Poll: The official Football Manager 2008 thread

[MarcLister]

This is the official Football Manager 2008 thread. This thread is for you to tell us stories about how you've taken your local club up to the giddy heights of the Premier League and taken on and beaten Chelsea in the Champions League final of 2046. Or have you taken over a top club like Man Utd or Arsenal and rewritten the record books? Let us know what you've done and what you've achieved.

Have you found the ultimate super player? Or the next wonderkid? Tell us about the essential purchases to make. Or perhaps you've found a coach or physio who makes the difference between losing and winning the league title. Or perhaps you lost too many games, lost the confidence of your players and fans and the board sacked you? Perhaps you've been at one club for so long and have been so successful that the board have honoured you by naming the club's new stadium after you?

Have you got a question about tactics or want to show off your tactic that bamboozles the likes of Arsenal, Man Utd and Liverpool? Have you've won the league with Wigan and want to show everyone the league table to rub it in?

And if you find a graphics pack that you like, share the knowledge. Player face pics, kit packs and club logos, its all good. If you want to post screenshots, keep them to a decent size like 800x600 and explain what you are showing us. Likewise if you post a link to a download I will do my best to get the link added to this post asap so that all the links you could possibly need for FM08 is easy to find and not hidden away on the 6th page somewhere.

So that's the intro out of the way. Let's get on with the show. Below are some links. Suggest some more and I'll add them on for you. From now on I will ask the Dons to merge any new FM08 thread into this one so that we can keep the information all in one place to make it easier to find. Let's make this a cracking thread for all us FM fans.

Tints and hips
If you wish to download graphics for FM08 there is a procedure to follow to get them to show up in the game. You need to go to your My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2008\

If there isn't a Graphics folder, create it. Then make sub-folders called Kits, Logos, Facepacks for erm kits, logos and facepacks funnily enough. Once you've done this you unpack the graphics you've downloaded into the corresponding folder and then you should see the graphics in the game. If you don't see them, go to the Preferences menu in-game and the display menu. Untick the "Use cache" option or whatever it is called. I forget and I'm at home on my laptop. Then tick the "Reload skin on OK" option I think it is. This makes the game always reload the skin when you click OK. This should sort out the graphics.

Now if you use the SS08 kits, there is something special you need to do. The SS08 shirt template is a different shape to the default kits so you need to download the default 'SS08' kits so that FM08 uses the right default kits. If you don't use this your SS08 kits will show up in game but you will see white edges where the SS08 kit is smaller than the default kits. This is mighty annoying!! So you download the SS08 default kit. Then you unpack the new default kits to the kits folder. BUT you must put them into a subfolder called 'default' I think it is.

General FM sites and download sites:

Sort It Out SI/PlayFM.co.uk
FM Britain
SI Games
SI Forums
Official FM08 site
FMG Live
FM Centre
FM Formation

Face packs:

Default style facepacks

Club logos:

FM08 E2G club logos

Kit packs:

SS08 (need to register for this site, its well worth it, says bailey12856 )

Tactics

Barca 5-3-2
SCM's 4-4-2
SCM's 4-4-2 tactic, version a.
memphisto's 4-4-2 tactic.
Wolfsong's guide to team talks

Other downloads

Real leagues and competition names
FM08 8.0.1 patch
FM08 8.0.2 patch

Other related threads on OcUK:

Championship Manager 08
FM08 Facepack?
Football Manager 08
Football Manager 08 Question
Football Manager 2008 - Status Packing!
Football Manager 2008 announced

Tactical Theorems and Frameworks 08 on FM Britain
TT&F Beta Frameworks

German fake player names
If you want to have the real names for the German players (made fake because of licensing issues I believe) then follow this link.

 

[MarcLister]

Thanks for posting guys. I'll get adding the links later on.

Nice one marc great work , are people having success with the default tactics or do they need tweaking abit ???

At the moment I'm keeping the default tactics but tweaking them a bit. I have one good game and one bad game so I think I need to read a tactics guide and develop my own one.

This is a good guide to read if you want to make your own tactic. As is this.

Snip

Lovely links there. I will add them to my first post if that is OK?

Barca 5-3-2

Mind if I link to that in the original post?

Has anyone bothered changing the pitch size to suit their team better? I've left it as it normally is so far.

At Old Trafford I've made it as large as it can possibly be.

Just bought this today - any patches to download prior to starting off a new game?

Only the beta patch so far. Have just added that in under the general links and download section

 

[MarcLister]

need to get some prem kits/logos.

anyone know the way to change the name of the Euro Cup etc without using an editor? is it still the same as deleting a FAKE.xxx file?

Either download a http://sortitoutsi.net/index.php?page=downloads&area=listfiles&catid=106&game=fm2008 or find your fake.lnc, scroll down to UEFA CUP or whatever and change the English entry to whatever you want.

I'll add the link to the first post.

 

[MarcLister]

good players are marcelo who u can get for 5.5mil min release clause

Goalkeeper? What club? There are loads of Marcelo's.

 

[MarcLister]

the goalkeeper marcelo grohle becomes a fantastic player.

Cheers.

also Marc first post on the kits you have linked to logos. but yes to download the SS08 from FMG you do need to register on the forums but its well worth it

Just testing you.

 

[MarcLister]

sorry i meant to left wingback marcelo, plays for real madrid i think when the game starts, hes listed as a wonderkid.

Lol, you sure this time?

 

[MarcLister]

Can anyone suggest a decent striker for me to buy for Man Utd. Got about £14 at the moment but it is December so I might get more in January. I have Rooney/Tevez/Saha so I need someone to compliment those three.

