ryandormer

In what circumstances, if ever, would you use this: I considered using it because I wanted to add a reserve team player to a mentoring unit, while keeping him in the reserves. However, it didn't work. I assume the player needs to actually be in the first team squad in order to be part of a mentoring unit. Which leads me to wonder why you would ever use this feature. Surely if you wanted a player to undergo first team training, he would be in the first team! Do any of you ever use it, and if so, what for?

I've often wondered, but never asked, if it is possible for a player's injury susceptibility to change. Can they become less injury prone, or do repeated injuries make the player more injury prone, for example?

How to you get around their press, before they manage to win the ball back? Just had another almost identical game against Sheffield Utd. They played three at the back, extremely aggressive press, and it seemed like they won pretty much every tackle, and there was nothing my team could do to get around it.

I'll give that a go, had never considered that. I don't generally use opposition instructions, never sure how effective they are, or how they all work

Interesting, hadn't thought of that. Would you use the 'tighter marking' team instruction? Or just specifically mark individual players?

I just played a game as Arsenal against Brighton, watching the full game. Their press was unbelievable. It almost resembled a game of tag at times. All their players had to do was get close to my players, and we lost the ball. We strung together almost nothing. My press, on the other hand, was pretty weak, and we barely managed to get a proper tackle in. These were the stats: The possession stat looks ok, but we did almost nothing with it, scoring with literally our only shot on target. The pre-game report suggested that Brighton would use a 'gegenpress' type style, meaning

Makes a lot of sense! I've just had a re-shuffle of the scouting team, so each scout if looking at at least two nations. In theory, that should mean six month of the year per nation, which seems like enough, and it means I can cover a large part of Europe in particular. How are you finding continental recruitment after Brexit in the game?

Ah I see--I hadn't even thought that you could assign more than one nation/region. Thanks guys

@DarJ @Justified great suggestions, thanks, I was planning on assigning scouts to individual nations instead. Might amend that to regions instead. How do you specify only certain nations within a region?

How effective do you find continental scouting to be? I imagine the scout can only do one country at a time, so isn't spending too long in any one place

Not sure if this is the right place, but I wanted to start a discussion on how people are doing their scouting. Do you leave it to the chief scout to assign? Do you set up assignments yourself? Do you assign scouts to regions, or individual nations? Trying to get some inspiration for my own set up.

Thanks for the reply. I might try and make my own schedules at some point, but for now I'm trying to stick, largely, to the pre-sets (though I may make some adjustments, such as the 'match review' session). I was wondering how to decide which pre-set would be best. If my team plays a tiki-taka-esque style, is selecting the tiki taka pre-set every week a reasonable idea, or are there any drawbacks? If so, how do I decide when to use it and when not, that kind of thing. I might check those videos out though, thank you.

That's a really interesting way of looking at it, I hadn't paid a great deal of attention to the fact that those sessions train the players in their assigned roles. It makes sense when you explain it in that way. Could I ask what the 'match review' that you recommended does?

Thanks, I'd forgotten about that first one, I remember signing VVD from Liverpool on FM19 I think (around £25million somehow, one of the best transfers I've ever made!) and he had it, completely transformed how the team played. What do you think about the tight marking trait? Would you want that on any defender with excellent marking?

Good player traits for attackers can be fairly straightforward. For example, an an inside forward who you want to score goals will likely have 'cut inside,' 'get into area,' etc. But I am struggling to think of good player traits for more defensive players. When would you want your centre backs to 'mark tighter'? What would govern your choice between 'dives into tackles' and 'does not dive into tackles'?