Icy

I'm currently playing a game with Crewe. I started in 2023 in the league two and did the usual path. Back to back promotions to the premier, struggle a little and then dominate in the local and in the continental competitions. I have a team full of wonderkids, with an average age of 23 or less, on cheap contracts and overperforming, the best league staff, top facilities, new stadium, etc. While it's been fun, at some point even with LLM house rules it becomes too easy to get all these wonderkids and a tactic that works. So now that the great Daveincid realistic megapack is more matured, I'm thinking about starting a different style game. A journeyman switching teams every year or two, so I can't work that much on youth setups and instead need to face a new challenge with each new team, rebuilding the team, adapting my tactics to the available players etc and with more urgency and pressure to get results now. My problem is that I get too attached to the teams and players I manage, so I find it really difficult to leave them both on the good and bad times. I tend to play more like that I'm the team than that I'm the manager. How do you guys approach such game styles? how do you find the motivation? what kind of house rules do you set yourself? when do you force yourself to move team? Any good career update thread in the forums to read about it and get ideas? I'm heavily into roleplay so maybe I can come with a good background story and try to stick to it, like for example I'm a defensive first coach like old Mourinho and set that style to any team I go, or the other way around, stick to each team traditional style of play and work on such tactics instead of falling back to the ones I know that work in FM24, etc. Any tips? Thanks in advance!

I also tried to put my AMC back to CM with good success as a playmaker. I find that at least for the past two years, or even sooner, maybe with the introduction of the SS role, the AMC acts more like a second striker, despite of the role, than as a playmaker in the hole (maybe enganche is the exception but it's way too static and easy to be marked out of the game). Besides enganche, any other AMC role, even on support, runs up the field way too early and doesn't come back to help the midfield as it should. I really wish one day we will have two screens, one for defensive positioning and another for attacking as it will help a lot with our tactics.

Hi Dave, thanks for the awesome job you do every year, really appreciate it. Quick question regarding Staff attributes changes. What do you recommend for long term saves? should we edit the new generated staff according to some of your rules to avoid the game slowly reversing your file effect as new staff is generated?

Correct: MacBook Air 2020, Apple M1, 156Gb RAM, OS Sonoma Version 14.1.1 (23B81) It happened once again after like 30 more games played without any issue, seems totally random, can't find a pattern. Please let me know if you need whole system info or any other detail.

It just happened to me randomly at the start of one game. The game after it was fine, this bug seems to appear randomly and get fixed by itself for the next game. It happened in 3D camera but switching between cameras or even to 2D doesn't fix it.

I'm (like most) big admirer of Alonso and hope he can come to Real Madrid next season. I'm watching a lot of Leverkusen games this season, first time ever I watch that many Bundesliga games ever, but it's so fun to watch this team this year. Nice representation of the tactic! I also wanted to give the 3-4-2-1 formation a go due to that, so I'm playing a similar one to yours but in the 4th division in Uk, with Crewe, so I had to adapt a little for my less skilled players. I'm currently sitting 3rd in the leage with 5 games to end the season, when I was predicted to be demoted. I only have one question/concern, why the trap outside? If I understand properly what the trap does, you are driving your opponents to the sides, that in fact could leave you exposed in the flanks specially with teams with wingers and attacking wingbacks that can 2v1 your single wide players.

This is exactly how I play FM, slightly overachieving once in a while is ok, but what I'm always looking for is to be as realistic as possible even if that means struggling for years. I'll be following for sure!

Have you tried with PPM "gets into opposition area"? It might work

Yes it was fixed.

Agree that when it was changed years ago so B and C teams in Spain are affiliated clubs it screwed the whole system. I know the reasoning was so that humans could be hired to manage these teams, something that you can't do with reserve teams. But that half done fix it created a much bigger problem as the game consider them as different teams and not teams that belong to the parent one other than the affiliate contract, with all the mess that comes with it as the game can't handle properly that status while trying to mirror the real one. If it can't not be done properly, returning them to be reserve teams like in UK or Netherlands would be a better idea but this has been suggested many times by the community to SI and not considered so I'm afraid it won't this time either. This is the main reason of why I never play saves in the Spanish leagues despite being my home country and favourite league.

It's probably your computer moaning while having an orgasm due to the FM satisfaction, that's why it's not happening with other games

@jazbo I'd edit your last phrase, specially if you are also a developer. I'm pretty sure it's not just a person doing things they way he wants.

As the community is really divided about injuries, I'm really looking forward to the day that you decide that we should have two injury settings, realistic and standard. Let's say current standard is 75% of injury chance (I think I read that number somewhere but anyway it's just a sample) so realistic would be a 100% chance. We really need more injuries, but of course not career ending ones, but the small knocks, stomach pain, flu, etc that are really common and that force a player to miss one or two games once in a while and that cause rotations in real life. I know you are against different difficulties in the game and I agree in general, but this would be a simple thing to add. Then of course when people reports that they have X number of injuries in their game, they must state which setting do they have enabled to not to drive you crazy. @Daveincid usually does a good job in his realistic "mod" raising the number of injuries and I'm so used to play with it enabled every year for a more real life management and rotations.

- Players interactions are fine for me (IF they work fine, they need tweaking in FM24). They add a lot for immersion and to have things to deal with during the season besides the game/tactical part. It's also realistic to deal with players issues and team dynamics. I love them (again, when they work fine) and I trust once SI fixes the current issues, they will be fun again. - Press releases are really tedious for me yet I still do them as I don't like the side effects of sending my AM. My main issue is that we have like 8 questions per interview that is way too much when a lot of them seem tedious are just fillers and seems to not to have effect in the game. I use them mainly to avoid over complacency in my team or to provoque it in my rivals and it works most of the time, to the point that it's maybe a bit over powered and easy to abuse once you figure out the mechanism. But for that effect, 2-3 questions should be enough. I prefer how they were in FM Touch, having them only once in a while for important games etc and just 1 or 2 questions.

Totally agree, this is how I morph a 442 in defence to a 325 in attack while overloading the left side. The "Guardiolas" in the forum will really enjoy this ME and the new roles and rotations.