Born Toulouse
Posted by: Greg Downs in Beerens, D1 Cup, European Cup (ECC), Mattsson, league table, tags: Beerens, D1 Cup, European Cup (ECC), MattssonThe league is still going well. Played 4, won 3, drawn 1. Beat Club Brugge 5-0 with a hat trick from Orellano (a PES stalwart who is just starting to come good). Thumped Everton 4-0. A tough 1-1 draw at Newcastle. I’m second in the table and well-placed to maintain the title challenge.
There’s a but, though.
The crowded fixtures list here at the start of the season is not doing me any favours (getting the excuse in early…).
I’m kind of prioritising the League, making sure to use Schwarz and Shimizu, Felipe and Mattsson, Bradley and Kaiser in particular solely for those games. The rest can fill in for the Cups. I’m not operating a formal Second XI system as I tried so unsuccessfully to do last season.
As good as I think my squad is, I’m struggling to cope with the Cup games using my squad players.
In the Division 1 Cup, I have played the first leg of the opening fixture against Newcastle. It was at my ground, and I lost painfully 2-3. So not only am I behind going into the second leg, but I shipped three away goals. Oops. That’ll be a testing return tie at Newcastle’s place.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was worse to come.
First up in the ECC (the PES version of the Champions League) were Marseille. The game was at their ground. Home field advantage doesn’t seem to make much difference in PES - or, indeed, in any football video game. Has anyone ever noticed anything different?
Having said that, despite me taking an early lead and bossing most of the first half, Marseille went into overdrive in the second half. They played as if they were being spurred on by a vociferous home crowd. They double-whammied me with two late goals and won 2-1. I shouldn’t have tried to chase the game after their equaliser. I should have shut up shop and settled for a 1-1. This is a group setup, after all. Taking the point would have been the smart thing to do.
Toulouse were next. I went into this one full of confidence, on the back of handing out that 5-0 thrashing to Brugge in the league. I fielded what I thought was a great side: Shaw played, Beerens played, Andy Cole played, Traore played. It was at my ground. Any home field advantage that may be modelled in PES should make this an easy win. Right?
Wrong. Coventry City 1 - 3 Toulouse.
I can’t even complain about scripting - not too much, anyway. Toulouse just seemed to play better than me. My players were sluggish and I failed to take many good chances to score.
Played two, lost two in Europe is not Treble-winning form. In the last of the first games against the other group hopefuls, I played PSV. This was a titanic game. I took the lead, then I gave away a stupid goal, then PSV took the lead, then I equalised. Then PSV scored a third. There were about ten minutes left. Damn.
I went into full-on panic mode. My season was disappearing in front of eyes, right here, right now. I charged all over the place. My finger barely left R1 (I know...). PSV were playing keepball. Then I got Mattsson sent off.
2-3 behind and down to 10 men, in the last seconds of stoppage time I raced forward with Beerens, more in desperate hope than any kind of realistic expectation. Lose this game and kiss goodbye to the Treble, I was thinking.
I skinned a PSV midfielder with Beerens and went on one of those long, looping, semi-circular runs that people who play this game online seem to do all the time. I burst down the wing and sent over a cross… and there was Reyes on the penalty spot to head the ball in. 3-3, and the final whistle blew straight after their kick-off.
So, I salvaged a morale-boosting point right at the death. But will it be enough? I’ll have to win all three remaining group games to be sure of finishing in the top two and progressing to the ECC tournament proper. These are worrying times.
This season, for me, is all about the Treble: League, Cup, European Cup. Winning one or two of them without the third would be a failure.
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you need to have brought in even more reinforcements ehhh!! You must have some 20,000ish cash + before the midseason negotiations that could be as much as 40,000. Get rid of the deadwood players that dont cut it at this level, all of them! 8 changes in the midseason is easy to accomplish!
after playing a whole season on all settings high, newcastle, portsmouth and blackburn got promoted, i finished 15th, and psv/ajax/someone else got relegated into my division. I was incorrect to say that the stamina wasnt a problem, as their bar does go up much quicker between games - having as many games as you seem to have with all settings on difficult will be a huge test! 87stamina will be a minimum for my key players. Also, negotiations are not more difficult, but the computer offers nothing interesting for your players. Minanda (3000worth) was sold for just 750p’s (the offer came, i couldnt care less for him, so accepted).. And for my best player boa morte, the computer (without me indicating his availability) offered 5800-6900Ps (his worth is 6900Ps apparently) - I had 6 offers for him in total and all of them are unacceptably low. id understand those offers if he was on my list of transferable players!
