5+ things you (possibly) didn't know you could do in FM - Tips and tricks

[XaW]

After having a chat with @FrazT about some features in the game it occured to me that many people, even those who have played the game for a long time might not know about some features in the game that can both improve how you play, but also function as QoL improvements. So here is a list of some stuff that's already in the game, but it could be that both newer players and also people who've played for a while can be surprised by. Of course, many people might know all or parts of this, but at the very least you might get reminded that it exists. I'm writing this about FM23, but it's likely similar or identical in other versions too, so take that into account. I'm also writing this based on the base skin, so if you are using a custom skin, it might be a bit different in parts.

1. Screen Flow
- There is a feature in the game that allows you fewer stops, but also more, depending on what you want. If you head into "Preferences" and search for "screen flow" you'll get this option.

Clicking on that takes you into a sub menu with a few options.

Firstly, the top option can be unticked to allow fewer stops, but it also mean you wont see the social feed or the news screen much. If you are the type of player who aren't bothered about AI transfers or what's happening in other loaded leagues, then you can turn it off and have slightly fewer stops in processing without losing much.
On the opposite side, the selections under "Competitions Screens" allow you to emerge yourself into the game a lot more. If you are managing a lower league team, but would like to know how the World Cup is going, you can set it up here and the matches will show, just like league games in your division on days you are not playing! This allows you to pay attention to more that is happening around the word, and the best part, you can customize this to suit just your needs.
Adding the World Cup like this.

And then select what you want in the "Screen" part, how often in the "Scope" part, and if you want to stop processing to show it.

You can add as many competitions as you'd like.

2. Custom colour schemes
 - This might be known to many, but not all know that you can customize a lot of the colours schemes in various parts of the game. If you head into preferences and search for "skin colour" you'll see another button.

 Clicking on it allows you to customize the colours in many parts of the game. Want to change the colours or the attributes? Sure, you can even set the ranges. The same goes for positions on the pitch and how familiar the player is with it. There is even changes to what colour a player on loan is, "greys" can be another colours, and many more. And the final one, ball colour. Are you tired of a white ball, or are you, like me, getting a bit older and grey, then you can change it into a more visible and vibrant colour so you don't have to pause and search the screen to find it.

 
3. Automatic rest for tired players
 - You can set training intensity automatically based on the fitness of players. If you head into training and select "Rest", you can set it up as you want.

 Here you can set anything from "No pitch or gym work", to let players recover, up to "Double intensity" for those who are in great shape, and everything in between. If you know you are heading into a very intense schedule for a while, head in here and half the intensity for anyone except those in great shape, and your players will slow down in training and have more gas in the tank for matches. Things that this might give you the edge when matches come fast. It allows it to happen automatically too, so you don't need to micro manage the tired ones, except if they still get too exhausted, mind.
 
4. Pre-emtively change the squad status to avoid players complaining about game time
 - Now, many of us have been in the situation where player complain about not getting enough matches, but there is a way to combat this, by managing the players expectations. This is a quite common thing, that I think most will know, but I'm adding it just in case some don't. Did you know you can change the agreed playing time of a player at any time, and not just in contract negotiations? Yes, you can, and it's handy if you know you can't give your former regular starter the same amount of matches this season. Head into the player profile and select the "Overview" drop down and then "Happiness".

 There you see the player's playing time pathway, their agreed playing time, and their expectatons for the next 5 matches.

 Here you can click the "Change" button to actually change the agreed playing time. Now, it's important to know that this can make the player mad if they don't agree, but you can try to explain it to them. I've had good success with slowly dropping the playing time for my player down one step at the time over a few season, and eventually they will be happy with being a sqaud player, or an impact sub. Doing this before they get annoyed is usually a good idea, I've found, as you can control their expectations, at least to a certain degree.
 
 5. Scouting filters
 - Are you tired of getting agent offers for geriatric players when you want to focus on the young ones? Who aren't? Well, you can actually change this, as well as a load of various options regarding how, when, and where you get informations about scouted players, and other players offered to you.
 If you head into the "Scouting" and then "Scouting Centre", you can see in the upper right of the screen a drop down called "Filter". That's a nice menu for the scouting cards you have there, but we are more concerned about the "Cog" icon next to it. Clicking it will bring up a menu.

 This is a lot of options! But wait it gets better! If you click the "Advanced filters..." in the top right, you get even more options!

