That There Phil
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Posts posted by That There Phil
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Dafuge Challenge - Grantham Town FC
It's the time of year when I usually wheel out Harry Wilder to take control of Grantham Town (my local club) in a Dafuge challenge that peters out after a season and a half, and ever the optimist, I'm back again! This time it's going to work out...
Here's my manager profile
The squad is an absolute shambles, with only 2 players who are at a Conference North level, and one of them doesn't really fit into my planned tactical system. The one player that is worth keeping looks very good for this level though, and if I can recruit the right players to give him the service he needs, I can see him scoring plenty of goals for us. With that in mind I offered him a new 2 year deal on day 1.
I'm expecting a tough first season as I offer trials to the world and his wife in an attempt to build a squad capable of competing at this level, so my aims for season one are purely to survive whilst bringing in the players to help us push on in season two.
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20 minutes ago, enders357 said:
Since the 4.0 update when you hover over the info button the display is transparent, making it hard to read as it's indistinguishable from what's below it a lot of the time. It also seems clipped omn the right hand side, with some info missing. I loved this feature, especially on scouting reports, because of all the extra info you could get. Would be great to get it reverted. Otherwise fantastic work! Cheers, this skin has made FM22 so much more playabale and enjoyable. I'd be surprised if SI aren't looking closely at it and considering implementing loads of the ideas in FM23.
Clearing your cache and reloading the skin usually solves this.
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After the latest update I don't seem to get the attribute improvement arrows on the player profile screen. They show up on the attributes screen, on the development screen and on the player popup, but not on the main profile screen.
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22 hours ago, Matt_1979 said:
Probs my worth pointing out that Wilder introduced the overlapping CB when playing against teams who parked the bus against his Sheff Utd team.
May not work well if teams aren’t sitting back against you.They were still doing plenty of overlapping in both seasons in the Championship and their first Premier league season when they finished 9th, and not too many teams were sitting back against them during that period!
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Let's face it. Most setups we'll see will be 2 wide centre backs on attack accompanied by months of moaning about how crap defending is in the FM22 match engine
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6 hours ago, koikingu said:
Is motivation a separate variable that is tracked? If it is, then that would explain it.
No it isn't
I have a suspicion it might be related to consistency, but I haven't seen it often enough to be able to be sure.
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On 30/07/2021 at 09:50, smeagoltonez said:
Agreed, a great read @That There Phil. I’d love to know if you’ve had a different experience when using this approach in FM21? It would be great to hear your thoughts even if they’re just casual observations.
The system of how personalities change has changed in FM21, so this approach can't be exploited like this any more. You can still use the same model, but the results are wildly inconsistent and it's almost impossible to reliably mentor new model citizens.
Rather than every single one of the hidden mental stats and determination being affected each time a player responds to mentoring, in FM21 a random selection of them are, and it can be anything from a single attribute to all of them.
To give an example, I did an experiment at the start of FM21 and I had a young player who was a single point of sportsmanship away from being a model citizen, and despite having 4 mentoring successes over 2 and a half seasons, he never gained the point of sportsmanship that he needed. It's just so wildly random now that it's impossible to rely on and/or predict.
I played 5 seasons of that save and mentored a grand total of 4 model citizens, despite having used to editor to find young players that were already close so I could try the system out again.1 -
Taking time to set up a good scouting network is a rewarding part of the game, but currently recruitment analysts are often working completely at odds with the rest of the recruitment team.
I'm currently managing in the Premier League in England, and focussing on bringing youth into the club to develop (I know, I'm such an innovator, right?). However my recruitment analysts just bring me random reports of players who are of absolutely no interest to me. I genuinely couldn't care less about a 26 year old that has the 6th best stats for tackles made in the Norwegian second division, I'm only looking to sign players under 21! I also have the same issue in another save where I'm trying to sign only British and Irish players - my recruitment analysts are constantly suggesting players from all over the world.
It would be great to be able to give assignments to recruitment analysts like we do scouts. For example:
Under 20 players based in South America with at least X number of successful dribbles per game.
Or
Skybet Championship defenders under 23 with Interceptions per 90 above the league average.
The possibilities are endless. Or failing that just the ability to direct them to analyse certain leagues/countries or nationalities/ages of players would at least be a start.1 -
Grantham Town Season 2021/22
League Table - An unbelievable season, from being predicted to drop straight back down to the 7th tier, to beating odds-on favourites Gateshead to promotion at the first time of asking. The season quickly became a two horse race, and we swapped positions numerous times throughout the season, including 5 times in the last 12 matches. We went into the final day level on points, but with a 4 point better goal difference. We took the lead early in our game, but conceded an equaliser midway through the 2nd half, around the same time that Gateshead took the lead in their match. We couldn't find a winner, and it looked like we'd missed out on the championship, only for Gateshead to concede a late equaliser and hand us the title on goal difference!
