ScotchWhisky

I am on around my 20th season in FM '22. 14th or so with Flekkerøy football. I am have worked them into the premier league and been steady there the past 5-6 seasons. I've always in theory had a 2nd team that just plays a few friendlies, but never more than a few players on the team. Well, now that I am a 3* reputation, I am having no issue signing cheap young prospects. Combined with my youth intake, I now have enough players to actually fully stock a 2nd team. Here is the issue. If I go to squad registration, it always gives deadlines for the Norwegian 4th division. Of course, there is no Norwegian 4th division in the game. Only a 3rd division. Therefore, even when meeting the deadlines with a fully registered squad, there are no matches listed. Is it possible this second team will ever make the 3rd division and I will have a legitimate 2nd team? I always felt that would be better than using junior affiliates for development. I've never quite understood how the game chooses which teams to promote from divisions that don't exist... such as when my first team, Göttne got demoted (after I left) to the Swedish 3rd division, then magically came back to the second a couple years later. Is it random? I guess if I can never have a true, competitive 2nd team, then I need to be loaning out all these players... to my affiliates or otherwise. Or selling them for a profit.

Haha, that's awesome! I think I did that once when I knew I was going to be fired, although I think I just loaded the earlier save and saved my job. Either way, there is some satisfaction in believing the board, which really only exists in our minds, is furious and has complete egg on their face. My biggest issue is that both of the players my board sold from underneath me were homegrown stars. The Norwegian Premier division only allows 9 non-homegrown players and it's not easy to find these diamonds in the rough. So yeah, I can usually find an adequate replacement if I don't worry about homegrown status, but my roster is full of non-homegrown players now.

Ok, I know everyone runs into an occasion where the board sells your player against your wishes, but it's suddenly become ridiculous. I've worked a bottom feeder team into the Premier division and have had them stably there for about five seasons now. I finally... finally get a young dream striker. Very fast with decent finishing. Only 19. What does the board do? They sell him for under $2 million. He'd have been worth 4-5 in a couple years. Generally speaking, my team wobbled between $1 million in the black and $1 million in debt. Hell, my transfer budgets was $1.5 million, my wage $80k per week (and I'm spending less than $45k per week), so finances are fine. I'd have paid all that for this player! First time I successfully protested, but the second time, with a slightly better offer, there was no option. I was able to get them to add a loan-back clause at least to finish out the season. Wound up 5th, which qualifies for ECCII or whatever it is (sorry, I don't know European cup names exactly). But that too should be a financial windfall based on the collective bonuses option. My young (24) Central defender won player of the year. I kept refusing offer after offer and finally, the board accepted a $2.3 million offer for him. This time, because two offers came at once, I couldn't find an option to protest their accepting the offer. $2.3 million sounds like a lot, except apparently there was a 40% sale clause. Which is odd, because I swore I stopped making any offers or accepting any negotiations with a sell-on clause. Anyways, I had just signed another start central defender. However, I was retraining him to DR and making my DR a solid backup. Well, that plans gone to hell and now I still have a good defense, except there is no longer any real depth. To make matters worse, the Norwegian premier transfer window closed the day prior and it was a Swedish team that got him, so I couldn't even look for another star player. I hope FM '25 adds more logical arguments in cases like this. It's like, the entire point of a football team is to win matches, titles, and cups. How am I supposed to do that when my best players keep getting taken by a moronic board? I'm sure this happens at times in real life, but I can only imagine managers can say "hey... wait a minute... do you really want to sell a future star that will pack butts in the seats?" Part of me wonders if ChatGPT or something similar will eventually expand interactions in ways we cannot imagine...

I want to comment about real life, because I recall the World Cup match where, I believe it was South Korea, had a ball nearly out, that was originally called out, but wound up being a goal because a fraction of the ball remained on the line. And everyone was like "well, that's the rule..." Yes, it was a rule designed in an era without video rule to where it's likely intent was that any time the ball was touching the line was never called out. It gave referees an extra couple inches not to make the mistake of calling an actual in ball out. It's like offside by half a toe... These rules were not made for video review. Sorry, don't have VRA in my league in the game, so can't comment to your request.

