Football Manager '11 Issues that should be resolved

Here is a list of issues that I would certainly hope would be resolved in the near future.

1) Pass-back : It appears that this happens far too often, my CB is facing my GK and is getting pressured by a striker, his accuracy to pass it back to the goalkeeper goes down to nearly 5%, even when they have good passing/composure. Its extremely bothersome because it creates a situation where they get a corner out of absolutely nothing. I am certain that top level teams would not make giant mistakes like this consistently. If the issue is the CB clearing the ball, they certainly tend to clear to flanks for a throw in rather than concede a corner. I hope they resolve this and make Centerbacks competent when passing back to the goalkeeper.

2) # of Woodworks : I personally find it fairly realistic that clearcut chances don't always get converted and its certainly possible for teams to have many and not score 1, but I certainly have an issue with the fact that in my 3 seasons, I nearly averages 2 woodworks per game, which is ludacris. Unless there is a Real Life statistic that backs the fact that players hit the woodwork plenty of times, I would prefer to see a miss.

3) Aging Player : For some weird reason, this years version seems to give me the impression that players begin to decrease physically far too fast. It tends to begin around 29 - 31, which is for a fair amount of players their peaking years. (Anelka, Drogba, Milito, Olic, etc.). I sense that any younger players that progress and reach those ages never amount to the same abilities since they decline too fast. More importantly, their Mental Attributes also decrease at the same time as their Physical attributes which is somewhat contradicting with popular belief of "experienced veterans". (Also Goalkeepers start decreasing at the age of 30, which is far too young)

In my current save, Essien began decreasing at the age of 29! including his mental attributes, depsite not being injured for the entire year and playing above average!

4) Regens : A known issue, but it needs to be addressed. Flair seems to be rather low.

5) Out of Contract : I have noticed that a few players that leave out of contract that look rather promising for lower clubs especially don't attract any interest. In my game, a 31 year old Shawn Wright Philipes is attracting no interest at all from anyone. Surely a lower division team would love him.

6) Agents : I know the issue of agents asking for to much money is something that gets thrown around a lot around here, but I my opinion, it all works well OTHER THAN the appearance fee! Thats the fee that is just too ridiculous. Many players in the world have an appearance fee ranging inbetween 3k - 18k. Yet as the game progresses, its impossible to get anything under 20k unless you increase their wages, and then that becomes the issue with the agents.

7) Match Preperation : Another known issue but certainly needs to be addressed. Completely annoying to see new tactics named "Current" being created.

8) Self-Modifying Tactics : Another known issue but certainly needs to be addressed. Set pieces get reset forcing you to modify them in game. Probably related to the "Current" issue above.

9) 4-5-1 vs 4-3-3 : It seems that for some odd reason, the game interprets these formations abnormally. In the tactic creator, 4-5-1 is a formation with an aml and amr, whereas Barcelona for some odd reason who play a "4-5-1", play with a flat 4 and 1 dmc. I had to use FMRTE to modify this by telling the manager to play a 4-3-3. It feels like a nightmare of confusion. Also, why do clubs not play a 4-2-4 where they have an aml and amr? Teams like Bayern and Atl. Madrid have been seen using that formation but it gets miss-represented as a flat 442, changing the roles from "inside forward" to "winger" which is a big difference.

That is all that comes to mind. Hopefully I have caught the attention of SI staff and that others agree with me. These are definately the pressing issues that can be resolved with a patch. I chose to ignore the issues I thought were unable to be patched up.

Feel free to leave your opinions and I hope the community agree's with me.

Here is a list of issues that I would certainly hope would be resolved in the near future.

1) Pass-back : It appears that this happens far too often, my CB is facing my GK and is getting pressured by a striker, his accuracy to pass it back to the goalkeeper goes down to nearly 5%, even when they have good passing/composure. Its extremely bothersome because it creates a situation where they get a corner out of absolutely nothing. I am certain that top level teams would not make giant mistakes like this consistently. If the issue is the CB clearing the ball, they certainly tend to clear to flanks for a throw in rather than concede a corner. I hope they resolve this and make Centerbacks competent when passing back to the goalkeeper.

