But this site is now dormant, as you may of worked out. I have content (well, ideas) ready really, but I’m waiting on a site project to appear that I joined a while back. I’ll give that a week tops, I’ve been hanging on to the hope it will open for a while now – then I’ll bring this old site back from the dead maybe. The point of this post was nothing really, all but to stop WP from deleting my account (which I’ve been informed they do if you do not post for a while). Please continue to browse the old articles of the place, or even better, contribute one of your own by e-mail to help me get this place active again!

Word. It’s been a while, and February has been a slow month for Team Talk. It’s been cold, miserable and erratic on many fronts but hopefully soon I’ll get back into the swing of things with a few new articles. I think in general the whole FM community has been slow as of late (in my honest opinion it has been slow for about six months) – it’s the period of transition of the FM cycle of play where no one can be bothered, as some articles on Throw In may put it – or at least I can’t, I haven’t switched on Football Manager in about a week. Well, as I said I will update as often as I can, but I also stated at the beginning sometimes I have the ideas but just can’t be bothered. These are those times. Click here if you are interested in helping my poor weary writing soul out.

Anyway, I’m not going too expand into more excuses of my laziness. But I’d be a bastard if I didn’t give you any content after all this time. I’m a bastard.

To readers of this post before this message was posted up I’d like to say sorry for the stupid mistakes I made in this article. Sigh.

I am the sad scene preacher man, listen to my word.

Firstly I hope you’ve taken note of changes to the site, in the fact that we are now officially linked to Footygamer and we are looking to contributions from you talented viewers of the site. Now onwards from that, I’ve gone back to my Football Manager Community article roots today – and I have produced the first scene article for this place since a while back. Firstly though I’ll guide you to this:

Hot Topic: Another topic that is, well I’d be lying if I said widely discussed, but it certainly has been looked at in detail by two sites as we speak is the fact Rob has got a good old slagging off from CM Frenzy. It’s pointless really on me commenting much on this issue, as Rob has pretty much covered it in his response – which may be of interest too you. For what it’s worth I am totally with Rob on this issue, and I feel that the amount of work and dedication he puts into running a site that is basically sending people out of it should not be critiqued so harshly; to be honest he can’t help with the Blog thing, I mean we are the highest updaters currently, and although some of the stuff he advertises shamelessly on his site is crap – it’s content, be your own critic. Spike has also published a rushed piece on this issue which I feel may be out there to cause a bit too much unnecessary controversy for a relatively minor issue, but he said Team Talk is great so fuck it, here is the link.

Dicussion: A short and scene related one today, as you have got the other bit of news as well. One thing I love about these discussion posts is that there so bloody easy. Now, my discussion focus point today is one that doesn’t need much coverage, Why Don’t We All Just Listen To Caleyjag?

My Views

I’m not into hippy talk. Yes, I know the community has no fucking spirit and talking about is going to change nothing (I shall refer to this article) – but there is one ‘Let’s Unite the Community’ man who actually interests me. And that is Caleyjag. Ever since Caleyjag left the limelight so to speak he has carried an enormous reputation with him, and instead of sitting back and doing nothing and living off the praise and respect he may get of forums he has got off his arse and tried to change the scene is ways I couldn’t ever aspire to do, mostly due to lack of coding abilities though . The Jagmeister J (bloody hell; I should get put down for that) has two ongoing projects (not including the recently formed FM Scene Forum which I know little about) – and some others which seem to look on the dead side of things – which if exploiting to there full possibilities could do amazing stuff for this faltering community. My FM CV and its interlinked Community Downloads Project have been largely overlooked despite their genius, but are they sleeping giants waiting to take off? Like ‘Jagged Little Pill’ (by Alanis Morissette if your asking; yeah, the “ironic” one) could it start off slow but expand quickly this year too dominate the scene? It’s all up to the members of the community, and because of this I don’t really think they will.

