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Does XG from set pieces seem over the top to other people? I'm comfortably outplaying teams, possession, open play chances, momentum etc. but they get like 3-4 set piece highlights that are not even close to clear cut but are ending up with like 1.5-2 XG. Just played Villa and on extended highlights they didn't have a single highlight that wasn't a set piece but they ended up with 2.4 XG, they seem to be getting like 0.2 XG or more from a set piece chance which makes no sense because IRL a chance on a corner is nowhere near that level. On a different note AI squad building seems to be still off, as an example Arsenal just beat me to a centre-back that I wanted and I thought it was odd considering they have lots of decent centre-backs, went to look and they have arguably 6 world class centre-backs that clearly are all going to want to play and they didn't need to spend near £70 million on a new one. They also signed a Portuguese left back on a free, then instantly transfer listed him. They also bought Dani Olmo for £51 million in the first season, he has made 9 starts in 2 years because he basically plays where Odegaard plays, and they have now gone and spent £64 million on Oyarzabel who is basically the same player and he could play wide but they are also stacked in those areas. There are similar stories at other big clubs where they are buying players for £50-60-70 million plus, but then those players don't play because there is a clear established very good player in that position.

Has anyone noticed this? I am usually a play from the back/distribute to defenders person so I might have missed this, but I started a new save with an updated summer transfers with Southampton in the Championship, and they have Paul Onuachu, who has 20 jumping reach so I played a new tactic that involved a target man and runners off him, more crosses etc. Part of that involves letting my GK be more direct, so a lot of balls go straight towards the target man, but I have noticed a lot of highlights involve the opposition centre-backs winning the first header but the header generally just goes nowhere and my team then picks up and is already in the final third with the opposition on the back foot so it leads to chances. Now I have started noticing it, it also happens to me quite a lot. So I am now wondering if this is happening too much and whether its an issue with the ME? Seems a lot of the defensive headers are very poor, even from decent defenders with 14-15 etc. heading (this is still happening since promotion back to the PL). Also has anyone come up with any tactics that help mitigate it? I have a DM but it doesn't seem to matter, the defenders do what people would call in Sunday League games '50p head' headers and they go all over the place that the midfield just can't deal with.

First time I have ever managed this in any version of FM (or even CM) so I thought I'd share it. (I'm sure many others have managed it but it was exciting for me). Meet Maxime Hugon - Lusitânia Lourosa and Portugal legend, who has now for me scored over One thousand goals for one club - Obviously career stats don't show overall goals (if someone knows how let me know), just league goals, so you'll have to take my word for it but he has to current date 1017 goals for Lusitânia Lourosa. He also managed 19 goals for Vitoria, and has 191 goals for Portugal, so has a grand total of 1,227 senior career goals. He even managed a 100 goal season in 2033-34 - He has won pretty much everything you can win, including 11 Balon d'Ors, the World Cup, 2 Euros, Multiple Champions Leagues and League titles. Hands down my most successful player probably ever in any game of FM.

