stockwellpete

Have a look at the "Contract Expired" players and offer them a Trial. Plenty of bargains available even for Leagues 1 and 2.

OK, but you don't know exactly what happens in, say, the Vanarama National in real life at present? It seems odd to have loanees still at your club from the previous season when your players are reporting back for pre-season training. And, because the backroom staff meeting continue in the close season, you still get training advice on loanees who will not be with you once the new season starts. As the situation is currently in the game, I think it puts an extra incentive to recruit "no fee" loanees if you are an impoverished part-time club.

Do we know roughly? Has SI any stats on this? From the proportion of online games perhaps? I find it the most interesting level in real life, so I have tended to play at this level in the game also. Aldershot Town in FM22 and now St Albans City in FM23.

I think at the non-league level, many of the clubs in the Vanarama leagues, particularly if they are part-time, will effectively close down for the summer months (mid-May to mid-July approx). Players and staff will not be at the club at all. So backroom staff meetings where training reports and training advice etc is usually given should not really be taking place. I am not sure if players at part-time clubs are paid during the summer break either, although I assume fully professional players are. I am also unsure about the rules concerning loaned players. Should they continue to be paid during the summer break if they are loaned to a part-time club? I have been trying to find out the detail about loans without much success.

Anyone?

Joey Barton losing it again!

Yes, I think they should switch to vegan alternatives for the start of next season. lol

Every hot dog van, in every ground - there's never ever anyone queuing up to buy one. Why is that? Lack of onions, or mustard perhaps? Very weird.

I agree pretty much with every word of this. Yes - turning off the whole system of management/player interactions would be a step forward at present. After a while, it just breaks the game for me because I just cannot be bothered to deal with the ludicrous dialogue and the whole rigmarole that goes with it. For example, during pre-season players get the hump because they are being rotated in friendlies; and then they pull funny faces on the pitch and you are told that "they would have preferred to stay on the bench" when you bring them on as sub late in the game. Players are not stupid, they understand all these things have to happen in successful football clubs and that a strong squad means they are more likely to be successful during the season. You can even end up having a row when you just want to praise a player for his performance in a game! But, by far the worst things are the wretched team meetings. And you have to have them! There is no escape. Can't they at least be optional in FM24? If not, if the assistant manager is so keen on having them then let him take them and leave me out of it completely.

The local reporters just get on the blower, don't they? With an occasional face-to-face interview during the season, I expect. Enduring a season in the Vanarama National with St Albans City where I get either 1 or 2 reporters recycling the same old tired questions.

Brief discussion here . . .

Although "Comprehensive Highlights" would be my preferred option for watching matches, I have now switched to "Extended Highlights" because it does not have many sequences that end with a whistle for offside. "Comprehensive Highlights" has far too many of these and it becomes very irritating after a while.

I am not 100% sure of the answer, but there seems to be. Some of my players will have good spells of form, while others will have two or three very poor games in a row after being OK for ages. I am less certain if there is a direct relationship between poor training performance and form. I find that some of my players will have an isolated poor training performance (which I always talk to them about), but rarely do players have consecutive poor training reports (unless they are on the transfer list and want to leave).

When I sign players on loan they usually stay at my club until the end of June (approx) even though my last fixture might be early, or mid-May. Same for the players I have loaned out. So, it seems that I am still paying wages to these players for no good reason and clubs are still paying me for no good reason as well. Is this in line with the actual "real-life" league regulations on loans, or is it a quirk of the game that might be considered a bug? Anyone know?

OK. I don't have one myself currently because I couldn't make out what was actually happening over a number of screens when I had achieved a play off spot last time. I am in the running for the play offs again this season, so if it happens this time I will save the game and send it to you. I have no idea at all about how computer games are constructed, but I would have thought something like this, which presumably happens to everyone reaching the play-offs in the Vanarama National League, would be easy for you to identify. It is not just specific to my game, is it? Not sure what happens in the Vanarama North and South and whether it is an issue there as well.

