enigmatic
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Posts posted by enigmatic
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FM23
FM22 had a pretty major flaw in that defensive sides set to play out the back kept the ball way too easily, even if they weren't very good, and especially if you didn't play a very aggressive press against them
FM23 doesn't have this flaw. Sides are a bit slow to progress the ball through the middle of the pitch in the opposition half (they tend to build up nicely and patiently then go wide and come back in again or play through balls or long diagonals) but that's a relatively subtle flaw, and no FM has ever had perfect play through the lines. FM23 also has slightly updated options for organising your defensive shape which are IMO better, even though I don't change them very often.
Don't forget, FM23 will be patched with an updated Match Engine in the new year. FM22 obviously wo't change
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1 hour ago, InigoPatinkin said:
"However, a report emerged on Friday suggesting White had been involved in a disagreement with Holland at a team meeting over a failure to recall data relating to his personal statistics."
What does that even mean?
It sounds above all like journalists waffling on not a lot more evidence than we have
But there's at least a hint that White was accused of not focusing on non-social stuff that the team were expected to be focused on, and this appears to have ended up in a conversation where White says sorry but he can't because the World Cup is too difficult for him, rather than promising to try harder next time or arguing that Steve Holland is a jerk and stats quizzes are silly.
19 minutes ago, outlander said:But it's not possible at all. Players will be banned by FIFA.
At least a number of people told so, when there was a discussion about the possibility of players boycotting the tournament.
A fringe player avoiding being called up in the first place by quietly telling Gareth he doesn't think he can mentally adjust to tournament football is pretty unlikely to get into any trouble.
A player refusing an international callup because his club have told him that club football is more important or to make a political gesture against FIFA's dodgy friends is a bit different.
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5 hours ago, InigoPatinkin said:
"However, a report emerged on Friday suggesting White had been involved in a disagreement with Holland at a team meeting over a failure to recall data relating to his personal statistics."
What does that even mean?
It sounds above all like journalists waffling on not a lot more evidence than we have
But there's at least a hint that White was accused of not focusing on non-social stuff that the team were expected to be focused on, and this appears to have ended up in a conversation where White says sorry but he can't because being part of the World Cup squad right now is too difficult for him, rather than promising to try harder next time or arguing that Steve Holland is a jerk and stats questions are silly.
4 hours ago, outlander said:But it's not possible at all. Players will be banned by FIFA.
At least a number of people told so, when there was a discussion about the possibility of players boycotting the tournament.
A fringe player avoiding being called up in the first place by quietly telling Gareth he doesn't think he can mentally adjust to tournament football is pretty unlikely to get into any trouble.
A player refusing an international callup because his club have told him that club football is more important or to make a political gesture against FIFA's dodgy friends is a bit different.
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14 minutes ago, InigoPatinkin said:
Kind of mad from either party that it was allowed to get to that stage, on a personal level surely there must have been some kind of compromise which kept White involved without making him sit through every match.
Reality is I don't think there was much point in compromising because he was unlikely to be needed to play, so not really much to be gained for either side in "how about you get a special pass to miss tactical briefings and only watch England games?". "You can leave if being here isn't what you want and we won't blame you" actually seems like the most sensible compromise. If it turned out Harry Kane could only deal with tournament pressure by hiding in his room and not being quizzed on tactics, there might be a bit more room for special arrangements to try to keep him there.
To a certain extent if White finds being surrounded by international teammates and socialising around football matches genuinely uncomfortable, it's probably as good a case as you'll get for refusing a callup to be a squad player. Sure Tomori and quite a few others would genuinely have enjoyed sitting on the bench watching games and hoping he'd get a few minutes
"Doesn't like football very much" still only feels like half the story though. Big difference between "it's just a job, talking about it bores me and in my spare time I'm dreaming about gardening rather than winning the World Cup" and feeling the need to avoid people and not do parts of the job.
I'm guessing that's a big reason why it was such a low tier tabloid that was willing to run with it...
