uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu FIFA Total Club Mannager: 2005 Platform: PS2 E-Mail: t_mac_daddy@hotmail.com Version 1.0 All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. Copyright 2006 Paul Cross (Crossyboyo) ----------------------------------- Table of contents: Version History Introduction About the game Decisions, Decisions (A) Operation: Clean Up 1: I'd Have Got Away With It If It Weren't For Those Pesky Kids! 2: Dad's Army (B) Take The Long Road And Walk It... 1: Club Facilities 2: Backroom Staff 3: Buying Players 4: Contracts 5: Youth Team 6: Training 7: Career 8: Maintaining Success Credits Contact info Legal stuff ------------------------------------ Version History Uploaded on 28/01/2006: Purchased the game, after about 2 weeks of playing I realised very quickly the mistakes I had made. Realised again 2 seasons in the steps I could have taken to vastly improve my team. Too late to start again,but am happy to help people learn from my mistakes. ------------------------------------ Introduction My name is Paul Cross and this is the first FAQ I have written so be gentle! Long time user of Gamefaqs, but there are so many people out there better at this type of stuff than me. 23 years old (24/05/1982), living in Bournemouth, UK. ------------------------------------ About The Game Total Club Manager, is , fairly obviously, a management game which allows you to take control of a club and mould it to your heart's content. Hopefully, with successfull results... ------------------------------------ Decisions, Decisions If we stick for now with the English Game, you essentially have 2 options. (A) Take control of one of the elite teams (Arsenal, Chelsea etc.) & clean up from day one (B) Take control of a Division 2 Club and work your way up As I'm sure you appreciate, the approach to take with both of these is very different, especially when you feature in the +£25,000,000 bonus the game allows you at the beginning. ------------------------------------ (A) Operation Clean:Up Choosing this mode allows you to ignore the majority of the in-depth options in the game. The backroom staff will be in place, the stadium will be a vision of modern architecture and your Youth Team an irrelevance. You will be focusing solely on bringing in the best players for that run at the Premiership / Champions' League Title. If you are looking at sustained success (you can play up to 25 seasons) you will need to have a blend of young talent and the more mature & elite players in your side. If you can find players that can combine the 2, then even better. Players are rated by the Potential Level (this is an indicator of how good they are when happy and settled) and Rating (a 1-5 mark that shows how quickly they learn new skills). A potential of 12.0 or above is considered v.good and a star rating of at least 4 is essential. (1) I'd Have Got Away With It If It Weren't For Those Pesky Kids! Here's some players to look out for: GK: 100 Iker Cassilas. The 2nd best keeper in the game, young with a 5-Star Rating. This player will hold down your GK spot for the next 10 years... V. Valdes: A top 10 goal-keeper, with a 4 star rating and only £5.5m. Great value LB: Gael Clichy. A useful left-back, who is extremely strong for a player of his age. The 4 Star Rating and reasonable cost are bonuses. RB: Seitardis. Fantastic player for an incredible price. Vanden Borne. 16 years of age, 4 star rating and all for under £1m? Gotta be happy. CB: John Terry. To be honest, no young talent leaps out at this position, but you rarely go wrong with a player of Terry's stature. Philip Senderos. Not great, but young and great value. Gerald Pique. Low rating (3) a concern, but at only 17, worth a punt. LM: Arjen Robben. Not cheap at £12m, but young and supremely talented. CM: Diego. 19 years old, already skilled and at 19, can only get better. A bargain at only £2.25m. Xabi Alonso. £12m gets you a young player, with a great rating, not yet in his prime (22). AM: Kaka. £29m but you're getting what you pay for. R. Van Der Vaart. Not quite Kaka, but much better value (£5.5m) ST: Wayne Rooney: Perfection ST: C. Martins. 