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One thing I have found out from watching the experts YouTube videos is that you should only use team instructions where you cannot get that instruction across using Player Instructions. For example there is not really a team instruction to tell your team to shot less - Work the ball in to the box will help but will still not prevent it. In the Player Instructions you have the instruction Shoot Less Often which I believe asks them to refrain from shooting from distance or bad situations. I also wonder how Take Fewer Risks would cut down on the first time shooting - I have never tried it. I also tend to keep mentality at Balanced now and do not change it . Raising it to more attacking mentalities will probably increase the likelihood of them shooting first time. I wonder if anyone else can explain the mentalities better than me.

The only Man Utd Academy player to be a first team player in the last few years has been Manoo. Garnacho and Amed were brought in from other clubs - their proud academy tradition has been cast aside in recent years. The only player for Man City that has come through their academy was Foden. They had Palmer but they couldn't be bothered to develop him and sold him to Chelsea. The other two are not first team regulars (yet). My club tried to bring through academy players and it got us relegated. We now only bring through the cream and it is one a season at best. Development of youth is not good for business. Most of our academy players are not good enough for League Two and no development plans will change that. This is the harsh reality of football. Brazil may be different as the decent younger players are sold leaving gaps for the next generation and the older stars will now be sold to the Saudi league. The development we used to have has gone and football has changed. The game will reflect this. Now it is all about astute signings using data rather than a coach bringing through a prospect.

Do the Premier League teams really develop young players though? Maybe some of the smaller ones by necessity. But look at City. It is only really Foden who has come through their youth set up. The other U25s have been bought in from other clubs where they have been developed. If you look at most Premier League clubs the ones coming through are the ones who will always make it. They very rarely, if at all, take a player who is below Premier League level and develop them into Premier League. What needs to be improved is the AI recruitment and from there the AI team's strength. Even in League Two my team, AFC Wimbledon, will routinely lose our better better players. Ollie Palmer, Jack Rudoni, Ayoub Assal, Ali Al-Hamadi and this summer Jack Currie all did great things for us but have been taken by bigger clubs than us. In the game we are less likely to lose our best players in this way and if we find a wonderkid we can keep him beyond what happens in real life. Paqueta has done well for West Ham but is probably on his way to Man City. The real thing AI has to improve on is recruitment and the bigger clubs using their muscle to take wonderkids away from the clubs that found them.

I think new players use these more or you use them when you go to a new club but could a subtle revamp be workable? I have based it on what I would find helpful. Current Ability - as football becomes more stats based the CA should be based on the stats garnered from playing time. Each position and role/mentality comes key attributes for this position. For example a winger has crossing, dribbling, flair etc. We can use the stats from the games to to see how they are currently doing against their potential ability. Potential Ability - This is garnered exclusively from their attributes. This allows you to see how a player is currently performing against his attributes. From this you could see a potential 4 star winger is only performing at 2.5 stars and that will allow you look at what it is that is dragging it down. We can keep it division based. But we should move it from a certain persons opinion and make it more based on the stats. On a new season basis you would carry over the previous season score. I am not too sure how long the current ability would be measured over. Finally this would impress on people how training players to improve attributes is worthwhile. What I want to see is an end to someone player CM-D and getting 4 stars but if you move him back to DM-D he can go down to 2.5 stars despite playing the exact same rule. You can also see how young players develop by their stars reacting to their development rather than your Ass Mans opinion. We need to see how well a player can do from moving to CM to ML quickly. The stars system does not allow you to decide on this and neither does the roles suitability traffic light system. I want the system to be useful rather than something most experienced players ignore. It should be an easy way to see how players are playing without have to dig through spreadsheets.