 This can look overwhealming, but it's quite easy. The "X" means you don't want the info. The magnifying glass means "add it to the scouting centre as a scouting card", and the letter means give me an inbox item. So here you can customize everything as you want it, or not. In the first screen you can also select what types of offers from agents you want (if any) as well as setting an acceptable age range. On the bottom are also a few nice preferences for how you want scouting or trials to work.

I think those 5 are the main ones I had on my mind, but I'll probably add some more here as I come across them. Feel free to add other "nice to knows" if you have any below, as I'm sure people will appreciate it.

[Dreambuilder]

Some quick ones:

 

• The board seems to accept improved youth recruitment 2 months + 1 day after the start date of your save. The higher determination of your manager, the higher the chance the board accept. It also takes an OK club economy.

 

• Untick "keep scout reports updated" in your shortlist if you dont want the same players appearing in the scouting cards over and over.

 

• When starting a save add custom data atleast all international team players for all continents for more exotic players and newgens, flavor and immersion. 

 

• It seems to me that players need to be scouted fully to see if they have "big matches" attribute or not. Can only be seen for players 22 years or older.

 

• If your club played in continental competitions just before your start date, the economy can vary alot depending on how far the RNG took the club in the continental cups. Restarting the save a few times before going can make a huge difference in prize money and club economy at the start. Also in club national ranking points, national club coefficients and places in cups. I had Swedish clubs taking like 10-15 points in some start giving them 2 spots in CL instead of just one in the second year of the save.

Edited October 10, 2023 by Dreambuilder

[XaW]

Just remembered another one. If you are tired of setting up your staff responsibilities every time you set up a new save, you can set your preference to "Experienced" and automate it! I have to give thanks to @Johnny Ace for this one, as I didn't know until he told me.

If you, when you want to add a manager, untick the "Teach me about key management concepts", you'll see that a new button arrives below it.

If you click it, you can setup the default responsibilities of what you want to handle, and who should handle the rest.

If you start many saves over the course of that version of FM, you don't have to setup the staff responsibilities each time and it saves quiet a lot of time if you restart often.

[phnompenhandy]

I used to struggle to see the damn ball in matches until I changed the colour to bright yellow or orange.

[XaW]

Sure lets do one more.

Level of detail!

- Many of you probably know about this screen, but do you know how it works and what it actually does? It's located in the FM-menu drop down.

Once you are in you can see a bunch of leagues and continents, based on what leagues you have loaded.

All of this can be quite confusing, but what it actually means is "how many, and what type of, matches do you want to be played in full?". Clicking on the list on the left will show more details, like this for England.

So what does that entail? Well, the game has two different match engines, the normal one that is used when your team plays, which is played out in full where you can see match statistics and all the details, but there is also a quick match engine, the QME. This version of it is a simplified version that does it much quicker, but in far less detail than the normal one. So matches played in the QME cannot be opened to look at in detail, nor will it use all the features of the normal match engine and use a more simplified way of deciding the result. SI haven't given much details of exactly how it works, but think of it just as a simplified version. The QME is faster, but less uses less details. So the more matches played in full, the longer processing time the game takes to simulate them.

So what you are selecting here on this screen is how many matches should be played in the full version. So why would you want the game to go slower by adding matches here? Well, the matches will give actual statistics and not just estimated ones, so if you care about how players do in other tournaments, then this is what you want to add. Also, the league your team plays in is forced into full detail for competitive matches. Games you attend or scout will also be played in full detail automatically. Personally, I think the default setups work well, but if you don't care much about the details, you can set everything to "None" and improve processing. Or, if you really want realism, add as much as you want and let the processing take its time. Anything that allows us to customize the game to our wish is great!

[oche balboa]

A great thread. I didn't know about Screen Flows 

 

Will adjust these in my games 

[\'Appy \'Ammer]

7 hours ago, XaW said:

but if you don't care much about the details, you can set everything to "None" and improve processing. Or, if you really want realism, add as much as you want and let the processing take its time. Anything that allows us to customize the game to our wish is great!

Setting to "None" is great for doing a 'holiday' test save. It will fly through the seasons especially if you put lots of leagues as 'view only'. It's a great way to test edited files. Leave it running overnight and it's usually racked up 60 or 70 seasons. 

[kingjericho]

"Screen flow" is a great tip! It should save me some unnecessary clicks when I'm just trying to get past the international breaks.

[Harper]

12 hours ago, XaW said:

Sure lets do one more.

Level of detail!

- Many of you probably know about this screen, but do you know how it works and what it actually does? It's located in the FM-menu drop down.