To explain about Caleyjag and his project to those who don’t know, Mr Jag used to be the owner of huge resource site SortItOutSI where he established a rep for himself of being an innovator and creator of the site side of things. He left a while back for reasons that are unknown to me, and ever since then the site has generally become rather stale under the lack sure leadership of Smithjurd. Caleyjag has produce a wide range of quirky and pretty awesome sites over the months since leaving the Resource Gaint including Message In The Movie, FM Stories and The Caley and Cleon Show, plus a new site called FM Scene that has only been brought to my attention during me writing this bloody article. I actually cannot keep up. But I will be concentrating on the ones a) I know the most about, purely as research is tiresome and b) I think can help the community the most.

One of his first love childs after the interesting podcasts of the Caley and Cleon Show was My FM CV, an expansion on Play FM where members would play online tournaments at Susie, yet now they also record results from there previous games to gain points and have the best manager CV so to speak. Again, brilliant idea, beautifully executed. So far this has been quite successful though – then comes the Downloads Project. If this goes down the pan the community should be ashamed. It basically sees sites sign up to the project with means that when a download is submitted to the project and is spread evenly on each of the site, sharing is good etc etc. and in the end all the sites see equal downloads, which could see whining people stop complaining about sites grabbing there work, as they know what they’ll be getting themselves in for.

So, get uploading to the Community Downloads Project you scary graphics creators. Okay? All these ideas have received critical acclaim, well praise as it sounds a bit strange to say that about an FM site, from casual posters at Throw In to intellectual what knots at FGN endorsing them – so what does the future hold for these kind of community sites? I hope good things, really, as there great ideas that if people stopped worrying about the exclusivity of there own site could really work. But with the community in the supposed ‘tatters’ it is today, will ambitious projects like this take off…

Your Views

Well, discussion post this isn’t really, but there are still points we can touch on. Are you a fan of Caleyjag’s ideas, there are obvious flaws with some? Do you really think they will take off – I sure hope they do. Is the community actaully in a mess, or are we just bloody moaners? I’d go for the latter. Finally, do I sound like I’ve been brown nosing Caley through this whole piece? Gulp. Please comment or email me, the usaully stuff. And don’t forget – send in your article contributions. Bah.

For further reading on this issue go here, where an actaul discussion is taking place in TI’s scene forums. Wow.

It’s not going to be regular event that I post up this many rather useless news pieces on my site – but sadly it is necessary to do it again. Well not sadly actually because both my pieces of news are good for the Football Manager blogging community, and therefore this site.

I’ve gone affiliate crazy and have pledged my sites name into two new projects, an ambitious new community wordpress ‘forum’ that just might work and an scene old timer trying to revive itself. So yesterday a few sites of the blog community received an e-mail containing a piece of long awaited and expected news (for the ones who read Blog FM anyway) – The Editor was starting up a new Blogging paradise, The Football Manager WordPress Community…

So, being one to jump on bandwagons (and then usually being thrown off them) I said I’d use his new system to create an FM blogging haven and help more hits flood into the site. To find out more about this project please visit the site:

HERE. And also read how you can be part of it, here, no, this linky.

And then there is FGN, the once Godfather of the scene and former home to the ultimate scene debate have decided to start up there networking scheme again and have offered a place for me to be part of it. I’m not expecting to inject a surge of activity into the site, I accepted there offer because a) I like the place and b) it would be great to have my own little part of the forum – it would help expand my lacking discussion posts and create talk about all my articles generally. This should be up some time after the weekend.

Now, it seems the new scene thing is too blog, like I do here, and quite fucking frankly it’s cramping my style. I literally can’t keep up with the amount of blog’s opening – but will they last I wonder or are they a spur of the moment thing to jump on the bandwagon? Well, the numerous new ones certainly have potential. This is my final point of this update that is turning so long it could be a full blown article, the opening of some sparse new blogs.

Places such as Affside (a scottish play of words of Offside), MarvellousScene and Scene Rant have been opened by popular members of the scene and are brimming with visitors already (well Affside is – most of them are just jokers). This is all good and well, but the content so far has been a bit so so I must admit – although places like Affside seem really to follow the prime focus of a blog, a place for Jordo to air his thoughts about FM, the scene and erm, homosexuals – and it seems he really want to make a go of it seriously, so I wish him luck, I’m sure his popularity and views could get him far. He certainly has the fast track to success due to him being popular on numerous large forums.

