Lazio noes
Posted by: not-Greg in European Cup (ECC), Treble, league table, tags: European Cup (ECC), league table, TrebleThe end of season 2018 saw me 9 points clear at the top of the table with three games to go. My goal difference was a lot better than Valencia’s, the second-placed team. So even if I lost all three games (which would never happen anyway, not even to me, an average sort of PES player) the title was guaranteed to be mine regardless. As expected, I won the next game—game 28—and Valenica could only draw. And that was that. I’d won the League. Hoo-rah…
It’s only my third or fourth Championship (I think), so I’d be entitled to feel very happy with it. And I do feel very happy with it. Really I do. But… the whole season has felt like a bit of an anti-climax. I was knocked out of the Division 1 Cup in the first round, ending my hopes for a Treble. That was disappointing, but I had the chance of a great consolation prize: to finish the season unbeaten in the league. That gave me hope of securing something remarkable from this season, but the run came to an end recently with defeat at the hands of the division’s bottom club. So I can’t quite shake a feeling of ‘could’ve done better’. I suppose I’ll just have to rectify matters in season 2019…
Before I get to that, though, there’s the trifling matter of a European Cup final to deal with. My opponents were Lazio. I don’t think I’ve played them at all yet in this career. Actually, I’ve just checked back through the archives and I definitely haven’t played them yet. (I have played Lazio in PES2008, but it was in that other version of PES2008 that we don’t like to talk about.)
Lazio were staggeringly good. Even for a souped-up team playing in a cup final (the CPU team is always souped-up), Lazio delivered possibly the single best performance against me from any CPU team. They were faster, stronger, and yes, they were luckier. I can’t really make my traditional complaint about scripting per se. Once again I think my defensive failings in this match were mostly of my own making. But all match it seemed at times that Lazio’s players were immune to tackling—or, if they were tackled, then my players would mysteriously walk away a few paces and stop dead while the CPU player recovered his wits and the ball and raced away with it… Words cannot do justice to the sense of injustice I feel whenever this happens.
But anyway. Lazio were brilliant and the non-tackling issue was relatively minor in comparison. They took the lead, I equalised, then I took the lead—it was 2-1 to me at half-time. I was pretty comfortably holding them at bay. The second half started with a hurricane of incessant Lazio attacks. I still held out, but inevitably buckled towards the end, just when the finishing line was coming into sight. Gutted. 2-2, and looking like extra time. Then I made a schoolboy error.
A Lazio striker broke through my defence out on the right wing and headed in toward goal. I should know better, but I advanced my keeper by pressing Triangle. For a couple of versions now, there’s been a fault when advancing your keeper at an angle towards an attacker. The keeper makes a beeline toward where the ball was at the start of your Triangle-pressing, ignoring the CPU player’s continued run. This leaves a massive gap that the CPU player can hardly fail to score into. That’s what happened here.
2-3 to Lazio in the 90th minute. There was hardly time to restart. I had a token run down their wing, lost the ball, and the final whistle went. Ouch. This one hurt.
After the disappointment of losing the European Cup final I took my eye off the ball in league game 29, and lost 0-1 to Recreativo de Huelva. That meant I’d lost two games all season. Disappointing, but with the unbeaten record already gone, it wasn’t disastrous. I rallied for the final game of the season and trounced Deportivo la Coruna 6-0. My strikers ran riot. Andy Cole got a hat-trick, Giggs got two, and Kim Cyun Hi got the remainder.
My end-of-season record in the league is a pretty healthy one. I finished 1st with 74 points from thirty games. I won 23 games, drew 5 games, and lost 2 games (grrr). I scored 74 goals and conceded 24 goals, giving me a goal difference of +50. Now that’s pretty good—Valencia, the next-best team in the whole division, had a goal difference of around +18 at the end of the season. If I could just tighten up at the back a bit—in all competitions—I might well get into that ‘Treble every year’ zone where I want to be. We’ll see how it goes.
