Friendly Fixture Generator.

FM12 needs a improvement on the way we create friendlies.

It would be nice if you could set ask your Assistant manager to do it for you. (Yes this is possible but as it stands, its crap)

You should be able to tell him a time frame of when you went such fixtures or you want to do an extensive tour of a country challenging from the top sides to the bottom.

For example. I tell my assistant, "I would like 10 friendly matches between xx/xx/2012 to xx/xx/2012 in XXXX country facing sides similar to my level." and this should be be doable as well for our Youth sides and reserve sides.

It would be a nice addition and if you are like me, your youth is your most prized asset, you can get them a good number of games without organizing a tour then having 3/4 clubs reject the matches. Plus it would mean if you have a reserve side that hardly gets games, you can get your assistant to find them matches from teams who might be on their winter break and that way, always got everyone playing.

In one of the recent podcasts I believe Miles mentioned something about friendlies being revamped, so you may get your wish.

I also want this. Its stupid that if the assistant chooses the friendlies, you always end up with a tour, then a home game, then your last friendly is usually away half way over the world. When in reality, the last friendly is usually at home ready for the new season.

If you are going into that much detail anyway, then you may as well arrange them yourself.

If you are going into that much detail anyway, then you may as well arrange them yourself.

Yeah as the guy said most clubs end up rejecting. I like to do a preseason cup, normally named after my ground. Most clubs end up rejecting and I'm stuck with clubs that aren't very good.

I'd like only "available" clubs to be shown when looking for a friendly.

In addition, we could have a feature that allows clubs (including yourself) to mark when they'd like a friendly before the next pre-season starts, and you might get some interest from other clubs, and you will be able to easily see which clubs want friendlies on certain dates.

We can combine the two of course.

So, for example, say I want a friendly at home on the 2nd of August for next season. After this season finishes, I go to my calendar/friendlies screen and there is a button "mark as available for friendly" next to the 2nd of August with the condition "at home" (there might be additional clauses, of course, like maximum % of gate receipts given out). A few days later, one of my feeder clubs in financial distress asks for a friendly with a large % of gate receipts for themselves, and a few days even later, a big club comes looking to parade their new star striker around the world and isn't asking for any money. (This is a bit like putting a job advert up - you get more replies as time goes on.) It is then up to me to choose which one I'd like.

Alternatively, if there is no response or nobody is specifically interested in playing me, I can click that date and it will find all clubs interested in participating in a friendly on that day (just not specifically against me). I can then contact them and try to arrange one. Similar to the conditions, we should have the ability to filter out things like home or away, and % of gate receipts.

We should also have "plausible" dates where there is no interest in a friendly on that specific date but the team has no (friendly) fixtures nearby that date (i.e. say a club has friendlies arranged for the 1st and 14th - there is a 14-day gap so a friendly somewhere in between wouldn't be out of the question. Alternatively, that club might be looking for one on the 7th but you want the 6th - which isn't necessarily a bad thing unless it's a short tour with few rest days).

This could also be used to arrange those transfer clause friendlies, or testimonials for players, or to plan winter breaks with friendlies, or indeed to create a psuedo-reserves league in countries where reserves leagues don't exist (i.e. Italy). Of course, I'd argue that we should have the ability to split our squad arbitrarily but designate one as the first-team, reserves and youth teams, but that's another matter.

Yes, spending hours trying this and that club it is a waste of time.

Available only teams should highlighted, this way we will save tons of hours asking.

Thx

Another thing I'd like to see when the assistant creates friendlies would be to create matches against the teams that you already have a friendly match agreed with (as part of a transfer). Almost all my outgoing transfers include a friendly, and it's getting to be a bit of a hassle to remember to manually add these friendlies myself.

For large clubs this would be a good idea I suppose. However for us cash-strapped lower league managers it would take away the excitement of waiting to see if you can temp a big club to your ground and the revenue that comes with it. I actually enjoy the pre season a lot more because of that.

Yes, spending hours trying this and that club it is a waste of time.

Available only teams should highlighted, this way we will save tons of hours asking.

Thx

Doesn't this already happen? As when I select a date for friendlies it lists out the available clubs by reputation, and into domestic and foreign clubs plus the amount of fee to pay.

Doesn't this already happen? As when I select a date for friendlies it lists out the available clubs by reputation, and into domestic and foreign clubs plus the amount of fee to pay.

Yep, but often the selected team refuse to play even if available.

You have then to try dozens of times before obtaining a decent friendly schedule, you know what I mean.

It is only a matter of tries, so if this yearly process could be shortened we could save lot of time.

Good idea - I ran into an example of where this would be very useful last night. My reserve team was for whatever reason not in a league. So if I want the reserves to play games I have to set up a season's worth of friendlies manually. It would be nice if there was an interface to make this tedious micromanagement easier.

from me

I think that's a great idea.

I also always notice reserve teams sometimes reject my friendlies for whatever reason, so at least a list with teams that are willing would be nice.