The other two seem to be mostly about the scene, which is all good as I do like a scene article myself, even more than a worded Football Manager piece of genius. Now these both seem to be run by intelligent members of the FM community, and I am quite surprised by there content – it’s actually good. Bar a few spelling mistakes and ignoring the fact it’s mostly re-chewed ideas spat out of a piece of web, MarvellousScene could turn into a good place for the odd scene rant and I’d like to see it expand into Football Manager in the future. Although I wish both these new domains and the exploding blog community as a whole muchy success.

It’d be a crime if I didn’t use that image – its so overused.

Now back to the content for today and I’m looking at a quite widely discussed issue (well, I’ve seen an article on it, snippets in others etc.) – features of a national team manager. There is a severe lack of things to do really if you choose to become manager of the National Team in FM 2007. Let’s hope this ‘discussion’ goes better than the last one you bloody miserable lot..

My View

We are all in agreement most probably that by FM 2008 we want to see National Team Management improved drastically as in it’s state now it is really only best to use it as a side job to your main one of managing your club of choice. In Football Manager to manage your country is viewed as your bit on the side so to speak and not a full time job as it is in real life. Most national team managers in the game nowadays will manage a club team as well – I believe the lack of people who solely manage a country for a while is due to the fact they get bored. There are currently few features as a national team manager to make those months of wait for a game seem worthwhile and little help on the scene in the form of guides lets say for an aspiring Mike Basset. So, what do SI and the scene do? Well, here are a few features in my view that could make international management all that bit better:

More Media Input /
Where’s the sense of excitement that surrounds a coming World Cup in this game? Where’s the rumours and major public interest of the new management of a national team that happens in most countries. Now by more media input I don’t mean “let’s turn FM into Footballers Wives” – however much fun that would be – I mean the real big main features of club managing that lack when you take the helm of a country. Manager Interaction for one – do national managers not have the right to criticise others? I think they do. This feature is desperately needed in the game to create a mind game effect and would give the opportunity for the management of a country to become more equal to team management.
Then theirs player interaction. The only time you really get to interact with your players in national team mode is when you occasionally (and I mean that) get rejected for a call up or don’t pick a star player – and they moan. With FM 2007 building a more complex interaction with everyone for managers at club level surely they should include this for when you manage a country also by the next instalment of the game. There are more aspects that could do with much higher media coverage but I won’t go on, you can suggest.

More Staff Involvement /
This applies generally to Football Manager as a game but in NTM (it’s plain what that stands for) staff involvement is, well, near enough nothing. Hiring staff is generally pointless and you could easily get on without them. The only major decisions on this front are the choice of who to manage your youngster team, and you take no part in controlling coaching sessions. They are basically there in name and nothing more – and scouts (see point below) should defiantly be including in the list for members of staff. All in all this a poor feature with general room for improvement.

Better Scouting Network and Training Options /
Do real managers of national teams in the world not scout for the next superstar? Do they rely on a list (‘national team pool’) and the rare media snippet saying this player has great form to choose there players. Well, I’m sure the more incompetent ones do (I’m looking at you Sven) but really you have to realise that national teams have scouts too and they use them to uncovering talent and observe players for possible picking for there next squad. It gives you something to do to fill up those lonely months without much more action that come with managing a national team. I currently manage England and Man Utd (I know – all that glory. I win though, so bah to you!) And really I don’t have the time or the facilities to search for new stars, so I end up using the same old boring squad. But being a focused national team manager and with a good scouting network you could do that, and get great results by having a England squad full of budding talent, waiting to be testing on the international stage and ready to kick out those old timers.
As for training, well, the dust has settled on that part of my FM – I never enter. But for the few weeks NTM get the players a year they could use there own rigorous training system on them to help them prepare for upcoming games/cups. It’s all to add to the realism of it.

Your Views

And I actually want to hear from you this time. Do you agree, or disagree with the features I think should be added into the game to fulfil the National Team experience? Are the any more you’d like to add? Do you actually think its fine as it is? Please do voice your opinion; it’s a discussion and all. If you don’t want to comment email me (although it’s quite a strange thing that you don’t). Have fun…

For further reading, this article is a much longer and in detail look at practically the same issue…

This post is generally pointless and was meant to be including in an article, but it made it too long so I thought I’d inform you of some things going on separately..

