Flohrinho

I have noticed one absolute improvement. In FM 2023, squads seemed to grow out of proportion. In FM 2024 the squads seem to be quite small, more often than not around the 25 player mark. This means that changing teams in a long save seems to be less of a hassle if you are deep in the future. You don't inherit 40 player squads with two thirds of the players unhappy.

For years now the way NPC teams with high possession play in the game has annoyed me and nothing seems to change about it. In real life you usually see teams like City enjoy a lot of possession, while also usually being the team with the most chances during a game. On top of that they enjoy the most possession in the oppositions half but not so in FM. I just played the league leaders in terms of possession. Now clearly given the shots in the game Newcastle, on the right, was not the dominant team in this match because the majority of possession happened here. Pretty much all in their own half with the biggest hot spot being their GK. In real life the passing around the back and boring your opponent to death is pretty much extinct, thanks to pressing. Losing the ball in your final third is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to your but the NPC teams can do it without much hassle, simply due to how pressing works in this game. There seems to be an invisible area on the pitch that is almost impossible to press, unless you play a 424 it seems and even with that formation passing around the back will still happen if a team is really hell bent on turtling out the game. I really hope that this is something the ME team is looking into because it's really annoying that your full court press so to speak just turns back at a certain area in the oppositions final third and lets them pass the ball around. Apart from that I still have to say I like this ME very much and the ME team has done some crazy good work this year with all the nice new animations it is looking better than ever and I can't wait for the graphics updates next when I hope it will get even better. Keep up the good work guys.

Awesome, best skin for FM2023 going to use it again for FM2024. @Wozzie thanks for the great work, you rock.

I usually come here to complain but this time I really have to give a compliment to you guys, especially the match engine team and animations team. Superb work, it's the first time really I feel like the players play together an utilize space in a clever way instead of just running along certain areas which are determined by their role and duty. Imo this is the best ME ever, if you upgrade the graphics next season I think it will be absolutely marvellous. On top of that, the new set piece editor is great. Great concept, great usability, I love it. Very welcome change. It takes away a lot of the possibilities for unwanted errors in the setup.

I think it's a money problem, in FM the best foreign teams never seem to be able to stay competitive. I don't think I have seen Bayern in more than one semi final in the 8 seasons my save game is running, Barca and Real usually go out early as well. Itlian clubs seem to do somewhat better but usually in the semi final it's like 2-4 English teams in recent season it seems.

Interesting, I feel like the majority of dribbles I see go straight into the defender, lose the ball and you get countered. That even seems to happen regularly to players with 18+ dribbling skills. But I totally agree that you rarely ever see a player beat another with a dribbling in a narrow space.

Is it possible that the game doesn't know offside rules? Striker is in offside position as ball is played to him but doesn't go after the ball, opposition goal keeper comes out passes the ball to his defender, the defender tries a pass to the other defender which my striker intercepts, the goal is then checked for offside. Of course, with the scene of the pass that my striker didn't even get to.

Weirdly enough it seems to mainly effect my CBs, I guess it's because I rotate them the least? But yeah I'm not even half way through the season and 2 out of three always get a fitness warning from my head physio.

4.8gb on my PC

I haven't attended a press conference in years, the only way to screw me over is make my assistant awful at press conferences. I should probably stop giving them ideas.

I like it much more when my defender is like way ahead, stops and only starts running again after the opposition striker has run past him. I try not to be too hard on him, narcolepsy is a serious matter, sadge.

So I was struggling a bit to get a 3421 going and while trying to find things that would work I simply slapped @knap's instructions he had on the 4231 Venom tactic and to my surprised it worked remarkably well. In my first season I got barely second, second season I actually won the league on the last day against Bayern but the tactic always felt a bit toothless, having high possession and passing percentages but only really scrapping out results. Third season I popped on the new 3421 Venom version after like 5 games where I really struggled to score and completely exploded from that point on. The formation: The team instructions and player instructions are like I said simply copied over from the 4231 Venom tactic, with which I also had great success in the past. The WCBs both have the same PI as the ball playing defender in My league result: My best CL games: That being said, the two results above are actually achieved with switching from attacking to cautious, which worked wonders for my big game performances the tactic goes from all-out pressure Knap-style tactic to a more deliberate more counter-attacking tactic, and it worked like a charm in big games or games where I felt like my opponents were getting too many counter-attacks off, and I needed to be more careful. As you can also see the tactic gets a decent possession and passing success rate, without overdoing it. I finished the league with 58% possession (only Bayern was better with 61%) and 88% passing success rate on average. Some more info on my team and what players I think work well in which positions. The team is what in past tactic tests has probably been called a sub-top team. The majority of my players are in the 150-160ca range, apart from my wingbacks, who are both below 150ca but work really well and Bellingham who is my stand-out player in midfield. As AMs I playmakers and shadow strikers both work well, my best one last season was actually Moukoko who had his first season becoming a starter for me. Simons & Reus have also done well, whereas Simons shines more with providing chances and Moukoko more as a second finisher, scoring more than 20 goals last season. Reus was pretty well-balanced chipping in 10+ assists and 10+ goals. Reyna I can't really say too much about, he played well when he played but apart from that was usually injured. As a striker I felt Adeyemi worked slightly better than Haller, but both worked actually quite well and ended up being number 1 and 2 in the League goalscorer charts. With all the balls over the top shenanigans it's also important to have a central ball playing defender that is excellent in the air and has excellent positioning, he will have to deal with the majority of these balls, it's how I concede the majority of the few goals I concede. 3421-attacking-v1.2.fmf

Oh boy, I totally forgot what a ***** fest the whole club world cup thing is. First game 2/3 of the squad is on international duty, the gray stand-in players the game provides for me all play in positions that are not part of my formation. Just brilliant SI, absolute piece of genius.