Unless it's changed, this isn't true. In FM '22, I left a Swedish team after about six years for a Norwegian 2nd division team that was mathematically already slated for relegation. The board, therefore, was not judging me on that season. I beat the best team in the league and drew in the two matches I had. The team got relegated and I got automatically fired once the new season began and had to load a save I made before I took the job. Interestingly, I then took a job for a team on the cusp and saved them from relegation. I was surprised that about half the teams were non-promotable B/2nd teams. I figured that's just how the Norwegian Second Division is. After nearly a decade managing Flekkerøy, I looked them up in real life. Only two B/2 teams in the entire league. Apparently, SIs top teams dominate so much that their B teams become superhuman too after a few years. Again, at least in FM '22.

During a mid-season slump, I sought better strikers and I found a perfect 18 year old. Ok, maybe he wouldn't be perfect for this season, but the deal was too good to pass up. After I gave a hefty contract and decent fee, I noticed before accepting he was ineligible this season due to the only two teams in a season rule. Now, I completed this deal after saving and going to bed one night, so I didn't remember all the details. Regardless, turns out I promised him to start as a pressing forward. He is ineligible though, so I couldn't play him a single game and he got upset. Hey, that's on me. This type of thing would not happen in real life. But wouldn't a player also know he is ineligible? Anyways, I got him to agree to give me another chance so it should be fine. Just another one of those annoying player interaction things in the FM world.

I am continuing my game as the manager of Flekkeroy. The Czech Republic offered me the job as manager of their international team. I wasn't sure I really wanted to add this, but the salary was too much... about a million a year compared to my $200k I am making with Flekkeroy. I'm not going to put a lot of time into it and plan to delegate out everything except actual matches. However, I run into the issue where I want to hire a B team manager, an U20s manager, and an U21s manager. I go to place an advertisement and nothing happens. How do I go about this without randomly offering the job to dozens of people hoping one will take it? *edit* This is for FM22 *second edit* I don't have the Czech Republic in the game. Would it be wise to add at least a view only version?

I've been managing a Norwegian team for around 10 seasons now. Initially in D2, but mostly in D1. In D2, there were almost no TV games. In D1, there were always televised matches that paid $57k per match. The total varied from about 1/3 to 1/2 of my matches in a season. I got promoted to the Premier league this season and thus was turned professional. I signed new full time staff and upgraded a few players to full time contracts. I'm still not sure how the finances will shake out, but I have good enough players I can sell if needed. As I was going through this preseason, I kept waiting for the televised matches notification thinking I'd need a similar number of matches at around 3x the pay ~$150k per match to remain liquid. The season came and no matches have been selected as being televised. HOWEVER, before every match is the tunnel broadcast interview, which suggests in it being televised. Yet no $$$ have arrived yet. Is this a bug, or is it some difference in the division where maybe I get all TV revenue at the end? Without any broadcast revenue, I am going broke.

I think the fact that women's ratings pale in every single sport, including tennis: https://awfulannouncing.com/tennis/wimbledon-finale-multi-year-viewership-high.html Tennis is definitely one of the closer sports, yet the men's event still gets double the audience. That's not misogyny. That's just accepting the fact that men and women are wired differently and athletics is something men tend to care about far more than women. And even though women enjoy watching sports too, they tend to prefer watching men's sports over women's sports. That translates to games too. If you want evidence on games, here ya go: https://www.thegamer.com/fifa-22-women-achievement/ These statistics are especially putrid considering many people are achievement seekers who would do something thing simple just to unlock the achievement. Hell, if I still bought FIFA games on my XBox, I would have played a match just to unlock it. Do you believe Football Manager is going to be any different? I am sure SI will include an achievement for managing a women's team. I bet the stats won't be much different. Maybe 10% to get a whiff of the "new football smell" before it wears off.

