Passion4FM

I have been following this thread since the main data update and there are so many things that goes on that I am very surprised hearing about both . 1. SI has always been telling us they talk to scouts (and other people within pro football clubs) to make the game more realistic! So you would think they have a good understanding of how scouts look for players. using player's interest as a way to filter away recommendations as they don't bother to file reports until they hits a certain age is beyond ludacris. Here they are trying to tell us how we shall play the game and limit our freedom to play it how we want. I would hardly believe a scout go to the sgent or player to ask about whether they want to join the team before they start scouting him... 2. What it looks like for me, right now, is that the game doesn't take into account a scouts past experience, his reputation and all his prior knowledge he has gained from years of building an extensive knowledge in a country. It doesn't even take into account the reputation of players under 18 and their ambitions to perhaps play for a bigger club. It is not unlikely that top clubs pick up players under the age of 18...or perhaps newsflash - know about the best Wonderkids already from they are 14! So it's highly unrealistic and unreasonable that my top scout won't even consider scouting the best Wonderkids in the game. 3. then they talked about workload of scouts and the likelihood to get fewer reports..but isn't region scouting increasing a scouts workload. it will be harder to travel between x different nations in a year and visit matches. Would it not be better for the scout to visit two neighbouring countries and watch matches that are of higher profile that fits the club? In this regard it seems to me that the game plays down the fact the number of scouts travelling the world and that they are often selecting to watch/scout 'the wrong players'. 4. they talk about limiting our abilities to purchase these wonderkids ..but why did they remove the previous scouting knowledge levels? previously you had to scout a player multiple times to unlock new information. why couldn't they kept that but made the final hurdle to get extensive knowledge from perhaps 1 month to e.g 2-3 months depending on where in the world he is and his reputation. then, on the other hand i don't feel it's the scouts job to filter reports. here i feel it's the job of the director of football or whoever in charge of ongoing transfer to see what possibilities there are in the world. If you think about how long processes are to get a player to pick between clubs in RL , I wish there where more focus on trying to get his attention by promises and facilities and reputation rather than a strict rule that says a player is most likely not wanting to join your club so he won't be known about until much later as you progress in the save 5. finally, what I don't understand if scouts really look only for players that can improve the team .. why did they scout players in the 3.div of Argentina when you are playing as Barcelona? it's who they prioritize scouting that beats me @Zachary Whyte said nothing had been changed from release to 24.2 in terms of how scouting works... this makes me even more confused as I felt there where two completely different worlds between beta and 24.2. If a club with 5 scouts can find as many players as a club with 20 scouts then that's just unrealistic. Those 5 scouts would have limited resources and time available to create as many reports.. Sorry for the long post but lots of frustration that i want to vent out

There is a thread about this issue here https://community.sigames.com/bugtracker/football-manager-2024-early-access-bugs-tracker/transfers-scouting-contracts-and-agentsintermediaries/scouting-recruitment-focuses-doesnt-work-r21301/page/7/?tab=comments#comment-135840 Please join the discussion with your issues so we can hopefully get it resolved with a hot fix @jen04

I'm probably too critical in this matter but I don't understand why scouting was revamped for FM24. I fondly remember the time when you had two ways to scout - setting up scouting assignments to increase world knowledge and specific short or long term scouting focuses to find players for the first team. How @Zachary Whyte phrases himself - it sounds like the scouts will only look for players that can improve the team. Filtering away future candidates because of Interest and Current Abilites based on squad quality In my opinion, scouts shouldnt be the ones filtering and removing candidates. As I have understood how scouting works IRL, the scouts travel the world by watching matches and tournaments, they then report back to the club about their findings and then it's up to the club, or DoF, to decide whether they are likely to be a priority signing. Over the years we have heard lots of incidents where the scouts has a huge database of player files that he takes with him if he leaves. What I feel has been lost with scouting on FM24 is the idea to identify potential future signings. Now, I haven't been able to test this in-game with the latest patch but a feature request for FM25 is the ability to scout for players that can improve the youth team or first team. Distinguish this with two different buttons that you check. In terms of this information - I don't quite understand you: "Another important thing to note is that when creating a Recruitment Focus you have to factor in the quality of your squad. For example, if you are a top Premier League club with a very talented group of players, your scouts will obviously have a harder time recommending players that they feel will make a significant impact on your team. So, say instead you are a mid-table team in League One, your scouts will have a wider selection of players to look at and recommend to you." If we take into accout what you said earlier about Players Interest then wouldn't there be less recommendations for a lower league side? The number of players in the database with the quality to play that level is higher but due to reputation and nationality, I'm sure there will be less players that wish to play for club X (e,g Derby) due to reputation and league level. It's more likely that more players is interested in joining a bigger club, such as Man Utd if we don't count in the squad quality. In this matter I think it's worth to consider how you can merge the Squad Planner and Scouting. You could have color coded scout reports or focuses that let your scouts to think long-term - Right now, it seems everything is about improving the squad immediately. When scouting for players under the age of 18 the current squad quality shouldnt matter

