Jonthedon26

I am still a big fan of the way OOTP Baseball does it: "In OOTP, players have a number of skills that are assigned numeric ratings approximating the player's ability. The higher the number, the better the player is at that particular skill. OOTP's scouting model is enabled by default. That means that the player ratings you see on the screen may not be the players' true ratings, but instead they are your scout's assessment of that player's ratings". So you never truly know the players attribute rating, you have to go more on attributes, your own assessment and actual stats from the matches. Too often on FM I find people (naturally) select the player with the best attributes, so even if your star striker got injured and a worse replacement came in and scored 10 goals in 5 games, many would replace them straight away for the striker with the better attributes as soon as they recovered. There is a lot more room for busts in OOTP as well, because as it says the attributes aren't a true reflection. It also makes you rely heavily on your staff, and your need for better staff to better assess the players.

That's great, thanks for the update! In fairness I am still playing my save from the beta so that transfer logic may have been pre-patch so maybe it will work better going forwards.

I don't like to complain about this game as the series has been in my life for as long as I can remember, however it is becoming all the more frustrating. I am in January with Birmingham City and I was having a look through some Premier League squads for possible loan signings, I noticed Liverpool signed Emerson Royal in the summer for a wild fee (think it was £60mil) and he has literally made zero appearances and is currently unhappy. He hasn't had any injuries or anything that has kept him out either. I thought the "Improved AI" was one of the main "features" this year. This isn't a one off either, some of the transfers the AI makes are just baffling, signing players they really don't need, for crazy fees and then rarely playing them. I obviously don't know what goes on behind the scenes in the making of FM, but it really feels like the team spend all the development cycle working on the match engine and data input, and everything else gets left behind. There have been certain bugs/issues in the game for years and years that haven't been addressed still.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before as a potential bug, or whether it is even a bug at all, but I have noticed that when my players are on loan from the summer until January, the club they are on loan to all come in with offers to extend the loan, and every single time for every single player the "agreed playing time" is always set at fringe player. Ever when the initial loan it was regular starter, important player, key player, whatever, the renewal always comes back as fringe player. Also, some of these players have started every game from the summer to now, so they are clearly being used as more than a fringe player currently. Anyone experienced this before?

Most issues I can put up with, however, the AI lack of rotation/subs is really bugging me. Pretty much every game I play is against a tired first 11 and a bench full of players in terrible shape and out of match sharpness. I am Birmingham City and I am currently 3rd in the league coming up to January. I am literally praying that I don't get promoted as it is boring going up first season, I want a few seasons working my way out the championship first.

Just one shortlist, I filter by position when I want to look at at that way. I review the shortlist twice per season and remove anyone I no longer want/need on there.

I saw someone post on Twitter over the weekend that they feel momentum is out on this version, in that when the AI scores a goal in the last 10mins they are almost guaranteed to score another straight after it. I have noticed a couple of examples in my save but have also seen plenty of instances where this isn't the case. Super frustrating wen it happens, but as a Birmingham City fan I know all too well about this happening in real life (see Ipswich game last weekend).

Amazing, thank you! Definitely going to visit Oslo for sure. I'll add that to the list, thank you!

Amazing! Whereabouts are you located (if you don't mind me asking?). I have visited Bergen, Alesund, Haugesund, Stavanger, Hellesilt and Olden so far. Would love to check out Oslo and Tromso soon! Anywhere else you would recommend?

Great post! I love playing "the old fashioned way" on FM, not quite the route one battering ram style you talk of, but the traditional 442 get it out wide and in the box to the big man kind of way. Glad to see there are others out there that aren't all tika taka gegenpressers!

XaW are you from Norway or just a huge Norwegian football fan? Norway is my favourite country on earth, a great place! I might have to start a save there, I was thinking Alesund or Haugesund.

Well then they should make you pay for searching in the first place, make it a real tough decision as to whether you go down the intermediary route or not. As it stands at the moment it feels totally unrealistic to me. Basically as it is now the DoF goes out to various intermediaries and they just come back and say "no we won't be able to sell him" without even attempting to do their job as an intermediary and find any potential interest? My implementation (if possible in the coding) would be DoF goes to various intermediaries with player X, you get a list of said intermediaries that are either local, regional, continental, worldwide and you can choose which level you go with. Each one has a cost for shopping around/drumming up interest in player X, for ease sake £10k, £20k, £30k, £40k, and you pay that up front for them to go around and shop around/drum up interest, then there is also their intermediary fee for an actual sale (like 2%-5% or whatever of the fee). If they don't or can't garner any interest in the player, it has still cost you £10k or whatever to hire the intermediary to go out and look for interest in the player. I don't feel like in real life a whole host of intermediaries would just come back to you straight away and say sorry we wont be able to get any interest in that player without actually going out and looking for/drumming up interest in the player. That's just my take anyway.

