A number of questions from a newbie player

Heya guys,

I've been watching my little brother play FM and other manager games for close to a decade, back when I still lived at home and now whenever I'm visiting him in his own flat. Well, although I have always been curious and interested in those games, school and work made it impossible - until now

That said, I bought the game and received it a few days ago. Now that I've played through the first few seasons, there are some questions that keep bugging me:

1.) The affiliate clubs are a nice touch and I even got a nice and strong player on a free loan each year. But is that all, affiliates are useful for in FM? I'd have liked to open a dialogue with the club, ask for additional loan players or maybe even get a nice mail from their manager the likes of "thanks for playing xy in your first team, if you keep that up we'll trust you with a better player next year" if he was satisfied with my handling of his player. The only way of communication are the positive/negative comments on their manager and that's hugely disappointing, because it's the same all over.

2.) How important are reserves and youth teams of a club? What I'm trying to ask is: does it make sense financially or for your personal or club's reputation to win or do well in those leagues? Is it beneficial to attract youth players to your club or buy weak guys designated for the reserves to get those titles, even though some of these players won't ever be likely to get a first team shot? While I am certainly not interested in managing three teams in one club, I'm willing to pay someone else to manage them and spend a bit of money if there's some kind of payback.

3.) Following up on the second question, when I'm looking to buy a player that's definitely not strong enough for my first team anytime soon, the lowest possible squad status option is Backup. Nevertheless, after signing a talent with said option, he was sorted into the first team squad and got angry as soon as I demoted him from the first team to the reserves, where I want him to play. Now, two years later he's not willing to sign a contract extension even though he's improved a lot and I'd be willing to pay for that. The question of course is, if there's no way to sign players directly into their designated teams (main, reserves, youth) to make it clear to them what they can expect in the club?

4.) A question in a similar vein, will the appearance fee need to be paid for each and every game (from friendlies to matches in the reserves squad) or can I use that option to lure those kinds of players when I don't plan on using them in the 1st team?

5.) What stats are important for an assistant manager? I'm sure that judging for potential/ability is needed, not only because of his recommendations and his reports. The thing is, that my current manager has 17 in both stats and completely messes up his team report by putting several players on their weaker positions and also putting someone with only 1 star on his preferred starting lineup despite not having used a player he gives 3 stars to.

6.) Can I somehow silence people in the backroom talk or tune their feedback to my needs? They're constantly giving me dubious advice, either by asking me to sign the worst types of players, coaches and scouts or by switching back and forth with their preferred moves. One defender, they keep asking him to dive into tackles and the next season, they ask him to change it back. While information on training success is a help, everything else is not.

7.) Is there a way to keep track of a player's career, not only what little the history screen shows statistically but also his skill progression? His attributes histor4y as shown in the trainings tab would be okay, but it only records one year If there's no built-in function, are there external programs that allow my tracking of players? I don't need the most exact data, but what I'd really like would be a yearly progress report or something like that.

8.) While I'm playing somewhat above my own expectations so far, my biggest problem are strikers. Once or twice per season my team has a really rough period where nothing works, no different tactics, no player changes, no letting players rest. It may be a coincidence, but it always starts with games which I expect to win handily because the opponents are weaker. This affects strikers the worst, once this phase has started, it's almost impossible to get them to shoot a goal, any goal. Is there any reason to this madness or can I do anthing to reduce these effects, the length of this rough period, etc?

Well, that's about it for the moment. I'm sure that as I get more familiar with the game, more questions will come For now though I'm happy with where I am.

Kney

As far as affiliate clubs are concerned getting one in Spain,Belgium or Poland is good if you want to sign south american players(Spain is especially good because of their 2 year rule for spanish speaking players) or any non-eu nation. If you try and sign a non-eu player and he fails to get a work permit you will still be able to sign him but you'll have to send him to the affiliate club for a few years (3 for Poland and Belgium and 2 2 for Spain if the player is from a Spanish speaking nation).

When looking for a good assistant manager I look for the following attributes

Judging player\potential

Man Management

Motivation

Level of Discipline

Tactical Knowledge

Determination

3.) Following up on the second question, when I'm looking to buy a player that's definitely not strong enough for my first team anytime soon, the lowest possible squad status option is Backup. Nevertheless, after signing a talent with said option, he was sorted into the first team squad and got angry as soon as I demoted him from the first team to the reserves, where I want him to play. Now, two years later he's not willing to sign a contract extension even though he's improved a lot and I'd be willing to pay for that. The question of course is, if there's no way to sign players directly into their designated teams (main, reserves, youth) to make it clear to them what they can expect in the club?

