Championship Manager 2001-2002 Free Download

Some time back Eidos made CM01-02 available for free. I can't find a direct link on their website, but here's a link on fmscout.

http://www.fmscout.com/a-championship-manager-0102-free-download.html

Anyway, this of itself isn't really big news. However, the way I found it is a bit more interesting. I wanted to recreate some classic players (specifically Roy Keane) in FM2012. I was looking for old screenshots of players from FM 2006 or so to basically reverse engineer old player stats. The problem is, players age oddly, and I would never see something like PA. I did manage to find some screenshots of Roy Keane from '06, but it wasn't going to be easy or accurate to recreate him.

I'd never played CM. So when I downloaded it, the first thing to note is that it won't run natively in Windows 7. It complains there's no memory available. However, if you right click on the exe in the start menu, you can run it in compatibility test, and it'll run just fine under Windows XP emulation that's built into Windows 7. It did freak out when I switched to windowed mode, but when I re-launched it everything was fine. Anyway, I don't plan to play it, but I turned off attribute masking and was able to see much of what I wanted.

Then I got a bit smart and noticed the editor. Here it is, the holy grail. It lists everything. CA/PA, attributes, relationships, history. It's perfect for my needs, and it will be a lot more fair than reverse engineering players. I don't think I'd have given Keano a 6 temperament for instance, but upon reflection, that's probably dead on. Anyway, off to play with a new savegame.

Tugs Training for FM11 Football Manager 2011

Since Tug has no intention of updating his training schedules, I did a direct clone from FM2010 with tweaks for the removal of Set Piece training and the dual GK training. I've just started playing, so I don't know how effective they'll be, but they're a close copy. I've gotten some feedback from a handful of players that they're being overloaded in training, but the overall feedback is content and no one has rioted yet.

The file server has been taken offline, sorry.

Regen / Newgen Dates

Some of the dates have changed in FM 2010, so I'm making my own list. I'll try to bold the changes as I come across them.

7 June Bosnia
7 June Montenegro
7 June New Zealand

20 June Northern Ireland
20 June Israel
20 June Croatia
20 June Switzerland
20 June Ukraine
20 June Wales
20 June Greece
20 June Hungary
20 June Turkey
20 June France
20 June Germany
20 June Portugal
20 June Australia
20 June Scotland

25 June England
25 June Austria

29 June Slovakia

30 June Czech Republic
30 June Poland
30 June Belgium
30 June Italy

1 July Bulgaria
1 July Slovenia
1 July Roumania

7 July Denmark
7 July Holland

10 July Serbia
10 July Spain

15 July South Africa

20 July Mexico

1 August Uruguay
1 August Argentina

19 September Barbados
19 September Trinidad & Tobago
19 September Paraguay
19 September Ecuador
19 September Bolivia

5 December Sweden

9 December Japan

26 December U.S.A

27 December Russia
27 December China

1 January Chile

2 January Brazil

5 January Iceland
5 January Ireland

7 January Finland

10 January Columbia

15 January Ivory Coast
15 January Tunisia
15 January Algeria
15 January Morocco
15 January Cameroon
15 January Senegal
15 January Nigeria
15 January Egypt

20 January Norway

28 January Peru

14 February Belarus

Training Guide

Outline:

1. Stuff That Matters

• What are CA and PA
• How to increase CA
• Training Categories
  
• The purpose of the training schedule
• Managing workload and training workload
• Preferred Moves
• Tutoring
  

2. Dispelling the Myths

• 7 star coaching
• Coach mental attributes
• Playing time
• Training intensity
  

3. Optimizing Schedules


Section 1 - Stuff That Matters

1.1 - What are CA and PA

CA and PA are normally hidden attributes on a scale of 1-200 that represent Current Ability and Potential Ability. Every player has a PA attribute that is fixed and will not change throughout his lifetime without the use of an editor. A player's CA will increase as he matures toward his playing peak. This varies somewhat by position. For most outfield players, CA will stop increasing at age 30 and begin to decrease. Physical attributes are the first to decline due to aging.

It's somewhat forgivable to think of CA and PA as "how good a player is" and "how good a player can become", but it's really not that simple. Not every player will reach their potential. The ability to reach a player's potential is based on many things, most important of which is probably age. Additionally the attributes of Determination, Ambition, Professionalism and Work Rate all factor in, as does your club's training facilities, your coaches, and some amount of luck with injuries. I'll go into more details on this in the section on increasing CA.

It's also too simple to use CA as a judge of a player's worth. Many attributes are not advantageous to particular position or tactics. Having a striker with high tackling or a center back with a high crossing skill probably doesn't contribute to their match performance, yet it still counts against their CA. There are also some attributes which don't seem to be factored into CA, yet certainly have an affect on performance. I'll try to find more details on this later. Additionally your match tactics will determine how effective a player can be in your team. If you play a counter-attacking style for example, you'll find midfielders with high passing and forwards with a lot of pace far more effective than slower forwards and quicker midfielders with the same CA or even with the same positional ratings.

1.2 - How to increase CA

1.3 - Training Categories

1.4 - The purpose of the training schedule

1.5 - Managing workload and training workload

1.6 - Preferred Moves

1.7 - Tutoring


False Assumptions:

- 7 star training will make your players train faster.
- Training facilities and coaches have a lot to do with how quickly a player progresses.
- A reserve or youth game is roughly equal to a first team game, it's appearances that matter.

References:
1 - http://cmfrenzy.com/football_manager_2009/football_manager_2009_guides/insights_into_current_ability_and_potential_ability.html

Training Mistakes

With 12 games left in my second season with Scunthorpe in the Championship, I had a 12 pt lead. As such, I decided to take the plunge and set up individual training schedules for each of my players. I had read a bit, and I thought I knew what I was doing, so I was ready.

The results were a complete disaster. I overtrained my players, which made them tired and unhappy. Furthermore, since I set up their training incorrectly, their training levels went down, which made them additionally unhappy. What followed was a string of 8 games without a win. I finished the season last night and managed to win the Championship in the final game, but I had to sweat it out.

I sat down to do some research into what went wrong, and I finally found the information I'd long been seeking. Now I'm going to pull it together into a guide, mostly for myself, hopefully dispelling my own incorrect assumptions, and documenting the results of other people's research.

Test images