Never seen this, but if your CB is under pressure wouldn't it be only fair to say his accuracy is going to go down, and then if he has low passing, composure, and similar stats then it is only going to get worse.

2) # of Woodworks : I personally find it fairly realistic that clearcut chances don't always get converted and its certainly possible for teams to have many and not score 1, but I certainly have an issue with the fact that in my 3 seasons, I nearly averages 2 woodworks per game, which is ludacris. Unless there is a Real Life statistic that backs the fact that players hit the woodwork plenty of times, I would prefer to see a miss.

Again not seeing this, except for the odd occasion. I did see it a lot in a Barca save in '09, but was regularly scoring 4 and 5 (so it must have been me cracking tactics, and that upping posts).

3) Aging Player : For some weird reason, this years version seems to give me the impression that players begin to decrease physically far too fast. It tends to begin around 29 - 31, which is for a fair amount of players their peaking years. (Anelka, Drogba, Milito, Olic, etc.). I sense that any younger players that progress and reach those ages never amount to the same abilities since they decline too fast. More importantly, their Mental Attributes also decrease at the same time as their Physical attributes which is somewhat contradicting with popular belief of "experienced veterans". (Also Goalkeepers start decreasing at the age of 30, which is far too young)

In my current save, Essien began decreasing at the age of 29! including his mental attributes, depsite not being injured for the entire year and playing above average!

Actually that would be about right, most players do peak at the turnover into their thirties. 3 of the four you're citing are at the edge of the probablility curve, and Olic was never a top player (and was out for 2 years looking for a kidney). Not too sure about GKs though.

4) Regens : A known issue, but it needs to be addressed. Flair seems to be rather low.

Proof please, all you're giving here is blind assertion. And please don't say there's threads on the issue, I've read them and they've as much proof as you do.

5) Out of Contract : I have noticed that a few players that leave out of contract that look rather promising for lower clubs especially don't attract any interest. In my game, a 31 year old Shawn Wright Philipes is attracting no interest at all from anyone. Surely a lower division team would love him.

A) wages, b) player is getting on. It is not that unusual for even a good ageing player to have trouble with finding clubs, and if the crisis bites deeper (no if there really) it'll only get more common.

6) Agents : I know the issue of agents asking for to much money is something that gets thrown around a lot around here, but I my opinion, it all works well OTHER THAN the appearance fee! Thats the fee that is just too ridiculous. Many players in the world have an appearance fee ranging inbetween 3k - 18k. Yet as the game progresses, its impossible to get anything under 20k unless you increase their wages, and then that becomes the issue with the agents.

Where do you get the figure 3K-18K first of all, I'm guessing more blind assertion. And also if you are not willing to shop around, make players unhappy and bargain you're only going to get ridiculous fees thrown at you.

7) Match Preperation : Another known issue but certainly needs to be addressed. Completely annoying to see new tactics named "Current" being created.

Never seen this one either. But is it a case you're changing tactics from game to game. If so the problem is that.

8) Self-Modifying Tactics : Another known issue but certainly needs to be addressed. Set pieces get reset forcing you to modify them in game. Probably related to the "Current" issue above.

Again not seen, but then I use default tactics with set pieces. They get me enough so why change?

In conclusion I actually think that most of the problems you're talking about are what's known as confirmation bias. You are either seeing an unusual occourance in-game, e.g. the pass back scenario, and inflating it's occourence so that you suddenly see it the whole time, or you're seeing an unusual occourance in real life, e.g. players retiring, and thinking that it is the normal practice. I'm not trying to belittle you, as this is something that happens to us all (for example in '09 I was thinking every other game I'd dominate possession like 59% to 41% but only come out 11 shots to 17. When I looked at the stats I found it only happened 5 times in over 100 matches), we've it wired into the deepest part of our brains.

But if you recognise the situation and correct for it then you might see a far better set of performances from your team, realising now what's actually going on and not what your subconsoius is telling you.