I am currently doing a save where I am in 2034, I've won multiple Champions leagues, have the highest rep club in the game and multiple very good players. EVERY transfer window I get the same offers, over and over and over again for my players and it is just tiresome for multiple reasons. 1. Transfer values, these seem to widely fluctuate for no real reason, but are also just too low most of the time. As an example I have a 5 times Ballon d'or winner, he's scored over 400 league goals in barely 300 games, multiple awards, scores multiple goals in the champions league etc. etc. pretty much he is the best performing player in game. He has 4 years left on his contract, where he is on £200k a week. He has also just turned 27, so he is basically peak Ronaldo or peak Messi, yet his transfer value is £43 - 58 million. Which is just bonkers, it shouldn't matter that I am in Portugal (which btw I have boosted rep wise to be top 5 European league ahead of France), this is basically the best player in the world playing for the biggest rep club. PSG as a comparison, have a worse player, on the same money, with 4 years left who has a transfer value of £181 million to £199 million. Lyon also have a worse player, on a lesser contract, as a less reputable club, that is worth nearly double what my 5 time ballon d'or winner is. It makes no sense and then feeds into the other issues with AI transfers. He should have one of the highest transfer values in the world. Even more stupidly, HE DID, at one point his value was near £180 million, but despite performing even better, gaining more and more competition wins and accolades, plus signing a bumper new contract his transfer 'value' most of the time is now in the low 40-50 millions. 2. AI offers, this then feeds into AI offers for him. Every window I will get offers for this player (and most of my squad) which are below the already far too low 'transfer value' of my players, which I reject, and then the same club will offer again, and again, and again, pretty much always the same bad offer, or basically the same maybe a million more than was offered before. Literally as I am writing this I am on deadline day in my game, Man City offered a deal worth £41 million for my star player at 5pm, 2 hours later they come back with another offer that is just ONE MILLION more, which I then reject, then at 9pm they come back with the SAME offer I just rejected. So that is 3 offers on deadline day, all below his already absurdly low transfer value, for a player I don't want to sell, and 2 of the offers were literally the same. Why does the AI act like a toddler? why does it think if it keeps asking over and over you are suddenly going to say yes? Every single transfer window this happens, I spent most of it rejecting low ball transfer offers for my players that just get repeated over and over and over. Yet if I offer for a good player or clearly high PA player from the AI I have to pay over the odds and they will always ask way more than the transfer value. So why does that logic from human to AI transfer negotiations not apply to AI to human offers? 3. Sometimes the player gets unsettled, despite me having the highest reputation club in the whole game, winning everything going, the players loving the club, me as manager and most of their teammates. I repeatedly get the 'unsettled would need some serious convincing to stay at the club', even sometimes with mid table PL clubs. I can pretty much always get out of it through my relationship with the player, often using the 'influential player' thing but I shouldn't have to do it. If IRL like Porto or Benfica were winning multiple champs leagues, dominating Europe and paying huge wages, their players wouldn't be agitating for moves to the PL or PSG. In fact PSG is a good example, PSG players aren't agitating for PL moves, even though they are 'only' in the French league. Overall it just makes long term saves, where you become successful, build up a club and nation tiresome when it comes to transfers. Constantly batting away low ball AI transfer offers, over and over again, that unsettle your players in illogical ways.

Just as a general question, some of the criticism areas around say stadium backgrounds, press conferences, player interactions, graphics etc. is this not something SI could open up to the community for modding? Like if they don't have the time and resources to sort many of these things out then are these things able to be accessed by modders to improve it? We've seen great things done by skinners for example, all the in game graphics like kits and faces that are done, you even get a great application like the regen facepack which IMO massively adds immersion for long term saves. Can the same not be done for say stadiums and backgrounds during matches? I bet if they were allowed the community would start making real looking stadiums, hell I bet the community could improve 3d engine graphics and 100% I reckon some sort of resource/database could be built up for all the questions/answers (so teamtalks, press conferences, player interactions just a mod that allows more and more lines, questions, answers to be added).

Just as an example of this I drew Inter in the CL so went to look at their team, it's 2030, the first team for their last game the average age of the team is 32.5, the youngest player they had in their starting 11 was 28 and they have 10 players out of their squad of 25 who are 33 or older, 5 players 35 plus. Only 6 guys in the whole squad are under 25, none under 20.

Lots of accurate passes for defenders just means they are safely passing it around the back rather than trying something more risky. It entirely depends how your tactic is set up, maybe you are playing out from the back but the options for the defenders to go forward is limited, thus they just pass it amongst themselves. The crosses thing again is tactic dependent, if you play narrow and look to pass through teams you might play next to no crosses, so the only crosses might be close range byline crosses which thus have a high rate of success and that is how you get your numbers rather than fullbacks bombing the balls into the box from deep. Like said above if you don't know what your tactic is doing, what is supposed to be doing etc. then the stats aren't going to mean much, it needs context.

