Football Manager 2013 - Best or the worst version yet?

Hello people, I've been a fan of Football manager since 2008. We all know that it is very addictive and I'm no different. Any spare moment I played the game, however things have been changing over the years for me. It's obviously meant to be a frustrating game some of the time as that's a big part of being a manager but this year my blood boils pretty much every time I log on to the newest version.

At this moment in time, I'm managing Millwall, in which I support as well and it was very fun trying to get them to the Premiership. I've now had them promoted for around 5 seasons now and have made steady progress to make them a dominant force in English football even with a shoe string budget! (Typical Millwall ¬¬ ). Although things have been starting to change and I don't know if it's the update or that all of my players have been taking a large amount of hallucinating drugs before most games! I've been very happy with the improvement of tactics and training regimes throughout the years and the developments of players has been great to watch and the players that I have bought for Millwall is really exciting for me to watch their progress.

However, goalkeepers. Where do I start! Something happened between FM12 and FM13 in which must be changed because due to one position in the game, it will be really difficult for me to even think about playing next years version. All of the goalkeepers that I have bought throughout the years seem to switch off every single game. There have been countless times where the highlight pans to the centre of the pitch with one of my players on the ball, the opposing players put some pressure and the defender passes back to my goalkeeper with around 30 to 40 yards of space. Now, the simple thing is for the goalkeeper to either clear it straight away if there is any pressure from a fast attacking player, or to pass the ball to a defender with space; This is 80% never the case though, he'll get the ball on the edge of his area, run with the ball, stop, look around, do a little spin from time to time on the spot, then get challenged by a striker who shoots into an empty net with the commentator saying that was an incredible goal. Now this only happened once a season or so in FM 2012. I don't understand why this is happening on such a regular basis.

Near post defending is also an increasing frustration to me, when a player shoots in that area, the goalkeeper will dive on the floor but not towards the ball, just on the spot. I know it makes me sound like a misery guts but goals like this hardly happened in the previous years. I just hope that next years game will have improved the AI of goalkeepers across the board. Other than that I will try to keep calm and carry on playing!

In my opinion, FM13 is the best version that i ever play. And i play FM/CM since 93 or 94.

But i agree with you in the goalkeepers part! I also think they are bad. And like i said in the feedback thread... too many times they dont even try to make the save... and too many times also when they make the save, they do it in a very strange way.

Neither the worst or the best. Most disappointing probably apt.

Review wise (both critical and user) it's the worst one in a while, sales wise I believe it's the biggest selling yet.

The latest patch seems to be a step in the right direction, and aspects of the ME are beautiful to behold, but the ME was a long way short of being good enough to ship and I'm disappointed SI saw fit to release it anyway.

It's not the worst though, probably not even close.

Edit : It's actually now sneaked above 2012 in the critical reviews on the aggregate sites.

There's a feedback thread for this very purpose ta muchly.