[Fixtures; playing some clubs home twice or away twice in one league season]

I've just noticed this in the 3rd season - I only noticed it because I had back-to-back league games away to the same team. Then looking at my schedule I realised I'd already played Liverpool twice at home too! I've checked back previous seasons and not had the issue before.

[Brexit in FM21]

Still sometimes getting WP rejections like this, which are a bug right? Wage and transfer fee shouldn't be coming into it, should they? (In this case I think a WP may have been correctly refused, but I did not get the "red bar" warning on the transfer or contract offer page)

 

[Football Manager 2021 Official Feedback Thread]

10 minutes ago, IrishRovers said:

A minor irritation for me is the little pop-up that tells you a player has a knock and suggests a sub. In theory, this is a good quality-of-life adjustment - a quicker way to take off players who pick up niggles during the game, and a reflection of something that would happen in real life where a fitness coach or whatever might have a word in the manager's ear if a player's looking uncomfortable.

In practice it's broken for two reasons. Firstly and most seriously, the suggestions for who to sub on are a wee bit off, so they want me to play a striker on the wing when we've got a like-for-like replacement on the bench who's being ignored. Secondly, less seriously but annoyingly, they often use a formulation like 'so-and-so has taken a bang to the knee, but they should be fine to continue - I recommend we replace them with....'. Make your mind up! 

I was thinking about this yesterday evening. On a more general level than this admittedly superficial complaint, it's pretty unusual and worrying, in my opinion, that the best way to play the game is to ignore almost all of the prompts, suggestions and advice that are given to you in the game. If you made all the mentality changes and substitutes the game suggests that you make, you'd be snookered! And that's fine for me, since I've been playing FM since the days before assistant manager advice and I ignore it as a matter of principle, but for people without all those wasted years under their belts it must be confusing to have a game that you need to ignore in order to succeed.

This is perhaps a slightly strange thought experiment, but compare it with something like Yoshi's Island on the SNES, where you're constantly being taught new things which you then put into practice on the following levels. During the first Covid lockdown my girlfriend and I played that all the way through on an emulator. She'd never played it, never had a console as a kid, doesn't play games at all, but she loved it, because it kind of holds your hand through all the mechanics (while also being fun, challenging and so on). Compare that to FM now, which pretends to hold your hand but is actually leading you into, like, a dark alley where Sam Allardyce is waiting with some snooker balls wrapped in a sock. I think the in-game prompts and advice are a good idea, but they really need a lot of work to stop being misleading.

 

Completely agree with this - the "Assistant advice" is not really a clear mechanism, and the game should be more clear about whether the advice is actually helpful, or is just an opinion of the AssMan. 

And why, for example, in the in-match pre-kickoff screen, does there always seem to be one specific bit of oppo advice (e.g. "we should always go in hard on Mo Salah"), but then if you click through to tactics, then opposition, and click to follow the AssMan's advice, you get possibly dozens of other instructions? How is that first one chosen above all the others?

Like you say, if I were a novice, a might think that all their advice is a genuine tip to help improve outcomes, but clearly it depends on a range of factors like the AssMan's attributes and preferences, and its not really clear how that translates to their advice. Mine nearly always recommends that I choose hard tackling for all 11 of my opponents. Great - then I have 3 yellow cards within 10 minutes. 

Again like you say, the substitution instructions are a bit mixed. It could also be improved if they offered one more step? E.g. say I have a WBL on the bench, and my WBR has got a knock. My starting WBL can play WBR, so it would make sense to make the sub and then switch the players round - but that is never suggested.

Similarly, opposition instructions themselves aren't always that clear? If I'm playing gegenpress with high lines and pressing already turned up to the max in my team and player instructions, is "always press" as an opposition instruction going to do anything on top? 

[Brexit in FM21]

Thanks for the above links, helpful!

I think then it's quite safe to say Brexit isn't going to "ruin" games in the way was anticipated in the early pages of this thread - clearly there were some issues with the way the WPs were issued in the beta which have now been addressed.

Getting a WP for a talented young foreign player is now easier than it used to be for non-EU players. For prem and championship clubs I don't think this will be a massive issue for the majority of targets - and for those who it is, that accurately reflects the policy choice of Brexit.

It seems like you could also sign a player without a WP and try and loan them to Ligue 1 or La Liga for some first team experience - if they are regular starters you should be able to achieve a WP by the next window.

 

Trickier I'm sure for league 1&2 and lower, but it's not necessarily "realistic" that they would be signing lots of hot young foreign talent themselves, in the most part

[Brexit in FM21]

Having played from the beta and through each of the various updates, I think in the most recent version, the work permit rules now seem very permissive (whereas in the beta they were very restrictive).

