Junkhead

That's one way of putting it lol. @buzzing_hornet - a few of us like-minded LLaMas are still active. Have a search for the Realism thread on here. Not as active as it once was, but people post the odd update in there and everyone in that thread plays (pretty much) in line with the old Lower League Manager forum rules.

Never forgotten it even now, 20 years on - got a tycoon takeover as Woking on CM01/02, persuaded (via his bank account) Laurent Blanc to join me in League 2, 6 years on from winning the '98 World Cup

I had done 5 full seasons in Brazil and with the State Championships, it can be an absolute slog. If I'd been playing in Europe I'd have been 2-3 seasons further forward, I think. Cruzeiro are possibly a bigger club in the grand scheme of things, but there were 10-12 clubs who are just as big (or bigger) with better squads. Boavista on the other hand SHOULD come top six at worst every year. Until I arrive, obviously 😂

Well this was a mistake It's a career step up, but they're £4.5m in debt and have 4-5 players who I would keep in the squad at this level & not much else. Gonna be a really fun rebuild!

At a turning point in my save. Having got Cruzeiro promoted during my first full season, I've survived and am likely to qualify for continental football (although 12th and up do in Brazil - I'm tenth). I've managed to turn a £16m profit in the 2.5 years I've been in charge to get the club out of financial difficulty through the consistent sale of star performers and promotion from the youth team or cheaper alternatives. However, I have little doubt I'm overachieving and it's looking unlikely I will be able to significantly strengthen the squad - a couple of my younger stars want to move to bigger clubs, and annoyingly they have relatively low release clauses. I've not really been able to identify replacements for these players, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do about it. Not only that, but of the four teams going down, 2 had never played at this level before and have had nightmare seasons (one being my former club Manaus), and another hadn't played at this level since the 70s. The teams coming up, however, include Botafogo, Vasco & Paranaenese - all of whom are clubs a similar size as us and with better squads than the relegated clubs. Added to that, another slog in the state championship (basically 14 friendlies and then a final against Minearo) and the prospect of my depleted squad also having to play at least 10 extra games in the Copa Sudamerica is making me feel like it's probably time. I've been offered a job at Boavista, currently sitting at 10th in Portugal (it's November) off the back of two 5th placed finishes. They play a similar formation to me so I should be able to carry on developing my main tactic, and I suspect that I would be able to tempt a couple of the young lads from Cruzeiro who are ready to move on. It's a decent sized club in a big league, my Manager speaks the language, and it feels a realistic move for a mildly successful Brazilian Manager into Europe. It's clear I need to take the job - anyone else get nervous at this point?! 😂

I remember the Championship Manager magazines, and distinctly remember a couple of articles which happened to be about clubs I had managed in that version. One was a tactic for Southend, the other a rebuild of Hereford United. Would love to have a look again - anyone know if these have been uploaded somewhere online?

Agree with @FrazT - feels like this might be the culmination of not developing young players in general when that is part of the club culture. Which club are you, and in what year?

Cruzeiro, FM22, July 2026. Started at Manaus in Serie C, promoted second season. Joined Cruzeiro mid-season with them having been relegated. Missed out on promotion at first ask, but won Serie B the following season. Currently battling against relegation from the top division.

Don't know if it's something I'm doing wrong or by design, but it seems this setting (scouting centre/shortlists) applies to all shortlists - is that right? I've currently got two shortlists - one with replacements/improvements limited at 25, so it matches player for player with my first team squad, and a "holding" shortlist for potentials. I want the replacements shortlist to have up to date scouting reports at all times, whilst the holding shortlist I want to scout manually when I need to. It seems when I tick the box - or untick it - that this applies to both shortlists. Any way to rectify this?

Game changing stuff. Gave FM23 a miss having gotten into a save on FM22 just before release. Had already decided to buy FM24 because a team really local to me has been promoted to a playable league for the first time ever and I was looking forward to a long save with them. Will either be an even longer save or held off a year, depending on what is happening with my current save. Doubt that games with edits will be transferable, but hope I'm wrong.

I think I already know the answer to this, but aside from taking control of every match myself, is there a way to force/recommend player positions & roles on/to my U20's team? I've got a right footed winger who I am training as a left sided inside forward, but he keeps playing as a right sided winger for my U20s.

Thanks - and all of what you say could explain why they are playing poorly. But my actual question is, given that they are playing poorly and have never played well together - why do they have green lines? And why do my far better performing duo have orange lines? To clarify - I'm not asking for help to get them performing - I understand that I can take action to improve that or replace them. It's what the logic is behind partnership lines that I am questioning

Thanks, @XaW - is it still appropriate to post in the bug forum even though this is FM22? Any issues may have been sorted for FM23, but I haven't played it.