I appreciate you challenging the issues I've found in my saves and here is my counter

1) Fair enough but since this hasn't occurred to you it wouldn't seem completely unbelievable that rather than me being the exception, it might be you. I tend to play with a really really high line so passing back to the goalkeeper is a regular part of the game, and therefore the probability of an error occuring with a pass back increases, understood. But the passes don't even seem like passes, they seem like wild clearances towards the goalkeeper.

2) Fair enough, it could be possible that me having 12 games in a row where i've hit the post inbetween 1-5 times was down to chance. Note that this is calculating the wins, the draws and the losses. It's a statistic i've been following closely recently so therefore you can rule out the "confirmation bias", as you call it.

3) Sure, generally the players peak and play their best football at the age of 30. What I've been noticing is that they start to decline at the age of 30. I do understand that a players ability to maintain his fitness ALSO depends on his personality and determination which creates a lot of variables in order to follow it "efficiently" and give a black and white answer, which is just not possible. But in my experience, I have not seen a player maintain a 15 acceleration and 15 pace until the age of 32, whereas at the beginning of the game, you can find a fair bit of players at that age with those physical abilities.

Also, you can't be telling me that mentally, players begin to decline at the age of 30 can you? I know some people think footballers tend to be idiots but their knowledge of the game should only increase with age.

4) It is not as much "Blind Asertation" if you take time to do a simple search. If you conduct a search at the beginning of the game for players above Flair of 15, you will get a noticably larger amount of players with that attribute than when you do it in 2020 persay. People have posted their numbers and I believe even SI have admited it is an issue they are taking a look at.

5) Fair enough but being out of contract of 3 months, certainly he would drop his demands for some playing time. If not, he should've retired by now. He should also at least generate interest from clubs and simply reject them.

6) I find this response rather offensive, simply because you're telling me "im not doing it right". I certainly know my players have me as favored personal. Second, my deductions on this may lack research but it would be worth looking into them. Everytime you renew a players contract, based on the intial contract he was given by the SI researches, that value sky rockets compared to the others, and trying to negociate it tends to be futile. Also, just take a little time and look through the top paying clubs and look at their Apperance fees. Iniesta, Silva, Pique, Villa, Higuain, Kaka etc. ALL are under 20k appearance. Also, Ronaldo and Messi both have around 26-28k. Now please explain my inability to negociate any of the players i want to renew a contract with, who were in my team for 4 years winning games and happy, all want above 20k appearance fee + extra wages, and its non-negotiable.

I am not going to provide you with a powerpoint and an essay with statistics. This isn't my job. But if you took even 2 minutes to look at appearance fee's in the game at top spending clubs, you can make your own deduction without calling it "blind assertion"

7) Already a known issue so for you to defend the game here is irrelevent

8) That is the poorest reasoning i've ever heard. "I don't use it so why should you?" Please. I don't even want to dignify that with a response.

Note : I don't want this to turn into a war of "Defender" vs "Attacker". I'm simply trying to bring to light issues i have found and if they tend to be valid, i would hope they would be fixed.

Actually that would be about right, most players do peak at the turnover into their thirties. 3 of the four you're citing are at the edge of the probablility curve, and Olic was never a top player (and was out for 2 years looking for a kidney). Not too sure about GKs though.

Olić still has both of his kidneys you're probably confusing him with Klasnić. And he is certainly supremely fit and last season probably had his best year at the age of 30.

And he wasn't even mentioned as in issue, you completely misunderstood it. He was mentioned as one of fair number of players (strikers) who peak around 30, which is pretty common with highly professional players nowadays. The issue mentioned wasn't about players who are in that situation now (in reality) and as such are hand crafted in the database. It was that those players who are younger in the starting database almost never reach those years without declining. Couple of seasons in the future there are almost no players like those mentioned who reach 30ish without starting to decline already.

Olić still has both of his kidneys you're probably confusing him with Klasnić. And he is certainly supremely fit and last season probably had his best year at the age of 30.

And he wasn't even mentioned as in issue, you completely misunderstood it. He was mentioned as one of fair number of players (strikers) who peak around 30, which is pretty common with highly professional players nowadays. The issue mentioned wasn't about players who are in that situation now (in reality) and as such are hand crafted in the database. It was that those players who are younger in the starting database almost never reach those years without declining. Couple of seasons in the future there are almost no players like those mentioned who reach 30ish without starting to decline already.

