MaskedReferee

Personally, I think it is realistic but calling it Travel is a bit misleading. Teams will travel back straight after a game but often won't get back until late evening, maybe early hours of the morning if it's a late kick-off. Player's won't be called in at 9am for training that morning as but will come in later in the day, normally for a recovery session. So I don't think of it as travel, I see it as the morning slot being unavailable having travelled back the evening before and players needing some time to sleep before coming back in.

I think the last thing football needs is to normalise shouting at referee's by making it part of a game.

I'm after some general guidance on how to play against teams who press high and / or counter press. Often in these games I find myself constantly under pressure and unable to avoid or play through the press. I've found that removing the 'Play Out of Defence' instruction helps avoid getting caught too deep in the press but as soon as the ball gets into the midfield I'm finding myself under immediate pressure and very quickly lose possession. Generally, I'm playing on a positive mentality, with a slightly higher tempo, shorter passing and fairly narrow width. How should I be adjusting the counteract the press? Would adopting a more direct passing style with a quicker tempo help? That feels like I'd be playing into their hands though as the press is trying to rush my players so upping the tempo seems like it would just give up possession quicker. Likewise slowing the tempo down will just draw the press. I understand I won't always be able to beat the press all the time...I just want to beat it some of the time!

There will always be loopholes that can be exploited in the game. The problem with closing a loophole is you often create another elsewhere. While what you have said it right, I think the easiest fix is for the player not to exploit it to begin with (although it's a single player game that people are entitled to play how they want). Personally, I have come across several ways to exploit the AI logic but try play within the 'spirit' of the game to keep the realism as high as possible. Again, not saying your suggestion is wrong or that you are wrong to raise it.

The game has issues yes, but it's still an enjoyable play. I'm West Ham and have made it to November in the first season, currently 7th in the Prem and I haven't seen the huge scorelines other players are reporting. Goals look balanced across the league, I've won 3-0 a couple of times and my biggest defeat has been 0-1 as I've got a fairly defensively secure tactic. In my last game I drew 1-1 with Villa away. I conceded a sloppy goal to go 0-1 down but they were largely on top through the first half. A slight tactical tweak at half time and I gained the initiative, Villa actually made 4 subs from 3 opportunities before the 75th minute and then their keeper got injured, outfield player John McGinn went in goal and I scored with my first shot against him. It just goes to show that the AI can get FM'd as well as I'm sure many on here would be screaming that the game was scripted if that happened to them! As I said, there are issues with the game but it's far from broken.

Morning guys, Something I have struggled with through multiple versions of FM now is the number of times my attacking players are offside in some games. It isn't every game but there are games where my striker, wingers or overlapping full backs will just constantly run offside and I've never been able to solve it! Because it isn't every game, I think it must be the opposition playing an offside trap (I guess the AilI applying the Step-up TI?) but I've never found a way of counteracting it. Should I, for example, change the attacking roles to something more conservative to reduce the number of forward runs (i.e. change an IFa to IFs?) or change the role completely to one that drops back (such as swapping an AFa to DLFa?). That approach tends to disrupt my tactic though (and doesn't work anyway!). Is the answer more in team instructions and should in increase or decrease the Tempo to either delay the runs or get the ball forward quicker? Or is this just a quirk of the match engine I need to accept and suck up (always an option given how complex it is under the hood!) After many years of tweaking on the fly and shouting at digital players trying to solve this any help would be appreciated!

I like this, you could get a news item saying "player X is currently a free agent and has contacted the club to ask if they can train with the under-21's/B team/academy while they try to find a new club" The assistant could then offer some additional advice along the lines of: "Player X is very experienced and could be a positive influence on some of our younger players" or "player X may be a useful addition to our squad so this would give us the opportunity to take a closer look at them". Alternatively, they could also tell you the player may be a disruptive influence or is unlikely to be good enough for the team (you could still accept our of the goodness of your heart though!)

