There are some more badges now. :)
Someone at my workplace was having trouble with this game, so I sent them an email with this guide in it. I thought I might as well post it on here too, so I've padded it out with a bit more detail.
Set up your team approximately like this:
- I've taken points away from PASS and THROW and put them in TOUGH and SPEED. I've also weakened the goalkeeper and put those spare points into TACKLING.
- Don't change your team's primary and secondary colours to the same like I did my first time. When you meet a light-coloured team it's very confusing.
- the 1000 to 1500 training items are not worth buying. Buy the 5000 and 6000 training items instead. Concentrate on speed and toughness, with a bit of tackling. Once speed and toughness are 5 star for most of your players, move on to tackling and throw.
- Don't bother with the drugs or bribe unless your team looks like Noodlez's team and so you have nothing else to spend money on. Since they only benefit your team for a single game, they are a waste of money.
- the game saves your progress after any purchase and immediately after a match ends. So you can refresh the page if you get off to a bad start in a match.
- Really there's no reason you can't win every game. 1-0 wins are perfectly acceptable.
- After seven games the season ends and you'll get promoted. You'll get the option of buying transfer players. I'm not sure this is a good idea: yes, they are reasonably priced, but you'll end up with some 5-star players and some rubbishy players, and you'll have to do training anyhow; some of which will be wasted.
- But, if you see a SPEEDy and TOUGH player, maybe with good TACKLING, you can get him. Also, feel free to downgrade your goalkeeper even more to get some money. If your goalkeeper is getting the ball more than once every few matches, you're playing it wrong. ;)
- I like the counterattack formation the most, it's good against everything. In Division 4 (at the start of the game) you might want to use Narrow Attack just because you don't need a defence of any kind.
- In actual play, tackle by walking into opposing players. DO NOT press pass or throw buttons while doing this: nine times out of ten this will cause the ball to go in a random direction.
- To be honest, passing and throwing are generally overrated. Running with the ball feels really slow, but it's more reliable and easier to control. Also, having less stats to train is very useful.
- You still need to use the pass key binding to switch players when you lose the ball.
- Once you have the ball, move up the field in zig zags. Avoid opposing players. If you run into a few of them, it's perfectly OK to turn the opposite direction and move away from them:
The green arrow is direction my player wanted to go in, but three opposing players have blocked that route. The pink arrow shows how I can spin around and head them off. The blue arrow is the direction they will tend to go in. I know it's difficult to believe this will work, but it will. They tend to head to where you're facing rather than at you. This starts working especially well in Division 1 when the pace is faster.
- If you get really closed in, or your player who has the ball is really slow, a good desperation move is to throw at an angle against the side of the pitch.
- Walk the ball into the net. Avoiding the goalkeeper is easy: head towards him at an angle then suddenly change.
- If you get tackled in the enemy area, they tend to muck about and not clear it right away. You have a very good chance of getting the ball back, leaving them defenceless.