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9 minutes ago, Astafjevs said:
Might have to give France some credit as well. They know how to get the job done. Runners-up, winner, R16, and at least runners-up in their last four tournaments, with a Nations League win in between. They're a quality team
Their central defenders have made some very good interventions and there's no doubt they've got another gear in terms of attacking and pressing to go to. But they've also had some proper letoffs
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9 minutes ago, Smallen said:
surely Amrabat is not usually this good.
His World Cup has "£90m transfer" written all over it. Guess you guys have the money....
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Just now, Coulthard's Jaw said:
No one can convince me France are playing well here.
Doesn't feel like a semi final tbh. Both sides way too open
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If the number 19 is more alert he's got the mother of all tapins there....
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Ref's been consistent in letting everything go (apart from the Moroccan treading on Theo's completely out of control sliding leg tbf)
I'm not sure it's good refereeing to let lots of fouls go, but it's consistent
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Think Giroud's block is the best bit of defending I've seen from Morocco so far
they do look a good side going forward though
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Has Theo made a deal with the devil or something? Gives away the dumbest penalty of all time and Kane of all people misses it, then he gets that rebound and now he gets to go all slidy slidy in the box and it's the Moroccan that gets into trouble for it,,,,
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1 minute ago, EnterUsernameHere said:
Both teams would be sitting on a one goal lead anyway.
The underdogs sitting on the lead and France being forced to use their deep reserves of talent to attack would be the more interesting course of the match than the other way round though...
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You get the feeling France got the silly mistakes out their system against England too.
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32 minutes ago, VamPook said:
Konate is clearly miles better than Upamecano
I can definitely imagine Upamecano was dropped rather than rotated. Didn't have his best game against England
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5 hours ago, skybluedave said:
Basically no (or expensive hard to get) alchohol is the reason for this ain't it
That and only about two English fans made the trip
I hope this doesn't give FIFA ideas....
2 hours ago, VamPook said:Asians don't know the meaning of queuing?
Really
Is that usually the case
If there's one thing we love doing here, is bloody queueing
I'm assuming that queuing was one of the bits of British culture Lee Kuan Yew most admired
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5 hours ago, Smallen said:
some of ITV's punditry has been absolutely surreal.
I'd expect better from Wright normally as well.
tbf I think the tone was set on the first day when the Beeb decided their half time take on the Ecuador disallowed goal was "here's FIFA's proof he was in an offside position, but nobody in the stadium spotted it in real time (and most of them didn't realise the defender on the line couldn't play him onside if he was the last man) so how dare they give it!"
Ironically there was an actual argument that the ref interpreted it completely wrongly (if the ball touched him in an offside position, it was because an opponent played it into him) , but they were too busy being angry that the officials didn't have the decency to call offsides based on whether the fans watching thought to pay attention to details like rules
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1 hour ago, TokyoWanderer said:
I don't want to be thick, but looking at the video I'm posting below, it is hard for me to understand how anyone can consider this a 50/50 play.
"He is still on his feet" -- The video clearly shows he has both feet in the air and lunging toward the forward, taking him down.
Anyway, I promise not to post about this anymore. Anyone who doesn't see the penalty in this video is just not going to be convinced no matter what.
Yeah. That's the one. Think if it's not given on the field VAR would call him back and show him that.
Sure, everyone agrees that Livakovic is trying to make himself big to make the save not to take down the oncoming player (that's why the card wasn't red), but he doesn't make a save and does prevent the opponent from reaching the ball for a tapin with a leg stretched out across the onrushing player (which isn't even close to playing the ball or necessary to be there to support his weight). That's always going to get given as a foul
4 hours ago, Coulthard's Jaw said:I felt it was Neville going big on it and Keane/Wright almost couldn't be bothered having the argument.
Also, Pougatch is really bad and I feel like the people behind the scenes aren't great either?
Keane definitely sounded like he couldn't be arsed. Wrighty was the big surprise: guy was a striker FFS, should be biased the other way!