Yeah, stupid me. I'll retract that one. On the second half, I'm still going to say that I'm far closer to right than either of ye, see my next post.

I appreciate you challenging the issues I've found in my saves and here is my counter

1) Fair enough but since this hasn't occurred to you it wouldn't seem completely unbelievable that rather than me being the exception, it might be you. I tend to play with a really really high line so passing back to the goalkeeper is a regular part of the game, and therefore the probability of an error occuring with a pass back increases, understood. But the passes don't even seem like passes, they seem like wild clearances towards the goalkeeper.

Confirmation bias. You're just saying it without any proof to back you up. It's definitely this.

2) Fair enough, it could be possible that me having 12 games in a row where i've hit the post inbetween 1-5 times was down to chance. Note that this is calculating the wins, the draws and the losses. It's a statistic i've been following closely recently so therefore you can rule out the "confirmation bias", as you call it.

Look back I bet you won't find 12 games in a season with posts being hit never mind 12 in a row.

3) Sure, generally the players peak and play their best football at the age of 30. What I've been noticing is that they start to decline at the age of 30. I do understand that a players ability to maintain his fitness ALSO depends on his personality and determination which creates a lot of variables in order to follow it "efficiently" and give a black and white answer, which is just not possible. But in my experience, I have not seen a player maintain a 15 acceleration and 15 pace until the age of 32, whereas at the beginning of the game, you can find a fair bit of players at that age with those physical abilities.

Also, you can't be telling me that mentally, players begin to decline at the age of 30 can you? I know some people think footballers tend to be idiots but their knowledge of the game should only increase with age.

Players peak at 28-30, so that means after they hit the top they decline. This happens fast, like over the course of a season, so no problem there. And as regards mentally I can absolutely gurantee you that players decline mentally starting from an average age of 17. That is the stage where the death of brain cells begins to outpace the replacement of the dead ones. Experience counts for much yes, but come the end of your career you are both physically and mentally much less sharp than at the start. You're still taking outliers to represent the trend.

4) It is not as much "Blind Asertation" if you take time to do a simple search. If you conduct a search at the beginning of the game for players above Flair of 15, you will get a noticably larger amount of players with that attribute than when you do it in 2020 persay. People have posted their numbers and I believe even SI have admited it is an issue they are taking a look at.

Actually go away and calculate it properly, start a save, count the flair of all players work out both the mean and the median. Then run fifty saves from the same base to 2020 and calculate the same values each time. If I had money I'd put it on coming out the same way as shooting, i.e. both the mean and median coming out higher 20 years in than at the start.

5) Fair enough but being out of contract of 3 months, certainly he would drop his demands for some playing time. If not, he should've retired by now. He should also at least generate interest from clubs and simply reject them.

Not neccessarily, there are often players (especially at the top) who will hang around for months before being snapped up. They've been on massively inflated salaries for over 10 years, they have a large cushion to live on, so they don't have to take the first job coming (or, in fact, any job if they don't want to). It's a matter of simple economics.

6) I find this response rather offensive, simply because you're telling me "im not doing it right". I certainly know my players have me as favored personal. Second, my deductions on this may lack research but it would be worth looking into them. Everytime you renew a players contract, based on the intial contract he was given by the SI researches, that value sky rockets compared to the others, and trying to negociate it tends to be futile. Also, just take a little time and look through the top paying clubs and look at their Apperance fees. Iniesta, Silva, Pique, Villa, Higuain, Kaka etc. ALL are under 20k appearance. Also, Ronaldo and Messi both have around 26-28k. Now please explain my inability to negociate any of the players i want to renew a contract with, who were in my team for 4 years winning games and happy, all want above 20k appearance fee + extra wages, and its non-negotiable.

Fine then you're not doing it right, I'm at Ajax and I can keep wages, bonuses and fees down to a fairly decent level despite 10 of my first team being constantly tapped up, and at least 5 of my squad players. Strangely enough Siem de Jong is the only one not wanted. The highest single bonus I'm paying is £12k for Stekelenberg keeping clean sheets.

