Football Manager 14: Help me choose a team?

[Reg]

I have recently decided to follow football (soccer for us Americans) after playing a bit of FM13...this years version is improved and pretty addictive. In the past I have stuck with playing either USA teams or lowest division English teams but I think I will take a shot at a Barclays Premiere League team. Currently the four teams facing relegation are West Bromich Albion, Sunderland, Cardiff City and Fulham...I am opening up a poll over the next few days for you guys to vote which team I should take on, in hopes to avoid relegation or at least outperform their real life counterparts. I will also do a write AAR of the game as I go.

I played soccer up until I was in the fourth grade. Thats about my tactical knowledge, though I have discovered that my tv service carries the premiere league games so I have been watching those as well as the FA cup coverage....and doing lots of online research....

I have it in mind to play a defensive/counter style...

[John]

I'm going with Sunderland purely because I think they have the coolest name.

[Nigel]

Speaking as one who is a season ticket holder at a Premier League team (Manchester City), there isn't a lot to choose between the four teams

Sunderland : Based in the North-East of England their main rivals are Newcastle which is a very hotly contested derby. They have moved into a new ground within the last decade and usually get a good turnout of passionate supporter especially on their rare good seasons. No real star players but Adam Johnson can be a tricky little winger who can score the occasional spectacular goal.

West Bromwich Albion : Based in the Midlands, their main rivals left in the PL are Aston Villa, most of their other rivals like Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester & Wolves have sunk to the lower levels. A very nondescript team that just exists. No stars, no fans, their only real claim to fame is that they are the only team to break the old adage that 'if you're bottom by Christmas you'll go down' when they survived on the last day of the 2004/2005 season despite being rock bottom at Christmas.

Cardiff City : Based in South Wales they have just arrived in the Premier League. One of only two sides that play outside England in the PL, the other is their deadly rivals Swansea City. This is a very fierce and violent derby with kick-off times often very early to prevent the fans drinking and often away fans banned completely. Cardiff moved into a new stadium a few years ago and have a Malaysian owner called Vincent Tan who is widely regarded as a bit of a joke or mad man. Among his stunts that have angered the fans are changing the club's traditional colours from Blue to Red saying that it would bring more luck and make far eastern sponsors look more favourably on the team and sacking the clubs head of recruitment and replaced him with a callow 23-year-old Kazakhstani with no prior experience in football who unluckily couldn't take up the role after failing to get a UK work permit.

Fulham : A quaint club in West London. No particular strong rivals despite being less than a few miles from Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers. Really old ground with a cottage in one corner used as the dressing room and directors area, also the only English ground with a tree in the away end. Now owned by the Jacksonville Jaguars owner but the previous owner Mohamend Al-fayed was a great fan of Michael Jackson and put a statue of him outside the ground and featured him on the club's merchandise.

[Reg]

Man City looked pretty impressive in thier fa cup victory over Chelsea....seemed like a different team and flavor than when they fell 1-0 earlier to them this month...is Man City going to take the PL this year?

[Borealis]

As Nigel mentioned, I choose Cardiff because they were the lone Welsh team, even though I root for Liverpool!!

[Reg]

Here is a sneak peek at the front runners in the voting so far-

Sunderland

will probably close the polls by tomorrow evening so get your vote in now.

[Nigel]

Man City looked pretty impressive in thier fa cup victory over Chelsea....seemed like a different team and flavor than when they fell 1-0 earlier to them this month...is Man City going to take the PL this year?

City are still competing for all four trophies at the moment. On Tuesday we face one of Europe's best teams (Barcelona) in the Champions league then on March 1st we play in the League Cup Final at Wembley (home of the Underground ha ha ) against ..... Sunderland. A week later we face Wigan in the quarter-final of the FA cup. Somewhere between now & early May we have to fit in 13 Premier League games. A hectic schedule but we could do it injuries permitting. That was the difference between the two Chelsea games, the second one we had three players back from injury.

[Reg]

Making a come back....

Cardiff

[Reg]

Deadlocked at 4 to 4...sometimes I think people just want to see the world burn...guess if nothing changes by tonight, I can flip a coin...


on a brighter side I downloaded and installed picture packs for the first time and now have real life pictures to go along detailed statistically ratings....

the people who do the pictures have kept them updated even up into January's transfers...for all the major football leagues which come out to more than 55,000 or so players....lot of work and dedication has to go into that....

[Coqui]

I broke the tie, on the very analytical ground that it would be more fun to take over for a crazy owner. I tried FM'12 eons ago, and play FM 2011 (and FIFA '13) on my iPhone from time-to-time. I will be following your posts with interest.

[Reg]

Well if it stays that way I will certainly welcome it....after all New Orleans is owned by Jack Cobb so working for insanity is kind of what I do...

I have become slightly addicted to FM 2014 - partly because I have given up on watching most major sports both college and professional and am trying to assimilate football knowledge and so its very challenging...I have had to read up on tactics and styles although there are many tactics that have been shared I am avoiding copying anyone person's directly....

also I like the whole idea of a commercial less half with a short half time and another commercial less half is pretty appealing - also means most matches can be watched in less that 2 hours - very little stoppage time - and it is usually pretty exciting action - though some matchups aren't that great....

My most successful attempt at playing so far has been to win promotion with semi-professional Margate from the Skrill South up one level...though I quickly was relegated the next season....

I am looking forward to the added options a fully professional league offers though Cardiff City does look to be a bit more of a challenge than Sunderland...but both are slated to end towards the bottom of the league....

[Nigel]

Margate have done very well to get where they currently are, so for you to get them up another level was no mean feat but you'll need some very good defensive tactics to make any of the four teams do anything. The hardest thing though is to get midfielders to supply your forwards with balls they can turn into goals. It doesn't matter getting beat 6-0 or more against the top teams, it's all about scoring enough to beat the teams that are around you in the league