enigmatic

What tactical approaches did you use with Celtic in Europe? That's probably closer to your current underdog status than your usual dominance of divisions.

If it's attribute based and not based mostly or exclusively on leadership, it's a crap description that needs renaming.

It'd be contentious IRL as to whether Kirby was trying to play the ball or not; I think FM defaults to assuming he is. But I'm not sure he is offside, and I'm not sure it's a VAR game either (are Huddersfield in the Premier League or is it an early cup round?) so I'd leave the injustice narrative to AI Huddersfield fans. Think the lines only show in highlights if it's chalked off by VAR which for whatever reason it obviously wasn't.

The fouls are shown because you created something from the free kicks, or the highlight generator rightly or wrongly thought the bit of play beforehand was interesting. IIRC it doesn't bother showing most of the actual cards on Extended, never mind fouls a referee might consider giving a card for. There's obviously a random element to ME yellow card giving, but you've seen real life refs! There's also definitely systematic variation with some AI refs being programmed to be harsher than others and probably a strong bias against marginal second yellows and small home bias in decision making as well. It is supposed to be a simulation after all.

Can't actually remember VAR overruling offsides without a replay tbh. Lots of non VAR games with offside calls and some real time offsides, and goals and penalty decisions confirmed without offside lines being necessary, but they're all different scenarios. Still, if SI have bothered to code VAR errors they'd be rare... Whilst we're on criticising highlights, that referee running to the side of the pitch animation is awful though

And yet you've also insisted that a lot of those individual results are wrong because you feel entitled to beat teams if they have poor goal difference, especially if they lose by wide margins in other games against better sides, and also complained about defeats because you find the goals they score too scruffy or too perfect. I said you were impossible to please, not that you were coherent I'm not sure why you would assume the other fouls committed by the player were yellow card worthy? Persistent fouling second yellows are rare in real life and nothing in the match engine given you any indication that fouls committed by your player weren't much worse [the visuals really aren't that detailed], so again, I don't think it's SI's fault you have decided this thing which happens regularly in football is unfair when it happens to you. Again, the 'narrative' argument is conspiratorial excuse making. It's not generating 'narrative', it's a bunch of data tables allied to a random number generator which doesn't know whether the inputs are coming from you or the AI. The same engine generates the other full detail matches you're not participating in. So since the narrative is entirely subjective perception and entirely in your head try a different narrative: Liverpool didn't create flowing highlights against you because you didn't have any glaring weaknesses in your back line to exploit due to a sounder setup and team than the average Premier League AI team [yes, that means your tactics were good for that game ] . They had enough possession [and a crowded enough box edge] to take some deflected speculative shots and were a bit lucky with the goals, but their players were good enough and well set up enough not to be threatened much by your long throws [which may or may not be a bit exploity given that nobody's really done much with them at the top level IRL since the Premier League figured out Delap ten years ago]. Your less-expensively assembled team wasn't as good as Liverpool's world class superstars who excel at big games, and probably panicked a bit more than usual, but kept them in a game that could have gone the other way with a bit of luck. If AI Klopp could talk he'd probably be fuming at the narrative meaning the one time his flowing moves didn't work was a cup final though.

It's not difficult to make the right changes after a goal or highlight - just hit pause and they'll all kick in at the next restart, which is quicker than any real life manager can intervene. Obviously if you're not watching on full match [who has the time] you miss stuff that happens in between highlights. But the AI misses a lot more from being too basic to properly analyse a match. I have seen it on rare occasions in FM, most notably a German AI side deciding to balance up their two goal lead by getting a couple of pointless red cards and then conceding eight goals to me. But I've also seen players do dumb and reckless things occasionally under little pressure IRL so I'm not sure if it's any more likely in FM.