And taking offence, honestly grow a thicker skin your current one is paper thin.

I am not going to provide you with a powerpoint and an essay with statistics. This isn't my job. But if you took even 2 minutes to look at appearance fee's in the game at top spending clubs, you can make your own deduction without calling it "blind assertion"

Actually if you want to be taken seriously it is. You're the one making claims, so it is your job to back them up, not mine. I'm just refuting them, and still I'm doing far more research than you.

7) Already a known issue so for you to defend the game here is irrelevent

There's an issue where if you have the team instructions open when changing tactics that it resets to default. Not even remotely connected to what you're saying. You can't just pick random items and call them "known issue".

8) That is the poorest reasoning i've ever heard. "I don't use it so why should you?" Please. I don't even want to dignify that with a response.

Not what I said. I said that as I don't use this side of the game I don't see any possible problems, so can't comment. Putting words in someone elses mouth, pretty rich from someone talking about "poorest reasoning".

Note : I don't want this to turn into a war of "Defender" vs "Attacker". I'm simply trying to bring to light issues i have found and if they tend to be valid, i would hope they would be fixed.

If you want to "bring light to" issues, then you will have to do a few things a lot differently:

1) Look at the stats to see if you're not fooling yourself,

2) Make sure of those stats (i.e. run them over and over again),

3) Find proof instead of making blanket statements growing from one incidence,

4) Actually take on board others' criticisms,

5) Don't go crying to mammy (which this post is essentially doing) every time someone points out a flaw in your reasoning.

1) If you were a member of SI staff and requested that I took a replay of it happening when it does, I would, but you don't warrant anything more then my word. You are welcome to create an opinion as you already have.

2) Looking at games here is what I've found. The first row is the match number I assigned at a random point in my last season, and the number on the right is the total number of woodworks being hit in 1 game.

match 1 : 1

match 2 : 3

match 3 : 4

match 4 : 0

match 5 : 1

match 6 : 0

match 7 : 2

match 8 : 0

match 9 : 0

match 10 : 0

match 11 : 1

match 12 : 2

match 13 : 2

match 14 : 0

match 15 : 2

match 16 : 1

match 17 : 0

match 18 : 0

match 19 : 1

match 20 : 0

20 woodworks in 20 games. Averages to 1 woodwork per game.

9/20 games occured where no woodworks have been hit. If I can, ill take a look at more seasons and see if it adds up, but this is a fair good reason to bring what i think is an issue to light. Whether or not it is researched and provide enough statistics to create the change is obviously clear. There just isn't enough. Though I don't exactly have the resources to do one anyways.

Note : I do admit to a certain exaggeration and I do apologize. Either way, I think the value is rather high.

3) Fair point, though you can't generalize too much. There are definatly exceptions, and players tend to peak at different times. At this point, there are no probability assigned to exceptions of the rule which is somewhat bothersome. Also, different positions have different ages where players tend to peak. i.e. midfielders do tend to peak at around the age of 26-28, whereas defenders peak at around 29-31. Strikers tend to be all over the place and wingers tend to be younger. Goalkeepers are well known to be able to play up to the age of 32-34 exceptionally well, if not longer though they tend to be exceptions. (Van der Saar, Friedal).

Also, we have very different understands when I speak of "mentally". You are talking about the mental capacity of a player whereas I am talking about the attributes assigned the the "Mental Attributes" category, which are in regards to a players knowledge of the game etc. Therefore as a player ages, his ability to make appropriate decisions and know where he belongs on the pitch should increase, yet his ability to actually accomplish those tasks should decrease. In other words, the Mental Attributes should increase rather than decline while the physical and to a different degree, technical should decrease.

The current situation I've been noticing is that Mental attributes and Physical attributes are dropping in tandem. (Side note : I do believe though that certain attributes like Concentration, Bravery and Workrate should be allowed to drop as a player ages but I refute the notion that Anticipation and Decision etc should drop)

4) If I had the resources to do a complete research I would but doing so on a Netbook would understandably take ages. Though it would be great if FM users who have a long term game could post their number of players with above flair of 15 and use the start game number of players with flair above 15 as a base. I have nothing against proper research other than if it actually gets recognized by SI staff and is not time wasted to prove something to someone who can't do anything about actual changes to future patches

5) I'll take your word for it, don't have knowledge in the area and I don't think i even came close to coming across as having a strong opinion on this issue.

