Gangor

I'd guess most of these issues are because the players' reputations are higher than the club's. They come about because humans tend to be better at squad building than the AI so will often have a better squad than the club "deserves". I don't see that as the problem - if the AI just became better at squad building this would be less of an issue

Before knowing what the requirements are for FM25 I would be hesitant to choose a laptop without a discrete GPU or less than 16Gb of RAM. If that's a firm budget you might consider looking for a laptop with the AMD Ryzen 6800u processor either refurbished or second hand. It still won't have a dGPU but AMD's integrated GPUs are significantly better than Intel's and would be more likely to manage the new game. Most laptops with this processor were also equipped with 16Gb of RAM. It's also possible you might find an 11th or 12th gen i5 (or AMD equivalent) paired with a RTX 3050 for around that price on the second hand market.

Keeping in mind that this laptop is a couple of years old at this point, it's decent value. It should be fine with FM24 but I suspect it will struggle with FM25 due to the lack of a dedicated graphics processor.

I would like to see a more efficient sorting algorithm for the player and staff search lists

If you want to go the mini PC route this is a good option - of course you'd still need to add a monitor, keyboard etc that you wouldn't need with the laptop. The processor on this is more powerful than on the laptop Kev suggests, but it relies on integrated graphics which, while perfectly fine for FM24 and likely adequate for FM25 are weaker than the dedicated GPU on the laptop. https://store.minisforum.uk/products/minisforum-um780xtx?_pos=2&_psq=780&_ss=e&_v=1.0&variant=46847065489686

Of more concern I'd have thought is the readiness of the AI to accept sell on clauses being added in on players the human sells. They hardly seem to value them at all

Maybe move your playmaker to a more advanced area so if he gives the ball away it's in a less dangerous area and more men are behind the ball.

If you can get the 16GB version you'll have a better all around experience, especially as the RAM has to be shared with the GPU.

A Macbook is overkill if you're just playing FM. 8GB will however hold back performance so 16 would be preferable. If it's just for FM you might however be better off to consider a Windows laptop

You could easily run the 3D match engine with this laptop.

No but there are loads of wonderkid shortlists you can download

The Apple silicon processors have pretty powerful integrated graphics. I would be surprised if they were inadequate for FM25

This is a rather minor thing, but surely easy to fix too. I prefer to play in Windowed mode, however whenever I download a new patch it is changed back to full screen. While not the end of the world I find this annoying. Please can preferences be left alone when patches are installed.

With the caveat that FM25 is going to be on a new engine which may well require a dedicated graphics card.

Having enough memory is important, but 16GB is sufficient. Past that the biggest impact is the CPU. Disk speed doesn't matter except for when saving the game