Life in Football Manager

This idea has been done sort of once before, Mike in one of his old carnations, sacked the whole of the England side and sometimes who wouldn’t want to do that? But as well as sacking them brought them down a peg or two to see how quickly they could rekindle their careers. Well I have done sort of the same I have taken some of the best players and managers in the world and sacked them and deleted the first digit in their reputation attributes and I am going to chart the game and see how they do. I haven’t changed anything else so they are still as talented as they always were just they are little known now.

I have also done the reverse randomly picking some lower league players and boosting there reputations in order to see if they get picked up by the bigger clubs. So that aim of this challenge basically is to find out how big a role reputation has within the game. Will the over rated players get picked up and played at some of the bigger clubs, will it take years for the bigger players to make it back to the top or will their attributes quickly build there reputation back up again?

The first name to be brought up to me when I had the idea of doing this was Cristiano Ronaldo, as a Liverpool fan I have to watch this guy every week with his silky skills on match of the day, he’s amazing and it make me sick that he is just not very modest about the whole situation, he knows when he gets on a football field he will kick you arse. So I won’t hesitate bringing his reputation down a peg or two and deprive United of one of their best players. Although I am doing exactly the same to my own team, Torres who this season seems to be the only goal threat to the opposition will have his own reputation culled and sent packing followed by Lampard. I have also culled a few stars abroad, one from Italy, the machine that is Ibrahimovic and god himself Brazilian Dani Alves who plys his trade in Spain.

I have been visiting a few Tranmere Rovers games this season the cheap prices make it more attractive then paying for any Premiership games which I may miss out on because I don’t fit the criteria. One of the star players at Prenton Park is Calvin Zola only this week they were singing “He used to be shite, but now he’s alright, walking in a Zola wonderland”. So I have bumped up his reputation to reflect this. Leeds man Alan Thompson will also gain a few numbers on his reputation along with Hull’s Michael Turner. Over in the continent I delved into the Pisa team and gave Juliano an inflated Ego along with Sociedad’s Agirretxe keeping Juliano in post to see what happens.

But the players are not the only victim’s of this sabotage I have picked on a few managers, Arsenal coach Wenger is one of the most revered and respected men in football. But as far as the world of FM in concerned he has disappeared and Pat Rice has taken up his position at the Emirates. The second will be Wycombe Wanders manager and ex-Celtic player Paul Lambert who will be fast tracked up in reputation without winning a single competition.

The results in themselves were rather disappointing after just one season three of the biggest players actually made the signing straight away to Inter Milan, maybe it had something to do with their impressive scouting system that was able to search out the little gems of Torres and Ronaldo and they must have already had people at the club who knew who this Zlatan guy was who eventually joined back up with his team. Dani Alves went swanning off to England, not Chelsea like normally happens within the game but it was Liverpool that won his signature. Frank made the worse move out of all of them, but he stayed in the top flight signing with Newcastle United, all played regular football and put in great performances along with it.

As for that players whose reputation was set higher there was really similar results, Calvin Zola signed for another League One side, arguably for a worse team then Tranmere, when he went down south and signed for Northampton. Alan Thompson was unable to find a new job after I released him and decided to hang up his boots and spend time with the kids and Juliano is still happy to play regular football with Pisa without much fuss, Michael Turner arrived back in the Championship playing for Southampton via a move to Falkirk. More interestingly Agirretxe’s careers took a much better turn, managing to earn a contract with Tottenham although he didn’t play many games and when he did he was rather naff.

The best results though came from the management side of it all. The misfortunes of Everton and Tranmere created openings for Arsene and Paul to get back into management. But unlike the players above who naturally went back to the level they were very used to Arsene took the Rovers job while Paul Lambert was able to pick up the job at the Toffees. Lambert wasn’t very good at his job really finishing 15th in his first season and 7th in the second. But is still in post despite there being rumours that he would be given the boot. Wenger I was a bit surprised at, he was unable to save Tranmere from the drop down to the League Two and when there was unable to get them back up losing in the Play-off fina maybe if I played them for a few more years I would have seen him flourish.

Although I thought this game might have lasted a bit longer and I would have more then one part to write about it, it seems that the results already speak for themselves about how the game deals with reputations. It seems like the boards at the clubs are more interested in what other people think about managers and they go on recommendations rather then hard evidence, many may say this is just like real life. It also seems that these clubs with the much improved scouting systems are able to spot the talent despite their reputation and willing to give it a go. Either that or the AI is looking into parts of the players hidden from the rest of us.