6) So now that we agree that the majority of players get around 3 - 20k appearance fee's seeing as you didn't complain about my "blind assertion" we can move on. My highest Appearance fee is a ridiculous 36k and he has 73k a week. That is the lowest I could get the negotiations to after the first time they broke apart. Note that I'm even on the agents favorite personal. The same goes for Zhirkov who has a massive 35k appearance fee. Ben Arfa is currently on 26k appearance and thats the lowest but I can let that one slide, he's been amazing so far. 35 year old Frank Lampard is on 28k appearance and 88k weekly after 2 negotiations broke apart. Though I can live with that one too, he's a legend.

I've also had a good amount of signings where I was trying to bring a player to the club and I simply couldn't get the appearance fee under 20k and i simply rejected bringing him to the club.

I understand it's not enough to create a giant issue out of it, and I do not think this is a major issue but there could possibly be one with appearance fee's. The demands for them are just a bit high.

7) I don't even understand you on this point. I am referring the fact that tactics named "Current" are being created without me doing anything about them. Don't know why it occurs but I've noticed it happening sometimes after changing something in my tactic but the slightest margins. I also don't really care why its happening, since its an issue that was brought by the newest patch and I would hope it gets resolved appropriately in the new patch.

8) Probably more of an issue of misunderstanding. "Again not seen, but then I use default tactics with set pieces. They get me enough so why change?". By saying "They get me enough so why change?", i understood you telling me not to change them, which would then lead me to my appropriate response. Since this is not the case then we can drop this point all together and I will apologize for my misunderstanding.

If you want to "bring light to" issues, then you will have to do a few things a lot differently:

1) Look at the stats to see if you're not fooling yourself,

reasonable enough.

2) Make sure of those stats (i.e. run them over and over again),

Would love to if I had the resources and if I had some kind of response or support from SI. Since neither is there, I will withdrawl from doing so.

3) Find proof instead of making blanket statements growing from one incidence,

No ones making Blanket statements, its you interpreting them as so.

4) Actually take on board others' criticisms,

I certainly have, and i have provided counters.

5) Don't go crying to mammy (which this post is essentially doing) every time someone points out a flaw in your reasoning.

Totally unprofessional on your part and I would reject the notion.

Note that this is simply my opinion of certain issues that I would "HOPE" were addressed. Take a step back and notice that I am only trying to provide SI with my opinion of certain issues that I feel exist. I am not demanding that they are to be changed. Nor will I be throwing the game out and raging. I am simply making my voice heard of issues I think are worth taking a look at. I do appreciate you poking holes at the issues I have found and would generally always welcome it but you need to learn to do it a "positive way". Don't throw words around like "Blind assertation" when they are not warranted. It appropriates a personal connotation. As you have noticed I replied positively to your most recent counter argument where I found warranted. Hopefully you can continue to do so in a professional manner and I will attempt to respond in what I believe is an appropriate method.

Novox re woodwork hits

Don't waste your time going through matches just to prove it's an issue. It's a known issue with the game (and has been for a few versions) that woodwork hits exceed real life stats.

I can confirm issues 7 and perhaps 8. By the end of the season I end up with 20+ tactics called "current". With regards to tactics resettitng, I have noticed that quite often it is neccessary to change the "corner kick aim" setting as it has returned to mixed. Regarding the backpass, I generally don't watch in full match, but I have seen some pretty wild back-passes with horrible accuracy. I can't say I've seen it as regularly as you, but it definitely happens, even with top defenders. Also it appears as though the keeper doesn't try hard enough to save the corner when it does happen.

Brian, there's no need to get personal is there? Even I, an innocent bystander, find your attitude appalling. I mean, how does it affect you if people mistakenly point out issues that are not actually issues?

