Football Manager Society III

Remember reading on here how people (including myself) struggled to get players to go out on loan.

Anyway, I analysed my team and started offering the majority of the players I knew I needed to go out on loan on the first day of the season.

Fast forward to late August, I've loaned out 12 players (all the ones I wanted to) to both affiliated clubs and one or two to other (bigger) teams.

Not sure if this is noteworthy but I have struggled in the past getting players on loan in FM12.

[FM12] Struggling to motivate myself to get rid of a 32 year old and declining Yaya Sanogo.

He's my 4th choice striker this season (out of 4), and when I count the younger strikers out on loan, he's 7th out of 7.
Out of contract at the end of the season, and I know I need to bring another young striker through the ranks, I just can't resist giving him a new deal.

And on that note... £3.4m, yey or ney? He's a target man. Will a target man work in a very fluid passing system?

Look at PSG with Ibrahimovic, they have a very fluid passing system, very cohesive in possession, Your player has good passing for his age. He needs to improve his off the ball movement and his pace. Also you'd want a more aggressive forward as a target man so tutor him with a striker that's more aggressive.

Very true. He does have improvements to make but I'm sure he'll get there with the right tutoring, like you said. Do you think I should sign him up? I've agreed a £3.6m fee and contract for him and it just needs to be confirmed. (BTW- he's dubbed the next Les Ferdinand )

My only worry is he won't grab enough goals as a target man. One of my main strikers is an Advanced Forward, gets tonnes of assists but doesn't score many, which is an issue when I play 4-2-3-1. Instead I've been playing a 20 year old poacher who is scoring for fun (the guy has bags of potential- he'll be better than Sanogo ever was IMO). That guy is third choice, my other main striker, along with the Advanced Forward player is a Deep Lying Forward, he gets goals but is fairly injury prone. When he has a run of games, he fires then in, but sporadic injuries stagnate this.

I've got 3 other young strikers out on loan, all poacher type players. One is doing incredible, 19 and getting a goal a game in the Eredivisie, then there's another who's 18/19, playing sporadically, and the third one is 23, who I'm probably going to sell as I don't think he's good enough.

I think I may just let Sanogo run down his contract He's not interested in coaching so there'd be no point keeping him for that. If I sign this new striker, he'll be my 8th. I tend to keep 4 for the first team and send the rest on loan as I have a lot of youngsters.

With that in mind, I could potentially have an AF, DLF, TM and a few Poacher(s) at my disposal upfront. Which combinations of these do you find most effective? My current systems are 4-2-3-1 (wide, with CM's), 4-1-2-1-2 (narrow) and 3-4-1-2. I'm open to chopping and changing these, although I won't make any major changes until the end of the season. I have two very good CAM's and some decent wingers, as well as some great strikers, so it's very hard to fit all of these into system. With that in mind, I'm open to any formation suggestions.

As for playing two up front, my initial instinct is to play either the DLF or the TM (with support duties) partnered with a Poacher or AF (attack). When playing one up front, use either a poacher or DLF (attack).

Should I sign this striker, I'll try and send him to an affiliated club for the remainder of the season, then reassess my striking options come the beginning of the new season.

You have to look at the guys game. Maybe he could be a complete forward. The problem with advanced forwards is that they tend to drift out wide on the flanks to help support the forwards, I have a similar issue with my forwards, which is why since (FM 12 where I had some top quality strikers doing Messi stats) I do not have a clear goalscoring striker. The threat is from my midfield. My AM is getting 25 league goals a season, my strikers are rotated a lot so generally get 1 in 2 around 10-20 goals, my wingers get like 10-15 goals a season mainly because of the role.

Well I'd assume the 19 year old will make it into the squad, probably do a loan in the big 5 leagues for a mid table team and see how he does.

I struggle with more than 3 strikers, I have a midfielder who can play up front (the 25 goal a season AM) so it allows me not to be in a pickle. I have 3 natural strikers, one is 26, one is 22 and the other is 18. The 18 year old has the potential to be better than all of them, but he's not at a better level than those strikers currently, he went on loan to a top 4 team in italy and got a good amount of appearances, got about 6 goals in 23 appearances at the age of 17 where he had 10 starts so he seems like he'll get better.

I use 4-3-1-2, or 4-2-2-2 or 4-3-2-1. I'm not scared to play a narrow formation.

Yeah that's a good tactic with DLF+AF or TM with poacher/AF. I think poacher is best when playing with two up top as the Target man/DLF will do the main bitch work for the striker. Also you can use a Complete forward as either one of the two.

This guy.

He's going to be absolutely amazing.

How do we think this will work out? (Ignore the players in the formation and the player roles)

I did this when struggling in a game and go all out attack.

3-6-1 is better though.