[Defensive Midfielders Ratings]

About Defensive Midfielders rating low my conclusion is that they tend to not participate much (and not enough in fact) to the game. That explains ratings of 6 (not below).

-Offensively they won't do much because they usually stay right at their defensive position too much like an Anchor Man would, even if they're not set as an Anchor Man.

-Defensively they won't do much either, because when the opposition attackers find themselves facing the triangle formed by our two CDs + our DM, they will choose to move the ball to the wings 90% of the time. It's useful because their attack is usually gonna fizzle miserably on the wings, but the DM doesn't get to touch the ball, and his rating thus tends to stays neutral, at 6.

My solution is to always set DMs as a Roaming Playmaker. They will not neglect their defensive tasks because of it, at all. They're still aware they are a DM. But the added freedom of movement will allow them to move more smartly during our offensive phases, helping us dominate the game and that will often push their rating up (a bit).

Le 04/04/2022 à 13:40, TheLoon a dit :

Why do player ratings after half time automatically drop / increase?

As far as I get it, that's because the rating you see at the end of the game represents how good they were during the whole game, while the rating that you see *during* the game only represents how good they were in the last 15 mins or so.

 

It's good in a sense because a player, or the whole team, can be good during a certain phase and completely suck during another. The rating you see during the game would not reflect this if it was simply based on the totality. When your team is collapsing mentally in the 2nd half and begins to play godawful, you need the rating to warn you about it fast, even if they had a good 1st half.

[What Am I Doing Wrong?]

Le 01/04/2022 à 17:14, lcutini a dit :

I’ve actually found success dropping the mentality to counter

I'm still trying to make a good counter tactic, with little success so far. So much that in desperation I'm considering completely splitting the team in two halfs, with zero players on the middle line, and 5-6 defenders directly sending long balls to 4-5 forwards.

By the way @Marc Vaughan  is this the right section to post our FMM tactics? I don't see another one, but since no one does, maybe I missed it.

[What Am I Doing Wrong?]

If you're happy with the defensive side and not conceding much, I think you can confidently take some more offensive options, especially for home games and against weaker teams. It could be:

-- switching mentality from Control to Offensive, if not Overload

Il y a 23 heures, lcutini a dit :

I played last season with a similar formation but on attacking mentality and felt like it didn’t give the players time to move/pick a pass

I would expect this problem with High tempo, but I don't think it came from the Attacking mentality. On the other hand Narrow width could help if they struggle finding passing options.

-- Slow tempo sounds bad but often works well with average players (they'll still play fast when it's a good idea to. It's a case of: "if I had one hour to fall a tree, I'd spend 45 mins sharpening my axe".)

-- moving defensive line from Balanced to High (in theory, but I'm still not convinced it helps that much)

-- turning at least one of the full backs into a wing back

-- since one of the central midfielders is already a ball winning one, the other one could (should imo) have a more offensive role than CM, like advanced or roaming playmaker.

-- as Marc Vaughan said, a Shadow Striker will shoot more often than an Attaking Midfielder, and works nicely in combo with a Target Man. You could even make him a second striker, 4-2-2-2 works great.

-- removing Work into Box. Yes they'll waste some balls with silly strikes, but they'll score too, and long-range goals are satisfying.

Hope you'll let us know what you did and how it went.

 

["We have a disloyal group of players"]

 

Il y a 19 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I have a separate tool (that I built), that shows the hidden attributes

One more sign that I need to become smarter with digital stuff. Just diving a bit into the game folders and files could be a good start.

Il y a 19 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I'd love them to overhaul this so it could show multiple liked clubs. And multiple liked peopl

Agreed, this page could use some love.

["We have a disloyal group of players"]

Thank you both for the replies.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I don't *think* the Loyalty value changes at all (could be wrong), except if they inherit their mentor's Loyalty.

My understanding so far was this: 

1) Players have an individual hidden loyalty rating wich is part of the player's personality (and as you said does not change except from tutoring).

2) The effect a player will have on the team's loyalty rating in the dynamics depends on a) his hidden loyalty rating b) his hierarchy status c) the time he has spent at the club.

Now I'm unsure if the time he has spent at the club matters at all. I thought it had an effect, just too small for my taste, now I'm confused.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

There is a message "Wants to help <the club> succeed" in the Training screen, but I think that's related to Favourite club, not Loyalty. It's showing on a player that has the club as a Favourite but only Loyalty of 13, where as players with Loyalty of 18 but without the the club as a favourite don't show that. 

Very interesting but that raises a question for me: how do you lifted the hood on their individual hidden loyalty rating? I have the editor but I guess I missed the option to see it.

About the "Wants to help the club succeed" mention yes it's tied to the favorite club but I noted that some players who have another club as their favorite can sometimes show this mention too.

And I think in this case there should be, in the "Personal" page, some mention of it. It could be a second-favorite club listed beside the first (if there is room), or they could just have the regular "glad to be part of the <my club> setup". Or a differently worded mention.

In any case I think the "Training" page isn't the right place for this bit of info.

Il y a 14 heures, StephenCronin a dit :

I typically keep the status as low as possible so they don't get upset about playing time, but I found that giving the right players a status of First Team or Key Player can actually be helpful here.