I agree with this. I assume it is because the game is just doing a query of a list and then transposing that in to either the 'Tends to' or 'Tends not no' part of the profile screen. Tends not to operate with out an assistant manager is fine for me because that tells me they always appointment an assistant manager (although I'm not sure what that tells me as a tendency!). The second one is more problematic for me "Tends not to 'doesn't use analysts'" ... Does this mean that they "tend not to use analysts" or that they "tend not to not use analysts" meaning that they do use analysts. In the grand scheme of things it's minor but it does mildly annoy me when I notice it!

So the way the Premier League 2 (PL2) works is that Category 1 academies (i.e. academies that achieve the highest rating of training offered to you players) compete across 2 divisions with promotion and relegation between the two. It works like a normal league so I'm not sure why you moved from Division 1 in to Division 2. The Professional Development League (PDL) is for Category 2 and Category 3 academies. What has likely happened here is that in the summer your academy had it's grading reduced because the facilities were no longer rated in the best category. This happens most seasons in IRL with teams being reclassified (Reading moved from the PL2 to the PDL last summer as they reduced the spending on their academy) while Sunderland moved into the PL2 as they invested in their facilities. In game, you probably received a news item in June telling you your academy had been reclassified from 1 to 2 which is why you were invited to the PDL not PL2 despite finishing top of the league last year. You can get back to PL2 by asking your board to invest in youth facilities

Its a good thread this as I was just about to start one asking for help tweaking my own 4-3-3 tactic! If just played the final game of the season (at West Ham, second season) so now is a good time to adjust my tactic for the new season. First things first, I won the league as West Ham so I'm happy and don't think my tactic needs major surgery, however, I did struggle for goals this season despite having plenty of shots most games so that is what I want to improve. First season, Scamacca scored 38 goals for me but this season he only managed 12. Having finished 4th in my first year I'm sure lots of this was to do with teams being much more defensive against me. What I've seen in games is Scamacca either being isolated upfront and not getting chances or getting the ball around the edge of the area and smashing the ball over rather than taking it into the box. In the build-up play on the break, I see runners going forward creating overloads but the player in possession on the halfway line (normally my centre forward or one of my central midfielders) is keeping hold of the ball and slowing the pace down rather than playing one of the runners in. The only Player Instructions in my tactic are for Lucas Paqueta who is CMs with 'Take More Risks', 'Get Further Forward' and 'Move Into Channels'. He has those PIs to make him play more like a Mezzala going forward but I've found having his base role as a CMs gives by midfield better balance out of possession. What I'm thinking from this thread: - Should Scamacca be a PFa or DLFa now that teams are sitting deeper against me? As a PF I think he'll get into the box more than as a CF and stay closer to the defensive line ready to break or as a DLFa he might drop off more to find space rather than getting crowded out so my midfield can find him with a pass. - Would Bowen be better as an IFs rather than IFa? I'm not getting supply in to my striker and with teams sitting deep does he not have the space to run into on an attack duty, particularly with a forward on attack and a B2B on the same side of centre mid? - My left wing has been so hit and miss all season that I wonder if IWs is the right role. Fornals and Benrahma both play there but neither have much consistency. Would an APs be better to act as a pivot, either playing through balls to my striker or the overlapping full back?

Morning all, A small change I'd like to suggest to give transfer talks a bit more realism is to actually slow down how quickly those talks happen outside the transfer window. For example, at this time of year (April) clubs are starting to think about the players they want to sign in the summer so are having exploratory conversations with agents and maybe some early discussions with clubs around deals. If we put this in FM context, it's me as a manager clicking the talk to agent button to find out how interested a player is and what sort of wages they might want. This is a good feature because if the player isn't interested or wants a huge sum of money I can go and scout some other options before the season finishes. What happens in game though is a day or so after sounding the agent out he comes knocking at the door wanting to know why you haven't bid yet and if you do make an offer you can often get everything sorted and a transfer agreed within a week or so. I just don't think this happens IRL (my evidence for this is how few teams have their transfer business sorted early in the summer). WHat would be good is if you enquire about a player with the agent outside the transfer window they don't chase you until the window opens to see if you are still interested. If you do bid for a player outside the window the response from the club should be slower and talks drag out a bit more, maybe agreeing a deal in principle but not accepting until the window opens to see if anybody else comes in and they can spark a bidding war. At the moment the transfers seem a bit to straight forward and slowing the pace down could go a long way to adding more realism.

