The Postma Always Rings Twice
The last three (largely meaningless) games of this 2008 season are a good opportunity to take a quick look at one of my most reliable players—my right back, Postma.
He’s been an ever-present in my side since he arrived in the middle of season 2007. At the moment he’s 18 years old. His positions are SB/WB/SMF. Sadly, he has no special ability stars, but his key baseline stats go a long way to making up for that shortcoming.
Attack:78
Defence:76
Agility:81
Acceleration:80
Mentality:79
The above stats really do show up on the pitch. Postma can outrun almost any attacker and keeps his head when all about him are losing theirs.
A good right back (or, for that matter, a good left-back) is so important in PES2008.
They’ve always been important, but in the next-gen version of the game, with the opposition’s fleet-footedness and tricksy shimmying at the byline, side-backs who have good speed, tackling, and fitness are a necessity. Worth their weight in gold.
The benchmark for side-backs in PES2008, for me, has to be my old right-back from my last ML career, Guimaraes. Postma isn’t quite up to his level—he’s a long way below it—but he’s the next-best side-back I’ve played with so far, and he has a long way to go yet.
Postma’s development graph shows that his peak is many years away yet, and that it’ll be pretty high. Nothing jaw-droppingly spectacular, but it’ll do me.
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Just three games left in the 2008 season. Then I’ll get down to some serious business in the transfer market, shore up my squad with some reliable talent, and make a real fist of season 2009. That’s the plan, anyway.
Immediately after I beat Sampdoria 4-3 in the D2 Cup Final, I came up against them in the League. This happens a lot in PES, and PES2008 is no exception. It happens in real life too, so it’s not really a cause for complaint.
Perhaps it was inevitable that my eye wasn’t really on the ball. The exertions of the cup final took their toll and I went through the game just pressing the buttons rather than engaged as fully as I should have been. The CPU took full advantage of my inattention just before half time, when yet another clearance from one of my corners landed ever-so-neatly right at the feet of a Sampdoria midfielder. He turned and ran from almost level with his own penalty area.
Upfield he went, past one defender, past two, jinking around a third—and then clean through on goal. It was my own fault. I can usually stop these post-corner runs that the CPU loves to go on. The Square button is my friend. I use a spare player to challenge while I get the player under my control into prime position to make a challenge or slide-tackle, with good results. Usually. But I was too hasty this time.
I dashed my keeper, James, out to meet the Sampdoria player on the edge of the box, but a shake of the hips later and the CPU had an open goal to slide the ball into. It finished 1-0 to them.
I perked up for the next game—the season’s penultimate game—against Feyenoord. And what a game it was for me. I scored six goals in a comprehensive 6-1 rout of the fallen Dutch masters. I call them fallen because in season 2007 they used to sweep my team aside with pitiful ease, but things are different now.
Here’s a couple of the goals, both from Altintop, my star man of the moment:
In the last game of the season, Sunderland seemed determined to prove that they are my bogey team, despite me believing that they’re not. Early on I had Pjinatnigh red-carded for nothing. It was a tackle from the side, not from behind, and it was up near the halfway line… Most referees in real life or in other football games, including most previous PES games, wouldn’t even have given a yellow card.
But I always play well with 10 men. I got it back to 2-2. First a penalty that was won by Matuzalem and then dispatched by him with style into the top corner, high up where no keeper is ever going to reach it. They’re the best possible kinds of penalties. In PES the game sometimes decides you’ll miss a penalty for no discernible reason. We need better penalties in PES. Here’s hoping for a (whisper it) FIFA-style power meter in PES2009 and beyond.
In literally the last seconds of the game, Leonardo popped up on the edge of the Sunderland box to do this:
I love goals that go in off the post. I loved this one. A hard-fought draw, and a fair result.
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And that was season 2008. Must do better next season.
Final position: 15th
Won:10 Drew:10 Lost:18
Goals scored:49 Goals conceded:58 Goal difference:-9
Yellow cards: 42 Red cards: 24
Teams relegated from Division 1: PSV, Paris St Germain, Tottenham.
Teams promoted from Division 2: Real Elcherino, Ajax, Torino
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this season. Having abruptly abandoned PES2008 at the turn of the year, and spending weeks flirting with FIFA, it was good to come home. What turned me off PES2008 was how extraordinarily easy the game becomes when using good players. It was never thus for me before. I was shocked and—frankly—disgusted to find that it was so for me now.
The importance of House Rules—as strict as they need to be, and no stricter (there’s no point in getting silly)—cannot be underestimated when trying to extend this game’s longevity. Self-handicapping is the way to go. No, we shouldn’t have to do it (curse you Seabass), but we play with the PES we have, not the PES we want.
Next season, my third with Singers FC, has got to be a promotion year. The negotiation period is coming up and it’s got to be a good ‘un. I’ll be taking my time and making my decisions carefully. I’ll also be tweaking my transfer market House Rules a little. Not too much—just enough to keep myself honest…
When I moved back to Kansas and started supporting the Wizards (Kansas...
hi not greg d
“Postma always rings twice” nice one.
I regularly sign Postma, in fact he’s in my Celtic squad ML, that I still play now and then, he’s a good full back. Haven’t seem him in my present game with the defaults yet. Maybe overlooked him and he’s elsewhere.
That’s alot of red cards mate. I thought I was bad with nine, and that was me spitting out my dummy the second part of season. I don’t usually pick up many. Although this game, the ref is card happy, only for Human players though. Seems the COM can make the same tackles, with a resulting NOTHING.
