glengarry224

I've thought about this post as I've read through other posters' bug reports and threads, and dealt with SI myself. I think that SI's customer service needs a complete overhaul. In one podcast interview, I even heard an SI employee refer to their new HQ as "Fortress SI", and that's what it's felt like to me reading posts and dealing with my own. Just speaking for myself, I've lost any desire to play this game and even feel some regret that I bought it. [It should go without saying but: I don't expect or ask anyone else to feel the same.] Anyway, thanks for running a very entertaining thread on the ultimate challenge.

Wow, you guys are really bad at customer service. You need to hire someone who understands that customer service is about social interactions, and who has some interpersonal skills. Well, don't worry, I won't ever bother you again.

@Neil Brock It is upsetting to your customers when your respond to legitimate issues with denials, false facts and "your just a whiny player" statements. I've read many other players complain that there is no point to posting bugs and I tend to agree. Also, we understand that most of your customers don't read the forums, so you probably don't care what we think. I know how to add and I'm not above dealing with difficult situations. Looking at all of my squads, including the reserve team, I have eleven players signed past the upcoming June 30, end of season: 5 youngsters who will earn $900/yr; 2 youngsters who will increase to $8,750/yr, each; 1 youngster who will increase to 10,500/yr; 1 youngster who will increase to 11,000/yr; 1 senior player who will earn $25,000/yr; and 1 senior player who will earn $27,000/yr; Total committed to next season = $95,500/yr My current budget payroll = $1,481,110. It might go down next season, but it won't go down anywhere close to $95,500. But the game indicates that I have committed to $2,043,847 and will not allow me to re-sign or extend any of my other players, at any price. for next season, or sign any new players for next season. I am not allowed to offer any player a slightly reduced wage, or even a half-wage, which would decrease my wage bill for this season, and not put me anyplace near what I could spend for next season. Indeed, I'm not allowed to offer a player a slightly reduced wage for only the remainder current season (not that anyone would accept that): in the example in my opening post, the board would allow me to offer a $73,000/yr player a wage of $6,500 for the remainder of this year but not a wage of $50,000 for the remainder of this year, even though the $50,000 would lower my payroll. In previous versions of the game, I could always renegotiate and extend players, even if I was above the current year's budget payroll, so long as I wasn't adding payroll for this season or going crazy spending for next season. It appears that the game will not allow me to sign any players, or extend any players, until all of the existing contracts (with the exception of the eleven mentioned above) expire on June 30. Which is crazy. My intention would be to extend 4-5 key, young, first team players, let go the expensive older players, and rebuild. But I can't do that.

We need to see basic club information. For example, when a team asks "can you work with a 3.5 million wage budget," we need to know if the current wage spend is 3 million or 4.5 million. That kind of information should be public.

When faced with a player demand, we need an option between saying "no, too bad", which pisses them off, and a promise. Something like "I'll do my best but can't promise anything," which is more like real life. When we promise a player to sort out a loan or transfer, but get no takers, the player gets angry.

BTW, I see that SI has not fixed this problem from previous versions. In my interview, I was asked if I could work with a 115,000 transfer budget but of course, now that I took over, it's zero. Also, when interviewing, there is no way to know that my payroll, which I said I could work within, is already way over budget. Oh well

First Job Thank you to other players before me who warned that I might not get a job until a few months into the season. I waited a little longer than I expected but finally was hired to my first job, 9,343 miles from Albuquerque and just 40 miles north of the Cape of Good Hope, in Cape Town = Kaapstad, in Afrikaans. Btw, a great place to visit with one of the most picturesque urban rock formations, Table Mountain. Formerly knows as Ajax Cape Town, the Urban Warriors were renamed after Ajax Amsterdam sold its majority stake in the Spurs during the heart of the pandemic, in September 2020. The Spurs unveiled our new logo: Based in the Parow, a suburb of Cape Town, the Spurs play most of their games in Athlone Stadium: CT Spurs have one of the best youth academies in the country and the board expects me to maintain that. Little do they know that I have no intention of staying that long. I lied in my interview. Yes I did. Just three days after South African Reconciliation Day, I take over during the winter break. The board's required mid-table finish should not be hard to achieve, and I have hopes of finishing much higher: Our attack is pretty good but needs improved finishing. Despite underperforming our league leading Xg, we are 6th in goals-for. Our defense is poor, allowing 19 in 15 games, tying us for 4th worst in the league. No time for safaris and wine country tours. Time to get stuck in and move up the table...