Did laugh when Neville compared it with his playing days. Mate, when you started tackling people by sticking your legs out and hoping for the best you retired a few weeks later!
31 minutes ago, GunmaN1905 said:Yeah, nice angle you pick thee from behind where it looks like the goalkeeper is one closing the distance, not the striker.
It wasn't the basic of football until VAR started nitpicking with nonsense.
Since it was impossible to see slight touches in real time without VAR, it was always about if the forward can get to the ball and did the defender take him out.
The penalty in Argentina-Poland match was something unprecedented in history.
I mean, the goalkeeper clearly is closing the distance... he actually he moves so far across Alvarez's path he moves out the way of the ball being chipped past him! Striker also closes the distance but he's the one that plays the ball. Two players go in for a challenge which makes high speed collision inevitable and one gets to the ball cleanly and first, the other one nearly always gets penalised, especially if the other one has his leg stuck out in the opposite direction to the ball movement. Has always been that way, even more so before VAR started allowing refs to nitpick about whether the player that won the ball looked for the contact or not (Alvarez didn't)
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10 minutes ago, GunmaN1905 said:
For years I've been listening about Matterface guy, but I never actually listened to a match he's commentating, I'll have to search youtube now.
would save yourself the bother. He's not rubbish in a particularly interesting way, just standard football cliches, the occasional line he's obviously prepared in advance and is a bit pleased with himself for, and once or twice a game the sort of comment that makes you wonder if he ever watched football before getting the job
1 minute ago, Ackter said:Why would that be irony?
It's like raaaaaaain....
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3 hours ago, Astafjevs said:
Don't know about a) but England are a decent prospect to coach at the minute. It's not like 10 years ago where it was a bit thankless. The current group are good, have already made a final, and have obvious potential to win. I suspect there's a lot of B and C list managers who fancy their chances of winning something with England.
It's not like going to coach, say, Holland, who are a traditional big nation but where the talent pool is a bit thin at the moment.
There's no doubt the England job has its appeal to the managers. But do the B and C list managers have the appeal to the public? And to the players for that matter?
tbf, Gareth is a C-list manager who did alright, but it helped a lot that the team he took over was a transitional one half of which knew him personally (and even our second and third best tournament performances ever and our highest scoring tournaments ever didn't manage to shake off the arguments he was holding the team back)
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Argentina and Croatia's defence determined to make longer lists of "facts" than Rafa irrelevant
Wonder if Ronaldo's watching Messi right now...
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3 minutes ago, Darius1998 said:
Argentina blew a 2 goal lead in the last game. Croatia haven't taken the lead in about 10 World Cup games at this point.
I don't think this is necessarily over.
tbh if they'd got across the near post and scored a minute or two back, I'd say the Croatian comeback / Argentine bottling was inevitable
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2 minutes ago, SouthCoastRed said:
Two Croatia assists in that
If I saw my defence do that in FM, I'd file a bug report
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The answer is training improves it relatively slowly for players in defensive units because it treats it as something mainly improved by attacking training (and newgens that start off with weak composure never get remedial 'final third" training which works on on composure from the AI).. Balancing everything perfectly is difficult and this is one that isn't quite right.,
The difference between newgen and starting database newgens is there, but it isn't huge - a couple of points or so difference on average. (It's not nearly as prominent or important as, say, the problems with FM defenders being physical monsters with no technical ability at all until recently, or fullbacks not being able to cross which only got fixed as a patch in this edition)
Two thirds of >120CA >22 year old centre backs with composure over 12, compared with two thirds of >120CA >22 year old newgen centre backs having a composure over 10 in one of my holiday saves, and the newgen centre backs tend to be slightly better than the starting ones in other relevant attributes like Decisions instead so should still be competent at passing out the back,
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African teams have been recruiting from Europe for years for good reason: they have massive diasporas there, and people based there get great coaching and become very good footballers. Plus the top players almost always end up there anyway, even coming from countries with leagues and youth development as strong as Brazil and Argentina,
Don't see how restricting their selection and losing more games would change that. The reason there's no money in domestic football isn't because the national team players are based in Europe (if anything, it's the opposite: a few footballers who've had very elite careers in Europe have decided academies in their [ancestral] homeland are things they want to spend money on)
Plus the African Championship of Nations is a thing which probably even Wenger's scheduling can't kill, so their domestically produced players have way more opportunity for international recognition than most nations.
