.

My interest in manual peaked after i had been suffering a poor run of form with QR matches and needed to breathe some life into the game. I play for a club but the guys i play with are missing presumed dead. XBL shows them as being offline for 28 days now. i think its safe to say that my club days are over. i very much doubt i would find another club with such unselfish players and blatent disregard for results, we just had a laugh playing, which is what its all about right?

well i think so, which is why QR matches had been getting me down. im not going to go over all the gripes. we all read the forums. we all know what they are, but i still enjoy fifa, and still want to play fifa, so i needed a way to avoid the titboxes i constantly found myself paired against online.

Enter DOA Kappa Tango. i have to say a MASSIVE thank you to Kappa for all of the effort he has put into the site, its well built, and there are some nice touches.

So i signed up to the manual league, and after a false start and a few political issues we are up and running again.

In the first run of the league, i was playing as sevilla, my first game was against Kappa. It ended 0-0, it was a pretty open game, passing was good, chance creation was good, the finishing wasnt. at 90 minutes the game was 0-0 and by league rules it got entered as a draw. not bad for my first league game i thought, especially as Kappa has more experience playing manual than i do. Kappa suggested playing the ET out for a bit more practise. so we did. he scored almost straight away. i bet he was gutted. i would have been. after 120 minutes it ended 1-0.

my second game was against Wexicosh. He's a decent manual player, moves the ball about well, pretty handy with the trick stick, and gave me quite a bit of trouble handling his wingers. As with my first game, i created chances, but couldnt finish any (keep reading, there is a theme developing). It ended 2-0 to Wexicosh.

we only played 2 games before things went a bit south, mainly people disagreeing with the bonus points sceme that was in place. So after a bit of chatter on the forums and a rethink new procedures were put in place.
instead of the original league of 20, it was split into 2 leagues of 10. A Platinum league and a Gold league, with promotion and relegation. This time round there were to be no bonus points in place. But a limit in that no teams over 4* were to be used. i had a little scoot about the game, and after having missed out on a few of the prime choices i chose Fenerbache. Not sure why as i had only used them once before on fifa, but did remember that they had a pretty nifty fella on the left wing. After the draw i found myself in the gold league, so the only way was up!

Or not as it would turn out. my first game was against Socalibrphenom's LA Galaxy. The game started pretty slowly, with each of us trying to sound the other out as we hadnt played before. Beckham caused me trouble down the right, but i found fairly early on that i could get my strikers behind his back line quite easily, a combination of the pace advantage i had and the fact that with manual controls, if you concentrate, the ball goes where you want it to .

I missed a few sitters in the first half. i can only blame myself. my finishing has really let me down so far. i need more practise, and having played with assisted controls for so long, its easy to forget that direction AND power is down to you. Couple that with a striker under pressure and its very easy to hit the chubby guy in row Z.

LA Galaxy obviously got a rocket up their arses at halftime because they came out all guns blazing in the second half, and i found myself stuck in my own half for 10 minutes but I managed to soak up the pressure and start getting forward again.

It was a really open and fast game and really really enjoyable to play (remember that breath of life i mentioned earlier?) so it was also a shame that it was decided the way it was. Beckham once again caused a bit of fuss down the wing, managed to lift the ball into the box, one goalmouth scramble later its in the net. Around the 80th minute. leaving me Rueing all the missed chances and ten minutes to level it out. I put plenty of pressure on but never really looked like equalising. So after one game of the new league im 0-0-1. thankfully having just checked the tables, celtic beat leeds 2-0 so im not bottom through goal difference .

My next game is against Wexicosh again. im going to try and play him tonight, but im not sure whether to go for revenge, or to play safe as i know what he can do? ill work out some sort of strategy on the train home i think.

So. Thats pretty much a summary of my experience of the manual league so far. ive played a few really good games against Liverpool_fifa and a few with Kappa too.

i hope it doesnt take too long to find my shooting boots. because if it does i will find myself in a position i cant get out of. i really need to get some points on the board early on.

A mid table finish is my target if im honest. anything less will be a bit dissapointing, and anything more seems unlikely at the moment unless i find a way to convert my chances. creating isnt, and hasnt ever been, a problem. its putting the ball in the net thats not happening. in 3 league games i havent scored which is a bit worrying. but i guess thats part of the learning curve with manual controls. i picked up the passing really easily, and defending is ok too, but shooting on manual really seperates the men from the boys. Ill let you know once i hit puberty.

Cheers for reading.

Tom