A Whole New World to Bamboozle After getting disbarred, an Albuquerque, New Mexico (former) lawyer decides to take up football management. If teams are smart, they'll let him handle all of their negotiations: Sadly, my art skills, and the FM hair styles, are nowhere good enough to get the look right.

Agree 100% that people don't speak like that, especially to their boss, even if they don't respect them. Though some do react "like" that internally: for example, some people take praise as manipulative or feel something like "I don't need you, who I don't respect, to tell me how I'm doing" etc. I'm hoping that computer advancements like ChatGPT will improve interactions in all games. Yeah, this kind of stuff drives me crazy. In FM22, I promised a player that I'd sell him for a certain price, but after I accepted two offers, he rejected those teams, even though they were higher reputation than my team and played in the CL. Maybe he rejected them for good reason - like too low a contract offer - but kinda crazy that he was angry at me for "breaking my promise," especially when I didn't reject any qualifying offers from even better teams.

@phnompenhandyThanks for this! I've subscribed to some of these too. Was there a reason you preferred Reinalda? Question: how did you deal with all of the greyed-out players? I was thinking to start it, say, the lower Cameroonian league but don't want to deal with having mostly crappy, greyed-out players and no budget. More specifically, I started unemployed, and got a low-level job, but ended up on a team with @ 2/3 greyed out players

I performed an experiment on this around 19 months ago. I learned that the finances of friendlies did not work how anyone expected. The experiment was for a previous version, and likely too much detail, but here it is:

Thanks for replying. That's what I suspect too. When you could not register good players, did they get angry that they were not playing in the CAF?

Yeah, sheesh. Enjoy reading your thread and hope you and the others can finish the challenge. Curious, and not expecting you to, but do you know if the user-created databases for other countries fix this problem? For example, if I played with the Steam Workshop Nigeria, Morocco and Egypt databases, would I have this problem? I know that using additional databases is against your rules but it's hard enough to take on these long challenges without having to out-maneuver the bugs, as you've pointed out.

Looks like his avg rating is very good = 7.33. Sometimes a game-rating can be misleading. If a player is not doing anything 'recordable' on attack (key pass, assist or goal) and your opponent is not attacking his side (= no interceptions, etc), he can only get an average rating. Then if he makes one mistake, his rating will be low. Ratings are very useful but only as one tool. You could play wider and focus down the left but why mess with your tactic and great success?

This tactic certainly could work, especially if you have the right players. Defensively, it seems like you'll need good CBs - I'd guess at least two of the three, and in particular the CD(c) - who have good agg/ant/pos/acc in order to play the high line without a DM and without defensive fullbacks, plus a SK who has very good ant/pos/acc to sweep up behind. A good BWM certainly will be needed to shut down counters up the middle because you might be vulnerable to counter-through-balls because your wingbacks get forwards, you have no DM and two of your three CBs are wide. As the other poster noted, 'tighter marking' might create problems with this system and allow opponents too much free space, especially up the middle. I'd play friendlies with it and see how it works. In particular, look for how your team plays and if your team is good at creating space and good passing outlets for your players. As the other poster noted, you might, or might not, have issues with higher tempo and shorter passing because your players on the ball will need several short-range passing outlets to successfully run this strategy. If not, and you want to play a vertical tiki-taka system, you might need to switch from 'wide' to 'standard' or even 'narrow'. As is, playing wide might work to stretch out the defense and create more space up the middle for your players, especially your two AMCs, but also it might just create room on the wings for your wingbacks and encourage your players to play the wide spaces, so you might see your DLP feeding your wingbacks for crosses into the box. This can work very well as crossing is OP, imnho. With three forwards and a higher LOE, I'd consider 'prevent short GK distribution' though to some degree, that depends upon how good your defenders and midfielders are in the air relative to opposition forwards and midfielders.

I can't remember where I read this but I'm pretty sure that more injuries occur in training than in matches, and also that during matches, injuries are more likely to occur if a player has low condition or match sharpness. So I think it's better to give individual players a day off from training, or lower their training intensity, rather than bench them. But also be prepared to sub them off when their condition hearts turn orange or red. Just my (maybe wrong) point of view: I don't worry unless injury risk gets to 'very high'. Especially during the second half of the season, especially if the schedule is packed, the day after a match, I'll give all tired and all high/very-high risk players a day off. Another approach I've used is to lower the automatic intensity settings to: (or keep the full-green-heart at 'double intensity'). Note that these settings will slow down player development.

