warlock

Tried this with Man Utd - not the best squad for the tactic - and it didn't work. It looked good at defending the ball, but there was a lot of passing back and it was poor at breaking down defensive sides. After 10 games, we lost four, won five, drew 1 and for me that's not good enough. Obviously, there might be some PIs that I didn't have from the original post, but given a team like MU i'd expect to do better than we did.

As a SS in the middle, or IF or AP on the right, Miki has been great for me over multiple saves. But I honestly believe "first season syndrome" is a thing in FM - Miki has been poor-to-average in the first season and then brilliant second season and onwards. Pogba slightly better first season, but brilliant second season. At Monaco I signed Hakim Ziyech and Davy Klaasen, who were both adequate first season but match-winners after that. I think it's even pointed out in the 'tips' section as the game progresses: it takes time for players to fit in with the squad, and the tactics. That has certainly been my experience.

No, just hop into your time machine and you can use it for your first save in FM17. Of course, you can reload an earlier save but that then becomes your current save, and possibly your last save before FM18. I had a lot of success with a similar 4-1-3-2 before Christmas with both Sheffield United and Manchester United. And I have played a couple of Portuguese sides lately who employed a 4-1-3-2 with the outer midfielders pushed out to the wings and they gave us a game so it's possible to play the 4-1-3-2 either way.

Just PM'd you, but I think the only real instruction change was Work Ball into Box.

Please allow me a small boast... just had my most successful season (second season). We were just one game away from an unbeaten Premiership run, going down to a home defeat against Liverpool in the last week of April (so close!). Top signings were Klaassen and Parades in midfield; Jetro Willems at LB; and Michael Keane at CB. Managed to get Dybala for £70m in June 2017 but he was a little disappointing - brilliant in the Champion's League but disappeared in the Premiership. Also brought in Bernardeschi who was also underwhelming - hoping both of those are just first-season syndrome. Martial and Rashford were also poor - not sure whether to give them another season or get rid. Zlatan has also retired so a new striker is needed. Onwards and upwards... we hope!

I have to say, it's still working for me! This is second season - first season saw us win the Community Shield, Premiership and Europa Cup (lost to Arsenal on penalties in the FA Cup final). Second season we won everything bar the League Cup. A great season, but that defeat at home to Liverpool at the end of April was crushing - we were more than 50 games unbeaten at that point and just three games away from an 'Invincibles' season. There are some minor differences between what I played, and the downloadable tactic. The biggest is playing Standard/Very Fluid for all games, but switching down to Contain or up to Attacking as needed in game. I turned off all Get Stuck In and Tackle Harder instructions, and played on Lower tempo without changing. Had Work Ball into Box on nearly permanently. Other occasional in-game changes were to drop the defensive line a notch and increase width when facing very defensive sides. So for me, it's still a brilliant tactic. Kudos to Franky!

Two approaches to the HG issue: 1) There are plenty of candidates in the reserve/youth squads and you only have to name them in the squad; you don't have to play them. 2) You're allowed a squad of 25; if you don't have enough HG players, just leave a squad place empty (eg, if you are short of one, leave one empty slot; if you're short of two, leave two empty slots). Of course, you can always buy some HG players! For me, Fellaini has often been great as a B2B, usually racking up 7-plus ratings across the season and chipping in with a few goals. Rooney has rarely performed across multiple United saves. If you offer him out on the first day of a save, I've often got £10m from Everton, but if you leave it even a few days that bid doesn't materialise (although Everton will sometimes take him on loan), and loan deals are often the only available options. And a thought about people's player recommendations... I've probably played more than 20 United saves (some long term, some just quick experiments) and there's a random element to player performance. I've had saves where Mata has been brilliant and saves where he's been poor, and saves where Miki starts poor and gets better and saves where he's just consistently poor. I've had saves where Martial has been brilliant as Ibra's understudy, and saves where he's been completely useless (ditto Rashford). Some of it is obviously tactical, sometimes it can be a result of injury (so the player doesn't get enough games early on), and some of it is confidence-based where a couple of poor games leads to a long-term loss of form. If you look back through this thread you'll find lots of exchanges along the lines of 'Player X is rubbish for me' and immediately someone else says 'No, Player X is a footballing god' and I think that random element (plus tactics and man management) is the reason why. And, I think, that's how it should be; see one Javier Hernandez Balcazar!