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FM23 Global (Less England) Small Club to Big Club Challenge
in Challenges, Sign-Ups & Experiments
Posted
Wurzburger Kickers
Season 1 | 3 Liga | Promoted (1st)
A good start! I had a strong first team squad and reputation for the level and fully expected to get out of the division, but didn’t anticipate breaking the division points and wins record on the way
The first few games involved draws, a defeat and some slightly lucky wins, but then the team settled into a rhythm and went into a long unbeaten run and the title rapidly became a three horse race between me and the two sides relegated from Bundesliga 2. An unexpected defeat knocked me off the top of the table going into the New Year, but I didn't lose again for the rest of the season. The wins became more comfortable and I wrapped automatic promotion up by beating Braunschweig five games from the end of the season, and won the title the following week, leaving me to relax in what could otherwise have been a nervy final game with Paderborn
Players
The stroll to the title owed much to one man: 29 goal Jacob Transizska. 3 Liga defences just couldn't handle his movement and aerial prowess as he broke the division record despite only starting 29 games.
Signed from affiliate Wacker Modling in Austria as a free loan and originally intended as backup to other strikers, he improved very quickly after coming off the bench in his first few games, and made the spot his own. I also bolstered the forward line with the ridiculously talented teenager Maurice Krattenmacher on a free. Krattenmacher made 23 goal contributions from 26 starts but spent much of the second part of the season out with a series of injuries, which seemed to put the Bundesliga clubs sniffing around him off. My original striker - Sane - who started the season badly - stepped up in his absence.
Defensive bargain hunting also gave me the best defence in the division. Aerially dominant, ball playing Tom Gaal came on a free, transfer-listed pacy Dominic Becker wouldn’t come to me on loan, so I shelled out the absurdly low price of £10k to buy him instead. Carstens wanted way too much money at the beginning of the season, but I ended up signing him midway through as cover at a fraction of the price (seriously dude, you should have had an agent!) . I’ve played worse defenders than these three in the Bundesliga before!
My other signings were free loans as cover and some 17 year olds I’m hoping will end up as homegrown
Oh… and Tim Boss who I panic signed on a free when my backup keeper conceded everything. He came as backup, but a string of brilliant saves in the few games he played means he’ll be starting next season, despite Richter generally being OK.
The original midfield was excellent, with Calciel performing way beyond his rather ordinary skill level and Zaiser popping up with 11 goals
Manager
Kevin Keller completed a couple of coaching courses, got 3. Liga Manager of the year and joined the club’s Favoured Personnel list. He's 'known for' a few things too
Youth
A youth team I’d already stacked with others’ castoffs completely destroyed the U19 regional second tier against semi pro youngsters. Karlo Kuranyi scored 65 goals!
The Intake was described as a “golden generation” after I cajoled the board into some improvements, but I’m hoping to be in the Bundesliga by the time they mature, and so I'm not sure any of them will be that level. Bannewitz and Rothdauscher look like they could be useful one day.
Next Season
The club's old stadium apparently couldn't be upgraded to meet Bundesliga 2 standards (even though they were playing in it not very long ago!) so the board have already taken out a loan to build new one, the imaginatively-named "Wurzburger Kickers Stadium" that's only slightly bigger. This shouldn't be a problem financially in the long run: there's a lot of money in the German second tier, but means not much of an expanded budget for second tier football. I'm confident my overall squad quality is adequate for the Bundesliga 2, but replacing Transziska's 29 goals as the loan couldn't be extended is going to be tough. Hanging on to Krattenmacher won't necessarily be easy either