Evening guys, As a manager at a top club, every summer the board approaches me and gives me a choice of holding a pre-season training camp from a list of 3 or 4 countries. There doesn't seem to be much impact or obvious benefit of picking one country over another though and just comes down to where I most fancy going that summer. In reality, I'm sure managers are sitting down with the DoF/Board/Club Secretary and selecting specific training camp locations based on what they want to get out of the camp and looking at several criteria. My suggestion is to try and replicate that in the game so the training camp location selection becomes more meaningful. Rather than generic locations (i.e USA, England or Portugal) you should be picking a specific location based on some specific information for each camp. The screen would look similar to the one you get for picking an affiliate club and would be the equivalent of sitting down with the coaching staff and board with a bunch of brochures. For example, where you currently select either USA, England or Portugal (to use the examples above) you would instead get IMG Academy (USA), St George's Park (England) and Browns (Portugal) with the following infor for each location: Training Facilities (out of 5 stars - would influence the quality of training sessions during the camp) Player Facilities (out of 5 stars - would influence the level of team cohesion gained away from training sessions) Commercial potential (out of 5 stars - would a training camp here have merchandise/reputation benefits? A training camp in NY for a high profile Prem team might have 5 stars but the same team going to a camp in the mountains of Switzerland might only have 2 or 3 stars) Cost (how much will the camp cost you at that location) Teams known to be touring nearby (a list of teams known to be touring nearby who could provide opposition for friendly games) So, when I get asked for a pre-season training camp I might be presented with the following: St George's Park (England) Training Facilities: ***** Player Facilities: *** Commercial Potential: * Cost: £25,000 Teams touring nearby: None IMG Academy, Florida (USA) Training Facilities: **** Player Facilities: **** Commercial Potential: *** Cost: £40,000 Teams touring nearby: Rangers, Lille Nike HQ, New York (USA) Training Facilities: ***** Player Facilities: ***** Commercial Potential: **** Cost: £80,000 Teams touring nearby: Barcelona, Juventus, Everton, Dortmund Browns (Portugal) Training Facilities: ** Player Facilities: ***** Commercial Potential: ** Cost: £30,000 Teams touring nearby: Palermo, Southampton So from those choices I could then pick a training camp depending on if my focus was the quality of training facilities, the player facilities to improve team cohesion or keeping my commercial team happy by building the brand at a location with more opportunities to sell merchandise and open training sessions etc... A few of the regular training camp locations are actually already in the game (university, the national centres like St George's, IMG and Clairfontaine) but a bit of research would be needed to add the facilities info, happy to help with that research as it should be fairly straightforward to come across as most clubs publish where they go each year.

Thanks for the responses guys. It's my second season at the club having had a successful first year but it sounds as though it might be a combination of how the body language is described by the game and some mechanics happening under the hood. It's only pre-season so I don't mind. It was like that in my first season and they switched it on for the competitive games. I might raise a post elsewhere though (probably under the feature requests rather than a bug) to refine the body language descriptions. Its great that you can see how players are 'feeling' before coming on to the pitch but I think it needs a bit of work. If you are winning comfortably most players coming on tend to have "would rather have stayed on the bench" which is probably true of some players but I think it happens too often. It always seems a bit odd as well when 17 year olds making their first-team debut come on to the pitch and don't seem to want to be there!

Evening all, A quick question about player attitude in pre-season matches, specifically my substitutes. There is a familiar pattern in me at of the friendly games I play. I'll get a good lead against a team in the first half, make a host of changes but none of my substitutes seem interested in the game and spend 45 minutes playing like a team who have never met eachother before! I've just played the opening game of my current pre-season tour of the USA. I'm playing as West Ham and opened my tour against Sacramento Republic as a gentle game to go through the motions and get some minutes on the pitch. First half ends and I'm 5-0 up, I change the full team and tell all the substitutes to go out there as there are places up for grabs. A couple of players respond to show 'appeared inspired' but then they all spent the next 45 minutes as either complacent, uninterested or "would rather have stayed on the bench". The game finished 5-1 and second half we barely strung 2 passes together whiley forwards stood offside! None of the shouts seem to have a positive impact and realistically I think if a manager had 11 players who didn't care they probably would last long at the club! This isn't a moan because, to an extent, I understand. We're winning 5-0 in a meaningless game against inferior opposition so I'd expect some of the players to not be bothered about the second half. Is there anything I can do though to get them more interested?