So I decided to pay some more attention to the social media stuff the game "simulates" and I'm not sure why I'm surprised that it's just as void of context as any other interaction in the game as well. Newspaper headline "Borussia Dortmund's hopes of beating RB Salzburg have taken a significant hit with Jude Bellingham ruled out through suspension." Yeah okay, I get it we are missing an important player in the second leg I could live with that headline, IF WE HADN'T JUST BEATEN THEM 7-2 at their stadium FFS!!! This social media fluff is exactly what is getting on my nerve in this game, all this low effort crap that has nothing to do with what's happening in the game and just gets triggered by certain events, not taking anything else into account. I get it, it's not an important part of the game and I will be ignoring it again, but it leaves a sour taste, it feels like SI simply doesn't care if their new features work as long as they at the time had a new feature to announce, and then it's left bare bones and broken in the game, and the game is completely riddled with these elements by now. Please, SI I want to like your game again, but it's really hard right now, and I don't even think the ME is as awful as some other posters here do, but the overall experience gets worse and worse year after year which is absolutely depressing.

Call me "paranoid" but I think the opposition also studies the pre-match reports and if certain formations have so far done really well against you will look to play that formation if the manager has it in his choice of tactics. At least that is what it feels like, I don't have any hard data on it, but it would also make sense game wise that other teams chose to play against you in a manner that they know will hurt you.

On the long term save debate, I have to add that I'm only 4 season into my "long term" save, and I already notice the competition in the PL getting weaker. First season with United I only came third, Liverpool and City seemed unbeatable. Second season I narrowly won the league with 1 point ahead of Liverpool and only secured the title on the last day. Third season it was City who pushed me until the 3 last games of the season, they lost, drew and won their last three games so overall the league win looked quite comfortable with 9 points. Now the fourth season, it seems their squad is getting too old and the new players they bought don't fit into their system. I won the league on game day 32, with 6 games to go, end of the season neither Chelsea (2nd) nor Liverpool (3rd) got over 80 points.

Despite all my complaints about the game, here is something I really like about it. The statistics section has improved year upon year and is starting to get really useful, so keep up the good work.

Well said, I have been harping on about this for years, mainly about the interaction module but if there is too much stuff that doesn't contribute to the game it's time to take stuff away. The problem is SI keeps adding systems on top of systems and it's not improving the product anymore. This is a clear sign that they need to get rid of some stuff and preferably not stuff that are quality of life improvements for the player, like the mentioned time bar.

I don't necessarily agree that pressing is OP, after all it's the current "meta" in real football as well for a reason. Leaving opponents less time to make decisions and closing out passing options fast is a really effective way to play football. But here is where I'm totally with you, this shouldn't be possible with every team, but in FM it is. In my just for fun save with PSG I played a 4231 with Neymar, Mbappé, Messi and Soler up front, apart from Soler none of these players has aggression or work rate above 10 and my pressing should have failed miserably, just look at how Ronaldo negatively influenced the pressing game of Manchester United, and I was able to play pressing in the game with 3 players up front that all have about the same work rate as Ronaldo. In short, I don't think player attributes are factored in enough when it comes to what players and teams are able to do on the pitch.

Awesome looking skin, gone give this a shot in my attributeless save.

I think the same phenomenon can be sometimes seen when defenders don't react to long balls until the opposition striker has passed them. That is the time they start running as well but not before, it's not always the case, but it happens way too often and just looks stupid. What's also hilarious is if your player with dribbling 18 decides it's time to run headlong, in a straight line, directly into the next opposition player. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

So first off a big thanks to Knap for his lovely 4231Venom tactic. First season I struggled with Manchester United and my 433 that worked so well in FM22, so I looked around and found this tactic and after switching to it I never looked back. Won 2 league titles and 2 champions leagues in as many seasons, now in my fourth season I find myself facing more and more teams, including other big teams that park the bus and try to counter-attack me, so I played around a bit with the tactic making a more secure version of it, without trying to sacrifice the pressure on my opponents, just make the build up more secure. I also have made a 4411 of the Venom base which I often use to kill of games, especially if I meet opponents who keep throwing their wing backs at me. The possession version is a bit misleading, don't expect to get huge amounts of possession, at best it gets around 60%. The passing success rate is usually what I really pay attention to here, because I mainly want the build up game to be more secure without losing too much of it's punch, you should end up around 90%, between 88% and 92% was what I would usually see with this version of the tactic. The 4411 is also great if you ever go a man down, switch to it and take the AM off for the new player that fills whichever position got sent off. It essentially becomes a 441. ME23.1VENOMKnap4231-floling-possession-tweak.fmf ME23.1VENOMKnap4411IW-flolingtweak.fmf

I usually only set up players for the development list, putting all my settings in. These settings get completely ignored. Only if I then get into manually offering him to clubs the settings get followed, that surely isn't how it should be, right? I mean, otherwise, what is the development list for if those settings get ignored?

Is it a known bug that the loan manager keeps ignoring my development list settings? I clearly instructed the player only to be loaned out if the agreed playing time is a "regular starter", but my loan manager keeps accepting loans with the status "fringe player". Really annoying. Only after I manually offer the player out for loan with "regular starter" demand the loan manager seems to accept the right loans and reject those who offer less playing time.

I always love reading threads like this, but I have to be honest, I never got possession tactics to work properly. I either find myself in a place where my possession isn't anything special, 54-58% over a season or at the point where I'm just not doing well, it seems like every time I get to keep the ball more than 60% of the time I'm blunting myself attacking wise and usually start doing worse. I totally get what you mean when you say "too much possession" isn't a good thing either, but I wouldn't have thought this would already happen when I go above 56% possession on average. Okay, complaint over, keep up the good work with these threads, love reading them.