samba23

Hi I noticed that many American states have hardly any cities listed in the FM database. For example, Mississippi only has four cities whereas California has over 300. I have tried to add more cities but I am finding that they do not produce any players. This means that those states with fewer cities produce far fewer players than those with more cities listed in the DB. In FM18 & 19 I needed to add more cities because some teams I created for my database did not have their city already in the database. These created cities do produce players but as far as I can tell only for the team that is in that city. In FM19 the cities I have added do not have any teams, they are there purely to try and produce a greater number of regen players in those states and a greater variety of places of birth for each state. These cities do not produce any players. So it seems that newly created cities only produce regen players if there is an active team in that city. As you can see in the above images Mississippi only has four cities in the original FM database. The cities I created that have teams in, Oxford, Starkville and Hattiesburg do produce players but the other cities do not produce any players. I have added the correct co-ordinates and other info needed for each city and even tried making four of them 10x larger to make them the largest cities in the state but they still do not produce any players. Please could you fix this so that cities can be properly added and working in-game, thanks.

Having checked again I can see that my competition logos and trophies work fine but club logos and icons do not work.

I am trying to copy some custom graphics (logos mostly) from FM18 to FM19 but I'm having some problems. When I look at my documents folder for FM19 there is no graphics folder, in fact many of the folders that are in my FM18 documents folder do not exist in FM19. I have created a graphics folder for FM19 and copied all of my FM18 graphics over. They all appear when I open the folder in documents but do not load in game. I have tried clearing the cache and reloading skin but it still does not work. Can someone help please.

Time for an update on the update. I'm currently working hard on an update for 2019. This will be available for FM19 eventually but there's still a huge amount to do and I'm currently still using the 2018 editor. The biggest update for next year is the addition of 40 new teams, taking the total to 160. This includes all 130 FBS schools and 30 leading FCS schools, meaning the service academies Army, Navy and Air Force are finally included. Most of the new teams are in the newly formed DIII, although there has been some shuffling around of teams including Wisconsin and Memphis moving across to the Central region (Big 12 conference and lower). DIII has 8 teams in the West, Central and South conferences and 16 teams in the East conference. Now every state except Alaska and Vermont is represented by at least one team. The College Football Playoff will now be an 8-team tournament, in line with the most common suggestion for a future expansion to the real life Playoff. The Quarter Finals will be played at the home site of a conference winner against another conference's second placed team and the Semi Finals will be as the Rose Bowl and Sugar Bowl. There will also be a slight tweak to the Bowl Game order. Every conference tournament will now include every conference team, in line with how most College Basketball Conference Tournaments are played. There is also a change to the promotion and relegation for every division. Every 10th placed team will be relegated and replaced by the lower division's champion as before but now there will be a promotion-relegation playoff game between 9th-2nd at the home site of the higher division team. This has been added because I was finding that there was not enough variation in conference teams in future years, for example 10+ years into the future most DIII teams have never been promoted and most DI-A teams have never been relegated. This change will ensure greater variety in future years but will not overly change the divisions i.e. too many DI-A teams relegated to lower divisions. The NCAA Tournament, NIT and CIT are mostly unchanged. The biggest change being that every DIII conference will send one team to the NCAA tournament. One big change is that there is no longer a College Cup. This is because it was formerly for the DI-A teams that did not make the 24-team College Football Playoff and DI-AA teams but with the Playoff now being only 8 teams and the Conference tournaments being expanded I just can't fit the tournament into the calendar, nor do I know which teams would play in it. The College World Series is also mostly unchanged, except that the DIII Conference Tournament champions will qualify for the Super Regional stage rather than the runners ups of the DI-A Conference Tournaments. The DII Playoff has also been removed and is now the DIII Playoff. This will be a 28-team tournament, the same as the real life College Football DII Playoff. I think this mostly covers the changes to the competition formats. Unfortunately, to be able to make the DIII level a proper parent-child format like the other divisions and to add the DIII teams to the non-conference schedule I will need to revert back to basic rules and therefore will need to build every competition from scratch. This will take a long time to complete but the good news is that every competition format change outlined above has been created and tested and works to satisfaction.

I love this, thank you so much for playing and enjoying. Please keep it going.

