____________ ___________ / | / | / |/ | | ___ | ___ | | / | | / | | | \___| | \___| | | | | \ |\ | \________ | \_______ | | | | | | | | | FA Premier League Football Manager | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |___| |___| FAQ/Tips Final Version (26/9/2002) Copyright Author: Jiahui Cai (flixflux@hotmail.com) ========================== Disclaimer: The below is not my interpretation of the actual abilities of real life players but rather what is present in the game. In other words, don't sue me if I've stated anywhere in this FAQ that a player sucks. =========================== Contents: 1. Intro 2. Tricks 3. Strategies 4. Player Tips =========================== Intro ========= Hello people. I'll start by telling you what is in and what's not in my FAQ. There's no player stats in here because they are constantly changing and to scout every single player and include their stats would make this FAQ unreadable but what I've done is to add a list of recommended player and a suitable position. There are no cheatcodes in this FAQ because I'm not really into cheatcodes but I've included a bunch of tricks I've found. Another thing you should know is that this is not a walkthrough and there're no instructions on how to play the game. I'm assuming you already have the game and know how the game plays. Now on with the FAQ!!! P.S: Sorry for boring your pants off. You can put them back on now. =========================== Tricks ======= The below are tricks to the game. Some have no direct effect on the results of your team while others seem to be some sort of cheat. You can do the judging. *Loan Trick If you want to buy a player but the other club won't sell at the price you want, you might wish to check if that player is available for loan and what sort of position he holds at that club. If he's a reserve, loan him in. When you receive a confirmation email about the loan, save your game then approve the loan. If the player is unwanted at that club, you would receive 2 emails the next 'day', one stating that you've loaned him successfully and the other, that his contract has terminated. You can then go to the transfer window, look under 'International' and find him there under free transfer. The good thing about free transfers is that you can offer quality players low wages and long contracts and they'd agree. If you're short on money, you might also wish to try a modification of this trick. Specifically seek out players that are on the reserve list but have high values. Do the same as above and agree to his wage demands. When he's at your club, put him up for transfer. Clubs will offer you money for him. *How to get players you want Let's say you want a player at another club but the club doesn't want to sell no matter how much you're willing to pay. (Halmstads won't sell me Fredrik Ljungberg for infinite pounds once) What you can do is to put up your unwanted players who play at that area for transfer (specific positions might not work because some clubs don't play their players in their specialised areas). If the club with your wanted player bids in, sell your player to them. After that, bid in for the player you want again and the club might be willing to sell him to you. This trick will work provided the target club actually wants your player and that they think highly of him. You might also want to bid for the player you want before his club's next match because if your sold player is really bad, the club might relegate him to the reserves and not sell you the player you want. An alternate method is to put all your players who play in that area up for loan. When the target club offers to loan one in, approve it. After that, try to buy in the wanted player like above except that after you buy the player, you might want to terminate the loan. *Valuation bugs I think this happened because the developers didn't think of it this way. After buying or selling a player, you would realise that the value of the player is the amount of money you offered for the transfer and is not an accurate reflection of his abilities. I think the game meant for it to be this way to make for a fairer transfer system. What they didn't think of is how this can be manipulated to the player's advantage. The value of the player changes once the clubs have agreed on a fee, before wage negotiations begin. What you can do to make more money is to agree on the highest fee offered, go back to the player screen and cancel the transfer, then put him up for transfer again. You'd notice his value's risen to the offered value. If you do this a lot of times, you'll get a really expensive player. Conversely, you can rise the value of some unknown player from another club by offering insane amounts of money for him (eg. $10000000000). That club will of course, happily agree but instead of negotiating with the player, you opt out of the deal. Now look at that player's stats again. His value's way high! This actually gets his club into trouble because they can't seem to sell him off. If you wait long enough for his contract to expire,you can do the later part of the loan trick. *Youth Team Promote ALL your youth players. Offer them any sort of contract you want but with minimum wage of course. Next, look up their stats and if they're really bad, sell them away. *To build a no frills team Scout for young players with strengths in any area of your choice. This is because youth players from other clubs are normally better than your own (at least in my case it seems so) and their wages are really low. Offer them a long contract so you can train them if they aren't up to scratch. *Buildings When possible, try to place buildings you want to construct on barren land. The less obstacles in your buildings' way, the less time and money it would cost to build it. BUT do NOT place your restaurants, clubhouses and other money making buildings far from your stadium. They make less money like that. *Injury trick If the club of a player you want doesn't want to sell him to you, be patient and wait til he gets injured. When you offer a price for him at that time the club will sell him to you most of the time (unless there're not enough players) BUT do beware of the situation known as .... *The Injury Dummy Before you buy any injured players, check that they are not injured for 27135weeks (or anything similar). Apparently (unless you cannot count) this means that they're out for eternity. Forever. Which means they can't play any matches for you. Which means you're paying their wages for fun. In real life, it's humane to take pity on players like that. But this is