think I have sorted it phew what a nightmare
I use a system due to increased number in teams world cup/euros there is no nations league[I run some regional comps in europe+ mini leagues based on rankings with promotion every 2 years, without friendlies/nations league nations are playing the same anount of games but condensed into the summer eg home nations/scandi cup/baltic etc that take place when there are no Euros/WC a mini tournament as such]
and due to this I had edited international friendlies just to 1 fixture per year , this was causing the issue with a saved game not being allowed to load, as once I removed that international friendlies competition from the file everything seems fine.
only issue I am seeing now with my group fixtures is they are all play at 20:00 even though they have been staggered to play at different times[15:00 + 20:00] to allow for 2 games at the same stadium per day
the KO rounds run as set up with venue+times using the specific stadiums using the offset option
but not the group games all group fixtures are set up using specific stadiums too[using offset rules] and it works for 75% of the time but some games do not get played at the stadium specified, but all games play at 20:00 when they have not been set to this