FM10: Adding Lower English Leagues

Being interested in adding in the lower English leagues, given the new features announced for FM10, I decided to poke around the FM09 editor to see how hard/easy this may be.

Currently in FM09 the following tiers are playable:

1 - EPL

2 - CCC

3 - L1

4 - L2

5 - BSP

6 - BSN/BSS

As a bit of trivia, the English league system has 24 tiers.

From my look around the editor, tiers 7, 8 and 9 could be added quite quickly! All the teams from these tiers exist in the game. Most would just have basic info (manager name, reputation, stadium, grey players and staff, etc.) but they are all assigned to their appropriate leagues. To put this in to perspective, that means 23 new leagues, including 488 new teams.

[warning: the following section involves speculation on the new features]

Given what I know, and what I assume of the new features, the following work would need to be done to add in these leagues:

- Activate the leagues (they will already exist in the game with appropriate teams)

- Create a bunch of Tier 10 clubs to create a pool for promotion/relegation to/from Tier 9.

- Link leagues together with promotion/relegation (may already exist. if not, would require some research)

- Link leagues to the rest of the English System through the Cups (i.e. schedule in the FA cup)

- Create missing lower league competitions (not sure on these myself, but I'm sure they exist. FA Vase?)

- Make sure admin stuff is in order (League schedule, sponsorship money, etc.)

Optional/Unknown:

- Create players for all tier 7-9 clubs (would take ages)

- Create kits/badges for tier 7-9 clubs and competitions

Honestly, it sounds easier to do than I thought it'd be, assuming the new editor works as I expect. The one major problem I anticipate is that all of the teams will be full of grey players, and that there may not be enough players of a poor enough quality in the transfer market to satisfy them all. I think it'd take 20 years of regens before the new tiers started to really come to life. Also, adding tier 10 clubs may be avoided by just removing relegation from tier 9.

I apologise if this thread has been a bit ranty, or a bit presumptuous seeing as we haven't even played the demo yet, but I couldn't help myself! I just felt like telling you all that it would in fact be quite easy (assuming the 'add leagues' feature is user friendly) to add in the 7th 8th and 9th tiers of English Football. We shall all be able to realise the dream of taking a club like Pegasus Juniors from the Hellenic Football League Premier Division to English glory in at least 8 seasons of struggling!

I'd just like to leave you with an interesting little side-note:

In dafuge's challenge it was hard enough using a team with a reputation below 1000. Well for you hard-knuckled rambo managers, teams like Pegasus Juniors have a reputation of 50. To put that into perspective, the relative difference between Pegasus and a 'challenging' dafuge team is greater, than between a dafuge team and Manchester Utd. What does that mean? It means, when Man Utd beat a BSS team 15-0, that same BSS team would probably beat Pegasus 30-0.

-MGH

I'm so pleased that this feature has been added

Not only because I'm a prolific competition creator, but because in a season's time I might need to add an extra tier to be able to play as Solihull Moors

Lots of editor geeks like me had been crying out for this for so long, I'm really glad that SI were listening.

Edit: Most step 3 (tier 7) sides have full squads anyway, and lots of step 4 (tier 8) sides do too. It would only be an issue if you were going to add leagues below this, such as the Midland Combination, Hellenic League, Northern League, NW Counties, etc.

And I don't think you should worry about teams getting beaten 30-0. BSN/S teams would certainly not beat the likes of Pegasus 30-0 in real life nor in the game, providing there is enough realism.

Great thread;)

I'll be interested to see what kinds of promotion/relegation you can input between leagues. Could, for instance, we have leagues where you have to be elected up and down? Or leagues with really complex promotion/relegation group splits like Turkey?

Will we have a free reign as to how we connect our leagues or will we have to accept only promotion and relegation according to league position and playoffs?

here's to getting garforth town to the big time!!!!!!!!!!!

if you add an extra tier do you have to create the teams or players yourself or this an autofill button