stockwellpete

I have just timed my last match - and from beginning to end (including half-time) it lasted around 30 minutes. So you are getting about third of the match, I suppose. I find it helps me to get to know my players better, which is a key part of the game. It gives you clues about which player traits might be worth developing e.g. I have a forward who continually runs offside and so I need to think about coaching him to beat the offside trap. You also notice if your team suddenly seems to empty out in terms of energy, while the other side remains stronger - which suggests that collectively the stamina/work rate levels of the team is insufficient.

I have finally settled on this setting as my preferred way of watching matches. I think it is really good and a lot of the matches are very exciting. There seems to be a greater variety of things happening that you don't usually see in the shorter highlight packages, such as player injuries and very contested passages of play, where possession changes sides 3 or 4 times very quickly. It makes everything much more unpredictable (and nerve-wracking). I might be imagining things, but it also seems that there is a greater preponderance of long balls played as the game moves past the hour mark and players start to tire. This results in the game becoming much more stretched with more chances to score. I do think the standard of football I am watching for the Vanarama National level in the game is probably equivalent to League 1 in real life though. I watched a couple of the real-life play off matches at the end of last season (Sheffield Wednesday v Barnsley and Stockport Country v Carlilse United) and they were both ferociously competitive matches, very physical with only intermittent periods of passing. Basically, if you took too long on the ball you got clobbered. Just a couple of other things might be improved, in my opinion - there are too many offside sequences shown; and sometimes defenders running back towards their own goal line, with no real pressure on them from behind, seem to become enraged and hoof the ball straight into the crowd to concede a corner. Very odd. Which setting do you use for matches?

Is it possible to do these in the game? I know that you can put another teammate out near the corner kicker, but does he ever pass to him? I tried it for about 10 matches without luck. The final straw came when the opposition player marking this extra player retreated back into the penalty area before the kick was taken. Also, the defending side would need to put two players out there, not one, if they really wanted to stop the cross from coming in.

OK. So once that black bar below "Anonymous upload" fills up then that means the file is completely transferred to you and the process is complete, does it? Thanks for helping me with this.

OK sorry. I keep putting things in the wrong place as I am not sure if they are bugs or not. Maybe there should be a separate tally for offsides and fouls in the Match Stats report? That way players would know if their attackers might need to be trained on beating the offside trap, or if individual/team tackling settings needed to be looked at.

Right, so if I press the PrtScr button on my computer it sends the screenshot to My Pictures. And I have found a Sports Interactive folder in Documents and saved games are in the "games" file. So, in future, if I see something like this I should immediately save the game so I have a record of it. Then I have to send it to you using the SI Cloud Service? This is confusing me because at the bottom of this post I am writing now there is a "choose files" option as well. Is this the SI Cloud Service too? It says Max total size is 9.77 MB, while by save game file for my last save this morning is 139,833 KB. I don't know which is bigger KB or MB?

I am sorry but I don't know how to do even basic things like this at the moment. I will read your guidance to see if I can do it in future. I don't even know how to take a screenshot, or where it goes on my computer. I am nearly 70 years old and have never been much good with computers. I buy my games from Steam who do most of the basic technical stuff (updating etc) for me. Hopefully, just reporting what I am seeing alerts you to an issue and it might even prompt someone else to report it as well. It happened at the beginning of the second season of my St Albans game, so near the beginning of the 23/24 season. In a previous game as Sheffield Wednesday, I had a player on loan for the entirety of the first season. Man City refused the loan for the second season, but I was then able to get him again for the 24/25 season. Again he was treated as a completely new player to the club.

There are a couple of things that I am doing to make the game a bit more difficult/realistic at the moment . . . 1) always pick a goalie among my substitutes. I have never had a goalie get injured during a game, although someone on Steam said it had happened to him once. It seems to be very rare, but clubs would always have a keeper on the bench. 2) I only use the individual "Rest" option if it means the player can sit out a training session. This is important as I am playing as a semi-professional club that only trains twice a week. So if I have a game on Saturday and then another one on Tuesday, with no training session scheduled in-between, I do not use the "Rest" option as it would seem to be an exploit to make my players recover more quickly. Are there any other things that players are doing like this? Edit: added the following house rules since starting this thread . . . 3) do not use "ghost" players if they appear in my matchday squad. 4) make tactical changes only when there is a break in play.