I am not saying all players should fade at 31 but certainly more should and IMO far too many are still far too good, especially physically at 35/36. I think Salah is a prime example of someone who probably will struggle in his mid 30s, this is a guy who has played 100s of games in the PL, a high intensity league, in a pressing team and has also had a big career with Egypt jetting off to Afcons mid season, where we saw recently he came back and looked extremely tired. He's also in a position and plays in such a way where he will get fouled a lot, take a lot knocks etc. These are all signs that logically would point to a high chance of burn out, increased injuries and physical decline way before 34-35. There is a reason why Liverpool were not going all in on his contract and that is because they didn't want a 33 year old plus Salah on £350k a week when his legs had gone and they knew players of his sort of style and history there is a high chance of that happening. Ibrahimovic is a different factor, for a start he has never had any real pace anway and has adapted his game as he got older, he is a target man style player, holds up the ball etc. not constantly running into channels, pressing people or driving past people. He's had like single figure pace and acceleration for like the last 3-4 FMs to knowledge. Ronaldo similar, we can see the burden he places on teams because he doesn't really press or move a lot for the team, just focuses his energy in and around the box, he is also more physically set up for winning headers being strong rather than out pacing back lines. Messi strolls about the park, he is a walking a HUGE amount of time so that is actually an example of what I am talking about, he doesn't have the pace he had or explosive acceleration. So really its only Modric and again he's not exactly quick. I don't mind exceptions, some freak athletes still performing at that level in their mid 30s even late 30s, but in FM it's far far too common. You get 6-7-8 years into the game and the top squads are still filled with the same players who have barely dropped a beat, still performing at 34,35,36, as they did at 27,28, 29 etc. and it's just silly IMO. IRL it's pretty clear that Liverpool for example are worried about their aging squad, a lot of their key players are in the 28-30 bracket and Liverpool don't want them to decline together. In game you still have Salah, VVD, Fabinho, Robertson etc. looking no different attributes wise at 35/36 than they did at the start of the game, it's just silly IMO and it'll be contributing to why AI teams don't integrate newgens into their squads properly because they pick teams pretty much on CA and these old players their CA stays too high for too long IMO.

One of the issues has to be because old players just don't decline quickly enough IMO. I'm in 2028 and 36 year old Mo Salah still has 15 pace and 16 acceleration, he still has 170 current ability. This is a guy with 600 career games and 100 international games, playing in one of the toughest leagues in the world, no way he's going to last as still an elite athlete at 36, and he only has 17 natural fitness, so what can players with 20 natural fitness do? Players IRL like Modric still going at elite level past their mid 30s should be rare, they are freaks. But in FM it's pretty common to have multiple players like this and particularly they don't seem to lose very much physically even in very demanding positions. If you look at the big teams later in the game, it's pretty common for more than half their squad to be 30 or over. I think older players there needs to be a push to having more 'Gareth Bales' so players more declining at 31,32,33, rather than more 'Modric's' where they don't seem to start declining until about 35/36 or even later. That way CAs of those players would drop and the AI would seek to replace them. Maybe there is just too much use of good natural fitness about or maybe decline shouldn't just be linked to natural fitness but also stuff like professionalism and ambition. So some players just decline earlier through lack of hunger to keep training hard etc.

I know that but no one he wants to join more than Dortmund is making an offer.

So I have a player in my team, regen, came through the youth ranks. He is a leading player in the Portuguese league, he's one of my key players, 'wonderkid' media description. Influential player in my dynamics as well. He also has 4 years left on his contract, no release clauses. The team overall we have nearly £20 million in the bank, we are through to the CL knock out phases so that is another £9 million coming in so we are secure finances and don't need to sell. For a start this player at the start of the season his value bafflingly had dropped to around £10 million, despite him previously being valued at around £35-40 million. So we've had an offer in from Dortmund that is about £40 million, which the Chairman has accepted because it's 'too good to refuse', this is the second offer we've had the first from Frieburg which was a similar amount, which I protested and said how important the player was so they rejected it. But now basically the same offer has come in, and they have accepted it again. Except I have no option to protest the transfer, I literally have no option to talk to the board about it, the only option I have is to resign, which is just bonkers, I don't even have the option to threaten to resign. This whole process just makes no sense from start to finish. 1. The player's weird valuation drop in the first place, when it was way higher. 2. This presumably then impacting the board making it seem the offer was 'too good to refuse' when it's not, this is one of the best wonderkids in the world, playing regular football in a top 6 league, playing in the champions league, it's not even really his true value. I have literally previously had offers of over £65 million for this player (which the board btw did not automatically accept). 3. The fact that I protest the transfer and make it clear how unhappy I would be if the player is sold, which the board the acknowledge. Then literally 3 DAYS! later a very similar bid comes in and they automatically accept it as if the conversation never happened. 4. That I get no option to interact with the board more than once, not even an option to escalate. The process is literally -> one time protest -> don't get to speak to the board again -> only option left is to resign. 5. This is all happening about 2 days before the end of the January transfer window, so not only is it mid season derailing my title challenge and champions league push, but there is barely any time to sign a replacement. I can't ever see this happening IRL, a club doing well both financially and on the pitch, agreeing to sell one of it's best players essentially at market value (his value has now changed to £37-44 million, Dortmunds too good to refuse offer is £43 million), against the wishes of its manager, just a few days from the end of the window. This is also a continental reputation club where I am a club legend, it makes no sense that the 'too good to refuse' thing is even happening.