19 years old a great striker and at £10m reasonable value. Other players to consider, but initially unavailable: C. Ronaldo, Carlos Alberto, Nigel De Jong, Adriano, C. Burke. (2) Dad's Army Of course, if money is ABSOLUTELY no object and you are only concerned with fielding the absolute best team possible from Day One here you go: POS NAME AGE POT. LVL RATING COST GK: Gianluigi Buffon 26 15.0 5 £22m LB: John Arne Risse 23 12.2 3 £6m RB: Cafu 34 12.2 4 £750K CB: Rio Ferdinand 25 13.0 4 £11m CB: Sol Campbell 29 12.6 4 £8m LM: Ryan Giggs 30 14.6 5 £14.6m RM: G. Zambrotta 27 14.4 5 £14m CM: Kaka (AM) 22 13.8 5 £29m CM: Valeron (AM) 29 13.8 5 £26m ST: Djibrill Cisse 23 13.6 5 £21m ST: Christian Vieri 30 13.2 5 £16m CF: A. Del Piero 29 13.2 5 £19m CF: Raul 27 13.2 5 £15m There are better players around, however these are generally unavailable. If you're feeling lucky, try the following: ST: R.Van Nistelrooy 28 14.4 5 ST: Thierry Henry 26 14.4 5 ST: Roy Mackaay 14.2 5 ST: Andrei Shevchenko 13.6 5 ST: David Trezeguet 13.6 5 AM: Zinedine Zidane 32 14.2 5 DM: Patrick Viera 13.8 5 LM: Robert Pires 13.6 5 ---------------------------------------- (B) Take The Long Road And Walk It... In this mode, you will have to change everything about the club you take over. You'll start off playing 2 one man and his dog in a a stadium that was purchased flat-packed from IKEA and a team that would get mistaken for Dad's Army. So, what's to be done? My first piece of advice? Take the money. £25,000,000 sounds like a lot of money, but you'll be lucky if a penny of that goes towards your team. We need to rebuild the stadium and get the backroom staff / facilities to Premiership standard before we can build a team to match. You need to set yourself a plan of action before you go any further. Are you going to wheel and deal in old pro's to ensure you get the best team possible for the lowest cost? Or are you going to go with youth? My personal feeling is that whilst the first plan will allow you to rocket up the table (and achieve the elusive Consecutive Promotions Award) you'll struggle to make money on these players and have to pay high wages. The youth option will allow you to achieve long-term success with a settled team for v. cheap wages. This guide is going to focus on the Youth Option. Feel free to experiment with buying old (or as I like to think of it, Redknapping your team) By all means e-mail me your thoughts & I'll include those I feel are relevant. Here's what you need for the Youth Option (1) Club Facilities Having the best facilities allows you to build your club in whichever direction you choose. For a club that's going to develop players, only the best in training facilities will do. Spending money on this now will allow you to buy in the best staff and develop the players you have. I would recommend buying the following asap: Club Centre Level 2: £1million 39 Weeks: Hire All Employees Research Level 2: £800,000 39 Weeks: Learn New Skills 10% Faster Training Grounds Level 2: £600K 13 Weeks: 10% Fitness Bonus for jogging/traning (2) Backroom Staff Hiring the right backroom staff can make a huge difference in this game. The more you need to upgrade your players/club, the more important they are. The better the staff, the better the club. Areas to focus on: Hire the Best Construction Manager going. Make sure he can save you at least 15% on your Construction Costs. Anything else is a bonus. In the first year alone you'll be spending £25 million on construction. There's £3.75 million saved straight away. Buy the best Scouts available and send them on Scouting Tours for the entire pre-season. If they don't come out with young players better than already in your side, then reset. You can easily pick up £1 million of talent for about £100K outlay. Even a Level 3 Scout should be finding 18 year old talent with a Potential Level of 6.5 and a 4-5 Star Rating. That's not bad for the level you are at... (3) Buying Players To be honest, the players your Scouts are finding for you should be better than anything on the market. My advice is leave the scouts to it until the week prior to your 1st match. Look at you team & try to determine what gaps you have. Sign players to feel these gaps only unless something exceptional is available. It is difficult to tell you who to sign as the low-level players can sometimes be random. My general advice is this. Look for a Potential Level of at least 7.0 a Talent Rating of at least 3 and no older than 22. As far as defenders go, Zaukini has always done well. Searching through on a new game, the following players caught my eye: POS NAME AGE TALENT POTENTIAL COST GK: J. Hart 17 3 7.8 300K CD: Zaukini 18 3 7.6 400K LM: Duncheon 18 3 7.2 450K RM: Pezko 19 3 7.6 250K* CM: Bolter 20 3 7.6 425K CM: Penford 19 3 7.4 550K DM: Wurtz 20 3 7.8 225K* ST: Peters 16 2 7.6 275K ST: S. Lee 18 3 7.6 650K ST: Kim DH 20 3 8.0 500K* ST: McLeod 19 3 7.6 750K * FOREIGN In all honesty, none of these players are any better than your scouts can find. If in doubt, unless you speak the language, try to buy British as foreign players often lose morale as a result of not speaking English. The 3 names at the top of the list represent the best investment. Beware. There are some great players which will show as Not For Sale. Usually, they'll have a 4-5-Star Rating. Leave these players be. Great players you can't sign represent