Tyga

Was considering signing a player (Steven Sessegnon) on a free transfer during the off-season. My team (Southend) had just won promotion to the English Championship and the player I was looking at had potential to be a top Championship player and a current ability of League 1. So he looked like a decent player who had some upside in potential to help us stay up in the coming season. I spoke to the player's agent to find out what their demands would be and was told that the player would want 9.5-12.5k per week plus other requests to strengthen the squad in certain areas. I told the agent that the wage demands were too high but he said they were not interested in dropping their wage demands to a more reasonable level. I gave up on the signing and saw that QPR (who are in League 1) made an offer for the player. The agent came back to be asking if I wanted to make an offer and I declined. The player signed for QPR on a wage of 2.5K per week! Ridiculous.

After 20 games in my save as Southend in the National League I decided to start a new save and tinker with more defensive/counter-attacking tactics as opposed to my usual gegenpress/tiki-taka tactics that worked well in previous versions. I think this is much more realistic, especially in the lower leagues where teams often set out not to lose rather than looking to score 4 and concede 3. Forcing the opposition out wide also tightened things up defensively as they are less likely to latch onto through balls which is usually a 100% sign they will score. I have found that more defensive tactics actually work as designed in FM23 (I had issues with them in FM21 and FM22 as you just got battered for 90 minutes and inevitably conceded). In my first save there were a lot of high scoring games and the defence was more or less useless. With the new save things seemed to have tightened up a bit and there are far fewer shootouts than before. The first game was a 3-2 win at home over Boreham Wood but after that we grafted out a few 1-0 wins and a 0-1 loss. Still a lot of shots hitting the woodwork which I think is designed to raise the blood pressure by frustrating the hell out of you as your team continually wastes clear cut chances by deftly placing their shots against the woodwork. Overall, I'm growing into the game a bit now although I hope all this positivity does not jinx it.

I am about 20 games into my first season at Southend in the National League. I was amazed to see my Head of Youth Development was on 20K per week when the club is broke! Nice deal if you can get it. A few things I have noticed. Defending is pretty much non-existent. Opposing players just waltz through while your defenders chase shadows allowing them to score at will. Add man-marking? No change. Drop deeper? Nope. Change mentality? Same deal, defenders running about for no reason or standing like a statue (whichever is most useless at the time). My favourite so far is the CB charging out for a clearing header, missing it completely then running back to try and head it again and miss it completely a second time allowing his opponent to walk past him and score. I checked the vision rating for my defender and it didn't say "impaired" so not sure what was going on there. Players are again heading for the corner when through on goal. Luckily in FM23 a shot from a tight angle is almost assured to go in. Your goalkeeper is largely window-dressing as the ball just passes through him each time. Even weak passes towards goal just slide on through. Same deal with shots from distance. Take a punt from 20 metres and in it goes. Set up a good clear-cut chance and odds are it'll go into orbit or hit the woodwork. Speaking of... As with previous versions of FM my teams seem to have an uncanny ability to hit the woodwork. In pre-season I had over 20 shots hit the woodwork in 5 games. Usually when it would be easier to score. I also got to witness the opposing goalkeeper rush out allowing my winger to skip past him only for him to to decide to dink a dribbling pass towards the goal allowing a defender 15 metres away to jog in and clear it. I still think the ball would have stopped before the line so weak was the "shot". So far, I have to say I'm not that impressed. Everything about the game so far feels like it is just randomly churning out results with no real consideration of tactics or anything. Ridiculous results over and over again. Hopefully when the complete game is released things will improve.

A promising name for a youth intake keeper. Shame about those handling skills though,,,