Week 7 Processing

Man City are selling Drogba to Dave at Rangers for £1million, quite a loss for Geoff on that deal, but I was he REALLY doesnt like the player after all.

Arsenal are selling Mary Chamakh to Leicester for £5millions, good deal for both teams that one, but i'm not sure Leicester need more central attackers when they play WHV and their winghalves are certainly the weakest link in their side. Harry Kewell can still be brilliant in flashes but wont last forever and Scott Brown is okay without being exceptional.

Ryan Bertrand returns to Blackpool for another 8 week loan and his teamates certainly missed him this week.

John Arne Riise returned to Liverpool for £12millions as most people expected he would sooner or later. Reality manager, Kenny Dalglish fancied him at RB and was pretty desperate to improve his RB so offered the full whack, which is 2 * tribval in cash, just in case you were wondering how it worked.

Good cash deal for Chelsea but why are they still playing MIX without a playmaker ? like I said, it may work if your AM or TM are good enough, but it may not as well, which may be why they have started to 'slow down' a bit recently, and it probably wont work against any of the top sides.

Tactical systems can be 'circumnavigated' by good players.

Paul Hemmings wrote:

...and it probably wont work against any of the top sides.

Oh dear.....

Kevin Davies leaves Leicester in a £2millions deal ( again tribval * 2 ) to join up with reality manager Owen Coyle at Bolton, where he'll be a good backup to Freddy Kanoute and Claudio Pizarro. Bolton are selling Jason Koumas for £2millions to balance the books.

I guess I should have read ahead abit cos Leicester have moved to improve things on the wings by signing Keiran Richardson from Fulham for £5.3millions, another good deal for them this week.

Ben had to send a private detective out this week to follow his assistant manager, AVB, who was visiting Wayne Rooney's pad on the shy, looks like AVB might be out of a job soon.

Jamie tried to transfer Sylvain Distin to Anderlecht but I couldn't find any permanent bids for him so I couldn't put it through, which may be good news for Lille who bid on him this week. Still got those deals to do atm. All the private deals get done first.

I reviewed Jose Enrique favorably for Watford as he was immense against City on every occasion i've seen him this season, so he is now a 9797.

Will has done some wheeling and dealing to get hold of Chris Samba for £8millions and it might not be long before he is drafted into his Fulham side maybe. I also reviewed Skrtel's skill levels as they were a bit on the low side as he too has been much better all season than in previous years, strange how a change of manager can affect players so much.

Charlton are looking much leaner and meaner now having also offloaded Jay Spearing and Sung Ki to Nantes as well as selling Lee Cattermole and Emmy Insua, this will certainly help on the training pitch and with club morale.

The Sylvain Distin mystery depends with a BUY command from Blackpool as thrown into the mix but no corresponding SELL command from Watford. So I cant put it through considering Lille's bis, so I've changed it to a BID command.

Neymar returned to Nantes for another 8 week loan from Schalke and will hope to carry on his good work there.

Rob took his Boca side off on holiday this week and treated them to a relaxing holiday on the beaches of Cancun and it obviously paid off.

Michel Vorm finally gets his wish and leaves Ajax, but only for Feyenoord, not the Premiership where he wanted to go, but it might not be long now before he gets his wish. Ajax snapped up the deal in exchange for the highly rated keeper Kenneth Vermeer and ex-captain Theo Janssen who were both more than happy to join up with Greg at Ajax.

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Rob took his Boca side off on holiday this week and treated them to a relaxing holiday on the beaches of Cancun and it obviously paid off.

Lots of transfer activity everywhere else and my boys were looking a bit leggy so a slightly weakened team was fielded and some tequilas on the beach in Cancun.

Just running all the reality manager transfer bids/deals now. usually takes about an hour at least.

Rob@Inter wrote:

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Rob took his Boca side off on holiday this week and treated them to a relaxing holiday on the beaches of Cancun and it obviously paid off.

Lots of transfer activity everywhere else and my boys were looking a bit leggy so a slightly weakened team was fielded and some tequilas on the beach in Cancun.

Sounds good to me

Somebody has asked me about MIX again so we can have another chat about that while we wait for the Reality Manager stuff to run.

MIX is one of the flexible tactical systems, flexible meaning you can play many different player positions within MIX, but it is all controlled by a PLAYMAKER.

During the game he will control where the ball goes and take the ball from the other players before setting up plays. If you dont play a PM then MIX wont work as well. Firstly your other players will first look for the PM but not see one, so that gives the opposition a chance for a tackle which they wouldn't normally get if you had played a PM, secondly that player then has to decide where to send the ball and you are then depending on his abilities. If he's an AM then thats not too bad cos they have similar skills to PMs and can do quite a good job, and likewise if you play a TM, as they too can also do a good job with similar skills to a PM and both these positions also think similar to a PM in that they both pick who to pass to depending on how the other players are performing, only AMs PMs and the TM do this.

So to sum up you should play a PM but can get away with playing an AM or TM or AM and TM instead. If you dont play a PM the oppo get that extra tackle chance.

As for the rest of the team its your choice, MIX can be played with wingbacks, winghalves, wingers or dynamos as your attacking outlets.

One more little wrinkle you may not be aware off is that it is best to play wide players in pairs, ie LK and RK, LH and RH etc and not mix them up, if you do mix them up and play for instance a LW and RH then the PM has to take a second to find his man before making the pass which gives the opposition another chance to tackle him, so again it can work but has a drawback.

Does this work particularly well against other formations?

Or alternatively struggle against others?

How effective each tactical system is against each other tactical system really depends on the players that are on the pitch not on the tactics. But if both sides are evenly matched then each tactic gives advantages and disadvantages against each of the other tactics. MIX does depend on which player positions you play though cos you have so much choice with MIX.

for instance

MIX with WINGERS would be very effective against WBK

but

MIX with WINGBACKS would be disastrous defensively against WIN

thats an obvious example

Counter Attack is the typical Alex Ferguson style of playing,

LB CL CR RB LH AM DY RH TM CF

and it's a fixed formation tactic in which you could swap the AM for a BW if you wanted to but then you would have to rely on your CBs to get the ball up to the TM and he would have to drop further back into midfield to get the ball, so it doesnt work quite so well going forward, but gives you more bite in midfield.

Just curious Paul. You mentioned reviews before. Did you get a chance to do the one I arnt in? Sorry for the don't size lol. I just press print n that's the size it comes out as.

When are the press reams arriving to do pre match summarys of the teams? Or has the snow delayed them lol.

Okay I carry on running the turns now all the reality manager stuff has finished.

Martin O'Neill has bought Michel Salcido from Watford for £6millions and that should help Watford's bank balance and Joe Royle at Ipswich has splashed out £4millions on Odemwingie from Watford which will help even more.