Also in terms of tactics, say I played Rooney and Tevez, who would I make the target man? Same for Rooney/Saha and Tevez/Saha.

 

[MarcLister]

The obv best "Onto Head" Target men are Klose & Toni from Bayern, not sure how much they would cost you though. Also Trezegeut is another class player in this department.

Im not sure about Vagner Love stats if hes a Target man type of player, but from what ive been reading and saw on my current game (hes at Portsmouth single handidly got them 5th i think in the Prem) he is a machine.

Toni looks a bit old really to spend £10m+ on.

Scouting all those players though.

It really depends on what style you play. Do you have two quick strikers and look for the ball in behind the defence, or do you want a TM that can hold the ball up until support arrives?

Not really sure. I suppose I play a fast kind of football what with Tevez and Rooney.

A couple of players I would consider looking at are: Rodrigo Palacio from Boca and usually costs around £6m or Goran Pandev but he usually gets snapped up early on by Chelski.

Pandev at Chelsea now.

If you can, get Bojan from Barca, or Carlos Vela from Arsenal. Both *very* good strikers. I don't know how far you are into the game but they start off quite young so the price shouldn't be too high. Whether or not their clubs will sel them is a different matter tho

Just coming up to January 2008.

Jim5000 - Any chance you could remove the pics from your post? They are very big and really only need to be seen once and not quoted because of their size.

 

[MarcLister]

Just bought Rodrigo Palacio, scored on his debut.

The board gave me £775k spending money in January so I fiddled the accounts again and got another £15m to play with. Might try for Bojan or Saivet for the future.

 

[MarcLister]

I'll gladly take my cut of the agents fee

Pfft! No chance. I'll give you a pair of season tickets instead?

 

[MarcLister]

Might want to put 'spoilers' in the thread title, with that massive list of players pulled direct from the DB being in a post rather than a link it's a bit dificult to avoid especially as it now appears twice and many including myself will think it's a bit underhand.

If you want I can ask them to edit their posts so that the quote doesn't show the images and that the OP of the pics just has links in his post with a spoiler alert on that?

And if we can't get them to do that within a reasonable time I can ask a don to do this for me.

How does that sound? I want this to be a thread for all of us FM08 fans that we can share tips, stories, tactics etc so I'm eager not to alienate people at this stage, or any other stage for that matter.

 

[MarcLister]

sorted, the images are just click links now, and spoiler etc on the post.

Lubbly jubbly sir.

10 mill striker;

Jimmy Briand - ~ £11m ish but well worth it, french, fast, good technique, 18 accelleration, 18 finishing... does the JOB~

Antonio Floro Flores - a bit weak, but non the less he does a job too..

check out the french top division there is an adbundance of new Henry's floating around for 5-12million. i picked Jimmy as being the best all rounder/fastest and best...

Thanks for the tips.

 

[MarcLister]

Bojan is worth every penny. Hes my top scorer at Spurs so far this season.

Think I have more chance of getting him than Carlos Vela since Arsenal will not want to sell anyone to me.

The perfect compromise, thanks to the origional poster for already removing the pics I don't want to annoy I just like to play the game a bit more old school.

Looks like we are all happy.

I'm not sure that ferguson and wenger have databse hacks to help them find the next star!

Bet they do!

 

[MarcLister]

Cheers!

i was looking for the folder in the FM08 directory as I have had to replace kits every year in there. Makes more sense to get them from my documents i suppose!

I hadn't realised that the system had changed until last night. Wondered where the ruddy folders were. Suppose this is quite a good system as it means you can only get graphics working from one place as opposed to game folder and My Docs like last year and before.

Just started my first game as manager of Basingstoke This could be interesting the only aim I've been given for the year is to avoid relegation

A realistic aim?

 

[MarcLister]

I'm sure you'll keep them safe from harm's way.

 

[MarcLister]

its bags of fun, lower league management is what makes Football Manager

And I thought it was about dominating the Premier League and Europe with Manchester United.

 

[MarcLister]

Two words: "Sergio Aguero". Buy him, buy him now. By a country mile, the best player I have come across.

Going to try and get him in the summer.

pleased this thread has a fair bit of interest can only be good for fellow fm players .

Yep I'm very happy that this thread is doing so well. I hoped that having a single thread would benefit us all and it looks like keeping it all in one place is and will help.

 

[MarcLister]

There is no doubt Aguero is a great player, but he comes at a high price, and there are better European prospects out there.

You need to consider how often you will lose him to International duty with Argentina, especially with the Olympics he is still eligible for. You also have Tevez, so you will effectively be losing two of your front men, and I recall you also signing Rodrigo Palacio, so that would be 3 of your strikers out for long periods of time playing for Argentina.

There are better long term European prospects if I am honest.

True. Suggest some of the European prospects then.

 

[MarcLister]

zytok - I'm confused here. What part of your post is a quote and what part is yours?

Could you just link to the sortitoutsi forum quote?

 

[MarcLister]

Sorry, it's not 100% clear.

The top half - talking about wanting to release a megapack was from one forum user. The second part - the warning was from Packmanch, the guy that seems to have done most of the SS08 kits.

Just couldn't understand why Packmanch was objecting so strongly to another forum user wanting to release all the kits released in one pack rather than 40odd separate downloads. Especially as a lot of the links to individual kits are down.

So is this guy releasing his own work or re-releasing Packmanch's work?

If its the latter it is understandable. He can choose how he releases his work, in single packs or megapacks. Its no-one else's decision to release his work in a different way just because they don't like it.

If this guy is doing his own kits then Packmanch doesn't really have a right to say not to release them in a megapack. Your work, you choose how you release it. Someone else's work, they choose. Unless they are passing your stuff off as their own.