Firstly, as a quick note I have two pieces of info for you today. Firstly, on Sunday thanks to a swarm of hits from TI (you’ll never guess what was the most read article..) this site has official debuted in the Top 100 list of growing WordPress Blogs at a reasonable #29. This is great and has pleased me no end, and it shows that with a little bit of advertising (cheers Cleon) you can really boost the old hit meter. So, feel free to advertise this place on any FM sites I haven’t already hit – there are plenty, and some like GK have posting limits (bah) which I can’t be bothered to abide too.

Secondly, if anyone would like to contribute to the site I’d be most grateful and all. As you can see content is going along pretty fine at the moment but there are times when I have nothing to say – really – and any assistance from the scene folk is always welcome. So don’t be tight fisted, send me any pieces you think are up to scratch and I’ll review them and post them if I think there amazingly brilliantly beautiful crafted pieces of elegant writing. In other words – give me your articles bitches. Who knows, if you’re great enough perhaps I could give you article posting privileges as long as I trust you not to fuck the place up.

Before we start, interesting design we have at the moment eh? I fancied a change; the last one was a bit dark. Please give feedback, because in all honesty it was my fourth choice as both Pitchside and Blog FM have the other good ones I was after. It could do with a new header if anyones interested. Thought not. I’m not too sure about it..

Let’s be brief today, I can’t be bothered with much more. After little testing, much aggravation and numerous urges to swear loudly I have concluded this about the PSP portable version of FM 2007 – Football Manager 2007 Handheld is, to put it simply, average. I gathered this opinion after probably half an hour of non-continuous play time. Why? Because it’s not on the computer to put it simply. I’ve got to used to the PC game and this PSP version doesn’t have the easy to use slick inter-surface, the ‘clicky’ tool otherwise known as a mouse which means scrolling down the options becomes a mundane process which gets you annoyed at it deeply. Infact – let’s play a game of pros and cons with FM Handheld:

Pros:

Is very quick which means you don’t have the endless fidgety waiting times FM has – still.
- FM 2007 on computer has improved but is still too majorly slow more my patience. Nothing can be worse than when I’d play CM4 and it would take days of play (literally) to get through a whole season. Yet on PSP Football Manager glides with grace, feeling the light weight on it’s shoulder by having more compact data and less of the features which Football Manager has on the computer.
Players are cheap as chips
- It’s true. A quick browse on it can tell me a player who I could normally buy for £10m on FM is valued at half that on the PSP. I chose Chelsea, and the most expensive player was Robben for £17m. Now, I’m torn. You could view this as a good thing, not only as it makes the game much easier, but because it adds a certain effect of realism to the game. In real life, despite recent issues about managers saying they are being asked for too much money for players, you don’t usual have to pay out the hefty funds you do in FM for players. But then again it takes away the realism – the players can be undervalued. See point one on Cons.
My Auntie gave it to me
- This is vital. Because of this I am under obligation not to be too rude about it.
Scene Wise – There is uncovered ground.
- Although the games have pretty much similar aspects to write about, just stick PSP infront of it and it’s new. The game is largely uncovered on the major FM sites and paves way for new ground.