 

Playing as Middlesbrough in the prem, in the summer 2022 window I have been able to sign:

- 19 yo Italian striker from Atalanta with no senior league appearances and 1 u21 cap £3.1m

-19 yo defender from Zebre with 1 senior cap and several in Serie C on a free transfer

-19 yo Norwegian fullback from Molde with a dozen appearances in the Norwegian league and 9 u21 caps

- 18yo Turkish goalkeeper from Besiktas with just 1 superlig apperance and some u19 caps

 

But then I did have a 22 yo Nigerian dm signed from Goteborg for £1,5m with lots of league apperances but nothing international at any level, wp refused.

 

This now seems to me a bit more permissive than it should be? I'd still want to know exactly how the various points are weighted. From the above it seems any combination of one or more first team appearances plus u21 international caps is enough!

[Work permit being incorrectly refused]

So in January 2022 had the following message about a work permit being rejected for a player

So in

 

 

I think this is a bug because:

- prior to the work permit being rejected, the player had the "settled" tag, which I understood to mean he was considered non-Foreign and wouldn't require a Work Permit until 1 January 2024. Now he has had the WP rejected, the "Set" tag has gone.

- the reasons for rejection include insufficient transfer fee and wages. This isn't correct for the FM21 post-Brext work permit rules, is it? Fee and wages are not criteria for the new points based system

- the text of the reason is wrong/doesn't make sense - "Submitting this offer with a wage of N/A or above would earn him enough points"

I have uploaded a save game with the name "Alessandro Denvir - Middlesbrough.fm" which is saved on the day before the WP is rejected.

[Brexit in FM21]

25 minutes ago, Junkhead said:

There will be changes. They will be limiting. The severity of those limits is yet to be confirmed, but the limits should absolutely be modelled in the game as best we know them IMO.

Completely agree - while it is disappointing and frustrating, FM definitely should try and reflect reality as much as possible. We shall see very shortly whether what they have modelled is accurate!

 

But in terms of gameplay and to imrpove the experience for us, they could provide more info in the game about exactly how the new points system works. Yes they list the criteria, but it is not at all clear how different leagues and number of appearances, club position and reputation, are weighted, and how many points are needed to qualify. Some sort of explainer for this would be very helpful, otherwise the "points based system" is just a black box. Are there for example some clubs with reputations so low that no player would ever qualify?

For example, your scout or DoF, or the message you get when a work permit is rejected to say: "Johnny Foreigner work permit rejected. He also doesn't have the number of points from the other categories required (blah blah) but 22 more appearances for his current club would see him reach that level.

If FM is going to reflect reality, and that reality is a new points based system, then we should be put in the same position as real life recruitment teams, who would be able to put player information into a simple algorithm to see if they would qualify or not!

[Brexit in FM21]

Agree that this is frustrating - playing as Boro and seeking to hit the playoffs in the first season. First January window comes around, and I've got loads of 18 to 25 year old targets, usually second tier in major countries (BuLi2, Ligue 2, Serie B) or top tier in lesser nations (Croatia, Greece, Poland), none have international caps but they do have a range of first team experience. I have not been able to get a work permit for a single one, attempting maybe a dozen or so loans or transfers.

 

Now, appreciate that if this is how it's going to be, then replicating it in game is fair enough. But as people have said, while what we know now suggests that these will be the future rules come 1 January 2021, the impact of these rules IRL would have such a massive impact on bottom-14 prem clubs and Championship clubs that it feels inevitable that the final implementation will not be so harsh. The transfer policy of a club like Leicester would be impossible - signing the likes of Kante, Mahrez, Ndidi, Fofana would be impossible under these new regulations. We'll likely find out the reality of these measures in six weeks' time - hopefully that will provide an opportunity to review?

But beyond the rights and wrongs of having this system at all, I think the game could do a better job of explaining it? Screenshot of the rules I have in the Championship:

 

I don't understand the meaning of the text: "British leagues which have squad registrations will now use a 17 foreign player in squad limit instead of the current work permit system."

My reading of that would be that foreign players no longer require work permits at all (as the Prem and Championship have squad registrations) - yet I have needed work permits for any foreign player I've tried to sign in January 2021?

Similarly, the game could do a better job of explaining the points based criteria. Here's a screenshot of a rejection:

Could the "rules" page explain how many points are available for each of those categories, and how many are required to reach the threshold? And/or the "work permit application result" message could contain a breakdown of how many points that player had got towards his work permit, and what was lacking (e.g. so you would know whether to come back in 3 months after he's played a few more league games, or whether that would simply never be enough)

It is also useful that when you are trying to sign a player, that there is a warning at the bottom of the transfer offer page - but again it would be very helpful to understand why players don't meet the criteria!