I think some of the things are animation issues, certainly some of the close contact stuff that just looks odd, but I don't think these issues are. I think they are issue with positioning/awareness of defenders to threats. Someone above said it's a bit like when you are playing FIFA or whatever and you couldn't select the right player you need, it's like defenders have a very small sphere of influence and anything out of that they are completely oblivious. I just don't think there is much logical explanation to a lot of them that you could explain away with animation issue, when you watch it you are just left scratching your head as it makes no sense, for example my Grealish goal I described the defenders were nowhere near where they should have been and their subsequent actions made no sense. Like I would understand if say a player kind of phased through a defender and that was the animation failing to show him getting beaten on the dribble. Or say a player just runs in close proximity to the attacker, that might be the ME showing the attacker muscling the defender off and keeping him from getting the ball, but the animation can't show their shoulder to shoulder running battle. Stuff like that yeh I could see logical explanations between what the game is trying to do and what the game is showing. Also I have seen defenders miss headers from long balls and getting outpaced, so the game can show that. The issue is their positioning, awareness and reactions. From my experience - 1. They can't react or react slowly to balls played from long distances, like they can only 'see' it when it enters a certain range from them but this 'rule' doesn't seem to apply to attackers. 2. If an attacker is being trailed by one defender, other defenders, even in better positions do not interact to close down, tackle or head off the attack. Again similar to say in FIFA where you select a player and use that player to chase an attacker, who you are trailing behind, instead of selecting to a defender in front of the attacker, because you don't select those other defenders they don't do anything to stem the attack. That is what it looks like to me, an old FIFA or ProEvo game where players not selected by the human player would basically do nothing but loiter around in their position until they were 'activated' by the human player selecting them. Those are the two main things I see that I don't think can be explained by animation issues.

Yeh I have the same, I have a Champions League Semi-final scheduled for a Tuesday, then a PL game on the Thursday, followed by another PL game on the Saturday AND then a game on the following Monday and then second leg of the semi-final on the wednesday. So that is 5 games in just 8 days. Again I don't think any club would be forced to do that IRL and they would screaming at the PL for that. This is also 2024/25 season so it's not the world cup either. I think the game can't cope with new Champions League format, which basically increases the CL group stage games from 6 to 8, which means 2 mid week slots are lost and the league never catches up, it then throws them all in at the end. This is basically why I keep the in game editor available, because stuff like this ruins saves. Apart from xmas period, and new year there is no way the PL would schedule league games 2 days apart or 2 days from major European competition. For some reason my team has played 30 games in the league, whereas everyone else has played at least 31, most have played 32 and some have played 33, so I am 2-3 league games behind. Even though I went out of the league cup in like the 4th round, yet Man City got to the final of the league cup, they are in the semis of CL, semis of the FA Cup, but they have played 31 games in the league and don't have the same fixture mess.

The defensive issues are just so painful to watch, you have to wonder how they weren't picked up. Just had Grealish pick the ball up against me on the halfway line, he is facing my whole back four, they don't even have any to mark. But they part like the red sea, one of my centre-backs is not even facing the right way for the initial part of his run, then both centre-backs slowly run backwards for a little bit, then do a full spin (both of them), then slowly jog parallel to him, so he basically picks the ball up on the half way line facing my entire defence and just gets a free run on goal. That was the 89th minute equaliser at 3-3, their second goal is basically another long hoof ball over the top where again my centre-backs don't react to the ball or track the runner. So was leading 3-1 against Man City to get a rare win over them and basically they get a draw because of two match engine glitches. Also this issue with long balls was apparent in the match engine TWO versions of the game ago, it's been a problem for like 3 years, defenders don't react to long balls, they only react to the ball when it's a certain distance away from them but attackers react from the kick. Every version of the game over the last 3 years these goals have been scored with far too much frequency because of that, whereas IRL they are extremely rare at high levels because such balls are just easy for competent defenders, but because you can clearly see they don't react until the ball has travelled a certain distance, you get these goals all the time.

