How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

Lets keep the discussion in this thread on how your CM is going. Get at it gentlemen!

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

Started this last Friday with Chelsea. Played every game and currently am 5th in the standings with 45 points in 24 games played. Manchester City is on top with 60 points in 25 played games.

Highly unlikely I catch them but it is possible I will catch 2nd place Arsenal at 52 points in 24 played games. My goal was to win the league title which is highly unlikely now. 2nd place is a must as well is winning the FA Cup if I want to keep my position with Chelsea. I'm already eliminated from the Carling Cup.

Injuries have hit me hard:

Mata - MCL - 3 months left
Essein - Sprained Knee - 3 weeks left (Most consistent and his absence hurts)
Mikel - ACL - 5 weeks left
Cole - sprained ankle - 2 weeks left

I tried to sign Bale in the January transfer window as he wanted out of Tottenham. Tottenham's list price was €43,000,000. I offered €35,000,000 and they denied with a they're not selling to a rival for less than €63,000,000. I tried to scramble transfer deadline day to come up with a offer around €50,000,000 but couldn't pull a Alex deal. And no interest came for Kalou. I was able to get Adriano from Barca however.

Speaking of Kalou, he's been my most worst player. He's even had 2 Torres like moments that made me grab my head in disbelief. Fortunately Kakuta is back from loan.

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

Loving it - going well so far.

Started as Juve on Tuesday when I got the game.

Brought in Munian from Atletico to bolster my young strike force, as well as a 20 year old AMC named Kenia (?) out of Spain. Saved up the rest of my money for scouting and youth so far.

Early results in the season are promising. Through 6 games I think I'm at 4W, 1D, 1L (if memory serves). Anyways, whatever the record is, I do remember that it's good for 3rd place in Serie A.

Lost a heartbreaker 1-0 to Milan last night. Damn traitor Ibra. I should have brought someone on at the end of the game to destroy him.

I've been having trouble figuring out how to derive consistent offense out of Conte's 4-2-4ish type formation with two deep-lying CMs, but I think I'm starting to get that sorted out a bit. Typing this out it occured to me that I could always have them playing give-and-go's to get one forward.

I've been using Luca Toni as one of my starting strikers due to his size and skill in the air, and then rotating in a smaller guy (Munian, Matri, Del Piero) next to him. Toni's bagged a couple for me, and Munian had a 2 goal game.

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

Settled on using the team I played as in Fifa 10 - the rosanerri of Palermo. I liked the look of the team going in alot, some really good youth players all led by the veteran Fabrizio Miccoli.

I sold Rubinho, who was wasting away as an eckstra Goalkeeper. Also sold some of my lesser defenders and brought in both Stephen Bocchetti from a russian club (24 year old defender rated at 77) and CM Mathieu Flamini from AC Milan to give me some depth.


So far the season has started splendidly. I beat Novara away 4-2 to open up the season (with a Miccoli hat trick no less). Following that, I had a big early season test with Inter at home. Inter made some moves in the transfer period, signing Drogba away from Chelsea and selling Sneijder to Real Madrid, so I was really amped to play them. I went down 2-0 in the first half, but rallied for two insane goals to equalize in the 2nd.

Finally, in the 90th minute, I scored the go-ahead after Julio Cesar struggled to contain a header from me. Truly unbelievable comeback, but I was thrilled.

Drogba was crazy though. I was afraid everytime he touched the ball. Good pickup for Inter to be sure

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

What's the rest of the top 5 look like if you don't mind me asking? In older versions of fifa the sim engine had far too many upsets.

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

This is what mine looks like after 25 games. I'm playing as Chelsea and Man City has yet to lose a game but has like 6 draws

1.Man City
2.Chelsea
3.Man Utd
4.Liverpool
5.Fulham

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

I'm managing Blackpool in the Championship, trying to get them back to the Premier League. It's not going so well. With 16 to play we are 15 points out of a playoff spot....sitting 18th in the table, just 12 points clear of relegation.

Blackpool doesn't have a lot of money and the squad is old, so I decided early on that I would go with a youth movement, hoping I could still snag a playoff spot. I invested heavily in scouting with the limited funds that I had and aimed to find some good players on loan.

Gone from the club are

ST Gary Taylor-Fletcher (moved over the summer when a good offer from Derby came in)
CM Keith Southern (gone in August when it was clear we had enough midfield depth)
LM Bojan Djordjic (old, slow, and now a league 1 side's problem)
CB Matt Hill (we hardly knew ya)
ST Brett Ormerod (complained incessantly about playing time, so I cut him)
ST Daniel Bogdanovic (terrible at keeping possession. Now he works at the Pizza Pizza).

These moves served to lower the wage bill, get me some much-needed flexibility in transfer funds, and reduce the average age of the team by about 7 years. :)

Since we were already light on strikers, I went out and got Federico Macheda, on loan for the season, from Man United. He's been great - 9 goals - but his wages are kind of high, something I wasn't paying close enough attention to initially.

I spent the bulk of my transfer money on Danny Rose from Tottenham, who is young enough and talented enough to spend money on (rated 71 at the start of the game, which puts him in rarified air in the blackpool locker room). He's been playing both LB and LM for me as I try to decide which position is the better fit. Incidentally, his rating has gone up 2 points since I got him, and now sits at 73.

I've seen similar rating increases for some of my other players, the younger ones I inherited. It's neat to see them improve; too bad I can't say the same for my own play, which is still quite lousy. :) We are the kings of mediocre , having drawn 15 times already. So much for a quick return to the top. This is looking like a two year project.

Back on the transfer market, I also picked up a Spanish striker, a young GK on loan for backup, and a couple of free agents (one CM/LM and one CB).

Things went poorly in the early part of the season as I was learning to play. We got knocked out of the Carling Cup in the second round and put ourselves in such a hole in the league that even an undefeated November and December didn't do us much good.

In the January transfer window, with it readily apparent that hoping for a playoff push would be unrealistic, I accepted an offer for the team captain, Barry Ferguson. He will be missed, but I replaced him short-term with another loanee, Chelsea's Josh McEachran.

In better news, my youth academy is going strong, with no less than five good prospects already signed. I have three scouts looking for more now, and I'm hoping, with the funds I've reserved, to pick up at least another seven prospects before the end of the year.

By far the best part of the season has been FA Cup. We got Man United in the first round, a double whammy because not only are they amazing, but my best player is ineligible to play against them. Didn't matter. After slamming us with shots all match, United was only up 1-0 (they even missed a penalty) when I scored a late equalizer to force a replay. And on that replay, out of nowhere, we scored two goals inside the first 24 minutes and went on to win, 2-0. Berbatov, Anderson and Rooney all missed sitters and in the two matches, United out shot me 28-5.

This was by far the best win we had all year, and my most enjoyable win in any FIFA game I can remember. Wish me luck the rest of the way.

Re: How is your Career Mode going? (FIFA 2012)
 

Did the game say he was ineligible or did you make him sit out? If the game automatically recognized it that would be pretty damn cool.

I'm going to run with Pompey once I figure out what to do with the tactics/sliders. I can't stand playing Championship sides who pass it around like Barca.