EA SPORTS'S TIPS Did you ever want to start with any team from the game rather than from the English or Scottish League? If yes, type "all teams" in the main screen (without the quotation marks) and see what happens. You will be able to start with any playable team. DAVID SAYERS'S TIPS The following strategies have helped me pull Brighton from the third division to the premier league finishing second in straight seasons. Play attacking an attacking formatin 4-4-2 ATT or 4-4-3 ATT. Search the transfer market for FREE TRANSFERS. You will find some brilliant players for a free transfer. Play a pressing game with lots of passing but attack should not be set to high. I usually play attack with the bar set almost half way between defense and attack. Make sure you promote your youth players. If you need money, some of your youth players may be worth a fortune. Aim for all your players to average form of 8 to 9. Rest your good players when the cups are on. For training, set technique bar distance high so that the players fitness ranges around 80. DEREK HRYDZIUSZKO'S TIPS A Good Formation to play is 5-3-2 Attacking. Use quite significantly spread wide and slight Long-Ball game. Also set the counter quite heavily in favour of Press. Use neutral attacking and use slight Take Risks. As for Individual Orders, set your two strikers to Shoot, and then set your best shooter to take all free-kicks on the Left and the Right; set the one player with influence higher than the rest as the Captain. If you get any decent amount of money, buy Roman Riquelme. He is worth every penny. With this set-up I took Gillingham to win the Premiership in 4 seasons. KEITH'S TIPS My tactic is to play the 3-2-1-2-1-1 formation. You will need a player like Owen to play to play the lone striker. Dennis Bergkamp to play as a Forward. Good attacking midfielders are Petit and Laudrup or Overmars. A good Defensive Midfielder is Ince. The wall at the back should be made of John Curtis, Rio Ferdinand and Tony Adams or Roberto Carlos. MIKE WILSON'S TIPS Although training in FA Premier Manager 99 has been simplified in some respects as compared to FIFA Soccer Manager 98, there is one tip that was given in the manual that I strongly suggest players use. It will avoid a lot of hair pulling. I am playing two test seasons using Arsenal. I am training one squad myself. The other squad has training handled by the game's virtual manager. I have not adjusted training settings on the squad which I am training. I have just kept control. I notice that the virtual manager training squad has had a LOT less injuries than my squad. I highly recommend leaving the training to the virtual manager, at least for the first half of the season, until you can get the players you want for your squad. This is especially important if you have a star striker or goal keeper. Injuries seem to happen to my star players more than my support players. MICHAEL SOTHMANN'S TIPS Experiment with the youth players. Initially put them on a certain position and then wait the 3 months for them to develop. After you find out what postion they are (it's usually only one) change them to another one (eg. Defender to Midfielder and vice versa and midfielder to striker and vice versa). You can get some really good players doing this. I got a player who is a RB, DM & RM and a player who is ST, CF & AM. YEN MAKABENTA'S TIPS Jumpstarting a good team from Division 2 or 3: To those people who want to really see how one could abuse the transfer system in this game or how one could assemble a team that could nail Arsenal and Man U within a single season – please continue reading. This is also a way to teach people how to get a quickest start into the game as possible. Starting up: If you wish, you could start with the established strong teams in the game – such as Arsenal and Man United. But I suggest you don’t or you’ll take the fun off building a Kaiserslautern surprise on European leagues. Start with Division 1–3. Any team in Div one will do. I suggest storied ManCity for the second division – because of the available players here and the huge stadium and fan base available. You also have to see whether a community is able to accommodate the building of all your future facilities and whether or not the stadium could be expanded. Your first day: Apply for a loan of around 2,000,000 initially. You’ll receive a sponsor pretty soon. Transfer out all expensive players on your team – regardless of how good they are – (unless it’s a position that’s crucial like right back or striker). Transfer out anyone who doesn’t have at least an above 14 rating in all crucial aspects of his game. He won’t increase to the elite levels going into the premier league so why bother keeping them? OK. So now you have to assemble a team, The initial opening international transfer lists have some of the best players in the game already. Hire some… after this paragraph there is a partial list of quality players you must go after. Remember that some players on your team must go through free transfer in order to accommodate this initial hiring of players. Tell you later why… but just make room for now. David Hunt – Gifted Left Back who has high influence rating. Must for lower division teams because can act as captain… (does age affect your ability to influence? – I had one case where influence went down and confidence went up as a player got older) Nuno Gomes – Striker with a good solid foundation to be a star. Determination (which doesn’t seem to change in any player) is what will make him a hall of famer. Gus Hurdle – solid multi role – with right back ability – its rare to find a good and cheap right back. Pavel Srnicek – solid goalkeeper, with high influence. Must for a young team, will be replaced as starter by coming of Magits to your team. Choice of keeping him could be vital. Cesar Sampaio – Brazilian national team’s top scorer in the World Cup – ‘nuff said. His transfer value is to drool for, but I’ve never been able to transfer him out. Roland Ntoko – A solid Nigerian left midfield Others that you may want to include are Dickinson, Freeman, Jaworek, Gislason, Grimm, Da Silva You’re building a team patterned along the same lines as Arsenal – whom uses a 442 with defensive midfielders as your center. Why? Well, the best cheap players available are defensive midfielders. Some players that are crucial are listed here. Goalkeeper: G. Magits – Best young goalie. Get him at the start or you never will. Transfer for around 850,000. Don’t get him now, you will never get him. Defenders: Very good young ones that are cheap. Giacobbi Cenni Colakovic Bundalo Midfield: V. Smirnov – best left midfielder available at low price. Defensive ones are – Duke, Gerloni, Vaineikis and a horde of others – use your scout to find 16–21 year old Defensive Midfielders with high tackling – this is the most crucial trait. They alone can shut down any semblance of offense your opponents have. Others as support are Antinov, Sveisson. Doesn’t matter if they are wingers. Midfielders are better on defense, Wingers on offense. Mix, them in formation – you’ll win anyway, because of Defense. Attack: Steinarsson – CF/AM with lethal foot for scoring. Post him in Striker – watch him light the board. Sereda – Best pure young striker in the early stages. High shooting and speed. OK. Get rid of all your players that were in the main team. Transfer them out and wait for all the offers to come in of course. Transfer these guys in but hang their offers before accomodating new ones. The goal here is to not exceed your squad size. A lot of these guys will become main honchos for their respective teams – so they may not allow you to transfer them out if you ask again, so it’s best to trickle the main squad out before putting others in. For future years, always check on incoming 16–18 year olds. A lot of them are really good. Steal them from teams, every start of the season. The cheap ones come from the International Transfer lists. Moving right along: Up to you. I suggest that you develop a clubhouse ASAP to increase audience attendance first. Make a Training pitch next. You must have one to skyrocket your team’s abilities to the moon. Sports shop, then a weights room. This is just for the first season. Generate matches, because your players usually play in better form than in a running match. Only run matches for crucial games. It also allows you to rotate personnel consistently. You avoid damaging injuries, but watch out for bookings. Low Ticket prices allow more people to watch games, set them as low as 12 and watch them trickle in. Remember – you are not Man U. yet so be patient. Turn off your Virtual Manager mid–season for Youth team players. Train them as much as you possibly can. Good ones can shift to another discipline. Also, do not promote players until the end of the season. Stuff that’s vital to the game: Influence is a key factor in your team’s ability to perform on the pitch. You must have a player with at least 20 to make any semblance of coordinated offense. Mix a striker with good confidence and determination like Nuno Gomes with one who has little like Sereda for better results. You need a scorer who has the edge of being able to score in tight spots such as a goal down in order for the rest of the team to explode. A winger or midfielder with the same type of scoring ability might do as well. Players with speed do more, so it’s vital to get players with it (determination can factor in as well). Stamina must be above 18 for most – to justify playing them. Strength is the area of the weights room, but is more supplementary to me than other abilities. Size never seemed to matter to me. Headers can be scored regardless of how tall one is. KEITH SPENDIFF'S TIPS Youth Squad You should always regardless of your youth team coach's advice make sure that you train all your youth team in two aspects of play (eg. defence then midfield). After this always promote them for 1 year and £100 per week. Then check their value, if they have been given a low value and you have other players of higher value sell them straight away. Normally the next turn will bring offers in from a number of clubs thus boosting your funds unless of course you have used the fund cheat! then it doesn't matter. I have found it useful to boost funds this way. GAM RAM HEO'S TIPS You really wanna increase your money? Set your ticket price to £150, and almost all the people will turn up and buys the ticket. I was somehow amazed by this strange thing. However, right now i am managing the Red Devils and now in 1 season I have over £80 Million. MICHAEL NELSON'S TIPS The loaning of players can be quite helpful especially if you are strapped for cash. I find that a lot of the time you can get RONALDO on loan at the start. Rivaldo and Okocha are also often available. Good players to buy are Seedorf and Riquelme who is a superb player at under a million. There is a player called Marco Bergani he is a 16 year old english man. He is worth 29 million and I have never bought him but he is a superb striker. I think he may be a fictional player named after Mark Bergan the assistant producer of the game. 4-4-2 attacking is the best formation to play. Here is a list of my ultimate team I have at Inter: Peruzzi Roberto Carlos Stam Campbell Seedorf Riquelme Ba Babangida Ronaldo Kanu At the start two players you must buy on the free transfer are Goram and Cadete ADAM LEE'S TIPS One good thing i've found is the when you newly promote youth players and don't seem to have room for them in your sqad - loan them out and they will gain experience for when you need them again! LARRY LOO EN JUAN'S TIPS Here are some interesting players to get on the first day:( find them through player search option) Akwa Leto Villalba Domizi Bukovec Giacobbi Bollini At the same time, always get Cesar Sampaio cos' you can then sell him and earn 4.71 million! SWONG'S TIPS When there's someone you want to buy, for example Ronaldo. Regularly they won't sell him but when he is band or injured they will sell him but you'll have to wait so put him on your hotlist and wait. This trick works for every player. BEN ZAPPIA'S TIPS When you are at the Transfer Market and you want to buy someone always check out for injuries of the player you want to buy, because some players are out for 16381 months, which means that they are out for life. BEN ZAPPIA'S TIPS When you are at the Transfer Market and you want to buy someone always check out for injuries of the player you want to buy, because some players are out for 16381 months, which means that they are out for life. 1)Buy a players 2)If the player want to join your team then type 99999999999 on the months and type 100 dollars on the wages 3)Then send the mail. Sometimes later,the player will be out of contract, and he will be in free tranfer list. then you can type the months 60 and the wages is 100 dollars! such as : Michael Owen - 100pounds for 60 months. EYDNA JOENSEN'S TIPS When some of your star players, are injured for a long time, then there is a solution to get rid from paying their high wage. Loan them out, and when there is 1-2 weeks left from his recovery, call him back from loan. Now you have saved money, because you did not pay his wage, while he was injured. KIFF'S TIPS Play a formation like the Xmas tree and rotate the roles every now and then to maintain form. If a good player is injured you will probably be able to buy him for the usual 14-30 million, without the "valuable member of our squad" stuff. Soon after the start you can buy Diego Maradona for about £500,000 for small clubs, who is a good tackler and attacker. Send us your Tips & Tactics to Mads Larsen.