Backup players view themselves as part of the first team squad in my experience.

How much playing time they expect as a backup varies with personality as far as I know so more temperamental types will complain more readily if they don't feel they are getting enough game time.

Keep the player in the first team squad but right click > make available for reserves. Players don't appear to view that as a demotion.

Also you say talent which I'm assuming means he was reasonably young. The squad status a player asks for is very much linked to their view of themselves relative to your club's reputation. So a youngster who Man Utd might be able to sign as a 'hot prospect' might ask for 'first team' if a Championship side tried to sign him.

4.) A question in a similar vein, will the appearance fee need to be paid for each and every game (from friendlies to matches in the reserves squad) or can I use that option to lure those kinds of players when I don't plan on using them in the 1st team

As far as I know it is first team appearances in competitive matches but don't quote me on that. You could probably figure it out readily enough if you really wanted to know.

6.) Can I somehow silence people in the backroom talk or tune their feedback to my needs? They're constantly giving me dubious advice, either by asking me to sign the worst types of players, coaches and scouts or by switching back and forth with their preferred moves. One defender, they keep asking him to dive into tackles and the next season, they ask him to change it back. While information on training success is a help, everything else is not

As others have said, no. On a related note I really hope they do not flesh this out in the name of realism. I can't think of anything worse than having squad morale etc. damaged because of not taking on crap advice or the follow on tedium of having to constantly search for staff just so you can find someone you can actually agree with from time to time so it doesn't mess up your team. They should keep the advice as a help option for those who like to use it, and not flesh it out so that it punishes those who ignore it because they are comfortable with their own understanding of the game. In this case playability trumps realism for me.

Hi guys,

first off thanks for all your answers, it's been a huge help in reforming my approach in being the best manager I can be. Now that I know how little the performance of my reserves team - and youth team for that matter - actually improves the club's standings, won't help in other matters but is mainly a drain on my finances, I have changed my outlook until a FM version might come along that takes some things into account, like Neil mentioned.

That being said, I have only played in the English league so far, even though I'm not very familiar with football over there but like it because of the huge league system. Since I live and was born in Austria, I know most about the Austrian, German and Italian leagues and in two of those countries, reserves teams are actually able to advance to playable leagues or are presently playing there, while Italy doesn't even have a reserves league. Examples are two Austrian reserves teams in the second highest league (Erste Liga) and four such teams in the 3rd Bundesliga in Germany. Now comes my next question: is there a difference between countries such as Austria/Germany and others where those secondary teams are locked in their respective reserves-leagues or is the lack of positive effects from reserves teams (little to no effect on reputation, etc) hard-coded into the game? Furthermore, is it even possible to do as I've been doing, by allowing unused first-team players to attend reserve matches if the reserve team's league has its own registration process and needs its own squad numbers? Can a player even be part of two squad registrations for two different national leagues at the same time? Before I start playing in Germany, I'd rather think about something like that

About affiliate clubs: yeah I've read that sending players to one's affiliates in certain countries allows for a faster gain of a new nationality. That's fine, but is there a way to ask the board for a specific type of affiliate club or from one nation only? As far as I've seen, there's only the general option to ask for a feeder club and the board will decide anything else, if I go by the message they sent after my request.

In regards to the tracking of a player's career: thanks for explaining that Neil. Yeah, I completely understand the 'grey' area you're talking about and I'm not saying that there should be a complete database of past training and attributes which would, for example, allow someone to analyze ones training schedules much too easily. Then again, we must think what a real-life club is doing and how that can be included in the game without destroying the balance of the game and challenge for the manager. While we in FM work with technical, mental and physical attributes on a scale from 1 to 20, that's certainly not how it's done in real life. But I'm quite sure that there are some real-life applications of a feature like this, for example recording and comparing fitness tests (ie. the number of repetitions of a certain task, speed of sprinting, reaction time, etc) that will follow a player throughout his time at the club and I think this data can be used in training schedules and the like. Translated to FM, this would only be an extension of an existing feature: instead of the monthly training progress report where a few players are named for their good or bad progress, lets do a yearly review of the player's training and make it possible to save that as a note which can then be used to track a player through his whole career at the club. I don't know how extensive that report should be, maybe only covering the players' most important stats regarding to his training and position(s).

Well, back to my game. We just qualified for international football with Wolverhampton for the first time in 2012/13 and I'll get back to that, before thinking about a German challenge.