I've been thinking about making some changes to this database lately. I'm unlikely to make it again for FM19, I don't know how it works about transferring databases to newer games, if that's even possible? Simple cosmetic things like, updating managers and coaching staff's, including salaries, a few tweaks to club reputations, stadium names, new stadiums, Bowl games etc. Also, I've been thinking about changing the DI College Football Playoff. I definitely want to have more than the four team Playoff used in real life but I think the 24 team tournament is too many for the very top competition in game. It should be the most difficult competition to qualify for and to win and I think that teams finishing 6th in their conference shouldn't have the possibility to win the National Championship. I'm considering changing it to 8 teams (e.g. SEC #1 vs Big Ten #2, Pac-12 #1 vs Big 12 #2, etc in the quarter finals and then semi and final as normal) and playing it at around the same time as the Bowl Games, and also perhaps changing it so that teams 1 & 2 only play in the Playoff and therefore the Bowl Games are for 3rd place in each DI conference downwards, but I don't know if I can fit it in that window, before the College Basketball tournaments begin. I'm also not particularly happy with how the pre-season invitational tournaments work currently. I like how to game selects local teams to their regional tournament, i.e. picking some Texas-based teams for the Texas Invitational and how this is largely random, but I don't like how some teams can be chosen for more than one tournament in the same year, messing up the calendar. I also don't like how each one is a separate tournament, it makes too many tournaments to have to scroll/search through and makes the tournaments pages look too cluttered. I'm thinking about making it so that it's just one overall tournament with each separate tournament being a separate stage (similar to how the Bowl games work). Then having 15 8-team tournaments (including all 120 teams all placed in a tournament at random) all happening at the same time, each with 8 teams and playing the same schedule. Each tournament would include consolation brackets so that every team plays three games. Meaning that as well as the usual 1/4>1/2>final pathway, having a consolation semi final round for the quarter final losing teams and then matches for 3rd place, 5th place and 7th place. Also, I have no idea if I can make this work, but making it so that all results get added to the "non-conference games" stage standings, and therefore added to the "conference standings" for the main part of the season". This would make the pre-season invitational tournaments work more closely to how they work in College Basketball, where the results from those games are included in every team's overall schedule/resume. However, all of these changes are unlikely to happen before January as I'm just too busy with other stuff right now, sorry.

The tournament directly after the conferences have played all 18 games? Between the top 6 teams in each conference, the winner qualifying for the College World Series? That shouldn't be the case, there should be tournaments for all conferences, as otherwise there would only be 8 qualifiers for the College World Series, i.e. the top two in each DI Conference Tournament. I will have to take a look at that if it's wrong.

Thank you for your continued interest. That spreadsheet looks like a lot, it's crazy to see how many tournaments I made in total. And, yes that is all correct as far as I remember it. NCAA Tournament (March Madness) - 68 teams, all 10 teams from DI, top 6 from DI-AA, top 1 from DII NIT - 32 teams, teams 7-10 from DI-AA, teams 2-5 from DII CIT - 16 teams - teams 6-9 from DII College Football Playoff - 24 teams, top 6 from DI College Cup - 48 teams - teams 7-10 from DI, top 8 from DI-AA DII Championship - 24 teams, top 6 from DII The NCAA Tournament, NIT and CIT are all the correct number of teams from the real life tournaments, unfortunately this means that the bottom teams in DII do not get a post-season (basketball) tournament. I did consider adding a "bottom four" tournament for those teams but didn't feel it necessary. DON'T FINISH BOTTOM. The DII championship is a copy of the FCS College Football, and presumably DII and DIII post-season tournament, in that it has 24 teams, the top 8 all receiving byes. The College Football Playoff has copied that structure so has the top 6 teams from each DI conference. I like to think of the College Cup as a "bridge" tournament, for the DI teams who don't make the College Football Playoff and the top DI-AA teams, who don't have an FCS-style 24-team playoff. As in real life, this is a 48-team tournament, with the top 16 teams receiving byes, i.e. 7-10 in DI. Therefore the bottom two teams in each DI-AA conference don't get a post-season "playoff" tournament as they are too low for the College Cup and too high for the DII Championship. Also, the bottom 6 teams in each DII conference do not qualify for a post-season "playoff" tournament as this would require creating a "College Cup" style "bridge" tournament for the teams 7-10. Therefore, there are 32 DI-AA and DII teams combined who do not have a tournament in April-May. I could perhaps create a tournament for those teams, perhaps the College Ice Hockey's tournament, including the Frozen Four, but then again, DON'T FINISH NEAR THE BOTTOM.

