My Observations

[Joe Rhymes With Moe]

I'm 75% into my first season as Harrogate Town in the Skrill North.

I have some observations and some suggestions for developers at the bottom (I will also post these in the feedback thread).

In short my observations are these (details below):

Signing players that actually improve your starting team seems more difficult this year (at this level, Skrill North/South).

However it does seem to be easier to sell/get-rid-of unwanted players now.

Having an inexperienced goalkeeper seems to make a bigger difference than last year.

The game as a whole (i.e. winning matches) seems easier - I'm walking my division having signed no-one, and I was expected only to attain a respectable league position.

My game so far:

Harrogate Town. Top of Skrill North.

Played 30, Won 22, Drawn 5, Lost 3, GD 41 Pts 68.

13 points clear despite a 3 point deduction and not having signed any players in my first two transfer windows.

Has anyone else found it difficult to sign players? Harrogate start with a pretty decent squad this year. In real life I hadn't noticed that Harrogate had signed ex-Chelsea starlet Michael Woods. He's really fallen far, but he's very good at this level in the game, he scores a goal every other game for me from central midfield. Up front I have a striker who is scoring a goal a game on average.

In fact the only problem with Harrogate's starting squad, the only glaring weakness, is that they have no senior goalkeeper. Their oldest goalie is 20 at the start of the game. His youth makes him very inconsistent. From late-November to mid-December I went on a 11-game streak without a single clean sheet. Luckily, just after new year he turned 21 and I noticed that the "too immature to be a first team goalkeeper" comment had been removed from his Coach Report. Since the 21st December I'm averaging a clean sheet every other game now.

So anyway, In my two transfer windows the only thing I wanted was an experienced keeper. But I couldn't sign one, every one I liked the look of demanded wages outside what I could offer. So I haven't signed anyone and have instead used the money to offer 3 year contracts to the players I will need next year (except for Woods, I should have given him a new deal right at the start of the season, now he is demanding way more than I can afford. I will most likely lose him for nothing.)

I really love the new layout. I was lost at first, but now I'm used to it, it's much easier. I love the match reports and the fact that you can see it for all games this season, not just the last game.

Simple suggestions (that I think could be implemented in an update):

1. It would be great if, on the home screen, you could scroll up and down the "Fixtures & Results" and League Table windows.

2. On the Tactics screen mid-game, the right-hand-side of the screen jumps down to the bottom of your bench whenever you move a player. This is a little annoying and doesn't happen on the Tactics screen pre-game.

3. When a player is moved, their "role" is changed to some default, i.e. Complete Forward". It would be great if they kept their role when you moved them, or if it changed to their preferred role by default.

4. From the News screen, I think some news items should have additional "News Links" at the bottom, particularly when managers are being discussed for a vacancy. I think at the moment the only way to see a manager's profile is to go to his club info screen and click on his name (or from the Hall of Fame, if the manager is famous enough to be on there). This means it isn't possible to see a manager's profile if he is unemployed. This means that you cannot compare yourself to other manager's who are being considered for a position you might like to apply for.

5. Player Interaction is always on Public and Positive by default. It would be really nice if the game remembered what you did with this player last time and it stayed on whatever you last chose. This is because I almost always treat the same player in the same way (public or private) and I don't like to be positive all the time or negative all the time, so it would be great if the game remembered for you how you last treated each player.

6. When you are viewing a player profile, either as part of a squad or as part of a search, it would be great if you could swipe up or down to go to the next or previous player, instead of "back" and "tap" on the next player.

I might post more suggestions as I think of them. But GREAT JOB to the developers. This game is a huge improvement to an already brilliant game.

[Jamie King]

Thanks for the excellent feedback Joe. See you've already posted this in the feedback thread, so I'll close this.

EDIT: You may want to copy over the top info also , there's some excellent game play observations in there.