NineCloudNine

It’s your tactics mate

That’s true too . Too few are willing to accept that part of the joy of football is how totally random it can sometimes be !

It’s not luck. Penalty taking is a skill that can be practiced like any other. Dealing with the pressure is also not luck and there are plenty of techniques for improving how you manage it. The myth that it’s a lottery is deeply ingrained in English football, but it’s not true.

Dortmund’s AI clearly cheated against PSG too. I know it’s a cheap shot, but I do wonder what some of the conspiracy theorists here would make of a two-legged tie where they had 44 shots, hit the woodwork 6 times, scored 0 from 5.36 xG and lost 0-2 including a header from a corner.

Yeah, but perhaps not 5 days before the last game of the season with a title on the line !

Seems like a pretty authentic experience to me. Promoted beyond your club’s expectations, budget and talent and probably going back down. Just enjoy the ride!

Let’s see if I understand … you used a cheat tactic because it’s necessary to cheat because the game cheats, and the more you cheat, the more the game cheats, so you’re going to go back to only cheating a bit, so that you can reduce the amount that the game cheats because you dislike it so much when the game cheats that you feel you have to come here to rage post about it?

Why don’t you save, try it to see, then go back to your saved game if it doesn’t? It’ll take you about a minute, then you can come back here and answer your own question

Yes you can terminate a contract (right click on player - contract - "release on a free"). You have to pay the remaining loyalty bonus and all wages due till the end of the contract. Your board might object/block it if it's a lot of money. You can offer a 'mutual termination' instead, though i'm not sure what (if any) difference that makes to the amount you have to pay.

Click the > next to the fee/wage offer to expand the details. Or press the red X to reject the offer.

I reckon they are actually playing the personalised role, but the form screen is displaying the default role instead. I use personalised roles and have not had any reason to think they’re not being deployed correctly in matches.

“I’ve done the same thing ten times and it always went wrong. Why do you make me do this to myself?”

He’s being crowded by the IF and the AM on attack duties, and there’s too big a gap between your front 4 and the midfield. Change the IF, the AM and the BWM to support duties and see how it goes.

No-one has sought to prove this. You have created a strawman, the doubled down on it. You took too literally the statement of mine that you quoted. I have expanded on this above. 'Success' in this context also does not mean winning every match, it means outperforming the expectations of the club the player is managing, which might well mean merely avoiding relegation - and no-one in this thread has said otherwise. You are correct to point out that the number of variables involved in a football match is enormous and cannot possibly be fully controlled. You are also correct that this means the margin between bad, ok, good and great managers is surprisingly small statistically. However, these conditions do not apply to FM because of the disparity between what the player knows and what the AI knows. While much remains unknown or uncontrollable, the ability gap between an experienced FM player and their AI opponent is vast and can easily overwhelm the element of unpredictability and randonmess which remains.

Neither of these things are necessary. Football is far too complex to be modeled with the precision you are demanding here and the need for that precison is a strawman you've created. As @Costav said you are conflating probability and likelihood. Your initial response to me was also based on taking literally a comment that was obviously not intended to suggest that an experienced FM player has complete knowledge or control of every variable. I have expanded on that in my post above.

I was wondering if someone who actually knows a bit about modelling would chip in . Let me expand a little on the original statement of mine that triggered this debate: Firstly that's obviously hyperbole because "know all the right ways to make it work" implies a degree of omniscience that none of us have about how the ME works. A better way to put it might be: An experienced player knows which variables have the biggest effect on performance in FM and which can be ignored/delegated (eg, morale is vital, role stars can be ignored, training can be delegated) An experienced player knows things that the AI doesn't know (for example, wonderkids are a great transfer policy) An experienced player won't make rookie errors (like making promises you can't keep or clicking the 'wrong' option in a player interaction) @GreenTriangle's model is actually an interesting starting point for understanding a real football match. There are dozens or even hundreds of variables, all available to both managers (and indeed players). Football is a low-scoring game, which adds a large amount of variation in outcomes. The margin of 'success' here is very small. Pep Guardiola, widely considered one of the greatest managers of all time, has a career win rate of 'only' 73% despite always having managed at clubs with title-winning ambitions and quality. So the small margin between a 'good' manager and an 'expert' one might indeed only be a few percent. That model doesn't apply to FM though, because the expert player doesn't just know how to control variables, they know which ones can be entirely ignored and which are crucial. The margin over the AI is substantial. 'Success' here is also not a win/lose binary, but (as @Costav says) relative to the expectations of the club and the strength of the opposition.

