Delicate Dave

I use a halfback at the moment but I play either a 4-1-2-2-1, 4-1-2-1-1 I play the WB of attack, CWB on attack or support. The thing I might do that makes this work for me is in player instructions I set the WB to mark tight but NOT press. This seems to make the space behind the WB less vulnerable and when I take this instruction off I ship goals from crosses.

Sure it will be and you did well to get that for 500 euro ;-)

Well worth pointing out, I merely gave the person a point at which to start - That being a laptop that now runs FM24 all leagues loaded playable. I also stated the price at which this could be had 200 euros or less. From there he can research newer laptops with better specs up to his budget and know his playtime will be reasonably smooth. Also, I agree with your next post - if FM24 doesn't run on even the old CPU I posted then their customer base will be cut in half. I know I certainly won't be spend £1000 or more to run FM25. Also I think we are coming to the end of the period where games forced the advance of computers, and the advances in interactions get lower each year.

As I said before I would always go the processor before the graphics. Most people seem to want to run all the leagues, that needs a fast processor. The problem with only having 500 euro (£430) is your likely to be looking at processors that are around old stock. For that reason, I would recommend the second-hand market where you'll get a better price for the same thing. You can shop for processor & GPU combinations and maybe have some spare cash left to up the memory or SSD card even. Purely as an example - this is what I use now, it's old but I can load all the leagues playable. Yes, there is a short lag but only when moving from day to day when it's calculating the results around the world. Ignore the price, you can get this model for less than 200 euro - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/384905970595 What you could do is go on MSI website and and look for the next versions of this till you hit one you can afford. Just an idea.

Problem - You are in the middle of the season or in close-season so you have no game. As a FM game player you need time to pass before then next game. But as a football manager you also need to do your job, so you'll most likely be scouting other players and researching your own players. But as it is now do this in FM24 time stands still. The only way to start time is to click continue or go on holiday. Why can't we have the option to let time pass while the manager continues to manage? Would this be a good idea, an option for the game player? So the idea being, while your players are away on international duty you are still working and don't need to click continue to get the days to move forward. Take it a bit further you could set up a process where you choose to watch the international games your players are playing in or players on your shortlist.

I don't know, I'm not a current expert I prefer to shop second hand but this seems up there and has some decent reviews, you can confgiure it wthout the OS if you already have one and the are option to take it up or down in price. But others will have a better idea on it's value - https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/configurator/cto/index.html?bundleId=83GSCTO1WWGB1

You might want to checkout the Lenovo main site before you buy, the have a 24 hour crash sale on today.

Sorry, all I did was read your first line "Star ratings for overall ability and potential have an error margin based on the ability of the staff assessing them." From that, I thought I would offer some insight into how people can find the rating of each staff member.

I would agree but staff don't always seem to be as good as the attributes show. I find a better way of seeing who are the best staff is to insert their "rating". Now I have no idea where these stars come from but if you go into staff, right-click the table title and choose insert, then scroll to general and choose "rating". You can then sort all the staff into their rating and see any weak points in your staff for find decent staff available.

Star rating is not a decent formula, it's very hit-and-miss. The most annoying part about it is it changes for seemingly no reason up or down - it changes from when you scout them to when they turn up and then it changes during the season and at the start of the next season. The only thing I know for sure is when a player has a high potential, he won't improve unless I play him. This means if I won't play anyone under 3-star level then the 2 star level players with higher potential all have to go out on loan to a decent club. If that fails there is no point hanging on to them so I sell them. But stars are less important for some duties, it's the attributes you need to look at, who cares if a 6ft 6in poacher can't cross, pass, tackle etc as long as he can head the ball and has decent strength and movement? If you want him to have 5 stars good luck with that one.

It sounds like the current laptop needs the fans cleaned out and the thermal paste changed. That's not hard to do and there will be YT vids for your model. As for new I suspect any £1000 laptop will run FM 24 well and FM25 should be much more demanding. The way I would go is CPU > Graphics Card > Ram > Build > Warentee - All on top of your own usability requirements - for example, I hate loud clicks of the keyboard but I also like the mousepad buttons to be separate. Then the is glare number pad design to think about. Leave it as late as possible, the deeper into the year the cheaper things become up to Oct.

As already As already said all these are easily capable for FM25 even on the wildest guess. I would always choose processor over graphics card but if you are going the graphics way it's also t what the panel is capable of and what sort glare etc etc. My advice and an old git is don't go into debt for a laptop. Perhaps you can try these before you buy?

I didn't know they did that. But then again with all this stuff it is often used for PR and the person saying it hasn't even spoken to the people who know. Sure the will be an increase but I would be amazed if it was wide enough to rule out more than 5% of the existing FM users. But we'll have to see. I know I won't be too fused as I never buy the update till I can get it for a reasonable price, I didn't buy FM24 till I could get it under £20 :-)

Only the highest quality ones, because I've found in general 90% of them are bad at both ends of the pitch. So depends if you want to defend with your WB or ATTACK if you don't have the few in FM that are really good.

I've had these problems in the past, the players trying to make the cross have to be able to dribble, have decent pace & be able to cross. If you don't have that then you will need to play slower and create the space for them by using other players to take the full backs inside. You might also want to try removing the centre AM and having two forwards, and pushing the DM into CM as you are pressing but if you do that you want at least 3 of your defenders on defence. On defence your full back will still get forward if you are pressing because they'll always go into space created by that pressing.