Hm, that doesn’t sound good at all. Looks like you’re pretty much dead in the ECC. Unless you pull off a miracle. Maybe it’s the scripting trying to give the game more “emotion”, and you’ll manage to pull through. I’ve just lost 2-1 to Barcelona on the first leg of the ECC semifinal (away), but it was a miracle I didn’t get pounded. They were playing like supermen. Can hardly wait for the 2nd leg. The league is done though. I won it with 5 games to go. I hope this is not the same as last year when I tried for the treble only to lose the ECC to Milan in the last minute of extra time.
Good luck to you anyway. Post more!
Ugh. Maybe you need to go with the traditional English European 4-5-1.
Ha, ha, ees leetle yoke.
It’s nice to see that the game still has some surprises for you. Even if you go out in the cups, you know that you still don’t have this thing completely handled.
David - I wish now that I had got at least two more top-notch strikers. I’ll rate my strikers out of 10 right now - Schwarz 9, Andy Cole 7, Shimizu 8, Reyes 7, Ian Rush 6, Orellano 6. I had the cash and still have the cash to have got almost anyone I wanted. I tried to play a smart game on the transfer market to conserve my funds for the future and it has backfired slightly - for now, anyway. Looks like I might have been complacent (again).
Mirandinha - I’m still in the competitions, technically, and I’ve noticed it’s not hard on PES2008 (on the PS3 anyway) to win any game *if it’s approached in the right way*. If I win the last three games I’ll be through. Re. your last-minute loss to Milan in the ECC final - one of the reasons I ended up playing 32+ seasons of the same career on PES5 was that the game always, ALWAYS contrived to prevent me getting the Treble. Year after year, I’d win 2 of the 3, but lose out on the third by either a single goal in a Final, or a run of bad results in the League. Eventually I won one after 12 seasons and the feeling was immense! I just kept playing that career for the whole PES year, and only won about 2 more Trebles after that.
I’ll post twice every day if I can from now on. If work etc. gets in the way it’ll be one post per day.
ck - The game has plenty of surprises for me and I never want to feel I have PES2008 ’sussed’. I never, EVER felt that I had conquered any previous version and could win anything just by wanting to win. If I ever get that feeling with PES2008 I’ll be gutted. And I’d probably play PES5 or PES6 (along with a spot of FIFA08 here and there) for the rest of the year.
I like the idea that none of the PES games have ever been a walk in the park at any time. Sure there are some games when you are just unstoppable and will thump 6 past the opposition but even if it is scripted to a degree I’m happy when i get a really tough fight for the title or an epic cup semi.
I won the treble!!!!
Ok, I cheated, as I was losing to Le Mans in the Cup due to an enormous amount of scripting. The Kim U Don’t-running-away-from-the-ball kind and worse, so I couldn’t take it and restarted. I’d still have won the double, but I suppose if the comp can cheat, so can I. Or can’t I?
But the coolest part was the ECC final against Bayern. After defeating Barcelona in a very hard thought (but fair) match in the semis, I got 2 goals ahead of Bayern in the final, only to have them score two soft goals just when I was about to celebrate the title. Off to extra time we go, and my CF Kim Cyun Hi (write that name down, he’s a Konami player who tops at about 92) score 2 in the first half ot ET and 3 more in the second half to bring the match down to a 7-2 score for my team. Woah! Never had that happen to me, not in a final.
stinger - the very real problem with PES2008 is that it seems unbalanced toward the five or six goals per game scenarios. In years past it was a rare game that featured more than 3 or 4 goals between both sides. Many games were 1-0 or 2-0 or 2-1. Too many games in PES2008 end 5-2 for my liking. They might have done this deliberately to make PES more ‘accessible’ to a new generation of gamers on PS3 and Xbox360.
Mirandinha - naughty! I don’t think we’re allowed to cheat as human players, but it’s just a personal rule I have and I’m not fanatical about getting other people to follow it. I’ll admit that I’ve been tempted many times over the years but can honestly say I’ve never indulged. The only time I’ve ever reloaded a save after the match has started was during the PES5 year. I remember I was playing Arsenal in the league and I was 2-0 down - and the game handily crashed on me. I was delighted to reload that day…
re. strange goings-on in finals, I hope to have at least TWO chances to find out later this season… I remember my D1 Cup triumph of a few seasons ago, with a relatively weak team - against LIVERPOOL - felt suspiciously easy at the time.