Well, I am not using gegenpress at all in my current game as St Albans City and we usually have around 50% possession using a "Positive" mentality at home and a "Balanced" mentality away. We are part time, so I only get four training slots a week and I cannot coach "pressing" at all. My players recover OK if we are playing just once a week, even though I usually finish a match with 5 or 6 players at "Very Poor" stamina. But these 5 or 6 players have no chance of playing in the next match if it is 3 or 4 days after, because they have not fully recovered. This includes the centre-backs who should be able to comfortably cope with playing Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday, provided it does not happen for 3 or 4 weeks consecutively. It sounds to me like the gegenpress tactic is too powerful in the game then. It is actually relatively easy to beat the high press part of the gegenpress system just by launching long passes up to the centre forward and getting runners to support and compete for second balls. Only muddle-headed coaches insist that their players should still play out from the back through the press, even though they often end up conceding the ball near their own penalty area. There seem to be a lot of coaches like this in real life operating at the elite level. Just because the rules now don't require the ball to leave the penalty area from a goal kick, it doesn't mean your team has to commit suicide playing tippy-tappy across your own 6 yard box. So what I usually have to do with my St Albans team is use my 4 outfield substitutes to replace the first 4 players who reach "Very Poor" stamina levels. This is usually after 60-70 minutes. Only occasionally, I will make a tactical substitution if someone is having a stinker and they have also been cautioned - and very occasionally I will take some of my best players off after 75 minutes if we have either safely won, or completely lost, the match. This is my main gripe. Concerns about stamina drops are blocking out my other tactical considerations, even though players do not actually get "exhausted" playing football matches. Then, if I have a midweek match coming up with no training session in-between, I have to drastically change my team as half a dozen of my players will only recover to "Good" and "Tired" by kick-off time. If I play them they will be at "Very Poor" stamina before half-time of this second match. If I am lucky enough to have a training session scheduled before the second match, then I allow myself to use the "Rest" "1 day" facility in the "Training" section to signify that I have excused them from training. Even just a 1 day rest does help the players recover much more. The only downside is that this is very tedious to do individually for each affected player (around 15 of them each time). The way I have got round this issue is to just increase the size of my squad by wheeling and dealing on the transfer market. I sell a star player each season to raise funds and I never pay a transfer fee myself, just free transfers and no-cost loans. I usually have a trialist at the club as well so I can gradually upgrade the team through the season. I am not sure how accurately this reflects what is happening now at non-league clubs at steps 5 and 6 of the pyramid. I think the game would be more interesting, and my squad more settled, if the stamina drops were not so harsh.

So I posted this about a week ago and have had no replies or acknowledgement. Public status is "open", whatever that means. Presumably you have a "To do" list, with some sort of prioritisation operating, do you? Is this on it anywhere? Do you agree that a change is merited, or not? I imagine that this would not be too difficult to fix.

Too many players in the game "dislike big matches". I can understand younger players being nervous if picked for one, but it shouldn't be a permanent personality trait.

I have only started playing the game this year as I am fairly recently retired. I wouldn't say that it is "bad" overall, but there are loads of things in the game that are done badly. From tortuous press conferences and interactions with players (e.g. ending up having a row with a player after you have congratulated him on his performance, excruciating club meetings etc) to ridiculous stamina drops and the absence of a clearly designed close season (club meetings continue with training advice as if the players are still at the club). It means that sometimes I cannot be bothered to play the game even though I want to continue with my club. At times the immersion is great - at other times it is just laughable. The overall effect is to make the game "scruffy", which is a great shame as it could be much, much better with a bit more attention to detail. Even the non-league clubs don't have their full names spelled out properly on some of the screens (e.g. cup draws, transfers). 6 out of 10 for me.

OK, so a player whose stamina is still "Very Good" implements the team plan more effectively than a player whose stamina level is "Good", "Fair" or "Poor"? But there is only an increased chance of injury if the stamina level drops to "Very Poor"? I would have to check when it is that my assistant gives me a message that a player is "exhausted", but it is probably when a players stamina level drops to "poor" so that I have a chance to avoid the possibility of injury. I see that you are part of the Sports Interactive Team. Do you agree that stamina drops are excessive in the game? I know it is the same for the AI teams, but my overwhelming consideration when making substitutions in a match is the stamina level of my players. It should be part of my consideration, but subtle tactical changes very often go completely out of the window. Usually, I end up with 5 or 6 players finishing the game on "Very Poor" stamina (these are the ones that I could not substitute). And these players are then ruled out of the next match completely if it is only 3-4 days later. I think a lot of nuance is being lost from gameplay and, quite frankly, it becomes tedious after a while. Btw I usually manage at Vanarama level in the game.

When I started a game with a Premier League team, I opted for an intra-squad friendly. Presumably, the ground where this match was played was the club's own training ground. It seemed to be much less developed than many of the Vanarama South and Vanarama National grounds I have played on in this game. In fact, the training ground bore some similarity to Carshalton Athletic's ground at Colston Avenue in real life. It has allotments behind one goal and a park down one side. So maybe, the training grounds of elite clubs could also be used for clubs at steps 7,8 and 9 in the UK pyramid? I am not sure how many versions of the training ground there are. Of course, some of the grounds in the Vanarama South are well developed as they belong to former league clubs who are now having a spell in the doldrums (e.g. Yeovil Town, Torquay United).

It is the effect on gameplay that I am more concerned about really. I am not saying the current situation is unfair as the AI teams are also completely knackered as well. The basic premise in the game that players get exhausted playing less than 90 minutes of football is just wrong, in my opinion. If it was correct then there wouldn't be such a thing as extra-time in KO matches because most players wouldn't be able to cope with it. It needs correcting, but I don't have much expectation that it will be.

"Top football is tough nowadays, 60 games a year in club football, 10 international games. Seventy games means that every third or fourth day you have to match the highest physical levels. When you’re not living the right life, you get killed. What is important? Sleep, recovery, nutrition. Three key areas and when you don’t do this right, you have a problem. You can’t perform.” Ten Hag (Man Utd) Guardian today, 31/7/23

Yes, there are lots of minor things that could easily be improved in the game without altering its basic structure. I am beginning to find it very frustrating, to be honest. Overall, the game is scruffy.

Nothing indicated in the chat after the match that we had just been automatically promoted. It was just treated as another match. I think this could be improved. (Same if team clinches the Championship even if they have already been promoted in an earlier game).