Slippy_

The tactic creator has really come a long way in terms of ease of use but there is one area I always find lacking – attempting to distribute the ball to specific players in certain ways. An example – I am playing a 4-4-2 formation with a 6 foot 5 DLF and a 5 foot 4 speedy AF. The ideal situation would be for my team to distribute to the head of my target man and to space for my advanced forward. However currently that isn’t possible. I can select the ‘pass into space’ team instruction but that would mean that we wouldn’t be providing the correct service to my DLF. Meanwhile my advanced forward, who will be the furthest ahead player, might get targeted for headers which he will never win if I don’t select it. In either situation I don’t win. In the real world the team would know not to direct high passes to the head of the small players (if they are going to be challenged for the header) and would know to direct passes to the tall strong forwards head. There are also situations where I might have an enganche style player with little pace/acceleration. For this kind of player I want the ball played directly to his feet rather than into space, in order for them to quickly make an decisive pass. In order to rectify this I would suggest making ‘receives passes to X’ an instruction on the player instruction screen, with the player trait further increasing/modifying the frequency of how a player receives passes. A list of options could be: · Receives passes to head (automatically selected for target forward & wide forward) · Receives passes to run onto (automatically selected for poacher, maybe shadow striker) · Receives passes to feet (automatically selected for playmakers, enganches) · Mixed (default setting for most roles) Most roles probably wouldn’t need a specific instruction but they could be added to suit the specific player. This would make it easier to make use of fast pacy forwards who perhaps lack size in roles outside of poacher, while also helping the team not make long passes to heads of players who have no businesses challenging for headers. This is specifically useful for goal keeper distribution as well. In FM23 if I am playing a small striker as my most advanced player the keeper will often seek them out, which will almost always result in a lost aerial duel and lost possession. Finally an examples: This is my advanced foward on one of my saves. For the clubs level he is a pretty solid advanced foward just with no physical presence. In match he loses nearly all his headers (which makes sense) but as my most advanced forward he will often find himself getting picked out by my keeper who is aiming at him rather than into space. In an ideal world the goalkeeper would instead look for his DLF teamate if it looks like it will be a contested header (but is a deeper player), look for a different option or instead play it into space.

I just spotted something which might explain it in my match right now. My teamare set up as 5-3-2 with 2 wingbacks on support and 3 no nonsense centrebacks with the middle on cover and the outer ones on defend. The centre backs (28, 4, 3) should from a defensive line around the half way line but No 3 has pushed up. Our DM is also pretty far forward so if this ball was to go long Bath (in white) would have 2 players (7 + 9) vs my 2 centre backs. My thinking is that my No 3 should be back around the halfway line. I understand that he might have broken forwards to intercept but he hasnt, he went forward with the rest of my team. It appears that something doesnt seem to be working here. No 3 doesnt have any player traits which would effect him getting forwards either. EDIT: Of course this could be because my defenders arent great - not a fault of the match engine.

Hi everyone. Quick question before I think about raising a bug report. I’m running a 3 at the back formation with the central defender being on cover duty. However I’m finding him often is out of position pushed up (like a stopper) when I thought he would sit deeper as he is on cover duty. Am I missing something? In previous FMs I used the same set up and the cover defender would sit a bit deeper rather than challenging the striker for balls. I could switch to all 3 on defend but that feels a bit too static for me, especially when my keeper isn’t the best sweeper style keeper.

I have yes. Under the match folder there are no sub folders. Anyway, I got in touch with the orginal skin maker who said he would take a look at it. If I find anything useful ill drop it here for further reference for anyone else who might stumble over this issue. Thanks for your help

Still nothing I removed all the skins in the skin folder and switched back the default skin. I tested the default skin and that worked fine. Put the skin back in, cleared the cache and reloaded but it went back the orginal incorrect version. I also tested the skin I am using for most of the base of my homebrew skin and it seems to be a problem with that skin. I also tried the Zealand/FME skin and that worked fine. Bit stuck sadly!

Sadly didnt work. Same as before. I have tried looking for match preview lineups panel.xml using search functions to see if its somewhere else in the skin but its not.

Hi all, hoping someone can help me here. I have taken a few skins a like and fused them together. However I am struggling to get the match line up preview back to the default. Currently I have this (see below), despite not having anything inside the match folder on the skin that changes this. I have tried removing everything from the match folder in the skin (stayed the same) and putting in the default files from the default FM skin but it still remained the same. The problem with the below image is that there are no player numbers and if the teams kit is black you cant read the name. I am guessing something is overwriting this but I cant find it. To clarfiy there is NO match preview preview lineups panel.xml in this skin. Any ideas? its driving me crazy. I have tried other skins and the default skin and thats fine but I cannot for the life of me understand this bit.

From messing around with scouting while testing it looks like the best way about it is to use STANDARD focus for large areas (region scouting and nation scouting) and ONGOING for small areas (competitions). Using Motherwell as an example (all 2* CA/2.5* PA focuses for tactic) I got: 17 hits on Scotland for standard after 2 months. (A further 4 after another month when I restarted the focus) 6 for UK and IE for standard after 1 month. (A further 13 after another month when I restarted the focus) 2 for England ongoing after 2 months. 2 for UK/IE ongoing after 2 months. 10 for Scottish Prem ongoing after 1 month. Its worth noting that scouting is still going on even if they arent coming through as hits. You can use the scouted players tab or player search to see whos been scouted and who you might be interested in. Reminds of me how I used to scout in FM13, I would let the scouts do their thing and maybe check their top 1 or 2 picks and use my scouted player search to pick out players for my shortlist. I havent tried directing my scouts to specific players yet so no idea how long that takes to get a full report. I think the issue is the conversion of ongoing wide focuses into hits. Right now the UK and IE ongoing focus has 10 in progress, all who meet the critera. After another month of simming none of them make the hit list. I hope it gets looked at for the next patch in December but you never know.

I belive this in as intended. SI confirmed in the beta thread that they have reduced the number of formations the AI will pick from. Something to do with wanting to make sure players arent used odd roles which you wouldnt see them used in IRL (eg using Mason Mount as a holding CM).

Completly anecdotal but after messing around in the 2 saves supplied but it feels that the regen players are a little less technically gifted than say 'current' players but they seem to have better physicals/mentals. Of course SI have said that they are still looking with the code to improve further. Although it looks like LeoFm came to the same summary. Glad to see it looks alright, looking forward to the full release!

Hi Andrew, Not the person who posted the analysis but noobcake did add the save to his orginal post. I had a poke around to check the average age of squads in the English prem and it looked to average out around 27/28. That is perhaps a little high but not unreasonable (especially if we consider more players will probably continue to play at higher level for longer). I have downloaded and checked the active leagues but probably best for noobcake to confirm:

Our of interest I checked this out based on the 2012 Ballon d'Or list and I would say out of the top 23 players nominated you could make arguments for maybe 4 or 5 who are still some of the best in the world. Pretty low ratio. I doubt on your save the Ballon d'Or nominations only include 4 or 5 top players from 2021.