Overmars

Goalscoring on my save using the latest patch looks low in most of the major European leagues. I am simming these six leagues on full detail: England: 2.66 goals per game in FM23 vs. 2.87 in real life Germany: 2.70 vs. 3.19 Spain: 2.55 vs. 2.54 Italy: 2.32 vs. 2.58 France: 2.62 vs. 2.96 Netherlands: 2.53 vs. 3.19 Spain looks great, but some of these other leagues have noticeable differences. I am playing in the Netherlands, and it feels really difficult to score in comparison to prior FM versions.

What is your team good at? Who are your best players? Try to play to your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. If you have a big strong forward, use a target man and play a direct style. If you have fast players, you might consider passing into space and playing on the counter. If you have slow defenders, don't play a high defensive line...and so on. With a bad team, my first thought would be a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 formation with a target man striker, runners in behind him at the midfield spots, and good dribblers out wide who can find space for crosses. Even on a limited budget, you can find some good cheap target men to lead the line and knock in the goals. I have had great success with Yaya Sanogo on a lower league save (with an amateur contract), as his strength and jumping reach routinely overwhelms defenders.

My takeaways from many experiments with FM22: Two strikers are often better than one, especially at helping avoid having an out of form striker from sinking your offense Narrow diamond and 4-3-3 are remarkably resilient formations, with the diamond being surprisingly solid defensively AML/AMR inverted wingers and inside forwards will frequently receive mediocre match ratings unless they score or assist, which will eventually sink them into bad form and affect their ability to develop and play well Playing inverted wingers at the ML/MR spots is a good workaround to the issue in point #3 IWB(a) will achieve better ratings than conventional wingbacks, and they deliver a lot of goals from just outside the box Excellent set piece takers will perform great, log great ratings, and always be in form to deliver offense for your team A back 3 can work very well, though I found a back 4 provided better long-term results Roles that often do well: AF(a), IWB(a), CM(a), DLP(s), RPM(s), SS(a) Positive mentality delivers consistently good results, though very attacking is reasonably good when you are desperate for a goal Intense pressing, counter, and counter-press are effective instructions If you get your morale management and squad building right, your tactic can be just about anything. SI did a good job of making it possible to succeed with a wide variety of formations in FM22.

I like the default 4-2-3-1 formation switch to two DMs, but I still see far too many players in FM who are natural at MC but have zero familiarity with the DM spot. There should be very few, if any, midfielders who can play MC but not DM. I have three such players in my first team, and they aren't natural AMCs or wingers either. They're just MCs who can't play anywhere else.

I think it's a simple case of it being too difficult to get CA to bump up a few points. In FM22 and FM23, a 20 year old could play an entire season and not improve at all. I understand them not improving to Premier League standard while playing in lower leagues, but not improving at all doesn't seem realistic either. If you do anything for a year at age 20 then you're probably going to get better at doing that thing. You might not become amazing because your level of competition will likely limit you, but you'd almost have to be better than the 19 year old version of yourself.

Managing in the Netherlands: Late March -- I have 3 scouts, and the board has allowed me to have 3 scouts all season with my domestic scouting package. Early April -- The scounting budget reduces to a negative balance (my chief scout is running that mess and has somehow overshot the allocated budget), and so my domestic scouting package disappears. The board reduces my allowed scouts to 0. Mid-April -- I receive the new transfer budget for next season, which gives me the chance to move some of that budget allocation to the scouting budget and reenable the domestic package. The board now allows me to have 5 scouts. Late April -- I offer jobs to two new scouts. Early May -- One of the potential hires accepts my offer, so now I have 4 scouts. The board then changes the limit to 4 scouts, so my offer for a fifth scout must be rescinded. Mid May -- The board revises my limit of scouts to 3. I still have my domestic scouting package and a positive scouting budget, so I'm not sure why anything should change. All of this is nonsensical. I have never seen this issue pre-FM23.

Denmark is just about ideal for this and fits into that reputation space just below the Eredivisie. You can also load multiple leagues in Denmark to give you a chance to loan out youth domestically if necessary.

Similar experience for me. I am using almost the identical setup I was using in FM22, but the processing speed is noticeably slower.

Totally agree. I wouldn't even colour-code it due to some people being colour blind. I'd just use a number -- something less granular than the old percentages.