FA Cup - A disappointing performance, being knocked out by lower league opposition in the third qualifying round. The less said about this, the better!
FA Trophy - If anything this was even worse, knocked out after a replay in the second round. At least this time it was by a team at the same level as us.
Tactic - A 3-5-2 vertical tiki-taka based loosely around the current real life Sheffield united tactic. There are some pretty demanding roles for this level in there, leading to a few costly mistakes over the season, but I'm happy with how my players performed overall.Squad - It was all change here, I took just over 600 players on trial over the course of the season, working as hard as I could to upgrade on the terrible group of players that I inherited. Only 6 of the original squad remain, and of those only Nathan Dyer and Liam Hardy are regular starters. I'm still not happy with the options at GK and MC (DLP), and I never found a truly consistent goalscorer, but considering where we started, I'm very happy with where the squad is right now.
Transfers - 16 signings in total, all improvements on the players they replaced. They're also all under the age of 24 and have room to grow, so I'm hoping that one or two of them can make the journey up the leagues with us.
Finances - Despite spending nothing on transfers, and being well below the wage budget set by the board, we were steadily losing money throughout the whole season. With no cup run to refill the coffers we end the season slightly in the red.
Manager Profile - I was pleased to complete my national C licence, and start work on my national B licence in the first season. The board seem eager to help with my development at the moment, so long may it continue!
Key PlayersNathan Dyer - The best player that I inherited kept his place at right wingback through the whole season. Despite some negatives in his coach report he was one of our most consistent players, rarely getting below a 7 and finishing the season with 3 goals, 10 assists and and average rating of 7.48 from 38 appearances.
Loïc Hernandez - My first signing on a free after being released by Barnet, he was an absolute revelation at left wingback. He made 36 appearances, grabbing 5 goals and a whopping 16 assists, leaving him with the highest average rating in the squad at 7.56.
De'marlio Brown-Sterling - Signed after being released by Bolton and being without a club for the whole of the previous season, he fitted right into the DLF(s) role. A slow start to the season made me question the wisdom of his signing, but he grew into the role as the season progressed, finishing as our top goalscorer with 13 and n average rating of 7.14
Season League Position Achievements Coaching badges ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2021/22 National League North 1st Promoted as champions National CNext SeasonThinking that I wasn't going to be promoted this year, I foolishly gave lots of my new signings 2 year contracts, meaning that I'm going to be stuck with quite a few of them in the league above. Adding quality in key areas will be key, and I'll be delighted with any position above the relegation zone!
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Save Introduction
The Club
Formed in 1874, Grantham Town - nicknamed, rather wonderfully, The Gingerbreads - have been a perennial fixture in the lower leagues ever since. Having spent the last 20 years bouncing between the 7th and 8th tiers of English football, their promotion to tier 6 and the National League North presents a new challenge for the club. The squad is seriously lacking in quality for this level, and will require major surgery if the club is to avoid an immediate relegation back to more familiar surroundings, presenting a significant challenge to any manager. To this end the Gingerbreads board have turned to former Sunday league journeyman Harry Wilder, looking past his lack of managerial experience and tasking him with guiding the team to safety and beyond.The Manager
Named in honour of my two favourite football managers (Dave 'Harry' Bassett and Chris Wilder), Harry Wilder will look to add some Sheffield steel to a lightweight and rudderless Grantham squad, focussing on the determination, work ethic and teamwork demanded by both his namesakes. He will also be looking to replicate their preference for players from Britain and Ireland, making sure that any foreign players are standout stars rather than journeyman squad fillers - this should also help dealing with the new restrictions imposed as a consequence of Brexit as Wilder (hopefully) guides the team through the leagues.
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Immediately I can see that you're using a higher defensive line + offside trap when your 2 central defenders have acceleration of 9 and 10. That's going to leave you massively vulnerable to balls in behind.
Secondly you're on a positive mentality with more direct passing, higher tempo and pass into space, so you're basically immediately punting the ball long into space and hoping that your advanced forward gets on the end of it. You need to find a way to get your supporting players more involved in attacks to give you some more variety.0 -
A BPD with a stopper duty and the right traits will step into midfield to bring the ball out fairly regularly, but there's no way to have him sit higher - he'll very quickly return to his defensive position once he gets rid of the ball.