My take on the issues:

Agree with most of Novox's gripes, except maybe the pass-back one, which I've never experienced personally.

My main gripe is the transfer system, which is still quite unrealistic, both in terms of activity (e.g. little bids unless you offer players out, which means that human players seldom get big money transfer for good players) and logic (e.g. big clubs buying useless players that go straight into the reserves).

Also, I hope they fixed all the flaws in the ME e.g. through balls and dribbles splitting the centrebacks too easily, crosses going to opposite wingers rather than the forward, goals from corners hit to far post etc.

Please keep this discussion civil guys.

@Brian Shanahan, BossAsianMafia, Novox

What is your problem Brian Shanahan? Do you feel high and mighty for blindly refuting and attacking this person who is trying to help us get a more polished game? I agree with BossAsianMafia and i find your attitude absolutely disgusting. You constantly belittle Novox for trying to bring issues to the fore while you do abo****ely nothing but say 'you're wrong' backed by nothing but your own experiences. I didn't know that your experiences were greater than his or anyone elses here. I guess i didn't get the memo that you were the absolute authority on whether things are working or not. Novox was more than nice enough to welcome your criticism and was much more civil towards you than you deserve. For you to tell him to take other peoples opinions onboard while you slander him and tell him he needs proof when you have none either. There is a general consensus on this board that there are issues with the game, low flair in regen is one of them. Whether it's true or not, is it not at least worth looking into from SI to find out whether it is true or not?

Novox:

I appreciate you challenging the issues I've found in my saves and here is my counter

1) Fair enough but since this hasn't occurred to you it wouldn't seem completely unbelievable that rather than me being the exception, it might be you. I tend to play with a really really high line so passing back to the goalkeeper is a regular part of the game, and therefore the probability of an error occuring with a pass back increases, understood. But the passes don't even seem like passes, they seem like wild clearances towards the goalkeeper.

Brian: Confirmation bias. You're just saying it without any proof to back you up. It's definitely this.

What the hell? Again, he's biased because he's seen it before and he proposes the possibility that the errors due to pressure might be too high? Whereas you are also biased in the view that you haven't seen it and it doesn't exist. You see how he's atleast open-minded to the fact that it *COULD* be wrong, or HE could be wrong, where as you are on your high horse thinking that you are NEVER wrong and everyone else is wrong if they don't say something you agree with? You've shown that you are an amazing hypocrite that believe you need no proof while doing nothing but attacking other peoples opinion but he requires proof for every little thing he notices because he's trying to help us get a better game. Also, his opinion is wrong because you've never experienced it. Absolutely disgusting how you've responded to this man and your attitude in general. Admittedly, i may have sunk to your level in my anger.

Brian, that's quite a pathetic attitude. Your post almost makes no sense, it seems you're new to the forums since many of the points in the OP have been discussed here in length earlier. Even if the OP may have mentioned a couple of issues that others may not have experienced, he/she hardly deserves to be shot down like this. I personally found your "Brain cells die at age 17, so mental attributes start decreasing" explanation the stupidest thing I've ever read on a forum, but that probably comes down to my choice of forums.

While, the pass-back and regen quality do not seem to be big issues to me, I do agree that the number of woodwork hits does seem to be a tad bit higher than IRL.

The 'current' tactics issue has already been discussed in the forum at length.

As for the decreasing player attributes, here's what I've observed in about 10 seasons so far:

1. The more playing time your players get, the longer they continue to keep their attributes, since they maintain their level of CA.

2. Now, depending on their training schedules, they might lose a few points in a certain attribute, but will gain some poaints in other attributes as long as their CA does not go down.

3. As your players reach age 30-32, they tend to lose their physical attributes faster, and so it's important to increase their physical and aerobics training.

4. Despite that and playing regularly, they Will ultimately begin to lose physical attributes as well as CA. But, if their tactics training levels are high enough they will recover most of their lost physical attributes in mentals.

5. Finally, their is really no strict rule to say if their attributes will be retained or change. It heavily depends on their personality attributes like ambition, professionalism and determination.

I have a Centre Back, who plays as a rotation player for me. He is aged 33 and still has retained almost all hig physical attributes. He lost a couple points in pace/acceleration and gained a couple in marking and decisions, keeping his CA constant.