Cheers
H
To add on a side note about the ref, is the annoying **** always gets in my players running/ball path, resulting in the opponents getting a easy ball to play up field. Semi-scripting or what?
And GD I tried long and hard to find Shimizu, but has yet to pop up for me. Although I do get Shaw and Schwarz almost everytime. Not Yet have I completed the Big “actually little in height” three S’s up front for me. Although I’ve just signed Carlos Tenario “I think that’s his name”, feels like he’s always going to do something special like C. Ronaldo in real life.
Just realised you’ve got Spurs to contend with in the upcoming season…My big bogey team with lots of green stuff and bits of brown as well.
I love that it seems to be harder to dredge out of Div 2 this verison, but as you mentioned there seems to be some sort of tipping-point where things go from competitive to just too easy. Keeping yourself away from that point will be the trick — and the aim of any house rules.
heraldo – I’m puzzled why I get more red cards than everybody else (on PS3/Xbox360) seems to. I thought it was due to the game’s fussiness and that I was playing normally. I don’t think I’m a particularly dirty or impatient player, but it seems that I am both! Only with the Default crowd, though, and also with the next level of players that you get after the Defaults. In my last season with my Coventry City galacticos I only got 6 (SIX) red cards all season. So it seems that it’s all my players’ fault. Not mine….
Lakriss – every once in a while the refs in PES2008 throw an American Football-style blocking tackle at my players. Most irritating. Occasionally they’ll even attack my players off the ball and send them sprawling. I don’t think it’s a feature. I think it’s a bug due to the game’s lack of a full development cycle. I’d be very interested to know what % of time, relative to previous games, was spent playtesting and debugging next-gen PES2008….
ck – I’ve ‘borrowed’ one of your Aylesbury Vale house rules for the transfer market. I’ll be posting details tomorrow about pre-season 2009…..
I think with the red card problem is that, with the default players they tend to be slow and clumsy. So unless you can do some pin point tackling they’re going to bring down their not so intended target. To add to that, the opponent most likely has gone past then before they can get to the deck to block the ball, bringing down the opponent from behind in the process.
house rules shouldn’t have to be used, but are very fun. try making a England side without the normal 11 “old normal 11 I mean” get some quite good glory killers. BTW I did this in PES 5 and I used Shimizu as a ringer and that was my last time I saw him.
I bet you the testing involved them putting it in the system, then going “oh wait this is PES there can’t be nothing wrong with it, Seabass made it, lets just mock FIFA instead”…
I’m running with house rules now; I’m trying to make mine more ‘realistic’. Its going to make my games much much harder but I think I’ll get more enjoyment out of it.
What always disapointed me is how I could sign certain players that this is no way that my team could sign him.
As a case in point is I’ve started a new ML with Heracles Almelo. I’m not doing very and even though I’m only ranked 12th in the league. Its coming up to the mid-season negoiations so I was looking at who I might be able to poach from teams in my league.
So I was pretty suprised to find that league leaders top scorer Djibril Cisse had 100 by his name for potential of signing.
I mean he’d be an awesome signing for most teams and some how even though I’m 11 places below themin the league he wants to come to me (or Marseille want rid).
Its crazy, luckily my house rules won’t let me buy from teams above me. (Unless its a loan deal).
Thats the sort of thing that really bugs me!
I’ll have to check “the” Postma out sometime. If you need another LB to go with him, I’d recommend Doesburg, Hoffmann, Walton or a very big guy called Graham (199 cm tall, very hand at corners for or against you).
Paul – I’m toying with a pretty radical idea (for me): declaring a transfer embargo, right now, and seeing if I can get promotion and then the Treble just with this squad of players.
(I mean with the squad I’ve got after tomorrow’s pre-2009 transfers – I’ve picked up some pretty good players, but they’re still average compared to the galacticos of my old ML team.)
The unrealism of the PES2008 transfer market is a big issue that Team Seabass has got to address, surely? The Team Ranking idea was a good one but it’s been half-arsedly implemented. Why not have a Football Manager-style system where certain players won’t come to your club no matter what, unless you’re a) in D1, b) in Europe, c) in the ECC, or whatever? That could work, but they’ll never do it, because the kids wouldn’t like it. PES has taken a turn toward the mass market with next-gen PES, no question. (No disrespect to kids – of all ages – who love to play with the best players, but those of us with hair on our chins who’ve kind of grown up with ISS/PES should be catered for too.)
Mirandinha – Postma is average by the standards of the top SBs I could get. I’m trying to make it in Master League again with a different type of team from my old one. No SB will ever come close to the greatness that was Guimaraes! That goal he scored running the length of the pitch – the one you that made you, ahem, ‘wonder’ what skill level I was playing on (it was Top Player, and that’s why next-gen PES2008 isn’t a ‘proper’ PES game) – was probably the best I scored in my last career.
Not a bad idea!
Perhaps I may do so after so many years (Because frankly unless I can get lucky and sign some good players over the next couple of seasons – I’ll be staying in D2 lol)
My tranfer house rules are probably too strict for your liking but I had to be the brakes on the way it was before (I’d bring in a whole new team come first tranfer window! – Completely realistic of course..)
Oh, yes, sorry. I forgot you were not looking for top SBs. Graham is just the ticket for you, IMO. He doesn’t peak very high. Yet he’s very solid in defense, and has a good cross on him.