Some reasons you can get those horrible underperforming xG statistics are: Talent Deficit -- Your players are worse than the average player in your league. Presented with identical chances to score, you would expect the better player to score more often than the worse player. Simple concept, but it's the main reason why the top teams crush xG while everyone else lags behind. Poor Form -- Your attacking players might be in poor form and you weren't able to shake them out of poor form before they did a bunch of damage to your stats. Warnings and fines are necessary tools to mitigate this. Poor Team Cohesion -- This can lead to a lot of shots hitting the woodwork and general squandered chances. Poor Player Mentality -- Your players might have terrible hidden attributes (ex. pressure, important matches, consistency) and you might be amplifying their anxiety with your interactions and shouts. If someone is always useless in big matches or anxious whenever you need a goal, you probably need to replace them for someone better. New Players -- You might be using attacking players who are new to your club. Unless they have great adaptability, it usually takes time for those players to assimilate and produce up to their talent level. Bad Luck -- And this can quickly snowball into form/confidence issues. Match Fixing -- I haven't seen evidence of this in FM, though it would be a great storyline if it happened.

Managing in the Netherlands with 28 leagues playable: England - 4 leagues Germany - 2 Spain - 2 Italy - 2 France - 2 Netherlands - 4 (expanded database) Portugal - 1 Belgium - 1 Scotland - 1 Austria - 1 Switzerland - 1 Denmark - 1 Norway - 1 Croatia - 1 Czechia - 1 Ukraine - 1 Turkey - 1 Greece - 1 I think player count is mostly a red herring in terms of game speed. Number of leagues seems to have a bigger impact, while number of leagues simming on full detail seems to have the biggest impact. I have the top 5 leagues in Europe + the top 3 in the Netherlands simming on full detail, and those match days are when the game slows a bit.

My experience managing an amateur (and then semi-pro) club has been mostly fun with some annoying bits: We were promoted, turned semi-pro, and my club reputation declined. That made me buy the editor. My non-contract amateur players attract a lot of interest from other clubs, which is logical. What's annoying is that they usually reject those other clubs, so I am getting bombarded with incessant "Club Y make Player X offer" messages followed by "Player X rejects Club Y" messages. Some players have gone through this offer/reject cycle over a dozen times this offseason. It's gotten to the point where I just want to release all of my amateurs and stick with contracted players only. My club turned semi-pro after we won promotion. Every staff member I was allowed to recruit demanded a professional contract, which is logical. What's annoying is that my club offered me an amateur contract renewal and wouldn't entertain the idea of anything more. So now I'm the lowest paid staff member at my club. This is obviously a minor thing, but it's illogical and somewhat immersion-breaking. Boards shouldn't be lowballing successful managers, or worse, making them volunteer while everyone else gets paid.

Agreed. Even if it's realistically difficult, I'd rather not have to manually click on dozens of staff, hoping one of them has low enough demands for me to even offer to them. It's a waste of time. Ideally, the advertise job feature would work, but I feel like that feature has never quite worked properly. In the end, I can see why tons of AI teams have skeleton staffs. The problem is really apparent when you go from amateur to semi-pro status as a club. As an amateur club, I can get famous names in as DOF, assistant manager, and coach. Once I'm semi-pro, even no-name staff have demands beyond my club's means.

I kind of like that dose of harsh realism. How often do we see bottom of the table teams dump thei rmanagers in desperate bids to turn things around? Past successes are routinely ignored in real life. I do agree with you about the budgets being too stingy, though. Even if you overachieve and grab a European spot, it can take 2-3 seasons for the board to catch up to reality and give you some money to spend. My general sense is that they are at least a year behind with their budgets, and I don't think the "They're just being cautious!" excuse is good enough.

You have lots of options to approximate that shape. First instinct would be a 4-4-2 with IWB(s) for the DL and FB(d) for the DR. You can then give your right-sided MC a CM(d) or DLP(d) type of role while giving your left-sided MC a CM(a), AP(s), or BBM(s) role. The more general roles also have stay wider/sit narrower instructions if you find you need to adjust their width.