@Zachary Whyte Saved a shortlist to Publish on Steam - It got wiped out in the game - not sure if the shortlist contains any players here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3171643538 Same shortlist should contain 26Kb - like this one: https://www.mediafire.com/file/oiqsv7wdm2mktaf/FM24_Wonderkids_v2.3_by_Passion4FM.fmf/file So when I save this shortlist by clicking the Publish to Steam button - all players gets removed

Have you created a shortlist and saved it? Then opened a new save, added players to it and clicked 'Save Shortlist As' or Save Shortlist. It wipes out all players - I have no databases selected but got db's in the editor data folder. Using the Tato Skin. Could it be an issue with .fmf files created in the beta and moved over to full game? However, It was the same error when I should create a new shortlist of Set-Piece coaches - Once I saved the shortlist, all staff was removed so had to compile the shortlist again. The only way to get it to work is to click Save Shortlist As and write a unique name - impossible to overwrite an existing file P.S. Still happened despite creating a new save for 24.3 db.

I can understand if a player gets a lower recommendation grade due to no interest in joining us. BUT if scouts doesnt even bother creating a scout report or watch the player because of this, then it works against us - especially for montoring the progress of U21s... Zachary has already said there will be some changes for Winter patch, so fingers crossed SI have understood the problem

if this is true, that players won't be recommended or pop up in recommendations due to they aren't likely to sign for you then that's shocking news! If this is really true, then no wonder you hardly see any major results of recommendations. However, I would hardly believe this is how it works in real life. A scout will travel around the world and create scout reports and include them in the database. Some clubs track players for years before making a move on them. And, who knows what will happen in the future and if they get interest in joining your club. If this is how scouting has been altered for FM24, then it's the biggest mistake ever!

My apologies! I must have missed it! Looking forward to the fix:D Keep up the great work!

@wazzaflow10 That's all well and good but it's rather weird they haven't noticed this bug when playing themselves - I mean any of the guys at SI? They talked about transparency and it took almost 1.5 months from 24.2 patch before they put it under review... that makes us wonder... In terms of workload and timeframe, they have normally fixed dates until a patch is going to be released - for years the patches has come almost around the same time, but for such an important element of FM as scouting is, it's strange they have not released a hot fix earlier. And if it can't be fixed for Winter Update then I'm sure more and more people will quit playing FM24 I've heard about lots of guys who doesn't even care to report bugs anymore as they feel they are not heard as they report the same things year on as there are stuff that isn't fixed. All the Moderators could do is simply say: we don't put effort into fixing that bug at the moment due to lack of resources, or reply with a solution - if it's a user error. Fingers crossed this is fixed for Winter patch - at least it's under review now

@DavutOzkan Hope I haven't given you the impression of that it's not minimum star rating. but I would probably lower the CA or increase PA... depends on whether you are scouting for first team players or youth... Regardlessly, you will probably have more luck sending the scouts out to scout individual players rather than thinking your recruitment focus will have any luck. So far it seems they go willy nilly around and not necessarily watch all top players within the league. You would suspect if they are scouting a competitition they would gain a bit knowledge of the other players that are attending a match they are watching.. or could recommend some more players as another player has made a huge impact within that nation... for instance, in France Grimandi only finds Cherki and Sofiane Diop.. we are now in April... Not sure if the number of loaded playable leagues has an effect on how many players they can find. I've loaded a save with Argentina, Brazil, England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain and with a database size of 86K... In a former save with Benfica (started before patch FM24.2) I have 20+ recommendations on almost every recruitment focus - 1872 players scouted by June 2024, compared to 525 at April 2024 with Arsenal.. 19/20 scouts at Arsenal compared to 15/15 at Benfica. However, in that Benfica save I have 10+ leagues loaded as playable...