Looking for some help understanding how the defensive width instructions and pressing trap work interact with eachother on FM23. By default, my tactic plays default for both but I might change the defensive width (invite cross / stop cross) depending on how the opposition are playing. For example, I play a 4-3-3 and if the opposition are playing a 4-2-3-1 with the two wide players cutting in I'll select 'Invite Cross' to restrict the space in the middle of the pitch to counter them cutting inside. My question is does setting a press to 'trap outside' support that approach (to further force play into the wide areas) or would 'trap inside' work better to force the opposition into a crowded space?

A couple of games into pre-season and I'm testing the same tactic I used in FM22 with my first-team, U21 and U18 side. All of my teams are having 20-30 shots per games from what is not an overly aggressive tactic (positive mentality, 2 attacking roles in the team and shoot less often TI selected). Is anybody else seeing more shots than they would expect in games? Might just be that I've played a load of terrible teams in pre-season so far that my teams are dominating!

I would imagine so as it's coded in the game as a league rule so would automatically apply once a team was promoted to a league that uses VAR. The way it works in reality (and in England, not sure how it works elsewhere) is that the Premier League pay for the installation and running costs of VAR. It's deducted straight out of the central pot of revenue (broadcasting rights, League sponsorship income etc...)

Your top 3 additional clauses can all be realised within a single season (£1million payable over 10 games, £2million payable after 5 international appearances and £1million payable after 10 international appearances). Add those to the upfront fee of £2.5million and you get the £6.5million that the board need to deduct from the transfer budget. It needs to be deducted because that's what the club might be asked to cough up by the end of the season. I see he is listed as a future prospect so what the game hasn't taken into account is that he's unlikely to make 10 international appearances before the end of the season (unless he is already being called-up to the national squad?)

I really like this, the transfer and contract system at the moment feels like exactly what it is, a computer game trying to replicate quite complex human interactions. Watching programs like All or Northing shows you how fluid transfer and contract negotiations are and FM makes everything quite rigid and binary. That said I sympathise with the Devs because this is a really difficult thing to replicate! It probably needs something as complex as the match engine to get it right

Having watched the clip I assume it has been allowed because after Pefok headers the ball forward into the penalty area the next touch is by the goalkeeper who plays the ball into the attacker (Nsamé) who scores. Lets break it down... 1. Pefok heads the ball forward and Nsamé is in an offside position but he hasn't yet impacted play. 2. The goalkeeper then comes out and deliberately plays the ball. The ball is clearly going wide of the goal so the principle of 'save' doesn't apply (in law, a 'save' is when a player stops, or attempts to stop, a ball which is going into or very close to the goal with any part of the body except the hands/arm unless it is the goalkeeper within their own penalty area) so this counts as being deliberately played by a defending team player. 3. At the point the goalkeeper plays the ball, Nsamé is not interfering with play because the goalkeeper had options and wasn't under immediate pressure (typically to be interfering you look at the attacking player being within 2 years of the player and he's further away here). 4. We are now into a second phase of play because the ball is deliberately played by the goalkeeper 5. You cannot be offside if you receive the ball directly from a defending player unless it was from a save (which we have established doesn't apply here as the ball is clearly going wide of goal) so Nsamé is onside. Controversial goal but actually, correctly in law!

I can confirm that, from the image, this is offside as the judgement is taken from any goalscoring part of the body nearest the opposition goal than the second to last defender (basically any part of the body except the arms or hands). This is probably a graphic representation error as the lines in the match engine are always slightly out but worth reporting as a bug so it can hopefully be fixed in future editions