Toon Army !!

Well, I managed to get in a larger than expected session on FM2011 last night and so far my Newcastle Uts team are doing rather better than expected??

I'm about halfway through the season (January transfer window has just closed) and I'm currently in 4th. I've used the time so far to tweak my free-flowing 4-4-2 formation and its working marvellously, proving to me that I am indeed a tactical genius and it was merely the Luton Town players that we failing :)

I'm keeping some fairly good unbeaten runs, but too many draws is keeping a decent sized gap between myself and 3rd place. I'm anticipating a fairly hard scrap to keep this final Champions League place as I've played the majority of the harder teams at home so far.

Bringing new players in has been quite a chore as Newcastle have very little money to play with, but with some good scouting a and few speculative choices I've filled out the squad nicely and my signings so far have done well. My front pairing of Xisco and Andy Carroll have been banging the goals in like crazy which, combined with some inspired half-time team talks, have turned quite a few potential loses into creditable draws and more that a few wins.

The big thing that I have found is that I'm making much better use of my scouting reports than in any previous game. The addition of dealing with agents is an interesting feature and this is where the scouts reports are fantastic. I'm saving a fortune on players wages with some calculated haggling, based on the scouts info on what players are likely to accept. Example: I bought a youngster from Chelsea who's agent was asking for wages of 19k per week. My scout indicated that the player would likely accept between 4k and 6.5k per week (current contact was £1500 per week), so I offered the contract at 4k, halved the signing on fee and agents fee. BOOM !!!  New player signed !!! Thats a saving of almost 1mill over the course of 1 year !!!

First game when I get home tonite is an away fixture to Man City who are riding high at the top of the Premiership......... could be tricky??