santy001

Early on I will delegate an awful lot and gradually over time like to take more and more back myself. I find delegating a lot of smaller details lets you focus on building your side, establishing a tactic and then when you've got a good foundation you can begin paying more attention to backroom staff, training regimes, youth development etc.

I do share in the underwhelming feeling with this option in network games. A checklist of sorts for what news items to stop processing for would probably be an ideal solution for single-player & network games alike.

Verifying the integrity of the game files through steam can help - sometimes as opposed to an uninstall/reinstall. It might be worth trying to get him to host a file and see if you can connect to him?

This is from the Overview page for my Under 18's. The same is true for the AC II squad and St Andra/WAC squad.

You can set the formation in the development section I think from one of the drop down options. I don't recall which unfortunately.

Didn't particularly pull up any trees in my save:

Each researcher can speak to their own ratings to an extent. Especially for historical ratings they've done, at least in an informal manner. I'm always quite open with my own but it's very subjective and I've never really been in the territory of handing out 20s. Since it often invites more trouble than it's worth fewer and fewer researchers discuss as much publicly. That being said we are under NDAs so there are limitations. But the general jist is ratings are our instincts and feelings on a player with a number of sanity checks along the way from people happy to question us on them. I think to answer your question in a way perhaps as best as can be done. If I want to give a player high or low ratings that stand out - I have to be prepared to defend it to various people. If someone tried to throw Messi in at a 10 technique next year, they'd have to try and justify it.

It depends how much the club wants the player and their situation. I've had similar experiences where the AI never gets close. But then with others I set that price through the negotiation and a club does come in at it. My best AMC was picked up by Bayern because I'd agreed a bit of a pie in the sky £50m price with a player while at my side in the Austrian league. Same happened with a CM, a club unsettled him with a low ball bid we agreed a £40m price in January and come the summer a club bid it. Often times I think the player doesn't go on to live up to the price tag you agree with the player. That certainly seems to be the case with most in my teams.

I remember that and sharing the file definitely got it a lot more attention - because it was interesting after all to see that much of the game played out. Seeing eras of dominance and the teams that rose/fall and in some cases rose again. On one hand the game really can't hold its integrity being played for that long, if I remember right some teams were in the same stadium for centuries. But it still was interesting to check and see what teams did. The only interesting thing in the long term saves is that ability to poke about and look around I think.

It's possibly a bug but at the same time the systems in the game aren't designed to go down to these levels with players and so things may be a bit strange just in day to day use.

I've very much focused on the physical development of a number of my youngsters to be fair, but that better fits the league I play in. But progress is definitely there to be made, I don't do anything in particular with my training schedules. Just a position focus and the additional focus to round out weaknesses. This is the development of one of my players from age 16 - 20:

You've covered some areas already by playing the same style and recognising the difference in quality. Perhaps one thing you're not factoring in is that often times IRL teams don't just play their way to victory at a comfortable pace without getting drawn into the physical side as much. So you can certainly have a tactic that skews under what you might expect for a Championship season, particularly with a team tactic that really narrows in on particular advantages. Aggression isn't inherently a bad thing either, going in a little earlier and more aggressively could just result in a free kick or winning the ball rather than holding off and trying to manage the threat before then having to react once the player has already gone. There are so many considerations its just worth pointing out that some of those same players being more aggressive could just as easily resulted in lower yellow/red cards because they're challenging before things get to dangerous points. But if you're being exposed for a lack of defensive technical play then the aggression could just cost you further anyway.