The one thing that does make this game hard is the pointless goals you concede with no warning. This is down to a poor match engine. Two secnarios. We are 1-0 up to Tottenham, playing as Man Utd (who are as inconsistent as in real life), we have a goal kick. We take a short one which Son immediately wins and equalises. We fall apart and lose 2-1. There was nothing in the highlights warning me of this situation. We were not getting caught at the back and we were the better side until this goal in the second half. Against Palace. 1-0 up at HT time We had 10 shots to their 0. They score early in the second half due to a poor back pass from a player under no pressure. We resume dominance. We miss chances and their keeper makes some great saves. We concede a 95th minute penalty to lose. I know people will talk about my tactics being wrong. But I was dominating in this games and it was freak goals that cost me

The problem is that SI have caused problems for themselves. People do not want to spend hours analysing things they just want to try and play matches. Take the stars system - I want to know if a player can play in a certain position and not how he ranks in the squad relative to the other squad members, Who thought getting the ass manger's opinion was a good idea? I just want to know if Garnacho can play left wing or not and to what standard and that should be based on his attributes and possibly morale/form. His ability to play left wing should not be measured against other team members. You can have someone who is a 2 star winger in one team in the Premier League who would be a 4-star winger in another team. How is this a thing? If we have three 4 star left wingers then it is my job to decide who is the starter and who may moved on. That is my understanding of stars is and if I am wrong it is once again because nothing is properly explained because tactics is the the deciding factor in FM and player ability has too little say in it. I can let any DoF sign any player and I can make it work as I understand how to manipulate the games system.

Something that I would like to see - and this is something that can easily be implemented to the AI team's templates - is to have an attacking formation screen and a defensive formation screen. It allows the change of formations to be easier. Or maybe the chance to add an attacking position as the game shows your defensive position. So you can ask you Wide Midfielder Left when defending to move to AMC - Support when we have the ball. At the very least maybe an attacking visualiser to see how your players will change their positioning.

What SI can do is to better balance tactics and player ability. In my opinion tactics has too much of a say in how a team performs in the game. If you look at real life football recruitment is more important than tactics. Do not get me wrong, tactics are still important but there is nothing the real life Luton manager can do tactically to compete with the likes of Man City or indeed most established Premier League sides. The difference between Man Utd and Man City is the quality of recruitment. Ten Hag may or may not be an elite manager but he is hampered by the clunkers hanging around the squad they cannot get rid of. In the game I was able to dispatch a strong Newcastle side in the EFL Cup 2-0 because I was at home and the game accepted my tactics were correct. The fact that none of my players would get in their side was seemingly ignored. The reverse happened in the FA Cup a few days later. I was away to a Conference South side and that coupled with my tactics not being deemed correct saw me 1-0 down at HT and second best. A slight tweak saw me win 3-2. Once again the game ignored the player ability in favour of tactics.

Two things I would like to see sorted. 1) Can we stop having unrealistic differences in suitably based solely on position rather than role. For example I can play someone as a Winger-Support and in the AML berth he can have 3.5 stars and a green rating. However if I play him in the ML as Winger-Support he can be orange and 1.5 stars. How can that be when he is doing the same job for the team? Fair enough if I play a 5 foot 7 winger as a centre back but there has to be some logic and common sense to it. 2) Can we cut down on the amount of goals conceded either with the opponents first shot or highlight. I can be leading and dominating and then concede out of nowhere, my opponent will have a low xg and shot count - sure it happens sometimes but no as often as happens in the game. I have no problem if they have the highlights or I do not heed a warning. Hopefully the news engine will have a better highlights routine.

I have to disagree with everything the OP has said. I am managing AFC Wimbledon. I have never used the Gengenpress. Stuck to the preset tactics and let my DOF buy the players. Despite that I won the EFL L2 and I am doing well in L1 (where I am 2nd favourite to go down). I use a mixture of Fluid Counter and Control Possession so sometimes I am defensive. I find shape is just a good way to win matches than the Gengenpress - I purposely have banned the use it of it in my game.

