ryandormer

I thought that was the case, as I'm sure I read somewhere a few years ago that it was just a label. My only doubt was that a change in 'team fluidity' still impacts your team's familiarity when it comes to creative freedom. It seems strange that your team would become less familiar with the creative freedom demanded of them if the 'team fluidity' had no impact at all on creative freedom.

It does:

I know this has been discussed before, and the consensus seems to have been that 'Team Fluidity' is simply a label given to a tactic depending on how many support duties there are. However, the game itself suggests that 'Team Fluidity' has an impact on the team's creative freedom. Here is my tactical familiarity for my regular tactic: And here is what it looks like when I change the fluidity from flexible to very fluid (the only change being the two attack duties are now support duties, nothing else has changed at all): So does 'Team Fluidity' actually affect the team? Are your individual players given more creative freedom if the shape is very fluid, for example?

This is the tactic I'm using at the moment, and it's worked incredibly well in season two. The IFB and IWB work very nicely, as expected, as this seems to have been a big focus this year. Normally, I would never want a player like Havertz as a BBM, but due to positional play, he operates far more like an attacking midfielder. He comes deep to pick the ball up, but gets forward very quickly, and the IWB on the left takes his place in midfield. The wingers are no longer forced to run down the flanks all the time, so those roles now work well even if the player is 'wrong-footed.' Having played the game for years, it feels wrong not having Martinelli and Saka as IF or IW, but wingers work really well. They choose to stay wide or to cut inside when it makes the most sense. Year two is almost finished, and looks like this:

Apologies, I wasn't sure what section it should go into, happy for it to be moved

I've decided to try the option to have the chief scout set all of my recruitment focuses to add a bit of a challenge. I'm managing Arsenal. My chief scout has decided to set up ongoing focuses on the Premier League, Championship, Italy, Ireland and Argentina (which seem a little odd). Question: Will the chief scout actually change these ongoing focuses in due course?

Also, I've only just noticed the screenshot above, but it seemed to suggest I was due a poor intake, with no players in any position! I had several players come through, one of them with really good potential, and two others who could potentially be first-team players one day. So I'd say that was a pretty good intake. As it happens, it means that this was the only time in FM my intake has actually been better than the December preview, which was nice!

That's fair enough. If I set my team to go 'very defensive' or 'very attacking,' will the set pieces automatically keep more people back/send more people forward, or does this have to be done manually?

I agree, I've been trying them all out, but I'm struggling to see as big a difference this year as last. All round, I much prefer this match engine, I think it's the best version so far by a long way. But I'm having to re-learn what each role will do in my tactic. For example, I'm playing a standard 433 at the moment. On one side of the pitch, I have an IW(s) and Mez(a). Last year, I found that they would swap positions regularly--IW coming inside, and Mez floating outside. This year, when the Mez moves up into the AM strata, the IW stays wide, and the Mez sticks to the middle. So I'm struggling to work out the practical difference in my tactic between a Mez(a), a CM(a), or even a BBM. Also I don't see a huge difference between the IW(s) and W(s). Might just come down to watching more of the game to see slightly more subtle differences this year.

That would be brilliant if it could be added, thanks for getting back to me!

Really enjoying the new version so far, it's fantastic. The only thing I'm struggling with is how to differentiate between the wide roles (winger, IF and IW), and also the CM to AM transition roles (Mez, CM(a), AP, BBM). For example, in my 433, the wide players seem to play exactly the same, whether I set them to be wingers, IWs or IFs. My Mez also seems to behave exactly the same as a BBM or AP. It might just be that I'm not paying close enough attention, but I can't work out which role is best for my tactic, as they all seem to do the same thing.

I don't know if anybody will find this useful, but I decided to post it anyway because it's something I've never been 100% sure about, and also never found a definitive answer. Hopefully this will provide it. It appears that if a player can gain homegrown status at your club, the player starts accumulating days to put towards the 'three year rule' as soon as the season officially starts/previous season officially ends, whether or not that player joined at the very start of the season. For example: I signed an 18-year-old centre back from Brazil in the January transfer window. I could not sign him over the summer because he was only 17 at the time. So he joined my club on the 1 January, and it is currently the 25 February: That means that this player has been at my club for 55 days. However, on his 'eligibility' screen, he has already accumulated 241 days towards the 1,095 days he has to spend at my club to become homegrown: This means that the player has been gaining homegrown status since the 29 June, which was the end of last season/start of this season. The player was not at the club on this date, and I had not even made an agreement to sign him at that time, but the days still count. The 'Home-Grown Status' view backs this up, showing that he will obtain homrgrown status on the 28 June in two years time. He will only have actually been at the club for two-and-a-half years at that point: I have no idea if this is how it works in real life, but I think it is safe to conclude that in the game a player begins to accumulate homegrown status from the first day of the season in which the player joins the club, irrespective of the date that the player actually joins. I hope this is helpful to anybody who wasn't too sure about it.

That's a great point. I'd changed mine so that my striker stayed forward, but hadn't put anybody on the edge of the area

Agreed, I like the idea of attacking corners in a more varied way, so the mixed one above looks good. Defending corners is something I don't think I've ever gotten right

Do you have your corners aimed at a certain area, or do you leave it on 'mixed'?

What is your best corner routine for both attacking and defending? Before the last update, I know lots of people stuck the CBs on the near post, and that worked well. Not sure if it still works. And what's the best set up for defending corners?

That's probably true! I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope for a better one next season Of course, I have to keep in mind that a really bad intake for my team might be a reasonable one for a lesser team. But at the same time, this is the best prospect that has come out of this year's intake: I avoid using the editor when I'm playing, but I had a quick check of his potential ability just to see if I'm being too harsh--it's 117! And he's not that much worse than the ones I've had for the last few years. Just bad luck I suppose.

I have had really bad youth intakes every year in my save, despite apparently having a really good set up for it. Is there anything I can do about this, or is it just bad luck? Here is my head of youth development: And here are the facilities: Not sure what else I can do!

That's incredibly helpful. A couple of questions: 1. Is there a way to stop players in the group picking up traits? Is it position specific? 2. Would you recommend adding youth team players to first team training just for the sake of mentoring? Or would it be better to keep them in the youth teams for training purposes?

That's great, thank you. Just a thought--is the Chief Scout supposed to rotate assignments? I've delegated the assignment to the Chief Scout, and I've found that he hasn't ever changed the scouting assignments, just set them, and then left them as they are. Is that supposed to happen? Or is the Chief Scout supposed to change assignments sometimes?