Next up is the pre-season 2019 negotiations period. With the seasons passing, it’s time to start making some plans for the future. I’ll be visiting the Youth list. And I’ll also be rearranging my First XI. It’s time to make some tough decisions.
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Tsk, tsk, an experienced player like yourself should know that you can’t just press triangle and let the keeper run to the ball at his own will. You have to tap triangle repeatedly to correctly his path, that also works to confuse the opposition. I find that for some reason, if you rush the keeper out early (before he appears on the screen), the opposition is most of the times taken by surprise. You have to get to the striker before he gets inside the box or just as he’s entering it. Otherwise it’s too easy to score. Having said that, I’ve had Fredriksson do some miraculous saves inside the box by carefully tapping triangle to reposition him.
Adriano - I didn’t know that and have never come across that info in a decade of Triangle-charging! Thanks. Next time I have that scenario, I’ll be sure to use the tap method.
Usually when I end up in that situation - attacker coming in at an angle, one-on-one with my keeper - I wait until almost the last moment, until he’s almost upon me, before coming out. But I’ve been very impatient with PES this year for a number of reasons (it’s a let-down of a year for mugs like me who bought a PlayStation3 with PES in mind), and my discipline just flies out of the window all too often.
It’s an either or situation, you either rush before the striker approaches so you can catch him off guard before he gets too close or you wait until the last moment, as you said. If it’s a crucial situation, I try my best to slide tackle him from behind with a defender. I’d rather have a CB sent off than a goalie (I never have a keeper in the bench).
As you may have noticed I’m an habitual professional-fouler. I’ll always scythe down a CPU player who’s clean through on goal and take the red card if the match is delicately poised. I can go down to 9 or 10 players and hang on for the win.
(I’d never do this against a human opponent. In my very few forays online, I’ve always played a clean game.)
Incidentally, I keep meaning to discuss this in a post, but I’ve noticed that I’ll often get a straight red card for a foul in an area of the pitch where the CPU is only marginally threatening—out on a wing, say, with lots of defenders still between it and the goal.
I think I get the red card because the CPU has already loaded up the script that says ‘this situation will lead to a clear-cut CPU chance’.
So when I foul the CPU player in a place where it hasn’t got a clear-cut goalscoring chance, it would have led to a clear-cut chance in the CPU’s ‘mind’, and thus I get a red card.
This could be typical PES paranoia on my part, but after all this time it seems to fit my observations. Why else would so many red cards be issued for fouls in non-threatening areas of the pitch? (They’re not the vicious tackles from behind that can draw a red card anywhere on the pitch.)
I suppose sometimes it happens that you get a red card for a foul you wouldn’t have expect to, but that is a bit like real life. You can never tell when a ref will go bananas. But of course it rarely happens to the CPU players. When the scripting is on they can cut you down shamelessly without a second glance form the ref.
I have to say I am starting to warm to the PSP version of PES 2008! I decided to play game after game, regardless of how many I lose just to get used to it once and for all. Don’t get me wrong, I am still losing regularly, but I can at least score a bit.. which is better than what I was like before (getting beaten 4-0 every week by every team). I also scored one of the best free kicks ever, it must have been about 40 yards out- Baraja of all people. Strangely it was the one match I made him captain! Did that cause him to lift his game or am I experiencing Not Greg like paranoia!
I agree during God Mode I am hacked down all over the place. It’s especially obvious when I am away for some reason…..
Adriano - what I’m suggesting, though, is that the CPU loads up a script when the play is still in midfield. That script dictates they’ll go through your entire defence whatever you do, and create at least a goal-scoring chance. If you foul the CPU ball-carrier at that stage, it can draw an automatic red card for a professional foul, despite them being nowhere near your goal. Like I say, maybe some paranoia there, but I think it’s true!
Not Given - keep plugging away with the PSP version, you’ll be rewarded. I was looking back through my first PSP posts yesterday and I found it really hard at first. If you rarely play on your PSP anyway, you’ll find it additionally hard. I think I adapted quite well because I’m always playing loads of different games on my PSP.