Ha, my teams often play badly! In fact, my almost full-strength Man Utd team just lost in the EFL Cup against what was effectively Southampton reserves. You can certainly see when your team is playing badly from the scoreline, the player ratings, possession stats and more. What I meant was that you don't see (or rather, I don't see) the real difference in quality between two teams in the 3D engine. In fact I often see lower-league teams playing brilliant Brazil-style football - one-touch, pass-and-move - until they make the kind of astonishing mistakes we're talking about. It's as if, in the 3D engine, the only visible difference in a game between Sutton Utd and Chelsea is that Sutton just make more mistakes, whereas the real difference is that the Sutton players simply don't have the skill, flair, vision, touch and athletic ability of the Chelsea players. Note: I'm *not* saying that Sutton couldn't or shouldn't compete against Chelsea. And sometimes, as in my United match, mistakes borne of complacency are the difference. But I hope one day we'll get a 3D engine capable of showing the difference in class between two widely differing teams.

Wrong. If I'm lucky I'll get a couple of hours per session, maybe two or three sessions a week. Still fun. For you, maybe. Not for other people. Perhaps you do; other people don't. Might be something you're doing, or not doing, or not understanding. As Maw74 pointed out, real players make mistakes too. More than that, sometimes it's a limitation of the 3D animations (players running away from the ball, goalkeeper muppetry), sometimes it's tactical, and sometimes that your players just aren't good enough to play the way you've instructed them to play. For me, the single biggest drawback with the 3D engine is that it simply can't show a team playing badly - all teams play at the same level but the poorer team (or a team having a bad day) just makes lots of dumb mistakes: apparently easy passes not completed, crosses wildly overhit, shots a mile off target, defenders who dawdle and get robbed by an opponent. But I think the 3d engine gets better with every release and hopefully this will be solved. If you want to discuss any of these things, go ahead. But if you open with a volley of whining snark, you can't be surprised when it's thrown back.

Yes, that's the one downloaded and installed today, which seems to have fixed the problems.

Despite the fact that last night my NVidia GForce Experience insisted my drivers were up to date, today I have downloaded and installed a more recent update - driver v382.05 - and this has solved the issue. FM is now running perfectly in both the 3D match view, and generally across the UI.

My laptop installed the Win10 update last night and FM17 is utterly borked. I've applied all of the fixes outlined above and the 3D match display is still unwatchable; and so are any aspects of the UI that rely on scrolling or in-place updating. So far this is confined to FM17 - other applications including Google Chrome browser with scrolling and Youtube videos perform as expected and as before the update. An offical SI response to the issue would be appreciated because it seems obvious that something in the Win10 update is not working with FM17.

Oh please! I don't have a PhD in pass-stringing; I can rarely come up with a tactic of my own that works. But there's lots of raw material in the tactic forum that provides inspiration, ideas, and a working template, that I can then take and make my own. I've had good saves, great saves, terrible saves. It's a computer game, not an alternative to real life, and when I get burned out with FM (usually happens around Jan/Feb) I play other stuff (Total War, Elite:Dangerous, Call of Duty, whatever). And after a while the urge for more FM creeps up and I fire it up again, and enjoy it again. But we always appreciate people like you who come round at regular intervals to tell the rest of us that we're not having fun, or not having fun in the right way, or that we're too stupid to realise we're having the wrong fun.

Sounds like one for the EFL highlight reel for years to come. Congrats on the win!

Before someone comes along and unloads a pile of snark, let me suggest that no-one is going to offer (or be able to offer) any help based on your post. You've got to provide a ton of information - screenshots, formation, tactical setup. Are you winning games you should lose, and losing games you should win, or vice-versa? Are you winning at home and losing away, or vice-versa? Are you making big changes or small? Are you making carefully-considered changes (and if so, why; what's your thinking)? On what you've given so far, you can only expect a huge shrug in response. We don't know, haven't a clue, not the foggiest notion.