Cons

It’s not as realistic
- Everyone knew from the day they annouced that they were making a PSP Portable Game it was not going a) as big of a success and b) have all the features plentiful that SI had provided for us on the PC version. They were right. All the major features on which where on FM 2007/06/05 on PC such as transfer rumours etc. are in a nutshell and other features of the game we all got so over excited about such as Feeder Clubs and Advanced Player Interaction do not even feature. It’s a sad affair really, but I can understand the problems they would have fitting all these features on to the PSP without destroying it.
I’m bored of it already
- This point is probably to be ignored as I have a strange inability not to enjoy anything I’m really crap at or I can’t get into quickly.
I can’t win – and I’ve played like, five games!
- As above.
PSP controls = no no for Football Manager
- Everything feels like it is done manually. Typing someone’s name on player search takes an age at first and the controls do not go well with the game – there’s too much scrolling and not enough clickage for an impatient soul like me.
Lack of numerous features such as an in game editor, play interaction etc.
- The lack of features issues also ties into my first Con of the game. This is no Pocket FM 2007 as you might expect. Infact it is far more arcadia and lacks many of the features we might have now grown accustomed too. Also, whats with the player search. I couldn’t even find Ronaldinho. Tactics and Training need improving but for a handheld, are pretty decent.
You can only pick one league – one team.
- Another issue with obviously lack of space for all the data to go on the PSP is the lack of choice team wise. Now, please put me wrong here but when starting the game you have a mere choice of a few teams and can only choose one league to play in e.g. if you choose England throughout the whole game you can not manage in another country. This goes on to prove my theory that Handheld FM is for quick usage and not prolonged in depth games. You also cannot manage two teams, say England and Fulham, at the same time and I don’t even think national teams are available to manage (I can only imagine how limited the national team management features would be).
Scene Wise – downloads? Anyone?
- How do you find FM downloads for this godamn game? I don’t download much, but tactics are needed for me as I am too useless to use my own creations and the default ones mess up after a while. This is bad, but is uncovered ground. Although – is it possible to get stuff onto there? It should be. And is there places which do it already? If not, be sharpish on it sceners.

Sadly I can’t be arsed to elaborate further on these issues. Measure it up, eh? I’m not telling you to not buy the game – as you can see my ‘research’ is pretty poor. But if you think it’s going to be like FM PC Style on a mini scale – don’t. It’s for someone who is looking for a more arcadia, pick up the game for half an hour style thing, not having the grip that the computerized game has (see here). I’m quite disappointed after half an hour. I will report back after I have spent another day bidding for Andres D’Alessandro.

For further reading on similar issues – This is an interesting piece on FM on the DS..erm..here.

That’s not how I would describe Throw In really – but Spike did, and has also drawn this article to the attention of TI readers, creating unnecessary controversy – causing them to dissent on the site in hordes, brimming with self confidence and annoyance, and ripping it to shreds just as I had predicted would happen merely hours ago. ‘The Damn Scene’ has already caused ripples of uproar at Throw In, causing riots and calls for protest (basically saying; why write this? and ‘you are sad’) against the site and it’s overtly critically TI article/review. This has me asking myself – could this be the single most important event of mass uproar since the beatings of Rodney King? No. A site disrespected you, get over it.

When did the scene get to the point when people got so touché – g-o-d? Why should a pointless article taking the piss out of another site aggravate such a reaction, I know it hurts to have your site insulted – but Throw In, one of the major players of the scene shouldn’t really be so overly sensitive and send there staff members attacking. Could you not just a) laugh it away but still take some of the points of the article with you or b) realise this person is obviously seems to have a bit of a grudge against the given site but yet you have the last laugh as you have thousands of more hits than them. This all sucks. Yet I bet the writer is smiling, because he has been practically handed hits on a plate, and the infuriation of Throw In might actually make him feel as if he has achieved something. The scene is too controversial for its own good nowadays. As a matter of fact, when did people start taking the piss out of peoples site for no reason; was it Fantastic at BALLS? I’m not going to sound like some preaching aging hippy telling you we should have a ‘community’ and that ‘my love is real, our love is real’ (god bless the Jackson’s) – that’s just plain embarrassing. You made the community the shit; now get yourselves out of it. Dig people, dig.

I’ll leave this little ‘jumble of mixed up words’ online overnight. By morning (hopefully) this will all be over.

Recently I have decided that I should introduce a new theme to this site; discussion posts about Football Manager and the community. This is my debutee and looks a something you may have thought about before.

So, first up is a pondering question – Should FM have difficulty levels? This is a question that has been querying me recently as to whether it should.