I'd love to see some kind of support duty central defender that sits higher in possession like many modern centre backs playing in a 3 do, but I guess we'll just have to keep our fingers crossed for FM22.
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11 hours ago, Rashidi said:
Yeah you the one who turned an entire squad into model citizens, I remember that :-)
Alas, it seems those days are gone in FM21, at least from what I've observed so far.
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Just now, 04texag said:
I still thought you had to pair them up with people at least close to similar determination and personality. Like, you can't mentor an unambitious player with a model citizen.
I'm 99% sure that isn't the case. I had improvements all the way through FM20 from tutoring all kinds of player personalities with model citizens.
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2 minutes ago, 04texag said:
I know you can, I'm asking what specific mentalities to pair with a fickle player for example. If you put a professional or too high on the scale player with someone lower they don't get along. My understanding is you have to kind of work their way up.
The whole 'getting along' thing doesn't exist any more since the change from tutoring to mentoring. Any player can mentor any other.
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3 minutes ago, Zemahh said:
You might find this useful:
You can improve negative Personalities with having enough influential players with positive ones. Their Personalities will rub off on players naturally, but you can also target them a bit more specifically with Mentoring. There's no rule like "Personality A mentored by Personality B = Personality C", but you should be able to see positive shifts, especially in younger players. You have to Mentor them before they get too influential though.
Welcoming periods also serve as mini-Mentoring sessions.
It's a shame I never got to see that project to it's conclusion in FM20.
Things have definitely changed in FM21 though. Whereas before all of the hidden attributes and determination were affected at once each time a player was influenced by the squad personality or mentoring group, in FM21 it seems that only some of those attributes are affected each time, so it will be much harder to game the system to create squads full of model citizens like last year. You'll still get improvements in personality, it will just be more random and difficult to predict.2 -
10 minutes ago, Dagenham_Dave said:
Now look at this. During the game, i get a pop up in the dugout pane telling me a player has picked up a knock (hilariously recommending I replace him with another player who went off injured earlier). Given these dugout messages can fly past, every chance I could have missed this. Nowhere else on this screen does it indicate the player has a knock. Sure, the condition icon is lower, but hovering over it on the bottom row does nothing, and on the team line up part on the tablet, just brings up a load of headings with no info. The only place I can find out he's injured is if I click on the tactics screen where it then shows the orange 'INJ' icon. Not good enough SI, sorry to say.
This is the issue for me. I like the new system in principle, but at the moment information from different places often seems to be contradictory. Hopefully these are teething problems which can be patched out.
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David Mendes scores a debut goal after coming off the bench
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Preseason 2021/22
Squad
Not much change here, other than a couple of our newly signed youngsters being part of the first team squad. With Berge leaving, Jorrit Hendrix will rotate with Melegoni in the DLP role, while Riccardi will move to the left side of the midfield three and Bellingham will move from a substitute role to challenge Zaracho for the Mez(a) role on the right of the three.
Tactics
I felt like I'd drifted away from my initial tactical identity a little bit, so some more tweaking towards the latter end of last season sees us start the new campaign with the following 3 tactics. I've also started dropping the DLP into the DM slot against opponents who play a 4231, otherwise my back three can be exposed versus the opposition front 4.
Mentoring
We still only have 4 mentoring groups at the moment, but several of our players are now approaching 24 when they will start to mentor others, meaning we will be able to increase the number of players being mentored, including starting to bring youngsters into the first team squad to be mentored.
Preseason Results
We had our usual preseason schedule. A quick whistle stop international tour - to China this season - followed by some games against local minnows to ensure we go into the new season with the highest morale possible.
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On 15/07/2020 at 09:33, ScoreMore (Mico) said:
Great thread you have going on here! Sorry if you have already mentioned (I can´t remember it), but do you use mentoring in the reserve or youth squads?
I don't at the moment because I binned all of my U18 and U23 players in the first couple of seasons. I'm just starting to fill the squads up again now, but the hierarchy in reserve and U18 teams seems to be very erratic, so it's hard to settle on the right players as mentors. The long term plan is to rotate players from the U18s into the first team squad to be mentored for shortish periods at a time, but it remains to be seen whether it works or not in the longer term.
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Transfer Window Summer 2021
Outs
I was generally pretty happy with my squad, but I had to make the tough decision to move Sander Berge on due to his personality stubbornly refusing to move. He'd been tutored constantly for two full seasons and hadn't made a single gain, so despite being a consistent performer for us he had to go. RB Leipzig came in with an offer of £40 million and he left with my blessing.