Once you are in you can see a bunch of leagues and continents, based on what leagues you have loaded.

All of this can be quite confusing, but what it actually means is "how many, and what type of, matches do you want to be played in full?". Clicking on the list on the left will show more details, like this for England.

So what does that entail? Well, the game has two different match engines, the normal one that is used when your team plays, which is played out in full where you can see match statistics and all the details, but there is also a quick match engine, the QME. This version of it is a simplified version that does it much quicker, but in far less detail than the normal one. So matches played in the QME cannot be opened to look at in detail, nor will it use all the features of the normal match engine and use a more simplified way of deciding the result. SI haven't given much details of exactly how it works, but think of it just as a simplified version. The QME is faster, but less uses less details. So the more matches played in full, the longer processing time the game takes to simulate them.

So what you are selecting here on this screen is how many matches should be played in the full version. So why would you want the game to go slower by adding matches here? Well, the matches will give actual statistics and not just estimated ones, so if you care about how players do in other tournaments, then this is what you want to add. Also, the league your team plays in is forced into full detail for competitive matches. Games you attend or scout will also be played in full detail automatically. Personally, I think the default setups work well, but if you don't care much about the details, you can set everything to "None" and improve processing. Or, if you really want realism, add as much as you want and let the processing take its time. Anything that allows us to customize the game to our wish is great!

I found you get significantly more scout results, at higher frequency, when you have match detail set to anything other than None.

[Harper]

Also, would be great to be able to right click on a competition and add to screen flow, rather going into the preferences every time.

[Dagenham_Dave]

I never use screen flow, as it's historically always been flawed at best, bugged at worst. Not even tried it for a couple of editions now, so maybe it works as it should now. 

Edited October 10, 2023 by Dagenham_Dave

[alian62]

14 hours ago, phnompenhandy said:

I used to struggle to see the damn ball in matches until I changed the colour to bright yellow or orange.

There are match ball upgrades in FMscout . You can you go back as far as FM19 to use them in FM23 or 24

[phd_angel]

Is there a way to set "Match Review" in my training calendar automatically? It's a pain to have to click this for every single match in my calendar! Thanks.

[Dreambuilder]

5 hours ago, Harper said:

I found you get significantly more scout results, at higher frequency, when you have match detail set to anything other than None.

This really bugs me. Did you find more good young players? Can it be a coincident with increased scouting knowledge etc?

[rusty217]

Never knew about the competitions one. Great to know though, I've been manually going and checking competition results every day, will be so much easier to just have that pop up as if I were managing in it myself!

[XaW]

8 hours ago, Harper said:

Also, would be great to be able to right click on a competition and add to screen flow, rather going into the preferences every time.

Suggest it in the feature requests forum?

[Brasilia88]

A bit tedious, but it helps a ton:

When you're low on money and want free agents, wait for the season to finish (30/06/20xx) and July 1st you hunt down every free agent by trialing them.

(For Southern Hemisphere teams it's January) 

Simply go to a league above you, click on transfers and find released players. You now have a whole batch of candidates. Trial 30 of them for 3 weeks and there you go. 

The same can be down for youth players. 

Note, this isn't affected by your scouting knowledge or your scouting package.

Surely, you might already know a bit about the player, but when you're the manager of FC KeepItSimple, a Premier League team most likely has something good to offer. 

[Dean Gripton]

I'm bookmarking this and I work here! 

Great stuff XaW.

[Grez]

On 11/10/2023 at 21:11, Brasilia88 said:

A bit tedious, but it helps a ton:

When you're low on money and want free agents, wait for the season to finish (30/06/20xx) and July 1st you hunt down every free agent by trialing them.

(For Southern Hemisphere teams it's January) 

Simply go to a league above you, click on transfers and find released players. You now have a whole batch of candidates. Trial 30 of them for 3 weeks and there you go. 

The same can be down for youth players. 

Note, this isn't affected by your scouting knowledge or your scouting package.

Surely, you might already know a bit about the player, but when you're the manager of FC KeepItSimple, a Premier League team most likely has something good to offer. 

Even better - you don't have to wait until the season ends, just offer them a trial while they're still at their club. Clubs will accept your trial requests if they don't intend to keep the player.

For example if you're managing in Scotland or in a lower league English team on a smaller budget, instead of wasting money on a UK-wide scouting package and waiting to get scouting reports back you can just offer trials to any premier league youth kid on a short contract.