Go 4-3-1-2. Your two strikers keeps the back three honest. You have a 4v2 in central midfield - your full backs negate your opponents wing backs. Your narrow three midfielders makes it very difficult for the attacking three to penetrate. The only slight twist you can make is going 4-3-2-1 if want to really clamp down on the CMs and have your 3 CMs deal with the 3 attackers. Another way if you do not want that much change is to keep your 4-2-3-1 and move your AML/R in one and a have three attacking AMCs. I have tried it once and it worked okay but that probably needs more testing. The three AMCs keeps their two DMs busy and makes it difficult for them to attack centrally as there is now five midfielders in the central area. Having four narrow attacking players also causes problems for their back three, For all narrow formations from opponents the 4-3-1-2 or narrow 4-2-3-1 works wonders.

Another thing I have found helpful it to keep it simple in the roles department. Lower League players are not good enough to play the convoluted roles - I only use CM, DM, BBM and BWM. I only use wide men as wingers and none of that fancy-dan inverted stuff. Target Men or Pressing Forwards rather than False 9s or Deep Lying Play Makers.

Well not entirely. My idea is that the TI is the tactical blueprint of your team and will form the main part of your training. The mentality is used for the match to match situation. I have re-read the mentalities and they are slightly different from what I thought. I used the fluid counter attack preset and changing mentalities does not affect TIs. But cautious asks you players to get behind the ball which is inviting pressure for the counter attack. Positive is to keep possession but to encourage forward runs when it is safe to do so. They are less extreme versions of attacking and defensive. Mentalities compliment the TIs from my viewing this morning, Rather than adjusting your TIs you can decide how you want your team to adapt their blue prints to each match. So away from home where you are not favourite you may keep all your TIs and go cautious and at home where you are favourite you can go positive. In football teams tend to spends Fridays walking through the shape for the match and the tactics in a meeting. During the match the manager will ask them hold on to the ball more or push higher/lower, be more compact. At half-time is where any formation changes are talked about unless something is clearly not working and the manager changes things with subs in the first half etc. Teams tend not to change things like their passing or tempo from match to match but they will change formation, mentality and how they deal with opponents.

I think people who do not understand how shape and mentality are the most important things in real life football do not understand football or tactics at all. You can tell a team to play down the wings but without the correct shape and mentality you might a well be talking to the office cat. An example of this is the Champions League semi final. In the first leg Ancelotti had his team attacking as a 4-3-3 but defensively they dropped into a 5-3-2 to stop they way Man City attacked. He wanted to stop the balls played to the edge of the six-yard area. He changed his defensive shape from what Madrid normally played in order to nullify their threat. The mentality gauge is the simplification of the TIs and is closer to what a real manager would do with defensive/ultra defensive meaning sit back; cautious meaning keep possession and positive meaning try riskier passes and attacking/ultra attacking meaning push forward. Balanced essentially means follow the tactics. In real life managers do not tell the players we have adjusted the slider two clicks to the right - he will either say push forward more, get up the pitch, sit deeper, hold on the ball, be more direct. Mentality is better than adjusting TIs for that. It would interesting to see if we could get a mode where access to tactics screen could be turned off - although I guess that could be self-imposed. All you could change would be mentality and shape.

As we are getting a new game engine for FM25 I wonder if we are going to be able to get the ability to change skins to the console versions. The console version is my favourite iteration of the game with the stripped downness of the game especially less press interaction. I like the Mustermann skin with the pizza charts especially and wonder if we can get that in this version.

In a way to end the cycle of getting a formation which slowly but surely stops being effective I tried to emulate my real life team, AFC Wimbledon, and went with a three formation set of tactics. We have played a 4-2-4, 4-2-3-1 and a 4-3-1-2 this season. So I tried that in my game and won the title fairly easily. I found being favourite at home I was better off playing 4-2-4. We seemed to far better at breaking down the opponents. There were times when we struggling at this we reverted to the 4-2-3-1 and that made the problems ease. At away games I usually went with the 4-2-3-1 as that gave me more control in the matches that a 4--2-4 did not. We were more open with the 4-2-4 and could either be picked off or struggle to get in the game. Finally the 4-3-1-2 is very effective at dealing with the teams playing a three man central defence. I find you need two strikers on their back three or you struggle offensively. It is especially effective at nullifying the 3-4-1-2, 3-4-2-1 or any narrow four defender formations with an AMC - you do not need a player in the DM line either. It is strange that rather than micro-managing the tactics screens I can follow my challenge and only use the presets and handle the adjustments with changing the formation, mentality and the roles/player mentalities. I have actually got the control possession idea to work. It will interesting to see how this holds playing in a higher division but adjusting shape seems to be more effective than some of the tweaks to the tactics screens. May be old hat to some of your but it is exciting to me to see an idea work out.

I have just won the EFL2 title with AFC Wimbledon and I thought I would move forward and see the playoff results. In the second week after the last match I started getting some training injuries but I thought the game would automatically cease training. I am playing the console version so it is hard to screenshot but is there a general way to stop your players training? I am worried of a big injury when we should be on our holidays.

Omar Bugiel is a weird one in this regard. In real life, before this season, he has been exclusively as forward and played in a straight 4-4-2 for Sutton. He joined us, AFC Wimbledon, in the summer and is being used in a different role/position this season. We have mostly played the 4-2-3-1 system with Omar dropping into the AM/SS role rather than the ST one. The other formation we have tried is 4-3-1-2 where he has played as the one behind the front two. He has been one of our best players in this new role/position. His Fotmob rating, so far this season, is 7.04 and his Sofa Score one is 7.20. I have wanted to replicate this in the game but have scared off by his low rating. I may try just playing him there to see how the game reacts to it. In the game, his only natural position is ST and nothing else. This must cause the game to downgrade his star rating. I understand the current game cannot accommodate for the real life player evolving his role or effectively changing his position but I do wonder if the updated data, in February, can reflect a player moving to a new role/position and if it can be added to a current save. There might be a case for changing the way it is calculated - an example being - possibly using the top 8 attributes to a role, adding the adaptability and the CA. Maybe removing the positional familiarity from the calculation can smooth out some of the quirks. I am not a computer programmer so would be interested to see if this was possible without breaking the game or if people think it was a good thing.

A second thought to this - in the era of big data should the star rating come from the Data Analysis team rather than the assistant manager?

As we are having a new engine should the star system be revamped as it is a bit mis-leading. One example is the amount of times if I play a player in the AML position as a Winger - Attack he gets 3 stars. If I play him as a winger-attack in the ML position he can drop to 1.5 stars but I am effectively asking him to do the same job but defend deeper. A specific example is Omar Bugiel. As a pressing forward or target man he gets 3 stars but as a shadow striker he gets 0.5 stars. This is despite his key attributes for the shadow striker role mostly being 10-12 which is decent for a L2 player. There is no reason for that drop. How much is the star rating allied with the actual attributes rather than whether the player is seen as a natural or unconvincing in that position. I know you are supposed to look at this but for newbies isn't this mis-leading?

This is based on what I saw with my AFC Wimbledon team in real life. We have moved to a 4-3-1-2 in attack which suits us with roles as follows: GK, LB, CB, CB., RB; CM, DLP, CM; AM, AF, AF. In attack we had our forwards to add width to wings when we were countering and our full backs push on to add support alongside with the central midfielder on that side. What we did defensively, after being punished for leaving their full backs free for the first half hour as we defended as 4-3-1-2, made us more defensively secure. We were 2-2 at HT without these positioning detailed below but won the second 3-1 with their goal an error from a corner in injury time. In defence in the second half, the three CMs dropped to cover gaps and our front three hunted high. The AFs moved wide so they were inbetween the CBs and the FBs. The AM pushed up and challenged the CBs. So if the left CB got the ball the AF on the left closed him down trying to block the pass to the LB and the AM tried block the pass to the centre. At the same the LCM moved to the LB to make it difficult for him to receive a pass and do something with it. How would you get the front three's defensive positioning - all I can think of is ask the AFs to mark the full backs when not in position and the AM to mark the CBs. Would a re-group order break that - so I can ask the CMs to cover gaps?