Another confusing thing is: If you go to a specific scouts, click Scouts assignment you will see a button with the number of reports e.g '36 reports' Then when you click on that button, it only shows 7 players...

There's no wonder why you get the message of busy with other tasks. You are using Standard priority for most of your recruitment focuses - meaning two scouts will be off for that assignement. Instead select Ongoing. You have a rather tight search paramater in terms of minimum CA and max PA. In reality you are searching for players between 110-120 CA (depending on squads average ability and level) and 120-130 PA... (if we say for example that 1 golden star is 100 where 5 stars is 200. But anyway, something is definitely wrong with how scouts recommend players - or lack of it. Between 27.08 and 30.11 in game - my scouts has only found around 90 players - from 258 in August to 341 at the end of November - At the end of January the number has gone up to 414... Many of the recruitment focuses doesnt got any recommendations and the ones the scouts find is at recommendation grade D to E.. seems like they are really poor at judging the players too - Tygo Land - 1.4 star potential with 4 in uncertainy factor (white stars). Jobe Bellingham 1.5 star potential with 3 star white stars. Both players recommended as D and last resort - despite the scouts says he has potential PL standard. What's certain is that many great players are missed if people only look at Recommendation grade...

What's interesting here is that everyone seems to loose, or if lucky draw, away games....

The last illustration here looking at passes completed by Inside Forward Attack could show some of the troubles... o the unsuccessful passes that are played mainly towards wing

P.S I'm not saying it's anything wrong with the passes into the middle as it might be a case of player roles and team instructions but there are several things in this ME that puts people off from playing FM24... one of these things are high passing accuracy of opposition and the feeling of a lesser opponent can play like Man City

@MarioFcn still an issue for you or found a fix? Seems like noone has looked at this issue either... I'm wondering if it could be an issue with first touch and decision-making of attacking players compared to how well the opposition enables themselves to get back into the correct position to block or intercept passes... I have discovered that my wingers (IF) often takes a lot of heavy touches and ball travels a shorter distance of their foot when moving with the ball or receiving a pass - I wil try to get some examples But also how they evaluate passing options is either move the ball towards one of the flanks or a back pass - Rarely do we see those through balls like in FM23 between the DC and FB wher the IF moves into channels... Despite my team has the most passes in the final third in the league, I'm troubling to retain and keep possession high up which ends in quickly counters where the opposition runs with the ball and my players running next to him.. 2024-01-24 19-21-09.mp4

Having the same issue! The problem has arrived after the 24.2.1 db and happens when you try to save an existiant shortlist. All the players gets deleted. The only work around is to create a new name for the shortlist Hope one of the moderators will investigate and fix this! 2024-01-24 19-01-32.mp4

@Zachary Whyte Thanks for replying so quickly! I have uploaded my game to the SI cloud and named it: 'passion4fm_recruitmentfocus_few_reports.fm' I tested a similar approach on FM23 earlier today by managing Le Havre and I received 20 B to A+ recommendations on players between 15 and 22 reports within a week! 5-star silver stars and 2.5 gold star (PA Minimum) - this was done with a TOP priority report. But I also set up a ongoing report of players between 15 and 21 with 5 silver star Ca minimum and 3 star PA minimum and I have 42 players in progress. The scouts had even watched some of the players by attending a match It seems the scouts are very lazy in FM24 compared to FM23, or doesn't focus properly on the players with the highest reputation. When managing Barcelona, why would the scout bother to scout the third division of Portugal after players... Throughout one season (May 24th 2024), my scouts at Barcelona has managed to scout 983 players (world range) - I have 9 scouts available. In the Arsenal simulation that I uploaded, I have 20 scouts available (max) and they have only been able to scout through 738 players in one season (May 29th 2024). However in that save, they have scouted players in Peru without me not sending scouts there (sent to Brazil and Argentina). Weirdly they haven't spotted any of the big five Brazilian wonderkids - Estevao, Endrick, Luis Guilherme, Kaua Elias, Gabriel Moscardo or Matheus Goncalves. same goes for Argentina's Claudio Echeverri. Instead we have 'gems' like Mauricio di Gubio or Agustin Kahl - the latter in Serie C... In FM23, with Le Havre with lesser scouting range (western Europe) and fewer scouts, the scouts has madde reports of 489 players (all scouted players) by October 10th 2022. That's not even half a year into the season.. Hope this helps to fix this for Winter Transfer Update... it takes away lots of the fun by scouting if you only needs to manual search for players rather than let your scouts to the heavy lifting.