nothing but heartache and often end up filling up your shortlist for no purpose. Occassional these great players will become available, but very rarely. Have a search every 2months and snap them up if you're lucky enough to find them. (4) Contracts The wages of the players you want are generally going to be £5K per week. 22x £5K = £110K per week. My tip? Offer huge goal bonuses in return for no weekly wage. £30K goal bonus per player (clean sheet bonus for GK) means that winning 3-0 every game will only cost you £120K. If you can do this for a 5 year deal then players will cost you practically nothing. Even better no worrying about the wages of your bench. No play? No pay. (5) Youth Team The players your scouts are picking up are generally better than anything that will come through your Youth Team. But keep an eye on the 12-14 yr olds with a Potential Level of 5.0 plus (if you're lucky enough to have them!) Give these players tutors and mentors and hopefully they'll reward your patience. (6) Training A key part of the game. Keep your players fit, their long & short passing together and ensure they can carry out whatever tactics you feel are required. Pre-Season is vital. Your fitness must be at 100 by your first game. If you can manage 5 for short/long passing, counter-attacks, pressing and build-up play you're well on your way. ALWAYS use Locker-Room once a week, if you've got the chance squeeze in some individual training and remember Sunday is not a rest day... Don't neglect the individual training option (using the shoulder buttons) ALWAYS "welcome" your new players for an instant morale boost. If any players fall-out try to patch things up using "learn to get along with one another". If one of your foreign players really starts to suffer, "send them home". Use your remaining talks to ensure players "give everything in training". LEVEL or SKILLS? Personally, I prefer to amend my player's training preference wherever possible to improve their skills (pass/head etc). Not only are these learnt quicker, they are also a more tangible benefit. If you target the skills that have the lower values, these will be learned quicker. By clicking on Youth Team, the same processs can be carried out for your younger players. (7) Career By clicking on career, you can not only check out how great you are doing, but you can also see what bonuses are available. You normally have three objectives to complete, each of which gives you bonus management points. If they seem reachable, go for it. (8) Maintaining Success Hopefully, by now you have the facilities, backroom and playing staff to embark upon a successful managerial career. Once you feel financially sound, try to divert some money into improving your stadium. After all, what's the point of building such a great team if no-one can see it? Build each corner to it's maximum extension, 1 corner at a time. Finally, don't push too hard! It's a long road. It's better to stay in the division you are in until you can win it comfortably. Don't bring in loan players to boost your quality if you're paying £25K per week, per player to do so. And most of all, have fun. Oh and the occasional Cup Run doesn't go amiss... ---------------------------------------- Credits There is some people I would like to thanks for making my guide a good guide, helping me out on the guide and giving me good tips for the game, here they are in no particular order: CjayC, for creating Gamefaqs and having a great website host my guide, thanks CjayC EA Sports for creating a great management game. Who'd have thunk it? To RaChuChu for allowing me to use his Championship Manager 205 guide as a template, as well as being a great help generally. Cheers fella! Anybody who's emailed me, I read all my emails near daily and reply to them all, unless I can't understand them, the more people who email me the happier I become, thanks e-mailers Myself, for writing the guide. What can I say? ------------------------------------------------- Contact info If you need to contact me about this guide you can at t_mac_daddy@hotmail.com. If you contribute anything to the guide full credit shall be given to you. Don't be shy to email me I don't bite, im a nice guy, although try not to email me in foreign languages that I don't understand, I only speak English, thanks. Also you may occasionally see me wandering the message boards, my name is Crossyboyo. -------------------------- Legal stuff This FAQ cannot be used on any sites other than the ones listed: Gamefaqs.com If you would like to use this guide on your website you will have to ask me first. Any site that posts this FAQ without permission will have the appropriate legal actions taken against them. This may not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright.