Chooxen

Oh that's crazy. You'd think they could work in fairly harmless off-the-ball fouls without controversy but I guess they have their reasons.

I could be missing something here but I realised today that in years of playing this game, I don't think I've ever seen an off-the-ball foul in the match engine. Anyone else noticed a lack of off-the-ball fouls or alternatively their occurence?

Yeah I can echo that my finances seem to be broadly good, unless it was a response to the mid-season financial slump. There was no notification of this happening either, it seems to just have occurred at some point overnight across multiple staff roles.

In 3 seasons playing as Man Utd, I was only able to sign one player under 18 from abroad, who was himself only a few weeks away from being 18. I think in the English league system it may actually be hardcoded that you can't sign any. I'd like to know if anyone's actually managed it.

Hey, I wondered if anyone else had encountered this. I'm coming to renew my staff wages and have found that my max staff wage for pretty much every staff role has decreased significantly, so much so that there's many members of staff whose contracts I cannot renew. Has anyone else had this happen or is this a bug?

If they were, we wouldn't have leagues awash with foreign-born players. There's a tinge of the political in the work permit rules I daresay. No, I've never seen that film.

Weighing on this, it's clearly a design decision the developers have deliberately made. It's obviously a workaround design to prevent you from buying up all the 5-star regens when they're 15. Its effect is that it ruins the fun of scouting young foreign players. It is also unrealistic. The premise that a 17-year-old player from an unknown team in South America has zero interest in moving to Man Utd is clearly unrealistic. The idea that 'Brexit' or work permit rules such as int caps or league quality would prevent Man Utd from signing a hot prospect from South America is clearly preposterous. If this were the case, we wouldn't have U-21 squads across the top flight rammed full of players from every corner of the globe. It's a broad-brush solution to a feature of real-life football that is perceived as an 'exploit' in the context of the game. Its lazy implementation ruins both realism and fun. If you want to create obstacles to signing up all the regens in order to balance the game a bit, the obstacles need to be both more realistic and more surmountable. Maybe 1 in 10 South American youths will actually sign a pre-contract with you. Maybe they're all homesick so will require higher wages. Make navigating these obstacles part of the game. Put a little effort into it.

My issue with it isn't simply that player interest ought to be higher, but as far as I'm aware these are imaginary obstacles. In relatively recent versions of the game, you could agree a contract when a player was 16 to bring them to the UK when they turned 18. No real reason that couldn't be how these signings work now as far as I can tell. Also, I don't really believe the work permit rules are as strict as all that. Knowing dear old Blighty as I do, there's no way football clubs are being prevented from signing as many 18-year-olds from Timbuktu as they like regardless of their wage, caps or league quality. Our immigration laws are not that strict, there's no way we're preventing top-flight clubs from bringing young footballers here on temporary visas. It seems like a hangover from FM19, where the game included best and worst-case scenarios of what Brexit might look like in practice. Let's get it in line with reality, there is absolutely no way these rules function like this in practice.

I just told my striker I thought his form was good after a big hattrick at the weekend. He was upset and told me we had different ideas of what good form was. Told him, okay, let's just leave it there. No. He can't let this go quietly. He's furious. Who coded this? It's not a one-off, it happens like maybe 1 in 5 times I congratulate an in-form player for being in-form. They get offended and there's no option that assuages them. What band of bizarre schizophrenics have I employed here?

I don't suppose there's any way to accomplish that with in-game editor, it's got to be a pre-game change?

I'm having some issues signing foreign youngsters to the Premier League. It seems as though 3-star 16-year-olds playing for anonymous clubs in South America have no interest in joining a top English side. I can't even get them to negotiate contracts. I'm reading between the lines here, but is the issue work permits? If so, am I just to assume that I basically can't even begin the process of signing any young players from foreign leagues? If this is the case, is this realistic? I feel like that's not how work permits actually function post-Brexit. You can't tell me if that Man City want to sign a 17-year-old from Timbuktu FC they're getting told the player isn't interested or the work permit can't be arranged.

The bit where they demand a proper answer always annoys me. When have you ever heard a journo speak like that to a manager? Imagine them pulling it with Ange...

I'm glad it's not only me experiencing it then. I've had it as well where I fulfil my promise to start my squad player more often and 2 weeks later he's bitching me out again. I just feel that players who are clearly second or third string ought to accept better that they are being rotated. Even if they're not happy, is it realistic that they're constantly banging on their manager's door making threats? I have like maxed out mental attributes, can't imagine what it must be like for coach managers.

Thanks for the advice on this one, I'll look to play more attention to agreed vs actual playing time. I feel like some players are just always irritated regardless of this though. Are there hidden personality traits that might impact this? I have one fringe player in particular that plays all the time and flips the lid if he misses 2 games.