It really needs investigation and a proper answer. If so many of us are doing it wrong, then they should tell us how it is supposed to work. the result of the ALL TOP focus gave a decent result in around 1 month

I have a similar issue with scouting. Almost none players gets highly recommended or found! For instance, I have asked Trezeguet (ADA - 19, JPA - 18 and JPP 19) to scout France. From August to April he has found a maximum of 52 players (!) (Scouted Players - Based in France) However, he must be very lazy as only 2 reports are kept within the Reports section under his staff profile. What's funny is that it says 56 reports. Let's say he has managed to scout 56 players - that's not a lot considering the number of matches he could have watched throughout that year. 1 match with 22 players per weekend would make the tally higher.. Watch U19 matches on Wednesday plus Cup matches.... After investigating the issue, I have discovered that my ONGOING Recruitment Focuses are completed after a little over 1 month.. I'm certain that some of these focuses has been completed without me editing the focus (simply because I have simulated the game) IMAGE OF COMPLETED RECRUITMENT FOCUSES https://imgur.com/a/wEdgzz1 Trezeguet completed one 12/12-23 and then 07/01-24 - later 01.03.24 and 17.03.24 It looks like the recruitment focus is completed whenever I make a slight edit to it... that's allright if it's supposed to be that way, but I don't get why nothing works unless you select the default recruitment focus age: 15 to 50 If it's completed, why won't the Reports be kept on the profile of the scout? I have SO many questions about this matter as I struggle to understand why my scouts can't even find or recommend top players or Under-23 that the entire world knows of... I understand Reputation is a matter but when you sign the best scouts and only Aurelio Pereira delivers - he has made 144 reports) - however, it doesn't look like that if I visit the Recuitment focus he has been on - U21 Wonderkids When creating an ALL Top priority recruitment focus - I quickly get 20 recommendations, 25 near matches and 12 in progress... Those who isn't recommended has C+ or lower recommendation grade - bust most often they have C- to E! When you set up a similar U21 Wonderkids focus from 5-star grey stars to 2.5 minimum PA and the 8 scouts on that assignment ONLY finds C- to E - such as William Rashidi, Matej Sakota, Ayman el Wafi I start to question how they scout for players... does they wander willy nilly around like a blind person who has no knowledge of football europe and consider which clubs and matches to watch? I saw one of the moderators talking about having a very restrictive recruitment focus but if you aren't supposed to scout within an age range or for players in a particular position (not role), how is the recruitment focus meant to be working? It's really sad that one of the core features of Football Manager isn't likely to work until March.... If we think about all the new features and changes coming to FM25...it could potentially become a disaster ...

In my opinion, this issue seems to be related to a poor high-pressing issue when the opposition is building up play. It seems impossible to block off passing lanes and press the defender with the ball effectively When the opposition (regardless of their composure, technique, passing or first touch) is allowed to play out from the back with minimal pressure - it's easy to get high pass completion ratio. Time and time again we see the opposition play from centre backs to fullbacks who makes a pass to the winger who runs to the byline for a cross - impossible to avoid it.. This illustration is with every settings at maximum (Higher Press - Higher Line of Engagement, Much Higher Defensive Line, Much More Often Trigger Press) The poor high pressing has been a problem since they removed Very High line of engament. A more effective pressing is with Mid block and Very High Defensive Line but then you're winning more balls in midfield rather than Ajax style where you hunt for possession inside the opposing final third

The latest update is now live! Due to FM23 announcement yesterday, I haven't yet updated the post with new players, but I've sorted the errors above and added a few more players. More information coming soon

@nicholas.shen Thanks for the heads up and I apologize for the bugs! Here have things gone a BIT too fast! I will sort all the issues! thanks In terms of Julio Enciso, the correct player has been updated with CA/PA.

Pollard is already at Rangers in the database - @Jamie Aubrey