Attention paid to Lower League Football

I'm getting fed up with my backroom staff in N.Ireland's Div 2. Why when I am third (1 loss in last 11 games) are they constantly telling me to drop 8 of my first eleven due to poor form????

How much testing actually goes on the lower leagues?

Also I'm still finding backroon staff (especially scouts) to be utterly useless. Too much micromanagement is needed with them.

Are you sure that your staff aren't rubbish? If staff don't have the right attributes then they're more likely to get things wrong. Same with your scouts.

You can't really complain about lower league staff being useless. They're lower league for a reason.

I find anyone who performs worse than they should do ends up with a staff message telling you to drop them at the bi-monthly backroom meeting. It's usually my goalkeeper I get it with, and occasionally one or two outfielders.

What micromanagement is needed for backroom staff?

If you're finding you're having to set scouts assignments all the time, send them on a roaming UK & Ireland thing (if you're allowed to, if you're not allowed then scout the competitions you can instead).

I'm getting fed up with my backroom staff in N.Ireland's Div 2. Why when I am third (1 loss in last 11 games) are they constantly telling me to drop 8 of my first eleven due to poor form????

How much testing actually goes on the lower leagues?

Also I'm still finding backroon staff (especially scouts) to be utterly useless. Too much micromanagement is needed with them.

Just because your 3rd and have one defeat in 11 games doesn't automatically mean your players are playing well.

What are their average ratings? If they are below 6.7 then FM considers them to not be doing that well and you'll get that message. I don't know about FM12 but in FM11 some things that could trigger poor ratings were DCs that didn't win some headers and MCs that took regular shots from outside the box missing the target.

Well now we're top with 3 games to go so fingers crossed.

The advice given to drop players is just dumb! One player maybe or 2 at a push perhaps. However the staff can't possibly be so dumb as to recommend dropping EIGHT no matter what the level.

As for micromanaging the staff...

The scouts still cannot find anyone better than what I already have, in fact what few they find are considerably worse. Hence I have to go off scouting on my own. Its just not realistic.

Coaches. Whenever a coach leaves or comes in straight away you have to go to the training screen because the AI is too dumb to just sort them into the best jobs. Even when you auto assign them they get assigned to coach things they shouldnt be. Mind you I'm still not convinced the quality of coaches makes much of a difference.

Physios. Seem to be only useful for letting you know how long a player will be out for. Why isn't there a preferences screen for what you want a physio to do? i.e. send home > physio, physio > injection, Specialist > physio. I give the same instructions all the time in this way so why do I have to be asked EVERY time. Is he hoping for a different answer???

The number of players they recommend to drop is irrelevant, the game looks at average ratings before coming up with that message, you would never be expected to drop them all, its just advice on the players they think could be dropped.

Managers go looking for their own players all the time, especially at that level, up here at Aberdeen we have 1 scout, our manager goes scouting whenever he can, its very realistic.

FM12 auto puts your coaches into their strongest catagory, as long as you have enough coaches to cover each section of training, if you dont it will assigne as it can, if your that bothered tho you will loook and adjust this yourself, but saying coach quality makes no difference is crazy, why give staff CA's if they do nothing??!!

Physio's are there to do exactly as you state, to tell you how long a player will be out, the better the physio the more accurate his diagnosis. You are asked each time because each situation is different, you never know when you will need to give a player an injection to get you through an important game, it would be very silly to get rid of that option.

Overall your complaint seems to be you are at a low level and as such your staff are poor, which to be honest is to be expected, you want better staff with better advice, manage a bigger better club, otherwise you learn to do deal with everything the game throws at you.

I'm an experienced manager in the real World and at a much lower level and I can tell you that if I had scouts as bad as the ones in FM I'd be getting rid even at our level. Scouts have always been poor in FM. Even at the biggest clubs. In fact the coaches recommend much better players than the scouts. The poorest programming of scouts is that they only ever give you an opinion on ONE position for players that play in more than one position.

You obviously didn't read correctly when I said I ALWAYS physio > injection.

I dont think my coaches have ever recommended a better player than my scouts, i have no idea what you must be doing wrong with yours, mines comes back with at least 5/6 very good players every few months. Scouts will scout on the strongest position of a player because that is most likely where they will watch him play, the AI wont play a player out of position unless its completely necessary. Surely tho, being an experienced manager you shouldnt need a scot to tell you what you need to know when it comes to something like that. Its pretty easy to figure out who is going to play well where because of attributes, scouts will tell you the hidden stats and very quickly you have a good picture of a player.

For scout in lower league, Determination is important. It will be hard to find some with 10 in this attribute, but search every week and you will find.

High Determination will give more attributes finded by the scout in one scout report. Also High determination will give more time for scout before ending his research.

Don't hesitate to ask to chairman to be able to scout in another country. I have found good players with my Warrenpoint with no problem only searching in UK country.

For coach, it's normal that you need to do it manual cause as each coach can have only 1 or 2.5 stars maximum, you need to choose yourself which category will be less or more trained. You are not in MU.

For Physio, they help to recover quicker also. For sending home during a flue or something, it's not necessary the best solution. There are advantages and disadvantages for this solution.

(I forget to advice you to read rumours of your division and scout each player mentioned. Sometimes, there are good surprise.)

You can't really complain about lower league staff being useless. They're lower league for a reason.

Slight generalisation. It is too simplistic to say lower league equals crap. Obviously it's a much lower standard, but lower league managers don't just appoint anyone to their staff because they think they're all as crap as each other. There's such a thing as being good at a certain level. That's something that the game struggles to replicate in lower league games. It's hard to find experienced staff who know the lower leagues and are good at that level.