Exactly what mine did when I had my GFX card driver issue. As @FrazT says, could you roll back and see if it stops happening?

Thanks for the response, but that isn't the problem. I'm playing with an inverted winger/FBA on one side and an Inside Forward/FBS on the other. My issue is that my green partnership perform worse than players in the same position & roles who have no partnership lines at all.

What exactly do player partnerships help? I have a fullback and a winger who have a green (excellent) partnership who regularly under perform, and a central defensive orange (average) partnership who generally do quite well. Is it just role familiarity? Is there some kind of teamwork boost? Dynamics? Why do my fullback & winger tend to perform poorly together but actually better with different partners ratings wise?

Only time I've ever had this was following a driver update for a Nvidia Graphics card.

I think sometimes things can get so bad that the only real option is to sell your best players & rebuild. In my current save, I moved to Cruzeiro a few seasons down the line and they were massively in debt due to relegation followed by failure to get back up. We were way over the wage & scouting budgets and there was no movement at all. I had no option but to identify what I had coming through the youth ranks, what I could get on the cheap who scouts recommended or who had performed for me elsewhere, and get rid of the overpaid players. I kept a couple who I thought would be able to contribute towards getting me back up, but I had to sell a couple of players in particular who were excellent & young and I would have loved to have kept. We had a nightmare end of the season with a cobbled together squad, but now I'm halfway through the following season debt free, flying in the league & with young players getting more games & developing well. End of the day Atalanta are a selling club. The relative size of the other clubs in their league mean that is unlikely to change any time soon.

Might be a silly question, but why have you done this? Accidentally?

Yes, multiple times, although mainly at lower levels. In my current (FM22) save as a large club, I have found it harder, but possible;

If you have empty slots in other areas, like medical or recruitment, then add staff to those areas with secondary jobs as coaches. If you don't have gaps, look to add secondary jobs when you renew contracts.

Update; Having won my third State Championship in three attempts at Manaus, a couple of slightly bigger clubs started sniffing around me. With this being my (and the club's) first season in Serie B, and confident in my squad, I distanced myself from any interest in the hope of having a decent, mid-table season to improve my reputation a bit. We actually got off to a storming start, topping the league after 5 games before balance started to restore itself and I spent the next 15 weeks or so hovering just under the top four promotion slots, but staying in touch. I would have been very happy finishing in a top half position, but then suddenly a news item popped up out of the blue saying that recently relegated Cruzeiro - struggling two places below me in the table and expecting promotion - wanted me to replace the manager they'd just sacked but couldn't afford the compensation. I didn't feel I'd quite hit the ceiling with Manaus, but I was probably coming close to it. On the other hand, it's fair to say that - certainly domestically - Cruzeiro's ceiling was considerably above their current position. Unlimited, in fact. So with this in mind, I had what I felt was a productive conversation with the board. I asked them to consider reducing my compensation to allow and approach, which they rejected. However they agreed to invest heavily in youth and training facilities to keep me at the club. And then the next day sold out prize asset, 19 year old newgen centrehalf Boquita Novo who I had bought into the first team early in my first season due to an injury crisis. He had never lost his place, improving to the point where he was being considered as a potential leading Serie A player. We could have got far more than the £900k they accepted from Koln, and so I resigned. Was offered the Cruzeiro role a few days later, and immediately had about 10 players banging my door down saying they wanted to leave given our relegation, and probably the fact that European transfer windows had just opened. Given that we were £4m in debt, I decided to take the hit and place those with any value on the transfer list but force the more experienced heads to stay and help develop the younger players. Four first choice players were sold for a total of around £6m, the board are pleased we are back in the black but the fans are gutted at a couple of the departures. Four games played so far and having taken 7 points, I'm still in touch and have climbed to 5th in the league. Still loving Brazil!

The stars aren't the only context, I think was the point @Wavelberry was making. As well as current attributes, the scouts will often say what level they believe the player will reach. So if you're in League 2 and have a choice between 2x 5 Star potential players, one report might say "Has the potential to be a decent League One Winger", whereas the other might say "Could become a leading Premier League player". Both could play at a higher level and are better than what you have, but one is clearly higher potential than the other. Also, in my experience, it DOES matter which scouts you have. The better scouts get things right more often, and give you more detail within their reports.

5 mins a week is about right - which is fine for me. As we've said, it can be a personal thing. I'd rather a living, breathing world with loads of variance - the time is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. This may be why I'm still on FM22 though....

It's genuinely fine - only takes a few minutes to get through a week. I'm playing in Brazil too so hundreds of games a year 😂