Random thoughts about FML while in transit

I am currently writing while stuck in Lyon airport listening to the strange mixture of the Cardigans, Radiohead, and Rodrigo y Gabriella my i-pod is throwing up at me. I am flying back to London (which means I will be back in the FML timezone) for about a month and I am trying to decide whether to hijack an unsecured network at the airport so that I can play FML as my fight is not for another 2 hours (make that 4 my plane has been diverted back to Heathrow with a problem). In the end I decide against it as my French is not yet good enough to get myself out of trouble and if I say the word hijack out loud then I will probably end up in a French prison. So I am trying to put together another blog post as I think once I am back in England I will not have much time to write big long posts for a while so this is a good opportunity to get one in.
The title of the post ‘losing my favourite game’ is based on the Cardigans song which has just inspired my current blog. I think the Cardigans must be football manager players, as two of their songs in particular highlight the problems some people are finding in the transition from FM08 to FML.
In FM people like to talk about their records as managers, which teams they got promoted, e.g. how they got Oxford United to the Premier league etc. In the original version of CM I used to take over at Man Utd and systematically destroy them, selling their whole team and replacing them with a full squad of second rate goalkeepers they couldn't get rid of. I was young back then and my brothers were all Man City fans so I had no choice it was my duty. The point is in the old CM and the standalone FM games you could rewrite history the way you liked it and kind of leave out the details of how you managed to guide Man U to the bottom of the old 4th Division.
When the Cardigans play FM they probably cheat I base this assumption on the basis of their song ‘erase and rewind’ which I don’t know the words to but am sure it is about their path to FM success. It is ok getting Oxford to the Premier league, but if you reloaded your last saved game every time you lost or manipulated the finances in the data editor then this is a bit of a fake victory (like the current rise of Chelski). How you play FM is up to you but I always played the game fairly (apart from my early Man Utd years) and took the rough with the smooth. I remember playing an all night session of CM 98 when at university with a friend. I was Barcelona he was Real Madrid. I had piped my friend to the La Liga by a single point but he made the champions league final again Lazio. Having taken an early lead and looking comfortable my friend was already thinking about his victory speech. However Robberto Manchini popped up with two late goals in the last 10 mins to kill my friends dreams of European glory and ruin a days hard work and planning. Sure he could have reset the game, played the match until he got the victory he wanted, but no he took the bitter disappointment like a man. He first gave a speech of the nature ‘If you say what he said about a man like Manchini’ (Think Keegan meltdown attack on Fergie), then he calmly ejected the CD-Rom from the computer and snapped it in two and we never talked about the Manchini final again (this is the first time I have retold this story).
To me this is how real FM players take defeat, sure it can hurt, sometimes it hurts like hell when a days worth of play is pissed up the wall by the superhuman efforts of an aging Italian, but you just had to deal with it and move on (my friend did replace the CM CD-Rom the next day).
The people who shielded themselves from such cruel nights in FM by adjusting their finances and/or replaying disappointing matches, I think are the ones beginning to feel the strain in my current FML game world. These people tend to moan a lot as they are not used to baron times and lean spells. They will lose a few games and start to blame bugs in the match engine which no one else can see and they cannot provide evidence for; they will over spend by a lot and wonder why they cannot have Drogba, Gerard and Torres in their teams (as if this was possible they would have been the first to think of it). Asking why they have been put into administration.
FML is the great leveller for all who like to boast about their FM records and achievements you all start off with the same resources and how well you use them determines your place in the FML pecking order. In my opinion I think Beta testers have a slight advantage over non-Beta testers (which is why I am writing the blog so you don’t make my mistakes) in terms of transfer targets, some of the long term Beta testers know who to buy and who they can turn a quick profit on. I may be mean and post their squads in my blog at some point to try and offset this insider knowledge (if I do please don’t tell them!).
In FML everyone wants to win, everyone wants to better their team as much as they can, it is not just a generic computer AI you can out maneuver in the Transfer market or create a killer tactic against which leaves you with a passive role in the game. In FML you always have to evolve your team and tactics, because you can bet everyone else is. I don’t mean you have to play the game constantly, but you cannot just buy a few players, set one tactic and watch the victories pour in.
My striker Gomis (source of all my FML blogging frustration) is a perfect example of what I mean by evolving your team. I bought Gomis in my first days on FML, and once he got match fit he would terrify defences who could not handle his pace and general skill. But these people did not just take the defeat as one of those things and moved on to the next game, they got smart they brought in better players they evolved their teams. This resulted in the situation I have at the minute whereby my initial favourite formation playing Gomis as a lone striker is becoming less and less effective he is just not up for it against the current FML teams. I had to draft in help for Gomis (see previous posts) and develop my tactics. Even old Goran was brought in to play centre midfield, but due to the rising quality of other players, I am having to play Goran in defence in place of Jack Hobbs who is finding life difficult. For me this is one of most enjoyable parts of the game, I feel more like a football manager than I ever did playing other management games, you have 1000 football manager terminators out there, these people want to beat you, will adapt their tactics to cope with your team, will go for the players you want, you have no choice but to evolve or fall behind.
The point I am trying to make is that in FML everyone wants to win and past glories mean nothing. As Thom Yorke is now softly singing to me: If you want a quiet life with no alarms and no surprises you should probably stick to FM08. Now where is that bloody plane...