I literally click on Man City, go to "Squad" and "All players", sort by contract expiry date and offer a trial to everyone with less than 6 months left. Immediately cancel the obviously bad players and repeat for every team in the prem until you're full on trials, then repeat a few weeks later to work your way through the league. There will be a few you can't get on trial, but you can scout those later if you need to.

I think the real tip for free transfers though is to save some money for October/November - I know it's tempting but don't spend all your money in August unless you really need to. Every season there will be a handful of really good players released that were previously at a bigger club and are still expecting really high wages. They'll sit unemployed for a few months until finally, around October/November, their demands will drop by enough that you can sign them. You can sign some absolute gems this way, and they still have 2/3 of the season left to be involved in.

[XaW]

By popular demand (@Dagenham_Dave), here is another one. If you don't want to see a specific type of advise from your staff, you can head into the staff responsibilities and find the "Advise and reports" section. There you have a few topics, and you can select who will give advise and reports for that topic. What many don't know, though, is that you can click on the headers to get a sub menu of where you want the various types of advise, if any!

In this screenshot, I've clicked on the "Development" topic, and that has brought up a sub menu on the right side. Here I can select what I want, and how I want to get it. Here you can select the heads to get it in staff meetings, the letter to get it as an inbox item, or the "X" to not get it in meetings. You can also select to never have it by unticking the Staff advise column.

[Dagenham_Dave]

Nice one, thats a lot cleaner than it was before. 

[DarJ]

You can also filter the new items that come into your inbox 

[TheOldFashi0ned1]

On 11/10/2023 at 14:01, phd_angel said:

Is there a way to set "Match Review" in my training calendar automatically? It's a pain to have to click this for every single match in my calendar! Thanks.

Only by creating your own training schedules

[Steve1977beyond]

12 hours ago, DarJ said:

You can also filter the new items that come into your inbox 

how do you do this? 

[DarJ]

4 minutes ago, Steve1977beyond said:

how do you do this? 

Go to your inbox then on the right you will see an arrow pointing down, click on it and you will see it

[Eccentric_Ed]

Players' attributes dropping half way through a season is something that really annoys me, and from reading various forums I've found a lot of other people are too. This is something that I have done quite a bit of research on and I have found numerous reasons as to why it happens, including a player playing in a league that is lower than the level they should be playing at, and players not receiving regular playing time. But recently I have found another potential reason or cause for players declining. Apparently, if one of your players perform really well in a match and gets a match rating of 8.5 or something, and you rest them for the next match without warning them, they will start to decline. This is something that I recently discovered in my save, but I don't think many people know about it.  

[phnompenhandy]

4 minutes ago, Eccentric_Ed said:

Players' attributes dropping half way through a season is something that really annoys me, and from reading various forums I've found a lot of other people are too. This is something that I have done quite a bit of research on and I have found numerous reasons as to why it happens, including a player playing in a league that is lower than the level they should be playing at, and players not receiving regular playing time. But recently I have found another potential reason or cause for players declining. Apparently, if one of your players perform really well in a match and gets a match rating of 8.5 or something, and you rest them for the next match without warning them, they will start to decline. This is something that I recently discovered in my save, but I don't think many people know about it.  

That's worrying. I maintain a very tight part-time squad and when games come twice a week I need to rotate the whole lot.

[XaW]

21 minutes ago, Eccentric_Ed said:

Players' attributes dropping half way through a season is something that really annoys me, and from reading various forums I've found a lot of other people are too. This is something that I have done quite a bit of research on and I have found numerous reasons as to why it happens, including a player playing in a league that is lower than the level they should be playing at, and players not receiving regular playing time. But recently I have found another potential reason or cause for players declining. Apparently, if one of your players perform really well in a match and gets a match rating of 8.5 or something, and you rest them for the next match without warning them, they will start to decline. This is something that I recently discovered in my save, but I don't think many people know about it.  

Also, if you are retraining them, or you have set up individual focus on a player close to, or at, his max potential, this can cause the rest of the abilities to give red arrows, even if they don't really go down much, as they are reduced by a fraction to allow for the change you have set up. Worth knowing about too.

[Dagenham_Dave]

1 hour ago, Eccentric_Ed said:

Players' attributes dropping half way through a season is something that really annoys me, and from reading various forums I've found a lot of other people are too. This is something that I have done quite a bit of research on and I have found numerous reasons as to why it happens, including a player playing in a league that is lower than the level they should be playing at, and players not receiving regular playing time. But recently I have found another potential reason or cause for players declining. Apparently, if one of your players perform really well in a match and gets a match rating of 8.5 or something, and you rest them for the next match without warning them, they will start to decline. This is something that I recently discovered in my save, but I don't think many people know about it.  