@Argonaut look at the video a few posts up I shared with the game-breaking edit to Akinfenwa. It literally for demonstrative purposes shows how height is used by the game to enable a 30 foot tall bloke to take a volley about 15 foot up in the air because his jumping reach is completely irrelevant when that tall. However, it shows that players are factoring in height and playing balls to accommodate the height of the player. If height had no bearing at all, those 15-20 foot high balls would do one of two things: 1) Clip right through the player, since the height is only cosmetic and the texture is only appearing that large, not actually being that large. 2) Bounce off the player if the ME cannot parse/handle the height since its still a physical object in the ME it just has no capacity to interact with it. A 4'11 player with 20 Jumping Reach will jump to the same height as anyone else with 20 Jumping Reach. For demonstrative purposes 20 Jumping Reach might be 7'2" or 7'3" - organically a 4'11 player would never have that jumping reach. But it doesn't disregard height because if a ball is played at around 6'0 height, the player with 4'11 still needs to jump to contend that whereas its head height for a 6'4 player.

Well he won't jump because his height negates the usefulness of his jumping reach. His jumping reach, even at 20 would be much less than his height. Which was my point, height determines the need to jump. This is something I used for Marko Arnautovic at Stoke, by deliberately setting his jumping reach too low to replicate the fact he would always back off and try to bring the ball down with his chest, or even getting his foot up to almost head height to try and control it with a touch. I don't know exactly how they achieved it, there's a thread knocking around somewhere on GD with the other video in showing the settings on Maguire. That is the standalone point though, if a player is tall enough he doesn't need to jump and so the dynamics of the two players competing are different if they both need to jump. If height were meaningless then those balls in the video above would just see the player passively watch them go by.

Funnily enough, this video, as broken as it is - does look like it demonstrates height in effect rather than it just being jumping reach: Another video shows the height on Maguire being set to 1000cm and his jumping reach still locked at 16 so calculations are being made off the back of height.

As part of the research role I do, I've been advised that player height does get used in the ME. If you wish to disregard it or feel like it doesn't match up with what you've seen, I can't really do much to help that. There's no control there at all, so you'd think a professional footballer would look to exert some control rather than letting it deflect off the top of their head. It was more making a point that there is a commitment smaller players have to make in time sooner than a taller player. You have to remember that basically its always better for your player to have more tools, more things available at their disposal? So you've got a fantastic dribbler - that's great, but that same guy with acceleration and pace gives the player more options in how to deploy that dribbling.

Even more attributes than that will come into the mix, but if you have to jump to win a ball you have to commit to a certain course of action earlier. If you need to jump to win a header, and mis-time the jump you've completely lost out no matter what compared to a player who can stand there and the ball would basically smash them in the face if they don't react. There are invariably more options available to a taller player, no guarantee they will pick the right one but in a lot of situations where a defender is probably going to be behind/goal side compared to a player if they're substantially taller it can seriously negate the utility of that defender.

Height does determine whether or not a player will need to jump. For that reason I'd never go with a 5'11 CB myself, there are too many 6'3/6'4 forward he would need to jump to compete against while they can still be feet planted on the floor. If you come across some 6'5+ forwards its going to be too easy for them in my mind.

Which is an example of something that probably should be logged in the bug reports because at a guess the players unhappiness is triggering right off the event of being offered out. So either the text needs to better reflect why the player is unhappy or the logic needs to be driven in a different way. If you feel like there should be something in the transfer system for sounding out interest in players you should probably look to make a feature request to that effect. What I can tell you though is that setting values on players and transfer listing them, or offering them out is categorically laying the groundwork for moving a player on by your own intentions. My understanding is that a lot of clubs these days do have their own agents acting on their behalf who probably would do this kind of sounding out behind closed doors without a player directly being informed of this. It's always going to be a struggle to replicate some of what goes on behind closed doors for a number of reasons. Some of its against rules, so couldn't be directly echoed in game. Some of it is incredibly informal, there have been transfer where I've seen the process loosely described as: Buying Club > Buying Clubs Agent > Intermediary agent who knows both buying clubs & players agent and is a go-between > Players Agent(s) > Selling Clubs Agent > Selling Club For sure it would be very interesting if FM could better replicate this area, but I don't know if its an express interest to do so because I suspect it would be a lot more frustrating for so many moving parts and potential impacts on transfers to be involved.