Literally the only person in midfield for England. Although tbf I did think Lingard played his best game of the tournament today.

Forget looking ahead to the QF and wanting to finish second in the group to avoid Brazil. We should be aiming to win the group so that we can have France/Argentina/Uruguay/Portugal in the SF. Nothing to fear there lads, it's coming home.

Because we have good attacking players and on the occasions when we were actually able to get the ball forward into attacking positions we looked like we could score every time (against terrible opposition) but we spent so much of the match passing the ball across our back 5 and Henderson, with no idea how to get the ball forward to our line of 4 players up front. It was maddeningly frustrating to watch.

So I've rewatched the first half and made the following table charting every passing combination when England started possession in defence. The vertical column is passes from, the horizonal column is passes to. For example, Kane completed one pass to each of Young, Lingard and Sterling and received passes from Maguire (2), Trippier and Sterling. People can take different conclusions from this but there's few things I want to pick up on. Most obviously is the passes between the midfield 3. Henderson passed to Alli 3 times but there were no other passes between the midfield three. Can you imagine a Barca team where Busquets doesn't pass to Iniesta and no passes between Xavi and Iniesta. England couldn't ever get the ball into midfield and keep it there. Also, the back 3 completed 19 passes to Henderson but only 4 passes to Alli and Lingard combined. Then when Alli and Lingard did get the ball, there was only one pass that didn't go straight back to the back 3. ONE PASS in 45 minutes and this was a nice one-two between Alli and Sterling. We supposedly play Stones and Walker in central defence for their ability to play out from the back but it was actually Maguire who played the most forward passes. Maguire played 5 passes to the front 4 (including one good pass which led to the corner which led to the goal) whereas Stones and Walker played 3 and 2 respectively. Maguire also played the most passes to a wing-back, 9 (all to Young) compared to 3 and 4 (all to Trippier) from Stones and Walker respectively. This was in the first half, where England supposedly played well.

It's 100% intentional. Southgate deliberately chose two attacking midfielders/forwards to play in central midfield. The inability to pass through central midfield was obvious throughout the whole game and the two warm up games and yet Southgate had no desire to tell Alli or Lingard to play deeper. Astafjevs is partly correct. The line up works better if playing more direct. The corner that led to the goal came from a move of Maguire passing direct to Kane, who played a first-time one-two with Sterling. However, this was probably our only good direct pass from defence to Kane/Sterling in the whole match as we always tried to play through Henderson, which was impossible. It's not about playing with another holding midfielder, it's about playing with another midfielder full stop. If Alli played alongside Henderson rather than 20 yards ahead of him then we would have been able to play out of defence more easily. But that's not Alli's game. It wasn't in 2016 when he played in central midfield, it isn't for Spurs and it won't suddenly change in this tournament.

