DP

Every player should have an estimated value. Plenty of websites show that. Whether they’re for sale at that value is another matter. This is exactly how FM was coded back in the day.

Flair is a bit of an edge case though right? Finishing, passing, tackling, positioning, determination - most of them, if not all - you want as high as possible.

What about jumping reach if the player is 5’4? Get a random 6’7 person off the street and they’ll be better.

This cannot be completely right. If someone has 1 for, say, professionalism or even heading that doesn’t mean it’s pretty dammed good. There are probably Sunday league players that are better in the air than some pro’s as the pro isn’t good in the air or plays in a position where it isn’t important.

All I ask is that I can be a manager of a big club in, say, 2030 and have some sort of challenge. Right now if you move to City or PSG 5, 10 years on from the start of the game there is genuinely no challenge after you have the team set up. It becomes a procession and the game is easy. In the early CM’s this wasn’t the case as there were far fewer variables for the AI to handle. It was great always having a ding dong with you closest rivals and not being guaranteed the title every season. There should be challengers and some sort of challenge still if you are a top club. Ask Pep if there’s still challenge for him being in charge of one of the richest teams in the world and he’ll say yes. He has to be completely on it to get ahead over the likes of Liverpool and this isn’t represented properly in FM imo.

If FIFA career was unlimited I’d just get that tbf.

Not even sure what a ‘roaming playmaker’ is in the real world. It’s way too fm related. Generally you get a playmaker from deep or one higher up the pitch. You can change their instructions to make them a bit more fluid but it’s odd their actual position/role is a ‘roaming playmaker’ when that’s just something set by the manager and his formation. Modric would probably not describe himself as a ‘roaming playmaker’. Overcomplication as ever, imo.

What I don’t like is that the game lets you have attack duties on a defensive formation. Surely the duties should change based on the mentality set? It seems odd and over complicated to me that you can have ‘defensive’ mentality set but everyone set to attacking duties. It’s contradictions like this that plague the current engine and means the community gets confused. There’s a lot that can be done to simplify it.

I would call it low risk, possession based football. Would I call it attacking football? Not really. I don’t think there are many cases of low risk attacking football, it’s a bit of an oxymoron imo. I mean, in theory, yes but it doesn’t really play out that way. City always play a high line, they’re always attacking and, whilst they have more possession than say Liverpool, it’s not low risk. It’s just how they play. Strangling the game so that the opposition cannot get a foothold. Pep would never say he plays ‘low risk’ football. FM has too many variations, complexity and systems that can too easily cancel each other out. An overhaul is required to present this information in a more readable format to the player and tactical instructions, mentality, player roles all could do with some streamlining. It’s system upon system that’s been added together over years and it’s resulted in this complex soup that over complicates everything imo.

Is there low risk attacking football then?

It should be though right? It’s too confusing otherwise. I mean, I personally think the whole tactical setup is more complex and has more variance than even real football - but that’s just me. Do teams in real life have a mentality other than ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ with a few varying shades of that? It’s all very poorly executed in the game with too much chance of various options clashing/cancelling each other. If FMs ‘defensive’ mentality doesn’t mean defensive football then it needs to be renamed or explained better.

The thing that isn’t good is the ease of the game at the top level. If SI could somehow make managing the top clubs a challenge long term, I’d buy the game.