Schedule a friendly against a horrible team who you can destroy. Rotate out any forwards who are in bad form since they will waste any scoring chances you get. Make sure you have a good set piece taker in your side to grab a corner or free kick goal that can turn the tide. Criticize individual player form if it is poor. Go easy on the team during team talks so they don't get too downtrodden. Shout encouragement during matches.

Thank you for making the game much more enjoyable for me!

This is a pet peeve of mine with FM22. I could look past the numbers if they didn't compound into bigger issues, but they do. One "bad" match can quickly turn into a run of poor form. Even disciplining the player for poor performance tends to fail because they need to score to break the slump and the game has them shooting over the net at every opportunity due to poor form. There are similar issues with fullback/wingback ratings, which is why many people resorted to using inverted wingbacks. A couple of incomplete crosses will destroy a fullback's rating and push you into a tactical change to avoid dropping yet another player into poor form.

I loved this challenge in FM21 and FM22. I was able to win with Hearts, Hamilton, and even Edinburgh. The exploit is the loan market -- as you can find players available who are just as good as what Celtic and Rangers have. It's a bit tougher now in a post-Brexit world, but it can still be done if things break right. I find winning the EPL with a low payroll club to be much tougher. Loans just don't get you players as good as what Man City and Liverpool have, and you have to hope those clubs have an "off" year.

Totally agree about keeping them rare. About 5 times per season would be more than enough. I just want the game to show me that it knows how big the moment is.

My initial feedback is mostly about the UI since I haven't played long enough yet to comment on the accuracy of the simulation and AI behaviour: 2D Matchplay UI wastes space - Same as in FM22, the huge black vertical bars on the sides of the 2D screen are an obvious design flaw. The player health visual across the bottom of the screen should be on the left or right side of the screen and the other side of the screen should have a customizable match stats visual. The way it is now makes the 2D experience virtually unplayable without a third party skin. Matchplay screen between highlights does not offer enough info - I want all of the player stats we used to have pre-FM22 so I know what is happening without having to watch a virtual game for 90 minutes. 3D Matchplay visuals - The player animations might be better, but the game is still shooting itself in the foot with the horrible crowd and stadium backgrounds. The game looks 20 years old in this department. Hearts for fitness - The distinctions between shades of yellow/green are not as obvious as they should be. Just show us a number (doesn't have to be as precise as 1-100) instead of a colour-coded indicator. Team training - It still requires too much micromanagement, especially when fixtures start moving around. My suggestion is to schedule types of training on a "Percentage of training time" basis rather than as discrete blocks within a daily schedule. Let me pick "15% transition defense," "5% attacking corners," etc. Sorting out a daily schedule is too much of a chore. Show me during the matches - This is something DrBenjy has suggested, and I think it's a great idea. If my striker misses a wide open net, cut to a visual of me shaking my head or something similar. If my team scores a late goal, show me celebrating. Show me irate after a controversial referee decision.

I find players develop well in youth teams for just about any club. I would keep players in the youth team until they are too old for their youth league rules. Once they are too old, the focus should be on giving them regular playing time at the highest competitive level you can find. I usually loan them out unless I can guarantee squad player minutes. Keeping them in the reserves is almost always a bad move. Once players turn ~22 years old, they generally need excellent training facilities and a high reputation league to develop much further. I usually just sell players who I can't play regularly by that point.

Yes, I think the 66% stat was from human-controlled teams, with human-controlled teams winning 51% of their away matches. I think the point being made was that there was a reasonable difference between the two percentages.

Also, the value for money point implies that more hours spent playing a game is a positive thing. But time is also an investment on top of the price of the game itself. Not every minute spent playing FM is enjoyable. If anything, the time spent playing the game is a risk -- a risk that any of us might feel as if we wasted time on a game that ultimately let us down. If you spend 100 hours getting into a save, setting it up for those magical payoffs that FM can provide, but on hour 101 you encounter something that destroys your enjoyment of the game then you're not going to come away thinking it was time well spent. A 4-season TV series is not better than a 1-season TV series simply because you end up watching more episodes of it. That's not how entertainment works.

The game-breaking (slight exaggeration) part for me is that after a few years, I notice that the only young stars developing are ones I have bought or are loaning in myself. If I'm not involved then the rest of the football world seems incapable of doing anything to help youngsters improve. It feels very artificial when looking at it like that, and it breaks immersion.