I can't believe I've just read 17 pages of this thread and there has been almost no discourse on the formation. I'm not against a back 3 at all but the formation overall made zero sense to me. Many years ago I actually coached a youth team and changed our formation from 4-5-1/4-3-3 to 3-5-2 for two simple reasons. We were terrible in defence and we were terrible in attack. Playing an extra central defender, and making a back 5 helped give extra protection and cover for the two centre backs, made it harder for the opposition to play through balls and had more players defending crosses. Playing 4-5-1 left our striker too isolated so playing with two strikers gave us more presence up front and enabled us to hold the ball up better when we went direct. Playing 3-5-2 also allowed us to continue with 3 central midfielders and avoid the possibility of being overrun in central midfield if we played 4-4-2. Tl;dr 3-5-2 gives better numbers in defence and attack and keeps numbers in central midfield vs 4-5-1/4-3-3. So what has this got to do with England's formation? We had 5 defenders when defending and looked solid for the most part. Kane always had someone up front with him and was never isolated. So where's the problem? We didn't play with 3 central midfielders. Not really. Not at all. The central midfield was the exact same problem we had in 2016 with Rooney and Alli playing in midfield in front of Dier as the pivot. Alli is a fine player, as an attacker. He plays as a support striker for Spurs. I've almost never seen him play in the midfield two for Spurs. His instinct is to always make forward runs and to be in the box for crosses. Lingard too is not a central midfielder. Never played there for Man Utd. The current word in vogue for England is pivot. Who will play the pivot position? Henderson or Dier? But it's not the pivot that's the problem. It's that there's no midfielder within 20 yards of Henderson when the defence has the ball. Think back, how many times did Lingard or Alli drop deep to receive a pass from a defender? It was like the team had been told that they had to pass through the pivot exclusively. So we passed sideways across the defence, forwards to Henderson, who had no supporting midfielder to pass to because Alli and Lingard were up front making a front 4, so then back to the defence and if we were lucky, maybe getting a full back in space to dribble the ball forward into attack. Because for damn sure we weren't going to pass the ball through central midfield. Some photographic evidence to prove my point. The defensive shape was generally not bad. The back 5 is in a good line and the spacings are fine between each player. More significantly there's a good shape and compactness to the midfield 3. Henderson is slightly deeper but Lingard and Alli are disciplined in their positioning, staying close to Henderson. Now look at the shape when our defenders have possession. In particular how much distance is between Henderson and the other two. Both Lingard and Alli are much closer to the forwards than Henderson. In this example, Alli needs to made a move 10 yards towards Maguire to be able to receive a pass. However, Alli's tendency is to always make forward runs. In this separate example he has made a forward run into the channel from a central position and is now England's furthest player forward. This is a good run in his role at Spurs but the opposite of what he needs to do as a central midfielder for England. Another example. This time the LB is forward and England effectively have 5 forwards and only 1 midfielder. Making it impossible to pass the ball "through the thirds". Notice that Tunisia have a line of 3 players in the central midfield area vs just Henderson. 1v3 is not how you want to play in central midfield but England did so time and time again. But hang on a second, England actually created some good chances so it can't have been that bad? Well here's the beginning of the move that led to England's first chance. Again, 4 forwards, no-one near Henderson. However, in this move when the ball is played to Henderson he plays an excellent first-time pass into the right channel, where Alli has (surprise, surprise) made a forward run. This move, although excellent, is not typically how you would want to play a possession based game. Finally, back to the concept of the pivot. If we take the best midfield 3 of this generation (Busquets-Xavi-Iniesta) the way England played was more akin to playing Busquets-Alexis-Pedro.

The final tournament to be changed in this update is the College World Series. This tournament has been expanded from 8 to 126 teams (1 from every conference plus 4 at-large teams) and the qualifying teams for this tournament are the winners of each conference tournament, as opposed to using the conference or overall standings. In this way this enables the College World Series to more closely resemble the real life tournament, which starts out as a 64 team field in 16 regional brackets before culminating in the 8 team College World Series. By using the conference tournaments to determine the qualifying teams, this means that each conference tournament is effectively a pre-qualifying round and therefore 72 teams (12 conferences x6 teams) effectively play in the expanded tournament. This 16 team tournament format is the same as the College World Series from the Super Regional stage onwards. In real life the 16 regional bracket winners are paired up into 8 Super Regional ties. These ties are played as a best-of-three with the 8 winners progressing to the 8-team College World Series. In game, the regional 64-team stage is not used. Instead there is the 72-team pre-qualifying stage outlined above (12x6 team regional tournaments). In the Super Regional round the DI-A tournament winners are paired with the DII tournament winners and the DI-AA tournament winners are paired with the DI-A tournament runners up (the 4 at-large teams). Ties are played at 8 pre-determined venues and are played as a two legged tie, with a replay if the aggregate points total is tied after two games. All 3 super regional ties for each team are played at the same venue. The 8 Super Regional winners then advance to the 8 team College World Series bracket. The 8 team tournament stage is unchanged from the previous 8 team configuration (double elimination until the semi final) except for the fact that it is separated into two 4-team brackets. This means that teams stay in their designated bracket until the Championship Game, which makes the draw the same as real life. The final change is the addition of extra baseball stadiums (almost all of which have featured college football matches) to play the extra matches in.