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Why is Hodgson still at Palace and Glasner unemployed?

@Mickeylad I don't use OIs.

@Qeroz I tend to use defend HB. However, it is worth experimenting to work out best options.

Luversense - Brazil - 2036 - Season 11 - Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A (Tier 1) - 1st (Champions) Knocked out in the QF of the Cope Libertadores. It was a tight game against Internacional. We lost the first leg 4 - 2 as they hit us on the break no less than 4 times. We managed to win the second leg 2 - 0 away, even hitting the bar in injury time, but we lost on away goals. On to next year. We won the league agin on the last day for what it's worth. Barbosa top score in the league again with 26. We have a 5 star potential striker coming through so Barbosa might move to right wing next season. Nothing in the youth intake. Nothing else important to mention.

Polish FA CUP 2038 WINNERS I did not expect that !! we were worse team, but managed to use the chances we had and scored last minute winner !! First major trophy for the club! Celebrating 15 years of management This also means that we qualify for the Europa League Playoffs, meaning if we lose we guaranteed 6 games in Conference League !

I run a lot of leagues from each continent (probably too many for most people, and a lot more with added league mods now this past while), and I can confirm that this hasn't helped me with AI squad building and AI squad selection issues in the slightest.

Season 4: Evolution, Not Revolution First off, thank you to everyone who's taken the time to comment and engage - I'm really enjoying writing about my save and sharing it with you guys. This will be a slightly different update in which I will cover everything from Pre-Season until the end of December, as I got carried away with playing and then work commitments meant I struggled to find time to write anything up. Some months may lack a bit of detail, which I hope to make up for in future posts. Pre-Season (2026/2027) Despite boasting a 100% record during pre-season, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with with the 4-2-4 shape which I’d previously proposed. As expected, scoring goals was not a problem, but keeping them out, appeared to be an issue. In all our games, we allowed the opposition around 1xG, sometimes even higher, and this was too much for my liking, especially as we had been so solid when playing 4-3-3. So for the final game of pre-season against Roma, I reverted to the tried and tested system and it was much more sturdy. I’m not disregarding the 4-2-4 / 4-2-3-1 completely, it may be revisited in the future, but I feel like our best chance of winning the title again is by sticking to what worked for us, and maybe making small tweaks here and there. On the transfer front, it was an incredibly quiet window for La Dea. The board gave me the largest budget of the save to date, at £42m, but I was satisfied with the balance of the squad that I felt no need to dip into the market. The team is incredibly young, and I can’t see how I can improve my first XI without stunting the growth of these exceptional talents. So there was just one first team arrival, the previously agreed free transfer of Jorginho from Arsenal. Jorgi comes in to replace the outgoing Marten de Roon, who expressed his desire to return to the Netherlands… which is why he decided to move to Sevilla? Lol. We did sign an 18yr old centre half from Uruguay, who will move straight into the B Team. In terms of outgoings, there were several, but they all came from the B Team / U21 level. I have a few young academy players which I want to prioritise in terms of development and creating a pathway to the first team. Therefore, making sure all three youth teams are small (maximum of 16/17 players), ensures that they get guaranteed game time at their required level. I did have to fend off some offers for key players though, namely Carnesecchi who attracted interest from Real Madrid. It was a mega offer, and I tested the waters, managing to negotiate a deal worth £100m after their initial offer of £70m… But I quickly came to my senses. He would be virtually impossible to replace, and he is a homegrown Atalanta player. If I begin to start selling our best players, who are one of our own no less, then I fear I’d lose interest in this save quite rapidly. Of course there was only one way to keep him happy after rejecting the offer, and that was to give him a much improved contract. Man City came in for right back Emil Holm, I wasn’t impressed by the offer and had no intention of letting him go. The Real Madrid came back, but this time for wonderkid Joao Rego! Again, a poor offer, and Joao didn’t show much interest in the move, so I swiftly rebuffed their offer. The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice from those screenshots that Berat Djimsiti has taken up the role of Director of Football, alongside his backup Centre Back role. He requested the role during his contract renewal, and given that my previous DoF was approaching the end of his deal, and it’s a bit of a redundant role in the game (since I handle basically everything), I was happy to give it to him, along with minimum responsibilities. There was one player who really tempted me this window. Smith Rowe became available for £30m, and he would fit the profile of this squad perfectly. His mixture of technical ability and high levels of Teamwork and Work Rate meant he’d fit us like a glove in midfield. But I simply didn’t need him, so we rounded up the window with just his ex-Gunners teammate, Jorginho, as our only arrival. I have £45m remaining in the transfer kitty now, which gives me the option to strengthen in the January window should we need to. Oh, and on the managerial front, there was some major news which sent shock waves around Italy… Unai chose to go out on a high and take up the Spain national team job. Perhaps an opportunity for us to take advantage and return to the summit of Italian football. August 2026 To the season proper then, and August was a bit of a mixed month. A good start at home to our two bogey teams from last season, although Bologna annoyingly put two goals past us from just 0.59xG. Safe to say Carnesecchi didn’t have his finest game, despite not making any obvious errors, he’d have been disappointed to get beaten so easily at his near post by Dan Ndoye. Roberto Piccoli scored against his old side once again. In other news, water is wet. Thankfully, the ex-Atalanta striker, who I sold to Bologna, won’t be causing us any problems anymore as he was sold to Leipzig just after this game. We are due to pocket £9,750,000 thanks to the sell on clause I included in the deal. The Lazio game was incredibly frustrating. We dominated in the fist half but couldn’t capitalise on all our chances, going into half time only 1-0 up. After the interval, it was as if a different team came out. As you can see by the momentum, it was virtually all Lazio. Inzaghi’s 5-3-2 gave us all sorts of problems and we simply couldn’t deal with the trickery and pace of both right wing back Lazzari, and striker Moise Kean. A proper game of two halves leaves me incredibly disappointed losing a winnable game at home so early in the season. The bright side is it is early in the season, plenty football left to play. September 2026 A tricky game to start the month away to rivals Juventus, now coached by Zidane. I felt we could have won this game on another day after we won the xG battle