So here we are, after tweaking and twisting widgets and tools, this is my first post on this blog, and I hope… one of many more to come 🙂
Having been more active than I ever thought I would be in recent years FM editions I think I’ve stepped a tiny bit over that boundary where you’re no longer ‘just playing a computer game’ and you find yourself dedicating some impressively large parts of your brain towards working out tactical super-systems or squad management strategies. It truly is amazing to how much depth Football Manager allows one to go into, and of course, nothing ever happens without a bit of imagination from our parts as users of the game, however everything it provides and the extent of the detail to which it does so is truly astonishing. Since I started swimming the deeper waters of FM, I’ve enjoyed a few careers, particularly in Germany, with Dynamo Dresden and VfB Stuttgart. Both saves that had a strict home-grown policy to challenge my ability as a manager, and boy, did they do just that! 9 seasons in Stuttgart literally taught me how to develop my own tactics and how and why things work or do not work in the tactical creator. Well… mostly! 🙂 What it has definitely done is it pushed me to take on the responsibility of designing my own systems and trying to give this game a chance to convince me it’s actually rooted in some form of football reality. Once you dive a bit deeper in that sense, you will definitely start taking things a bit more seriously and trust me, you’ll be amazed of the effects that has. Lastly, this intense experience has taught me one invaluable lesson: trust yourself! The thing about football is that it’s an immense world of concepts, definitions, interpretations, perceived rules, gurus and experts and yet, the game is infinitely more complex in itself. If you are going to achieve any success or enjoyment for that matter, the only thing you can do is focus on what you can understand and start building blocks of knowledge that will ultimately click into place whatever the situation you’ll be faced with. If you constantly take in opinions from left and right and have no foundation or method to translate that into your own system of thought, you will: a) never be sure of your decisions b) never build on your understanding of the game, and  c) always rely on other people’s advice. Now don’t get me wrong, the FM community is absolutely fantastic, and the level and manner of discussion is very enjoyable and educating, particularly on SI’s forum and a few other great blogs out there. Just make sure not to ‘monkey see monkey do’ and take in any information while adjusting it to the things you’re already sure of, see what you can see, and then build from there! I suppose this is one of the inner conversations I was remembering having these days, as I considered opening this site. Now that I finally have, I hope it serves the purpose of having some interesting discussion around the ideas that I come across while playing FM. My focus will be, as always, tactics and youth development, although, I’m more than open to try new things and see just how far I can go in forgetting I have a real life as well as how close to feeling like I’m actually managing the hell out of a football team.
Asymmetric 
Very good post, I hope to read a lot more of your work in the future, very interesting.
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glad to have you on board 🙂
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