So far the only situation you have accepted it is OK for the opposition to contrive to score against you is if you gamble on a win [but it's also unacceptable for you not to already be beating them by similarly wide margins to Man City's better, more attacking side, so go figure] or if they're Man Utd and don't repeat the implausibly large tactical errors they made in the first game. You claimed you were OK with not winning games if the opposition parked the bus, but promptly added the caveat unless they have negative goal differences. So basically you want me to acknowledge you're cool with the opposition taking points off you if they are at least as good as you, defend well and don't have any players on bookings that you care to dribble at? Nobody acknowledges Mourinho's shows of humility either Maybe the opposition asked a player to calm down and he actually responded. The AI isn't obsessed with validation, but it does make decisions. The match engine code doesn't know whether it's input from a human button click or an AI function, and literally the only way SI could ease your simultaneous insistence that your players should never get second yellows if you make an instruction, but the opposition should get second yellows regardless of their instructions if your unremarkable-for-the-level winger ran at them would be to change the engine inputs so it could treat yours favourably. You watch MOTD as well, don't you? Ever seen a player be blatantly targeted by the opposition and not get sent off, or a player get sent off stupidly? Both of them happen literally all the time. There's no particular reason to expect a second yellow card just because your player runs at his opponent, it's just a bonus if he gets it. Similarly, there's no reason to expect your player to be immune to yellow cards if you change his tackling settings, because if every player avoided getting yellow cards if their manager asked them to, it'd be a very different sport. And likewise no reason to expect that telling your players to mark the opponent after he's scored his first goal will guarantee he won't score a second because again, the league would be a very different place if players stopped making mistakes as soon as they were asked. tbf it is valid to argue highlight selection can sometimes be a little weird. But this is because writing highlight selection code to figure out which passages of play are interesting and how they segue into other chances is hard, and because for better and for worse Extended Highlights intentionally doesn't show every shot and intentionally always shows kickoff and [too much of] the last play of the match. I don't think code which satisfied your desire to both see every foul you gave away and not see any buildup to your own free kicks would be better though (and afaik the highlights engine is also unbiased as to which sides' chances it shows) never mind other things you've complained about like Man City's form.. I mean, if the only explanation that 'visually makes sense' to you when you watch a highlight of the opposition throwing on a striker and put the ball on his head for him to put the ball into the net is a conspiracy theory about developers contriving to make tension in the overall competition, it's hard to believe your actual problem is with the information it chooses to show or that SI could ever genuinely satisfy you with a balanced match engine. You 'feel validated' when you benefit from putting on a striker and write posts complaining that the manner of the negative results is irrational highlighting one occasion all season the opposition succeed from it

Any game which doesn't cause a negative attitude in some of its player base doesn't have many players. If it's a game which is a sports sim and the problem is that people take a negative attitude when sides with better players and more attacking formations get better results against weak teams and take conspiratorial views about what the game is trying to simulate on the very rare occasions they lose it's probably not the developer who needs to address it. The match engine is there to simulate the variation of a football match, not provide an explanation of why side X deserved to lose. Any objective person can see that if you've scored more goals against Man United than they've conceded in a single game in decades [no doubt with an unusually high chance conversion ratio, though you don't complain when it's in your favour...] that's a bigger indication of possible match engine shortcomings than your side squeezing past poor teams which happens several times a season if not most games to real life sides at a similar level. And yet you're convinced the former is all your clever tactics and not a combination of weak AI and statistical fluke, and the latter needs an explanation and not just a combination of tactics unsuited to breaking down a defensive opponent and statistical fluke... It's not even like you're doing badly or having the same issue every time, it's the game not being utterly deterministic which seems to be troubling you, which is one of the ME's strengths rather than its weaknesses. I mean, seriously, you're complaining that it's unfair that the opponent doesn't get sent off just because he has a first yellow card and you have a winger? If you want that sort of consistent validation of your managerial decisions, I suggest playing your right hand vs your left hand at FIFA

City and Liverpool play with strikers and inside forwards, and therefore are rarely impotent against massed defences. Plus different teams on different days get different results. Both the teams IRL Premier League history to have scored nine goals lost the reverse fixture. This is an attitude for you to work on, not SI, because the assumption that every time you win it's because you got things right and every time you lose it's because the match engine got things wrong is a much more universal theme in these threads than the actual match engine issues [which frankly heavily favour the human player] I bet you're never as certain an injustice has been done when you beat an opponent with a long range shot whilst they miss clear cut chances on the counter, or when you win a ding dong battle with a Liverpool side that clearly dominated the stats.

Does he have 'team leader' status in a youth team? Someone can be regarded as a leading figure in a squad due to being well established, popular and relatively high reputation even if their actual ability to motivate the team on the pitch sucks, but maybe the wording/explanations could use improvement

Exploitability is a big part, but the other problem that either you've got incredibly predictable and unrealistic football where players always make the same runs, or you have FMers complaining that their team keeps playing in a different way to how they're asked. I drew pretty triangles in midfield when they had it, but the reality is that the passing triangles players make IRL are contingent on what happened earlier in the play and where the spaces are (and selecting something like picking Regista/CM(s)/AP[A] probably does a much more realistic job of describing my general intent of having different average shape in defence and attack) I'd think being able to see something like those screens would still be useful, but the reality is that where the Trequartista operates when the ball is in the middle of the field isn't well represented by one dot, but lots of arrows indicating the many varied runs he makes to come short or find space out wide or run channels. Inside Forward when the ball's on the opposite flank is a bit more predictable, but it's a big arrow to the far post and smaller ones to the near post or coming short, not just one position they normally try to operate.

They've improved in some areas and gone down in others, which isn't unusual. Mimnaugh looks like he's improved a lot overall.

Considerably less regular than earlier versions.

First time I got a non-predictable VAR decision against me was obviously the 90th minute in a derby in a title race