a game. It's not REAL. So don't do that. *Saving money Loan off your injured players to save on their wages. When they recover, terminate the loan. Loan off reserve players. When you need them, terminate the loan. This gives your reserves playing experience, increasing their stats. *Less injuries More rest = less injuries BUT More rest= less time on fitness and training = decrease in stats Enough said. *To get good players So you've found a good player but the club won't sell. What you can do is to wait til the end of the season and he might be available for loan. Or better still, for sale. Also, try scouting for players from the ages 16-18 at the end of the season. When players retire, they don't just disappear. Someone with really good stats in a few areas sharing the same first or last name as the retired would turn up. Then again, some of these player-reincarnates really suck. I found a Clarence Bergkamp once (after Dennis Bergkamp and Clarence Seedorf retired) and he was really bad. *Contract Termination This is a little risky. If your players are nearing the end of their contracts, you can choose to raise their wages to convince them to stay or they'd leave on a free transfer when their contracts end. Sometimes, after they bid you farewell, you can find them on the transfer window , offer them a long contract with really low pay and they'll accept. Other times, they'd be snapped up real fast or they just disappear. *Retirement When your players' contracts end when they're of age 33-37, there's a good chance they'll choose to retire. To 'change' their minds, what you can do is to put them up for transfer, sell them away, then buy them back. You can lengthen their contracts by 36 months on average each time you do that. I don't know if there's an age limit in the game...my oldest player is currently 40. This concludes my section. =========================== Strategies ======== Everything's in point form so it's easier to follow. + Straight up + ------------- This is what I did to get my Division 3 club to the Premier League in 3 seasons..I won the European cup in the 5th season. I played with Plymouth by the way. - Scour the transfer market for players on free transfer and offer all of them contracts. - Look at the wages window and put non-first team players that have high wages or low stats up for transfer. - When the players arrive, check their stats and put the ones with lousy stats up for transfer. This will give you a reasonable amount of money. - Keep about 18 players in your squad and loan off the rest. You save on the wages this way. And besides, more players in your squad means more injuries to your first team players (this is apparently how the game works..beats me why). - Start constructing buildings. Loan money if you need to. Start with the ones that raise stats if you feel that your squad needs a stats upgrade. If your squad's already up to scratch, start with the money making buildings like the clubhouse. - After you get your name or your club on the rank table, search for better players to upgrade your squad. They'll now be more willing to join for a lower wage unless they're already playing first team for a better club (of higher rank or division) +Expanding your worldclass club + ------------------------------- This is if you start with a club that is already filled with players with high stats. I've played with Arsenal for 6 seasons once but my game got erased..I'm into my fifth now. - Make money by doing the same as the above. - Constuct buildings like above - Expand your stadium. This will increase the fanbase in the long run. - Not succeeding in Europe? Buy strikers off the teams that are winning. - Always buy merchandise at the cheapest possible price..you might have to wait for this. Buy in bulk if you have a large fan base. Near the end season, decrease the prices to get rid of the stock. - Increase your ticket price. Your stadium will still fill. Trust me. - Improve your pitch. Buy up all the options available. +If you really hate a club+ --------------------------- I've a sinking feeling the developers really hate Manchester United. Why? Because no matter what team I play with, the AI will cause Man U to get relegated most seasons. The fun in playing the game this way is in destroying the team you really hate, then abandoning it the next season and let the AI do the rest of the damage. Guess which team I played with *evil grin* P.S: Please don't spam me. - Choose your victim - Sell off all your good players and replace them with lousy ones. - With the money from the sale of your good players, reconstruct the stadium by reducing the seating capacity. - Play the game as normal. It's ok to do a good job of it. After all you need a good reputation. - Near the end of the season, apply for a job at another club..the one you like. - Amend the contract of any (or all) player(s). Offer him a wage increase of $100000000 or any large sum of money. The game will take that sum to be infinity. - Buy more lousy players. - Abandon ship. =========================== Player Tips =========== This is a list of players I found to be good. I played with Arsenal FC and won the European cup, the Intercontinental Cup, the Premier League Title, the English Cup, the League Cup, the Super Cup (is this the name?) and the Charity Shield in one season so you know what kind of players I have. Goalkeepers ----------- Seaman Manninger Magits Buffon Defenders ---------- Campbell Lizarazu Adams Petrescu Nikolov (he's really cheap and plays real good!!) Ballack Belenguer (he's a midfielder but I play him at the back) Santos K. Betsy K. Bain (I think there're loads of Bains and Betsys) Cascini Midfielders ------------ Seedorf Nakata Ince Zidane (his wage was $5000 only.) Overmars Viera Riquelme (really cheap but fantastic) Sampiao (he's on Free Transfer when you start the game) (Jose Roberto) da Silva (he's also on free transfer but loads of clubs want to buy him for abnormally large sums of money. beats me why but you might want to get him for that reason) Ageev Attacking Midfield/Centre Forwards ----------------------------------- Sensoussi Steinarsson You can play both of them anyway up front actually. I use them in this position though Ikpeba (he's suprisingly good...at least for me) Juan C Gomez Forwards --------- Baggio Ortega M. Jansen Sukur (another cheap player) Mancini S. Anderson Shearer del Piero Kluivert K. Phillips (cheap too) Bergkamp Paolo Nunes ====================================== Conclusion ========== This concludes my FAQ. If you've any queries, you can direct them to me at flixflux@hotmail.com