I have another centre back, who at 19 years of age, lost 5 points in CA and attribute points in about 10 attributes, despite being a first team regular.

I guess it comes down to personality in the end.

In reference to the OP:

1) Back Passes going out for Corners: Known Issue that has been reported many times before. Might not happen to everybody, but certainly happens more than it should.

2) Woodwork: Again, as isuckatfm said earlier, known issue, although it is not hugely higher than in reality. Just a bit.

3) Regression of Aging Player Attributes: Will relate to the player himself and the match/training workload he's under. I regularly see mental stats increasing into the mid-thirties for determined or professional players I am not overplaying or overtraining. I've also had players pretty much end their careers at 31. Think about the criticisms commonly made of Michael Owen: 'He can't play as he used to as he no longer has the legs and struggles to mentally adjust to the role he now has to play'. In FM terms, his mental attributes will drop. With no legs and no brain, the player isn't cut out for top flight football any longer. A mismanaged, low professional FM player can completely regress as he hits 30.

4) Regens: Have never been perfectly modelled but are getting better over time. I'd expect to see further improvements still in the 11.3 patch.

5) Out of Contract Players: Hopefully as the above.

6) Agents: Agent issues can generally be dealt with through good management. I've never yet had to pay over the odds for anyone, in either wages, fees or transfers. Sometimes you need a lot of patience, but it can pretty much always be done.

7 & 8) Match Preparation and Tactics: I'm not happy about the logic around this and hope it can be improved for future FMs. Agree that the 'Current' tactic issue is infuriating. Hope it can be solved for the next patch.

9) This is a legacy issue in which the old tactical terms were supplanted by the new ones in the TC. It's more cosmetic than anything else, but hopefully can be tidied up in the long-term.

While I'd agree that the OP didn't need to be refuted quite so vehemently, debates such as these can be very useful sources of information and ideas. As long as things are kept civil, there should be no issue in discussing whether things are bugs or not, and, either way, how they might be improved.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that noticed the "pass-back" issue, and I appreciate the fact that many of you agree with a good amount of the issues I've presented. Hopefully we can press on in a civil manner from now on.

1) & 2) Glad to know both of these are known issue and hopefully they get acknowledged in the next patch.

3) I've read some interesting things so far. I can agree with the fact that players like Ronaldo and Messi probably won't last above 30 simply because they peaked so early and defenders tend to slash them in order to stop them so they will probably decrease earlier, but are stuff like this really implemented in the system?

Also, is it possible to "overtrain" a player with a higher workload to the point where he begins to decrease? I've personally never payed any attention to this since I like to put my training schedules on heavy and don't care how they feel about it.

Interestingly enough though. I've noticed that a 35 year old Lucio at Inter still has 15 accel and 15 pace. Still a top class defender! I do know that personalty traits affect the downfall in a players stats as he ages, but because those attributes have such an impact, its nearly impossible to get the Anelka's and the Drogba's of today. Neither of those players are exactly professional yet they peaked around 31-32. This might be more of an issue of "Late-Bloomers" which tend to be non-existant in FM.

4) I'm fairly happy with the regens though it would be nice if they introduced more role specified tendencies in combination with the nationality ones. Though this might be more of a feature for fm12 if it already isn't in fm11

5) In addition, I would hope more clubs enter into competition of signing a player on Bosman. Like I've heard other say, It's far too easy to create a top class team with free signings since no one competes for the bosman signatures. It's not until they actually run out of a contract that everyone starts fighting for him, which gives you 6 months advantage in getting him.

6) The only reason i raised this issue is the fact that I couldn't even be close to reducing the appearance fee's for Sturridge and Zhirkov from 30k. Which is absoultely ridiculous fee's. Though I guess this might be attributed to the fact I'm chelsea and agents try to extract as much as they can from a cash rich club.

Hopefully this thread has contributed at least something to SI. It was only my hope to help, and I look forward to the new patch. If anyone noticed any other reasonable issues that I might've missed and you would like to introduce to this discussion, I would be glad to hear them