A lot of people panic when they see red arrows on a players profile, but most of the time its just attributes rebalancing because of something happening in training, or a change in ability etc. And more often than not, it's only fractional differences. If you go deeper into the attributes you can see if any have actually dropped and by how much (as well as ones that increase). Usually nothing to worry about. 

[Harper]

22 hours ago, Dagenham_Dave said:

A lot of people panic when they see red arrows on a players profile, but most of the time its just attributes rebalancing because of something happening in training, or a change in ability etc. And more often than not, it's only fractional differences. If you go deeper into the attributes you can see if any have actually dropped and by how much (as well as ones that increase). Usually nothing to worry about. 

To illustrate the point, attributes rise and falls by increments of 0.2 (I believe, kind of guess work) and the game truncates the float values.

Here is a player's attributes with an indicator of decrease in is long shot ability

Hovering over the attribute in the progress tracker on the previous month (August 2026), you see "Long Shots - 13"

On the current month (September 2026), you see the slight decline from the previous month, but the information when hovering over the data point still reads "Long Shots - 13"

Different play (new signing, but with a more dramatic arrow indicator). The darker red arrow, indicating a sharper decrease indicates the integer has changed, but the decrease isn't a significant decline. Here the player has 13 stamina

The following month, the integer is 12, but it may have gone from 13.0 to 12.8 (maybe 12.6).

Edited October 23, 2023 by Harper

[DarJ]

This will be useful to very few people but I've seen people complain about this so here it is.

You can go back and watch the entire 90 minutes of a game you've played. To do this first to preference and search for "when viewing matches from the start screen" change it from "show final results and stats" to "play through match from start".

 

once that is done you can go into your game and save and match you want to rewatch. To do this go to your fixture list and click on the result of the game then it will take you to the summary page. On the top right of that page you will see where it says "save match" when you click on it a pop up window will ask you where you want to save.

 

When that is done all you have to do is go to the start screen of the game and on the the right where it asks you if you want to start a new game or load a game just click where it says more then pick the option that says view match then a popup will appear and you will be able to choose the match you want to rewatch then change it from key highlights to full match then click play.

 

 

[whatsupdoc]

Good thread!

[whatsupdoc]

Is there any way to customise and make these screens permanent during a match?

 

Edited November 5, 2023 by whatsupdoc

[DarJ]

2 hours ago, whatsupdoc said:

Is there any way to customise and make these screens permanent during a match?

 

If by permanent you mean they remain solid even Eden the ball is underneath then your only option is to use skins 

[dalenichol]

I'm really intrigued by the 'detail level' screen which I hadn't really considered before.  I already play with a custom database to try and get as many players in the game as possible, but it'll be interesting to see what impact DL has.  I've changed it so that all continental club comps and more of the international tournaments have higher level of detail now

[DarJ]

42 minutes ago, dalenichol said:

I'm really intrigued by the 'detail level' screen which I hadn't really considered before.  I already play with a custom database to try and get as many players in the game as possible, but it'll be interesting to see what impact DL has.  I've changed it so that all continental club comps and more of the international tournaments have higher level of detail now

I think It has more impact than the number of players and leave you have loaded 

[craiigman]

On 04/11/2023 at 10:04, DarJ said:

This will be useful to very few people but I've seen people complain about this so here it is.

You can go back and watch the entire 90 minutes of a game you've played. To do this first to preference and search for "when viewing matches from the start screen" change it from "show final results and stats" to "play through match from start".

 

once that is done you can go into your game and save and match you want to rewatch. To do this go to your fixture list and click on the result of the game then it will take you to the summary page. On the top right of that page you will see where it says "save match" when you click on it a pop up window will ask you where you want to save.

 

When that is done all you have to do is go to the start screen of the game and on the the right where it asks you if you want to start a new game or load a game just click where it says more then pick the option that says view match then a popup will appear and you will be able to choose the match you want to rewatch then change it from key highlights to full match then click play.

 

 

That's quite a painful way to do something you used to be able to do in the game just be clicking on the fixture. "Full match" in highlights used to be there

[DarJ]

14 minutes ago, craiigman said:

That's quite a painful way to do something you used to be able to do in the game just be clicking on the fixture. "Full match" in highlights used to be there

Removing it improved the game speed so it’s a good trade off for something few people use anyway