It is what it is in game, was a surprise when Champions League fixtures just appeared without any draw or anything. But IRL it's clearly just to make it easier for the big teams not to fail out of groups, more games so if they fail one/two it matters less, no groups with 3 lesser teams due to draws and no guaranteed home/away fixtures for those smaller teams to upset a bigger team. Add in the wildcards and it basically just stealth Super League, the Super League clubs may not have got their way but the pressure they applied has basically produced this. They want their place at the top table to be exclusive and not threatened, this goes a long way to doing that. I expect us to see less Villareals or Ajaxs or Atalantas etc. in the future. Plus making the Champions league like that, with even more money in it (more group games) just makes the Champions League impact on lesser league more keenly felt and pushes the divide more between the haves and have nots. It already makes a huge difference in the PL and that is the richest league in the world that equally divides TV money, the CL completely distorts other leagues like the Dutch league etc. because that £20-30-40 million from say a decent group stage and getting to the knockout stage can be two, three times the budget of many other clubs in those leagues. IIRC when Ajax got to the semi-finals of the CL their income that year was 20 times that of the bottom club in the Eredivisie, 20 times, how are you supposed to get any competition from something like that? Like I said it's already bad enough in the PL despite the wealth the other 16 clubs get from the league, you can't compete with that gap of finances.

Every direct free kick highlight against me is a goal. I've only played 12 games so far this season and I have already conceded 5 direct free kicks, the highest free kick ability of anyone was 16, the average is more like 13, with one player only having 10. There were about 6 or 7 last year against me as well. Yet I have JWP with 20 freekicks and he's scored 1 in a about 50 games. There have only been 9 DFKs in the whole PL so far this season, THREE have been against me. If the AI has a DFK highlight against me, it's goal, they are more efficient than penalties.

Personally whilst there are some nice aesthetics in the ME, ball bouncing around, bad touches etc. which are improvements, I still think the same issues from last year exist. Defensive positioning/tracking is still poor, defenders not directly near the ball make completely illogical decisions like running parallel to attackers just letting them run free towards goal instead of just running at an angle to head them off for an easy block or tackle attempt. In some cases they even check their runs or just jog for no apparent reason. This leads to goals where people just run in a straight line and get a 1v1 with the keeper even though there should be covering defenders. It seems particularly bad in central areas. Short wide throw ins and free kicks, almost always consistently lead to a good chance, again defensive positions and reactions in these scenarios are all over the place and you still can't control exactly where you want players to be in the set pieces so have no control over this even though the issues are obvious. Extremely low chance free kicks are scored from very average free kick takers (12s, 13s etc. scoring 0.01 XG free kicks that are like 30 yard bangers). Maybe this is a GK issue because GKs generally seem poor and seem to have hands that the ball just goes through, but these are goals that the greatest free kick takers of all time would be proud of, instead its like Luke Shaw. Long punt goal kicks/drop kicks from the GK leading to chances, with defenders just missing headers and the rest of the defence being completely out of position. PL level defences don't get done by back to front long kicks, especially with no dominating target man around. I'd get it if there was some 6' 7" strong target man flicking it on, but these are literally long punts from the GK that a defender either just completely ignores or misses the header allowing the attacker to just run onto it whilst the rest of the defence just watches it happen. Corners at the near post are to strong again, I have a centre-back with 11 goals in 30. It's just disappointing seeing the same highlights and issues leading to the same goals.

You could see this in the last game by doing international management and the media reactions, you'd put some highly rated youngster into the squad and the media would be questioning the call up. Meanwhile they would be clamouring to include 32-33 year olds who just weren't that good. Also pretty much any international job I got offered in FM22, so usually 4-5+ years into the game or more, and half the squad is over 30 and there is barely a regen in there. Was hoping it was fixed.