Quite often when I try to develop a playing trait for an older player (30+) the coach will say that the player is too old to learn anything new. While this may be true of some players who are set in their ways, it is certainly not true of all players. One of the main reasons that veterans thrive in the game in their 30s is precisely because they are able to adjust the way that they play to compensate for a gradual loss of stamina and pace. If I get told that by a coach, should I just take their word for it, or should I persist with my training idea? is it possible in the game for players who are 30+ to develop new traits? I appreciate it may not be possible for some players, or that it might take more than one attempt (as it sometimes does with younger players).

Ok thanks. I don't think a second promotion is on the cards for St Albans City this season. The board have just asked me to avoid relegation and I think a mid-table finish is most likely. But I can still try and get that financial surplus moving in the right direction.

I am playing as St Albans City currently. We started off in the Vanarama South and we are part-time, training just twice a week (4 slots in total). In our first season we got promoted to the Vanarama National league. So I asked the board if they were prepared to become fully professional. They said no as they did not have enough money. When I joined the club it had a financial surplus of around £100K. By the beginning of the second season that financial surplus had increased to around £500K, partly because we had a good run in the FA Cup. Is it going to be possible for me to eventually turn the club fully professional? Is it catered for in the game? Or are the board continually going to say no? What might the financial surplus need to be to get the club into an area where turning fully professional is a possibility? Just to say, I have no problem with there being a mixture of professional and semi-professional clubs at both Vanarama National and Regional levels. This is true to real life. About half a dozen clubs in the Vanarama South this season will be full-time (e.g. Yeovil, Havant and Waterlooville) and I think there will be four part-time clubs in the Vanarama National (Oxford City, Wealdstone, Dorking Wanderers and Maidenhead United).

Overlap is when you try to outnumber the defenders in wide areas, underlap is when you try to outnumber the defenders in central areas.

Nowadays, I am trying to keep the same tactic and the same mentality - always 442 with a "cautious" mentality. In the season before, when we got promoted as champions by 26 points, we always played 442 with a "balanced" mentality. My squad now is 50% "good" players for the division we have just come out of - and 50% "decent" for the higher division we are now in. When I can increase the % of "decent" higher division players in my squad to around 75% then I will go back to a "balanced" 442 again. But this may take a season as we have very little money to spend. We are still part-time, while most clubs in the division are fully professional. Even so, we have won 3 out of our first 4 matches so far. What I have stopped doing now is jumping about from one mentality to another during a game and I very rarely change my formation either. Sometimes, away from home, when defending a lead late on in a game, I might take a forward off and go to 451 or 4141. I think I did it twice in the whole of last season (around 25 away games). Doing this allows the players to learn the system really well so you get a high "familiarity" rating.

This is what I usually do. Pre-match is done by my assistant manager, post-match is done by me (unless we have been tonked up! lol). But the assistant often talks as if he is the manager of the club instead of me! I do this and I do that, he pontificates. When I should be getting all the credit!! So it needs to be tweaked slightly so the assistant uses "we" instead of "I" and so he doesn't sound quite so much like someone who wants to nick my job.

. . . but the fans treat him as if he is a completely new loanee. Playing as St Albans City in Vanarama South, we took an excellent young goalie from Norwich City on loan (19 years old) and he was central to our promotion and FA Cup run. I was repeatedly asked at press conferences whether we would sign him, but I always said "no" because he was too expensive. Week after week he turned in excellent performances and my initial attempt to renew the loan in March was knocked back by his parent club. Then, a couple of months later, I was advised at our Recruitment meeting to try to get him on loan again and this time Norwich City were agreeable, although they now reserved the right to recall him at short notice. The reaction of our fans was lukewarm to say the least and the screen said something like "they hope he can do well for us". In reality, they would have been ecstatic to get such a good player of proven reliability for a second season. So I think the game could be improved for situations where there is a returning loanee. It would just help with the reality/immersion aspect of the game.

Yesterday I had a situation in a meeting where I was advised to reduce the asking price of a player who was already sold to another club. He was still with us (in May) because he was transferring to a Swedish club in a couple of months time (in July). But the game did not recognise that he had been sold.

I do wonder if these club meetings (whether they are weekly, fortnightly or monthly) need to actually take place during the summer break in the game? If they didn't then these anomalies, like training changes, players complaining about training etc would not occur. Just have these meetings when players are at the club, not during the close season.

Getting some very high foul tallies in matches where the extended highlights have very few fouls but lots of offsides.

At the fortnightly club meetings, I am still being given advice about specific training changes for players, even players on loan who will shortly be returning to their own clubs. And interactions with players (e.g. congratulating them on winning an award) usually end with "see you at training, boss". This needs looking at, I think.

It would help matters if you could choose whether you wanted a team meeting or not. At the moment you have no choice at all.