Hahah so I'm not the only one! You are right that it matters I think, I found it out recently. We keep the status low so they stay happy with their playing time, and as a result the players who are objectively key players get "first team" status, those who are objectively first team are called "rotation" and so on. But since, as you said, a high status very much tends to push them up the hierarchy, we end up with too few Influential/Leaders and it hurts the dynamics. Lesson learned for me too.

Il y a 9 heures, Marc Vaughan a dit :

I think that in the circumstances perhaps I should make this more flexible (so it's artificially higher if a player is at a club for a while and lower if he's moved recently before he 'takes roots').

Yes, very much. My two cents are that the artificial loyalty bonus should be tied to a) his attachment to the club (favorite club or not, etc...) b) overall time spent at the club c) if he's happy to be here or not so much (like, "happy to stay at club"/"willing to remain presently" etc..)

I'm not sure how it exactly works currently so what I'm saying might not be really relevant. But my central idea is that the loyalty we get from the players should reflect our loyalty toward them: if we keep throwing them away as soon as we get a slightly better replacement, we should never get much loyalty back. It should take squad stability over years, and to achieve this the "roots" could grow very slowly at first, but exponentially. After all, spending 2-3 seasons at a club is normal business, 5-6 is a different thing, and 8+ a completely different thing.

By the way Marc Vaughan, last time I reported a glitch (the "becoming more pro under senior guidance" mention not showing), you fixed it in a record time, so I wanted to thank you for that. So... expect some more looong feedback threads from me in the future! xD

[the new update is a disgrace! Fm 22 mobile]

il y a 9 minutes, FrazT a dit :

Please advise what specifically you are concerned about.

I'm concerned about the crazy display of unconstructive whining and entitlement shown by the two complainers, not the team's response. Should have made this more clear heheh.

I'm all for ruthless critic but here.... well. Ah, nevermind.

["We have a disloyal group of players"]

Arrrrgh. In my long-term save I have kept the team very stable in order to pump up the loyalty rating in the team dynamics.

It goes about the same for all players: after a time between 6 months at best and 4 seasons at worst, they begin to slightly influence the team loyalty rating positively, provided they have Influential or Team Leader status.

Then they can pass 10 more years at the club, they will never influence the team loyalty rating more than this tiny bit. So the rating basically depends of how many Influencial/Team Leaders I have, and until recently with 6-7 leaders +6-7 influs in the group, the rating was stuck at B for years, briefly reaching A once.

But recently I have less players with influence overall (not sure why), and the rating has fallen back to C.  But there is worse: the team report now tells me, much to my dismay, that "we have a disloyal group of players". Yet none of them is listed as having a negative influence.

So... I have two problems here:

The first is that player's influence on this team rating doesn't seem to improve over time. I mean, it does, since this influence doesn't appear right away (even with Influential status), wich is good. But then it doesn't matter if the player has been here for 2 or 10 years, none of them will ever improve the rating more than a tiny bit. I think it should keep improving over time: I have an extremely stable group, my manager profile has been showing a loyalty rating of 20 for years, I believe the team's attitude should reflect this a little more BOOOHOO NO ONE LUVES ME. So, even players who have a quite low loyalty hidden value should, imo, have an impact on the team rating that keeps growing over time more than it does now. Because 3 seasons at a club are one thing, and 10 another, even for someone who's not very loyal by nature.

Second problem is that I have zero clue wich of them have a natural tendency to be loyal (so, the individual hidden loyalty rating) and wich don't. It would be great if, just like the player report sometimes says "has a tendency to bend the rules" when they have low sportsmanship, we could have a "not the most loyal player"/"rather loyal player" mention. Because now we're very much kept in the dark about it, unless they have Loyal personality.

Ah, also it doesn't seem that having our club as their favorite one makes any difference at all, but I can't be sure about this.

[the new update is a disgrace! Fm 22 mobile]

Are you guys for real? What a crazy caricature of entitlement we're seeing here.

I'm all for being patient with people, but surely there has to be a limit to it. 

Edit: I'm talking about complainers' attitude here, not the devs.

 

[Club Squad selection page green icon w/ arrows]

Usually it begins with a yellow star symbol at the same place. I think it means the player is under strong mediatic light. Then other clubs become interested, the yellow star is replaced by these circular arrows, and troubles begin as transfer offers destabilize the player.

If I manage a small club and can hardly retain my best players, I find important to hide a bit my brightest jewels. As soon as the gold star symbol appears I try to make the player enter the next games from the bench so he gets lower ratings for a while. And it goes away usually. Move along, big clubs, nothing to see here. We're just a bunch of sub-par players trying to avoid relegation... right?

[English lower (lowest playable) leagues]

Boston United's Pilgrims for me. After nolifing the hell out of the game for a while I'm now gonna play my first Champion's League and dearly love my squad.

If you like a challenge and focus like me on squad dynamics I recommend the Dorking Wanderers. At first sight they're great: rated A in most areas and B in others (wether you're using true or fake players). Then you take a closer look and... it's all coming from the influence of 35+ years old players who can barely run any more. If you can maintain these values at the top by quickly bringing in new positive-minded players (and making them influential fast), then you truly are a wizard. I gave up.

 

 

[Club's Culture]

It's maybe the most interesting aspect of the game, and the one I was the most pleasantly surprised with when I bought the 2021 edition after some years off.

Improving the culture takes quite a bit of planning, and you soon find yourself recruiting players with determined or professional personalities to improve these areas, or renouncing to some brilliant slacker so he doesn't contaminate the dressing room. But it really gives the game some soul.