Thanks! Ya know, I've never dug into the personality traits and now that you mention it and I finally looked them up, you are right. That looks like the second best personality trait a player can have. Since he is slow, I will only play him as a keeper and not a sweeper keeper. It would make sense in that case to sell Dønnum then. Cash out on that massive (for my team) player value before his contract runs out. Then use the 16 year old should an emergency injury occur. So, would you renegotiate Drage's contract to full time? I don't know how much full time matters for development compared to part time. Honesty, if I get relegated, my team is going broke as I've been spending like a fish on new staff and what not since becoming professional. I don't even know how finances are going to shake out yet as I have no idea what TV contracts will be, and won't for another couple months.

After 10 years with Flekkerøy Fotball, I finally achieved promotion to the Premier division. I've had a rock solid keeper, Richard Dønnum, for the past five years who has a year left on his contract. He is now 29. However, in the prior season, I was able to sign another top keeper, Kristoffer Drage, as his contract was expiring, so he joined after the season ended. They both have pros and cons, but before I say much more, here is their individual profiles, as while as direct attribute comparison: I wouldn't worry too much about Dønnum's injury. It's the only one he's ever had with me and it's a fractured finger, which is only a few weeks before returning to full health. When it comes to Drage, I really like the handling, reflexes, and lack of punching, while being more likely to rush out. However, his positioning and teamwork isn't great. And while he is willing to rush out, he is pretty slow. His kicking also stinks. Since I have him locked in for five years, one thought is to send him out on loan for a season... I have a Norwegian third division team as a junior affiliate, although it's probably be much wiser to send him to a much higher level team. The other option is to simply start him and bench Dønnum. He may get upset and is a team leader, though I've never had a major mutiny yet. One other point is that both of these players are on part-time contracts and I was just made professional. Would it be wise to renegotiate Drage's contract immediately as I believe that would impact training and development, no? Oh, and yet one other point is that I also have a very good prospect and supposedly my youth intake is bringing in another A keeper, though trials haven't occurred yet, so not sure who he is. I'll probably send this prospect to my junior affiliate... or is it better to leave him in my U19 team? What would you all do? Thanks in advance!

I'm amazed that after years of incremental changes, FM '24 actually sounds like it's implementing a lot of useful changes. Is this just part of the transition to whatever FM '25 is supposed to become? It feels like it's a way to gin up support for the changes that are coming next year. Either way, I welcome these changes. Though I still hope too much isn't dedicated to women's football in '25. Beyond the initial "let's check this out!", we all know it's barely going to be used.

I just had a streak of 11 matches without a loss snapped. Started the next match against a generally superior rival and quickly went down 1-0. Team came back and by about the 65th minute, was up 2-1. Dude gets a second yellow card. I go very defensive and use defensive tactics hoping to at least salvage a draw. Things are going well for about 10 minutes then I get a straight up red card. Now it's 11-9 and still up 2-1. I pull my forwards (I am not sure this is wise) and sure enough, I wind up losing 3-2 with a goal in the 91st minute. I get into the tunnel and first thing the reporter asks is "what happened?" Once again, no option to say "I was leading then got two red cards." Instead I have to say something about preparation. Another similar question before they finally addressed one of two red cards. Now, you may find this to be something about a lame interview. But, if the interviewers think this, then player morale is probably factored in the same way. And since morale is the most important thing in this game it seems, that IS important. I just held a team meeting and said don't worry about the last result. I'll give an example. The season is over and a player has a month left in his contract. No new contract has been offered. He then threatens to leave the team if his demands are not meant. So, I have the option to try and sell the player... ok, I am going to "sell" a player with a month left, sure. Or, he/I can threaten to run down his contract. Hey, you moron! You have one left then you are free of all obligations. Take your $500 per week and enjoy the time off!

I've attended every interview, but I don't know why. I should just send my assistant. Though the interviews can impact player morale. And you are right. If they use some AI bot, we probably will get better conversation. But then, you get an AI like snapchats AI that will (or at least used to) argue with you that Boris Johnson is the present PM of the UK. And I also don't get the point of gestures. Throw water bottle sounds pretty weak for a manager. At least they have "kick chair" in team meetings. I want "expletive filled rant." More importantly, I want a board that can assess the realistic future situation!