Football Manager is a hard game for many of us, and the thought of difficulty levels may soften the blow when you buy the game and realise your crap. The thing is there are two different types of people I believe this move would benefit – the ones who seek trophies and a chance to win without using the ‘add manager’ button, and people who want to be ‘cool’ and make it all a bit harder for them (LLM hardcore..woah, erm, yeah!). I think most people have done a bit on cheating before – I certainly have, whole games on my part have previously been done without any knowledge of tactics, training etc. and I have won due to my many cheating talents – but despite all the satisfaction of winning endless awards and cups it takes away much of the excitement from the game. But people hate to lose so they do bend the rules a bit; but a option of let’s say easy would please people like this because it would show them they can win trophies the fair way and also have fun in the process (even if the games is a piss of piss). In the great words of Spike (hmm…) ‘I miss the days when FM was a game’ – I’m sure many do.

And then there’s the FM geeks, the devote worshipers who now are bored with the trophies and head for the unknown world (to me anyway) of LLM in England, or somewhere like tundra of the lower leagues of Slovakia or whatever…anyway, I’m sure these people would jump at the chance to make there game a little harder and boost there over-inflated FM egos a bit more.

I can’t think of many cons for this; to me it seems like a stroke of genius. I’m sure it has been done before, and I know it is in FIFA Manager 2007, but undoubtable that game is poor. But as a simple option before you choose your leagues when starting a game it would be great – I mean why not? Are there any other management games with this feature (I’d like to know)? The only major problem I can see affecting some is that it takes away the realism of being a real manager: real managers don’t choose a difficulty option. Well, get over it, your not a real manager, your playing a football game I say to them. So my opinion is that a difficulty system would work – maybe ranked easy-medium-hard – well in this game.

Your Views

I know this site is not amazingly popular so the few of you that do dwindle yourselves over here do not leave comments, but please do voice your opinion, it’s a discussion (sort of) and all. Do you think the game is easy enough as it is? Should gamers have the chance to up the challenge or lower it? If you don’t want to comment email me or at least contemplate my idea. So yeah..

Oh my dear god. Sports Interactive cursed us to forever be shocked with ourselves when they added the gameplay timer and it’s deeply worrying slogans – ‘Football Managers don’t need food’ I’m currently on. What a cruel inclusion that fucking timer was. There is a strange realisation that your life has gone down the pan when you see that you have spent a total of three wasteful days pointlessly filing through a glossy set of glorified spreadsheets. And that just one fricking little game? I tend to think I may have spent well over a week of my precious little life withering away on the span of CM/FM games I have owned, time that could be spent swimming with dolphin and doing other life fulfilling activities. My eyes are opened I’ll tell you that, I mean, some people who’s history with the game dates back donkeys years must of spent, well, a month on these games maybe. And not to mention the time we spend sitting on our half dead backsides exploring the many links of the scene. We are officially hooked, SI’s corporate machine must be smiling now, they have got us into Football Manager. I demand compensation! People have said they wear suits to games, they have FM all nighters – I attack cushions whenever I’m angry at a loss. This is it. Should we view this game time as wasteful? Are we really all that sad…?

YES. WE ARE.

So, my inactivity on this site has seen my viewing figures plummet to eight. Eight!? I might as well not bother! Which, I have not really, as a series of very unfortunate traumas for me have made updated unlikely over the past six days, but I hope to be back on my feet so to speak content wise in the next few days. But for now I would like to appoint to your attention a new blog (another WordPress affair – I feel so common using this software) called the ‘The Damn Scene‘. Hmmm. As others have commented on this guy seems to be trying to hard to be controversial. Reading his first bit of real content which is focused on the scene haven that is Throw In I feel in some spots he has got the right idea, such as the dramatic decline in the quality of the sites player reviews, an area the site was once highly praised for. But in others I feel he has been a little too over critical just for the sake of arguing against the site. Some guides of the TI front page may just be interpreted as a bit of a re-write of the manual with a twist but I still feel that if he actually really looked into the forums there are some real gems of articles to be fond there, I’m very fond of joaquin17 Team Guides and Toony’s pieces (of which he used to be plentiful). Another anonymous ranter too – join the club. |It looks the hordes of Throw In will probably be coming at him after his complaints about them. I hope it sticks around and doesn’t try and get too damn controversial for the sake of it, it could be it’s downfall as it bares the attack of Throw-In ferociously loyal and sometimes rather inept members. Good to see another home for discussion about the scene though.

EDIT: It seems as if his review might of raised some issues at Throw In..