I think that’s right and Saka would definitely be one who does both, even if he is (even) more dangerous cutting in onto his left foot.

That was what I was thinking of. On the face of it having Ben White as an IFB-d doesn’t make sense, given his marauding down the touchline. But if the aim is to have him combine tucking in with overlapping runs then that role combined with a gets forward PPM could he really strong. On Saka and Martinelli, I think they are best recreated as Wingers with cuts inside PPMs. This will push them higher and wider and cutting in later than an IF role. PPMs like moves into channels and gets into opposition area would also change the way they play.

One thing often overlooked in specific tactical recreations like this is PPMs. A FB with ‘gets forward whenever possible’ will play differently to one without, whatever role they are given. Same with a W with ‘cuts inside’, who will play differently to one without. I find PPMs really powerful in recreating particular styles, especially when the style in question is IRL very dependent on particular players, which I think is true of Arteta’s Arsenal (but perhaps less so of Guardiola’s Man City).

There’s a big thread in the Editor Downloads section here, with links. It’s a lot of different files and you don’t have to use them all. I’ve never had any problems.

There’s a thread right now in the Tactics forum from a new player who can’t make anything work and is on the point of quitting. The vast majority of players who struggle won’t even make it that far, they’ll just quit and do/play something else. The regulars here have persevered through multiple FMs, learned to navigate a mindblowingly complex UI, studied Rashidi tutorials on what ‘mentality’ means (clue: it’s not what you’d think it means), learned what to do when players throw tantrums, worked out how to buy all the wonderkids. And so on. We’re the weird ones. I trust SI to have a much better grasp of the experience of the playerbase than we do. They have actual data, research, patterns. If you overachieve it’s because you’ve mastered the game and know all the ways to make it work right. Well done, you can now /flex on the forums about how easy it all is.

I have seen nothing on this either way. Given the strength of the modding community here and the tools SI have consistently made available for free it would be stunning to discover that editing wasn't possible - or was limited - in FM25 That would also mark the end of my FM playing days because I have never, ever, even once played a save with an unmodded version of the game.

Although it might seem the club is "no better" than yours in current achievement/position terms, in fact it will likely have a higher reputation which is why the player is willing to alter his demands. Reputation is far too blunt a tool in FM and has been so - as @jozza800 implies - for ever.

No-one is suggesting that active development of academy/young* players should happen all the time, or with every club, or with every prospect. You are right that it is fiercely difficult to break through to a top team, but it does sometimes happen when a gem emerges. Alexander-Arnold, Saka, Foden, Rashford and Lewis Miley (to pick some examples) did not come out of their academies as ready-made first team regulars, they were actively developed. There are some clubs and some coaches who never prioritise young players. There are also some situations where clubs or coaches who once did, don't do so now, and clubs or coaches who never used to, starting to. The point is that this is dynamic - there are clear preferences and differences in coaches and club culture, both long-standing and evolving. That is simply not the case in FM. I agree it should be hard to do and I agree it should not always work, but those preferences and philosophies (which do exist in the game) should mean something in the game world. * These two things are often conflated but they are different. Your point about smart talent identification and use of data is correct - IRL Brighton use this to find and excellent young players around the world and actively develop them for sale upwards. FM Brighton, on the other hand, make the exact same transfers as everyone else.

It’s possible - though fiddly - to change competition squad selection rules to be as restrictive as you want on homegrown (club and nation) players and foreign players. The AI does adapt over time because AI clubs/managers do ‘know’ about registration restrictions. You can also add youth team development to club culture and board preferences. As mentioned these seem under-tuned and should act to differentiate clubs, but used widely would presumably make some difference. This shouldn’t be necessary though. The tools are there in the game, they just don’t make much or any difference.