Ins
I'm focusing almost entirely on the future with my transfers in now, and several new young faces arrived at the club.
First up is Gastón Chávez who you may remember I agreed a deal for last summer. He's a little rough around the edges, but he'll go straight into the first team squad as our backup deep lying forward, replacing Rodrigo Palacio, who at 39 is very much an emergency backup in his last season before retirement.
Next up is 16 year old Czech striker Petr Benes. Dirt cheap at £950k, he's a very low risk signing. He has an awful lot of developing to do in order to get anywhere near the first team, but he represents a guaranteed profit if he doesn't make the grade here.
Nicolas Roy is a young french prospect who joins us from Lyon in a £6 million deal. I'll look to develop him as a Mez(a) to play on the right side of our midfield three. There's plenty of work to do on his mental and technical attributes, but he has bags of potential so I'm confident he can make the grade with a bit of luck.
Our penultimate signing is Craig Wylie, signed from Hamilton for a bargain £500k. He doesn't seem to have quite the same potential as the previous 3 signings, but could still be a very useful player in the future. At such a low price this was a no brainer of a signing.
I've saved the best until last, and I managed to get my hands on David Mendes after a couple of months of stalking him. I had to pay through the nose at £22.5 million, although he didn't demand too much in terms of his contract. He's ready made to drop right into our first team, and already has determination 17 and a model citizen personality. Along with his 2 footedness he really is a dream of a signing, and if he develops well he could be challenging Fedor Chalov for the main goalscorer job sooner rather than later.
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May 2021 & Season Review
Results
The month began well with two wins and two clean sheets, including two goals in two games for Fedor Chalov. A disappointing 1-1 draw with Aston Villa followed, before a narrow 1-0 loss to Manchester City. We finished the season with something of a whimper, a 92nd minute equaliser salvaging a 1-1 draw against Everton.
Final League Table
Despite our slightly disappointing end to the season, we secured 4th place and a second consecutive season of Champions League football. We finished one place lower than last season, but it's still a huge over achievement, so I'm not concerned about that. We did finish much closer to the top two this season though, only 5 points off second and 6 points of first.
Other Competitions
We did brilliantly in the Champions League, coming through a tough group before finally succumbing to Manchester City in the quarter finals. We had a disappointing exit from the FA cup in the 3rd round, but we did have a very tough draw against Manchester United. Just like in the Champions League, our good run in the Carabao Cup was ended when we met Manchester City in the semi finals - Pep and his boys are quickly becoming my nemesis!
Team Stats
We put in some brilliant defensive performances this season, conceding the fewest goals in the league and keeping the most clean sheets. I think that was at least partially influenced by the fact that lots of sides have been much more defensive against us this year, and that also contributed to a slightly disappointing 7th place in terms of goals scored. Hopefully we can improve this as we gradually increase the quality of our squad.
Player Stats
Fedor Chalov scored fewer goals than last season - a combination of fewer appearances due to Champions League commitments, and teams being more defensive against us. He did still finish 2nd in the scoring charts though behind Harry Kane who was helped by 10 goals from penalties! Our two left wingbacks occupied the top 2 places in terms of distance covered per 90, and Luca Netz was in 4th place in dribbles per game, showing what a key position the left wingback role is for us.
Mentoring
Another month with no mentoring success, but the avalanche of squad's general character increases continued:
Karol Fila gained a point of determination whilst maintaining his model citizen personality, and Jude Bellingham also gained a point of determination and became our 13th model citizen - an increase of four from the same time last season.
Close Season Priorities
I'm pretty happy with where the first team squad is, right now. There is still some improvement in personalities which needs to happen, but my main focus now will start to shift towards stage 2 of the plan outlined in the opening post. Looking for a team of younger players for the future who can be developed and brought into the first team as and when needed.
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On 06/07/2020 at 16:33, ShaunG95 said:
Hmm it's a strange one. He performs really well I find but as a mentor he doesn't seem great for me, don't know why - I've always used smaller mentoring groups too.
There's such a huge random factor involved in mentoring that stuff like that can happen just by chance.
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19 hours ago, ShaunG95 said:
I've had him a few times now, I find he's quite hit and miss as a mentor unless he's significantly better than the player(s) he is mentoring.
He's been great for me, and still has significant influence in my mentoring groups.
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Winter Patch Speculation Thread
in Football Manager General Discussion
Posted
Some might say they do that every November. Not me, of course.