MackBristol

First season on FM23, playing with Sunderland. Wasn't having the best time with my own tactics and decided to give these a go. Predicted to finish 14th, no new signings this season (other than a backup GK on loan). Started using your formations after the Lincoln City match. Hasn't been perfect, both the Reading and Watford matches we threw away leads late on, and obviously we were overpowered by Norwich but we've climbed from 16th to 5th, the team has stabilised, and things are going well. Just a few observations. Firstly, adjusting the defensive width and defensive line makes an enormous difference. Only in the last 2 matches have I started doing this and it's massive. Yes we only won 1-0 in both games, but we had over 5 XG combined and had 3 goals disallowed for marginal offsides, and more importantly our opponents had less than 0.4xg in both matches. I haven't yet started any matches with the Penetration tactic but it seems to be a great tactic if you're chasing a goal. Against Rotherham and Milwall we were 1-0 down when I made the switch in the 70th minute and then ran them ragged in the last 20 minutes.

https://imgur.com/a/NvBT1cf Screenshots and the full story at the link above. I was looking for Gabriel Vidovic. I know he exists because I've fully scouted him, but he doesn't show up in my Player Search screen. We have the World scouting package but even if I have no search filters on at all, showing nearly 50,000 players which in theory should be every player in the game, but there is no Gabriel Vidovic! Anybody got any ideas? I've checked that he's not on the discard list and he's not, and I can't think of anything else to check. It's making me really paranoid about how many players I might be missing out on when I look at the player search screen! Thanks.

I tried it, got about a dozen seasons in before i gave up. It's damn near impossible. Being the only amateur team in the league you have no hope of signing anything but the worst players in the league. If you do by some miracle manage to find a good player then you'll lose him stupidly quickly, often within a few months. If you get a good youth player come through your academy then you can already wave them goodbye. If they have any kind of ability or potential then they'll be gone within a couple of years. So essentially you have to build a squad of players who are too bad for any other team in the league to be interested in them and the bad players from your youth intakes. Good luck!