with 2.20 to their 1.30. Our UCL fixtures were revealed, and it looked promising. PSG aside, they all seemed like very winnable games on paper. It turned out to be the case this month, as we coasted past Galatasaray, even if it was only 1-0. I did use this game as an opportunity to try something a little radical. I deployed a Cruyff inspired 3-4-3 diamond, which is unlikely to be used often if I’m honest, but it was fun. In this screenshot here, the ball is with our goalkeeper who has dribbled forward with the ball, giving us an extra man in the backline as we now create a 4-1-6 shape. He then launched a defence splitting pass to our #10 (Pafundi) who you can just about see behind the Galatasaray #34, but Pafundi failed to convert his 1v1 opportunity. What an assist that would have been from the keeper. For the games against Inter and PSG, I wanted to revert back to the usual 4-3-3, but it had a slight twist to it. Essentially, it became a 4-2-3-1, for one specific purpose. Concerned by the result and performance against Lazio’s 5-3-2 setup, I opted to try something a little adventurous against Inter’s 5-3-2. Inspired by Marcelo Bielsa, I deployed a radical man marking system: I went man for man, instructing individual players to tight mark their assigned opponent, which was simple enough to pull off in the 4-2-3-1 shape. It worked a treat as we limited them to just five attempts on our goal, for a total xG of 0.54 - we also had the momentum in our favour as we controlled proceedings. Call me crazy but I went for the same approach away to the Parisians. La Dea were good money for their draw away to PSG, and would have won the game if not for Nagalo completely forgetting his man marking duties as Mbappe was left completely free on the left to receive the ball and drive into the box before curling a beauty past Carnesecchi. Our goal may have come from a penalty, but limiting them to just 7 shots left me feeling like our aggressive man marking system did its job. The Sassuolo game, however, was a clear indication to me that this ‘MurderBall’ man marking approach was not going to be sustainable. Their 4-2-3-1 ripped through us on many occasions as they created 2.28xG from open play! What a let off. Luckily, Scamacca was on hand to score four times against his former club - a man on fire. October 2026 October was a straightforward month in the league as we won 4/4 games, all against favourable opponents. The only defeat of the month came in the UCL, away to Sporting Lisbon, in what was a dismal performance. Their narrow 4-4-2 diamond compacted the centre, and despite all my efforts to exploit their flanks, we remained incredibly toothless in attack. Strange, as we are scoring goals for fun domestically, it’s the defence which gives me the most concern thus far. November 2026 We navigated through November unbeaten across all competitions. Ludogorets, however, was one to forget. The game got off to a disastrous start, as Arda Guler picked up a straight red card just 13 minutes in. The visitors broke the deadlock on the half hour mark, before CDK came off the bench to grab a leveller for the 10 men of Atalanta. Probably the easiest fixture in our UCL campaign, and we threw it away. I did schedule a friendly against Cremonese during the international break to give some much needed match sharpness to some of our fringe players, as well as experiment a little bit tactically. Those experiments were worthwhile as we smashed both Fiorentina and Marseille (our 4.10xg from open play was a particular highlight), before rounding up the month with a professional away performance in Rome. December 2026 The final month of the year began with a bang. We’ve beaten our bogey team on two occasions now this season, and our electric start to the game ensured we grabbed all three points against a top Bologna side. I’m so impressed with them that I’ve sent my scouts after a number of their players, and I’ll keep tabs on them ahead of the January window if an opportunity arises. Some good wins against Torino and Leipzig followed, before the major disappointment of the month. Once again we were beaten by our title rivals, Milan. I haven’t shown the league standings as of yet, that will follow below, but a victory here would have put us level on points. We can’t complain either, the stats show that we were second best in a cagey affair. Lecce (Salento) at home gave us an opportunity to bounce back, and didn’t we just?! The biggest victory of the season so far, with Joao Marques playing in a central midfield role nowadays, grabbing the headlines after an excellent hat trick. Frustratingly, we ended the month, and the year with a point apiece against struggling Verona. One of those games where you just can’t understand how you didn’t win. Not a classic FM’ing, but we were far superior. We lost Scamacca to illness just before the game, perhaps the result may have been different had he been fit. His deputy, Esposito, did find the net though, and is in decent form himself, in fairness. As the table below shows, that result now opens up a five point gap to league leaders, Milan. Who else would we be chasing? Life under new manager, Michel, is going very well for them much to my annoyance. However, they have dropped points away to Napoli (1-1) and crucially in the Derby vs Inter (losing 2-0) - so they are far from invincible. Perhaps a little unlike me, we have sacrificed some defensive stability for attacking prowess. We lead the league for goals scored, xG and non-penalty xG, chances created and basically every key attacking metric. What I am pleased with is we seem to have found the balance between possession and goals. We still have the highest av. possession (at 63%), and the most final third passes. Compare that to where we were this stage last year, if you remember, we couldn’t buy a goal despite keeping the ball so well. Despite all that, we do need to tighten up at the back, and hope that Milan drop some points, if we are to win the league. Perhaps a bit of luck might be nice too, as the xG Table shows that we should be top! A couple of my favourite metrics from the Data Hub at the halfway point also show that we are in a league of our own when it comes to Pressing Intensity (more on that in the next post). And the same goes for our Pitch Tilt. Both graphics give us a good visualisation of how we look to impose our game on the opposition to another level this season. This is my evolution. A quick glance at the UCL standings shows that we’re doing okay in Europe. I can’t help but think we should be in those automatic spots given the fixtures we had. But to be just 1pt off with two games to go, leaves us in a good position still. Our remaining games are both away from home, however fairly easy on paper, as we take on FC Midtjylland and Anderlecht. A look at the player stats at this point should be no surprise. Both Scamacca and Rego are picking up where they left off last season, leading scorer and assister respectively. Our No.9 is averaging a goal per game at this stage, he is in frightening form. ——— In the next update I will try to focus on the key tactical tweaks which we have made to our 4-3-3. Despite some tactical experiments with a 3-4-3 or the man marking approach in the 4-2-3-1, as I have hinted, it’s more evolution than revolution with my preferred tactical setup. I will also try and make the next post a little more detailed and will probably look to update on either a monthly or bi-monthly basis in game time. #GoAtalantaGo!