I understand this element doesn't translate into FM directly or obviously. But keep in mind that its a representation of a person that you're doing this to. The course of action you're taking is to potentially mess around with that individuals future on a whim just to see if there is some interest. It'd be a bit like your boss telling you they're interviewing explicitly for your position at work, not because they want to get rid of you they just wants to gauge the interest in the position. Once you start the ball rolling on this, it is quite logical they'll want to just get away from such an individual who messes them around in this manner and get on with their future as quickly and without feeling like they're being priced out of it. When you think of it is as what a footballer is, a professional employee for a business - even as cut-throat as football is its a terrible way to treat people. If anything in my mind its that players are far too forgiving of being on the receiving end of poor treatment from managers/clubs.

Clauses like these can be set through arbitration, post transfer in the real world and so its probably how FM can best replicate it at present. I know it has been that way for Stoke with a number of players down the years. I think most recently with Tyrese Campbell it wasn't until around 15-18 months after he joined the club. It does mean that there are times where if you don't agree a deal up front, you are taking a risk.

Didn't read fully that you were focusing on it just from an FM21 perspective, my apologies, but no I always move onto the next game since it will always be the most up to date and offer the most expanded challenge the FM games can. Si aren't allowed to even sell copies of FM21 any more however (licensing, but any pre-existing keys can still be sold by 3rd party vendors) so I presume that in itself curtails most possible development even if there weren't a subsequent game in the series. I'm quite good at compartmentalising the bugs away and not letting them impact my enjoyment. I do remember the issue with VAR in FM21, but I don't remember that the decision was wrong - just that you could predict it.

There are points after which there are no further planned updates. Typically it will reach a point where internal systems and builds are so far ahead of the current version of the game we play that reproducing an issue on the latest internal build could be different, it might no longer exist and so on. Some bugs do get passively resolved just by a fix for something else or by an iteration on an aspect of a system in the game. I've had plenty of goals confirmed and disallowed by VAR. Most recently just last night:

Quite the contrary. The signing on bonus that could be negotiated for a player who is being sold by a club for next to nothing would be enormous in comparison. If a player and their agent believe that they're worth £100m but the current club are being idiots (or in the case of Haaland, have a release clause) then the expectation is a good chunk of that money saved on the fee is going to the player and agent. Clubs aren't stupid and just guided by price alone, listing little billy from the reserves who has never played a game for £100m doesn't suddenly get Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern, Juventus etc interested because they're bamboozled and intrigued by this price. It's always worth logging any interactions you feel are bugs over in the bug tracker, but it feels like you're thinking of this very much as a game mechanic that should be favourable to a human player rather than what it actually is which is a representation of the systems in place to begin disposing of players. They'll act in accordance with their personalities irrespective of your intentions once you begin to lay the groundwork for you to get rid of them.

If on player search you adjust the filter to extremely interested and a club rejects a reasonable bid then they will more often than not (some personality attributes come into it I believe) become unhappy and can then go on to request a transfer. As I'm narrowing in on a pool of players I will often check on this screen to see if one of my ideal targets falls under extremely interested, since I know in the 6 months before I intend to make the transfer I can begin the destabilising process. A non-negotiable bid for a player in February/March which is fair based on their current value can result in a very unhappy player come June with a transfer listing price you find acceptable. ----- When it comes to offering players out, this isn't a case of you just sounding out interest that's out there. You're actively marking that player as someone who can leave the club and there is an implied intention that you're going to be getting rid of them because they no longer fit your plans. So if they're perceived at being over-valued it's a case of creating a sentiment they're no longer wanted at your club, and you're potentially pricing out other clubs who would want them. Because the game can't ever look to emulate something like tapping up players, despite the fact its all pretty much done behind closed doors there is no sounding out interest from clubs and carry on as normal if nothing materialises for club managers. You can begin the process of highlighting the fact you're looking to get rid of them but once you open that door its not so easy to close again.