I think you have missed the point of what I have said and tactics in football in general. But I will explain. In the past I have set the general tactics with regards to width, passing, whether I countered or dropped back and my defensive lines/counter press and never really touched them - I was successful as I knew what worked. I tried the tactics bundled into the game as I believe the game knows how better to counter them. It is a choice but I see no value in setting a Gengenpress one that is OPed. I definitely see no value in moaning about it in these forums save letting SI know it is over-powered. But if that Oped-ness is ruining your game for you then until they do we saying there are other options. In real life the managers now do not scout players - that is not their job. At best they offer suggested players or decide on the players signed with the scouting team/DOF once again I am trying to make the game more life like. At some clubs managers have no say in which players are signed. I am following that scenario. In real life they do not set counter-pressing at scale from one to five - the game has to compromise as it is a game. But I saw a game IRL where my team AFC Wimbledon went to Wycombe in the EFL Trophy. They started in a 3-4-3 and we started in a 4-4-2. We had done our homework and had asked our wingers to cut off the passing lanes from their wide CBs to their wing-backs. We did this so effectively they could not attack and they were forced to change to a 4-3-3. We played a mid-block. Against Swindon they played a 3-4--1-2 against our 4-4-2. We dominated the first half hour playing a high press - they changed to a 4-3-1-2 and dominated the last 15. At half time we changed to a 4-3-1-2 and won the match 4-0. That rambling paragraph shows that tweaks to formation is just as important than the tweaks to the stuff in the tactics section both in the game and IRL. This season's El Classico and Ancelotti's positional tweaks also shows this. I have much more success changing the mentality and formation. There is fundamentally no difference from setting up your general tactics at the start of the season and letting it run through and choosing, say wing play, from the SI tactics and using formation and roles/mentality to change your tactics. I would like the game to have some kind of way of asking a player to cut passing lanes as managers do in real life but that is not in the game. Maybe that will come with the new engine.

One thing I have found is that the amount of micro-management available makes it easier for you to beat the game. I think it may always be impossible for SI to programme against every tweak the player can implement. I have found one way to make the game a decent challenge is to use the preset tactics without tweaks and the player roles/mentalities without PIs. Just reducing the TIs and PIs added extra challenge. My gut feel is that you can programme against the preset ones. I wonder if the believed OPed Gengenpress would be as OPed if you used the preset one without tweaks. Anyone got time to test this? I haven't. I have found it more fun to use a variation of 4-3-3 DM to deal with opponent tactics. An example of this is using two DMs against an AM behind two strikers. I also limit who I can bring in. I use the DOF to make signings but you can adhere to the club vision to the letter. For example, a L2 club in the UK may only sign UK players and not that 16 year old wunderkid from Peru.

A second thought has occurred to me. If you used the preset Gengenpress tactic with no tweaks would that be as over-powered? I would wager it is impossible for the SI team for programme for all human players micro-management but maybe they can programme for the preset ones?

If you think that the Gengenpress instructions are over-powered then do not use them. It is your game and your time so set yourself challenges to allow yourself to enjoy the game. If you want to use OPed tactics then do so. BTW I am not telling you not to use them - just suggesting it. I only use the preset tactics with no tweaks, roles and mentalities with no PIs and leave the signings to my DOF. That means I do not exploit the game with either tactics or signing wunderkids my team would never sign in real life. I have only used Gengenpress once and it didn't work. My squad is best served to use wing-play but I sometimes switch to fluid counter attack if I am defending a lead. I use formation to counter opponents - ie two DMs to counter an AM behind two strikers. I have found a way to be successful without using an exploit. The games and the league are closer and the game is more fun for me. More fun than moaning about an exploit then still using it and complaining the game is too easy. Challenge yourself to find other ways to win. Try to win using a philosophy or formation you do not usually use - it can be fun.