Thank you for the suggestion.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will put this under consideration for a future FM.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will put this under consideration.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will put this under consideration.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will put this under consideration.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will put this under consideration for a future FM.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Thank you for the suggestion, we will consider this for a future FM.

Thank you for the detailed suggestion, we will put this under consideration for a future FM.

SEASON 2023/2024 Spurs Clinch Vanarama South! King Wins Award! Youth Players Progress In FA Trophy.

S15 - April 2038 Ekstraklasa Almost perfect month, We had a great result against Radomiak, to then waste it against Gornik Leczna (tycoon club). With 4 games there is still everything or nothing up for grabs. Polish FA Cup We played the second team and we FMed Jagiellonia with a last minute of extra time goal, We will be playing Legia in the final Debuts Records U19s This is 3rd in a row, I didn't expect anything different.

Its Role Suitability and positional familiarity. I wouldnt be too concerned with RF since thats a function of how well distributed his attributes are for the role. You should be more concerned with positional familiarity. They will make mistakes if they are unfamiliar with the position. How well they perform the role is a function of their attributes and the other roles and duties around them

Good luck with Sant Andreu. Played as them for a season or two in a youth challenge back in FM19, really enjoyed it.

I think if i can get 1-2 per game in exactly the halfspace I am going to be happy, most times i get them closely to the wider channels and this is done with the underlap instruction with focus play. Halfspace crosses inside the penalty area are common in FM

Thank you for the suggestions, we will put these under consideration for a future FM.

Thank you for the detailed feedback, we will put this under consideration for a future FM.