I feel like that intermediary screen should be available every time you try to sell a player via intermediary. You should be able to select which intermediary you want to use based on their fee/expected price, then if they can't drum up the interest they should come back to you saying so, and saying there is no fee as they haven't been able to drum up any interest. You shouldn't know if there is interest before you have selected an intermediary to actually go out and establish if there is interest.

FM06 was probably my favourite, purely because I had a ridiculous Birmingham City team. Beckham and Veron in midfield, Lucarelli and Chevanton up top

This sounds exactly like me haha. After a long day at work, then doing dinner, getting our child ready for bed, putting her to bed etc I just don't have the energy to turn my laptop on, especially having looked at a laptop screen all day. What makes matters worse is the fact that I know if I play for 45mins - 60mins I will barely get anything done in game, so I just put it off to the next day and the same process takes place again.

There is an option in preferences to limit the amount of inbox items that's stops processing through the days, I use that. I also request staff meetings every 2 weeks and just request a summary to my inbox and not read it. I also very rarely use the data hub as I don't get great benefit from it unless I am massively struggling with something. As I only tend to get through about 5-6 seasons per save with one club I also limit the amount of time I spend scouting by scouting positions I need in the transfer windows (or just before), then through the rest of the season get scouts to scout certain nations and keep repeating those assignments until the transfer windows. I know it isn't best use of the scouting system in game, but it reduces the amount of time I spend on that task. Finally, I tend to focus on my team rather than the opposition, so I don't tend to analyse my opponents tactics and what not before a game, I tend to just focus on my own team and when I find a tactic that is working well I will keep it most the season and make minor tweaks here and there. I never alter my tactics to accommodate what the opposition do, again this saves a fair amount of time and I am usually still pretty successful with my team doing things this way so no need to change it. But as I said, doing all that I still only tend to get through about 5/6 seasons per iteration.

I play the same formation with Birmingham City and I am experiencing the same as you.

Out of interest did you pay him the £200k per week?

Yeah I am sure there were some wage rises, and I am sure some people complained or thought they could get more elsewhere. I am not saying it doesn't happen at all. I am just saying in terms of FM. I find it very unlikely that a team will get promoted from L1 to the Championship and demand a wage rise from £5k per week to £25k per week, be offered £15k, turn it down, then the whole squad gets furious. I just don't envisage that happening regularly. Again, maybe with some unprofessional players it might, but this is a constant and regular thing on Football Manager and there is little way to avoid it or safely negotiate your way out of it, again in my personal opinion. EDIT: just had a quick look at Al-Nassr wage structure. 18 of the lowest 19 paid players in the squad are from Saudi Arabia, and their wages range from £9500 - £20k per week. Now I don't know if that is what they were originally on, or if some have received pay rises or anything since Ronaldo joined, but as I stated in my original post, it doesn't look to me like their squad players are all demanding £100k per week because Ronaldo is paid £3.5m per week.

Firstly, a great explanation and hopefully this gives people more insight as to why it happens. Whilst I agree with what you are saying, I don't think it happens in real life as much as it happens in the game, and in real life people have the ability to say "look we are doubling your wages after you requested a new contract". In game obviously that isn't an option. and communication is nowhere near as free flowing in game as in real life. If a club signs a star player on a huge wage, let's take Ronaldo for example when he first moved to the Saudi league although it is an extreme example, when he signed on his ridiculous contract, I doubt all the other players kicked off and starting demanding their contracts go up from £1k a week to £100k per week because the overall squad average had increased as a result of Ronaldo joining. It's always going to happen with some players, and I think it should happen in game with those that have certain personality types (unprofessional players), but the frequency it happens in game and the catastrophic effect it has on the whole squad is too much, in my personal opinion.

I might have to try it that way next time I play against 10 men, see how I get on. Thanks man

Just a quick one on this, I know your feedback focuses mainly on the team talk stuff, but tactically, if a team goes down to 10 men isn't it better to be less patient and move the ball quicker to exploit the space of the extra man? My natural tactic is higher tempo so I never have to change it anyway, but from my experience, much slower possession based football enables the defence the time to set themselves up in a good shape on the edge of their own box to defend. Not saying your tactical decision is wrong and mine is right, I am just more intrigued as I have always played a more higher tempo, direct passing game.

A very moving post! I am glad Football Manager has got you to a much better place.

Yeah him going to Real Madrid is bonkers haha

Miles just confirmed it is today