A few to correct mistakes which no manager would make: when we click 'Submit Team': get a warning if someone is being played out of position: for example, sometimes players have similar names and I accidentally play a CB at LW, then have to use an early sub to correct it; when we click 'Submit Team', make a sub or change tactics: get a warning if we have messed up our set-pieces: if my attacking set pieces always have two men staying back, alert me if my in-game change has me keeping less than two back; when a player completes training a trait: do not have him switch back to general position training; after we accept a transfer bid: give the option to take that player off of training and matches; in the bar graph, or graph which show the recent form, make an indication when a player has not played (saves clicks): or

Agree. I prepare an extra set of set pieces, which I title "safe" to switch to when protecting a lead late. I also change my attacking set pieces - for example, I'll have my CBs stay back on corners instead of attacking the posts. Unfortunately, the game does not always load them properly, so it takes some time to check them

Is the game realistic: i.e. does FM22 = irl football? Obviously no, nor should it be. It's a game. IRL, very smart, skilled and experienced managers work 70-80 hours per week (= 3500-4000 hours per year) and rarely, if ever, have the kind of success which we have on FM in - what? - 1/10 the time invested (on average, how long does it take to get through 52 weeks of FM?). Of course, we want the game to somewhat simulate IRL, but if the game does not supply some adrenaline and some thrilling success, it won't be around for long. [personally, I think it's too easy to achieve wild success and would like a 'difficulty switch' which doesn't require me to turn off the simulation: for example, you can hide all attributes but irl, no manager would ever have to say: I have no idea which of these players has more pace or which can jump higher.] Agree. And if accumulating great attributes worked IRL, Man U would be...LOL. But should it be easier for newbies/casuals to see what kind of player they have? IRL, can players achieve elite level without certain attributes? I think so. Often they need to be in the right position and role: for example, Pirlo after he became more of a DLP. Do CBs need great tackling to be elite. Well, look at Virgil over the last 365 days: I'd wager that no top team would have trouble finding a spot for VvD!

You can save team selections for quick selection later. After you set your selection, on the 'Tactics' screen, go to the dropdown menu next to 'Quick Pick', then Manage, then Save Team Selection....:

I don't know the answer but you can add leagues. However, the additions usually happen in the off-season. For example, I was managing Sporting CP and my B team was in the (I think) third division. I added that division and the next season it was a go.

Could work, though I agreed with @dja2k14 about a 442 tiki taka. Hard to press high with only two players in the Striker/AM stratas I'd play some friendlies and see. A few things which might be issues (or might not): you only have three players on support, excluding the SK, so it might be hard to patiently make short passes until something opens up: most tiki taka systems have 5-6 outfield players on support; you'll have to see but I can imagine the DLP, with the ball just outside his defensive third, with 0-1 teammates located within short/safe passing range: that might be fine because you are superior but not tiki taka; Benfica has far superior talent to all but two PPL opponents, so: you might want them to be more expressive; 'lowest tempo' and 'hold position' might tamper some of your natural advantage, and allow inferior teams to get back into defensive positions, but yes those instructions are usually part of tiki taka;

It's natural. People get engaged with something and then get bored with it or get busy with other things. Also, remember that 2020-2021 was an unusual time where we all had a lot of time sitting home. Alone. Bored.

Yes! I also have Pae at IWB. My tactic, and I will go 'Positive' at times, but worried about stamina: I'm 'ok'; with this tactic but expect to modify it after friendlies. Definitely considering 'Regroup' and upping Pae to IWB(s); and worried that with a Car and CM(a), I'm leaving the middle too wide open so likely will switch the Car to CM(d) or BWM(d). RWB really should be WB(a) or CWB(a) (and RCM on BWM(d)) but I just don't think Junaidi can hack it and, as you point out, there are scant options at WB. Worried that Pae at 35 will not make it through the season and the backups are so bad. Also going to train an alternate tactic which is positive, narrower, with 2 strikers and maybe Zulfikar at AMC. I've never tried a back 3 with cover-stopper-defender: seems too wonky, especially with lesser talent, but I thought that with an IWB(d) in front of him, the cover duty might work fine. None of my CBs can play BPD unfortunately. I bought or loaned some depth at midfield and striker: Hoping this guy, who is a good backup at CM(a), can also retrain as LWB-IWB(s), especially with really good decisions: Also training this guy to also backup AMR: Loaned in a backup pivot who is too slow but has strong mentals and hopefully can hack it as a rotation backup: I have some more time and want to get better backups at both WBs, which seems doubtful, and AMR.