Freakiie

I honestly don't even care whether he's good enough, I just care about having someone that parks his ass on top of the CDs and tries to keep them busy rather than drifting around 24/7 looking for the same space that all 3 guys behind him also want to drift into and finding none of it as a result.

Still not playing with an actual striker. Just how often are coaches gonna play Müller as a false 9, have it hopelessly fail and attempt it again the next game anyway.

Flick always plays with a very passive right back, it's why Pavard looked so much better under Flick than under Nagelsmann, as he was more of a third CD than a RB. The alternative to Süle in Flick's previous matches was Kehrer, who is more of a CD as well (and afaik has been CD entire season at WHU?). Admittedly, Germany doesn't have a proper RWB currently either, unless you move Kimmich back there. Only real RB in the selection is Klostermann who has been injured the entire season and had to leave the field in the friendly against Oman as well. His style was pretty suicidal with Bayern as well, but Bayern managed to press most teams so hard that very few could cleanly play their way out of trouble making things work. With Germany that just doesn't seem to be the case, which is weird considering half the team is Bayern players and should very much be used to this style.

Yeah after backtracking into his own half to help defensively.

Well when you don't take your chances and then give it away this easily the moment the opposition bothers attacking you for like 5 minutes. The German experience for the past... what 6 years by now?

There's Füllkrug who made his NT debut at 29 just before the WC. Just haven't produced a proper number 9 since Gomez (and no I don't count Werner ).

Clearly that's just a very dedicated Bellingham fan that got lost in the wrong match.

Well, I guess that's one reason to have Gündogan in the team, Germany doesn't have any other penalty takers.

I mean, anyone ever seen a decent match from Gündogan in the Germany shirt? Can't say I can recall him ever replicating his City form for Germany and I'd much rather see Goretzka there.

Yeah, I'd definitely rate a Gosens in form much higher than Raum, but haven't really seen anything of him since his big injury.

Flick has pretty much always played with one conservative back and one very aggressive one and Süle has played most of his games at Dortmund on RB this season. His technical skills are much better than you'd expect from your general blockhead CD as well.

Not taking Flekken despite his very solid performances at Freiburg has been quite a surprise here. As for the goalies that did get the call, Pasveer has been in horrid form the last couple weeks (but he has "experience" ), Bijlow as always spent most of the season injured, so Noppert it is. Cilessen supposedly wasn't called up due to him being a negative influence when not playing and quite frankly if your competition is Noppert, Bijlow or Pasveer, I'd be angry at not playing as well!

Gamesplanet is ~€39. Still more expensive than shopto + shipping (for me at least), but still the cheapest option among the official retailers.

If Hertha keep their sugar daddy status in FM then they could definitely be an interesting club for you. 16th in the BL last season and a squad that isn't really any better than that, but in FM they got a pretty generous sugar daddy so their financial capabilities are way beyond their real life status.

You get a physical box, with the Steam key inside and no CD. That's how box sales for computer games tend to work nowadays. Just add it to your cart and you'll see it includes a shipping fee, which obviously wouldn't be required if it was a purely digital sale.

Shopto just dropped their price to €29 for me, guess those physical copies aren't selling too well. This also means it's now definitely cheaper than any alternative I've seen despite €8 shipping costs.

Not sure if SI will give Hertha sugar daddy finances again in FM23, but Germany in FM22 had some decent top tier competition with obviously Bayern being there, Hertha turning into German City and occasionally Dortmund/Leipzig don't suck (although that one can really vary a lot per save). No restrictions whatsoever regarding transfers though, so you can pretty easily spiral out of control with cheap wonderkids in Germany. Out of the lower leagues, Belgium tends to get a lot of sugar daddies (I think in my current save there's 4 sugar daddy clubs and a very strong Anderlecht), but that's in like 2045, so you'd have to holiday a while to see that build up and money alone doesn't guarantee AI competitiveness in a league like Belgium. The Netherlands has Ajax as a massive financial powerhouse compared to the rest of the league, but PSV/Feyenoord are nowhere near them financially so you can probably snag up second place behind Ajax very quickly and start getting CL money from that. Finally, Ukraine could be interesting, although the top team squads will be absolutely ravaged in FM23. Shaktar tends to massively dominate the league, you barely have any income from the league itself and with the relatively strict foreigner rules you need to keep a solid Ukrainian core, which should make for a decent challenge even long term.

Technically, every own goal is a 0.00 xG goal Jokes aside, I have seen actual 0 xG goals as well. I think the game will register some things as passes, clearances, crosses etc rather than goal attempts, automatically giving them 0 xG, but a miss hit cross can still turn into an absolute fluke goal and the result is that 0.00 xG goal.

But it's still a box that needs to be shipped from the UK to my place for €8, instead of just giving me a steam code like they've done in the past years, and who knows when it will actually arrive, meaning I might not actually get beta access.

Seeing how shopto delivers a boxed copy this year for some reason, anyone has a good spot for non UK buyers? I checked out Fanatical, but for me it has a massive price difference compared to shopto.

I mean, there's two different aspects here. Should a good tactic, with a good team, with players suited to that tactic be successful without too much tinkering? Yes. Should there be tactics that you can just shove onto any random team and massively over perform? Preferably not. There are plenty of successful coaches that only really have a plan A, however, it generally takes them quite a while to successfully implement that plan A and they require players that suit their style and time for the players to learn the style. A lot of top managers don't shuffle their tactics a lot (and why would they, they're generally the top dog), but they also tend to have the financial backing to buy the players needed to play their style. The issue with the successful plug and play tactics in FM is that they can easily be implemented across a way too large variety of teams, regardless of player styles and quality. In one of my future journey man saves I started at Dynamo Kyiv, made a strikerless 5-2-3 because why not, instantly challenged Shaktar (who had won every season until then, so they had like 10 titles in a row or something) in my first season and if it wasn't for Ukraine having play offs in case #1 and #2 are on the same points I would've won the championship (of course the only loss to Shaktar that season was that very play off match, after the worst penalty shootout I've ever seen ), I then dominated Ukraine in season 2, moved on to Mainz, same tactic, massively over performed and dragged Mainz into the CL in my first full season, moved to Barcelona, again same 5-2-3 and dominated Spain and won the CL. Now I'm by no means some strategical mastermind, but the fact that I could take that 5-2-3 across 3 different leagues and teams in different positions, with all 3 not having squads that really were suited for a 5-2-3 and easily out perform expectations right off the bat feels way too easy.

He can't play in the Bundesliga until he's 16 anyway, so that's not a worry for now. If you have a good mentor for him get working on that. Then just have a look at him when he turns 16 and is actually allowed to play for your first team. If he develops even a bit he'll be way too good to just let him sit in your youth team. As for keeping him around, make sure to put him on a nice long contract (you can use the club contract extension to give him a 3+3 even as a youngster), suck up to him a lot so you're his favorite personnel (giving him his first team debut will also be a massive boost for that). Even if you fail to convince him to stick around if an offer comes in, with a long enough contract and good play time he will shut up sooner or later, at which point you can simply give him another stupidly long contract.

Rashidi has done saves where he uses a different tactic every match and those saves do perfectly fine. Tactical familiarity should not be what makes or breaks a tactic. As for positional familiarity for players, they suffer from a penalty to decision making if they play in a position they're not familiar with. Only the position though, role and duty are irrelevant. A player can still play a role or duty the game does not rate him highly in without any penalties. Of course, the reason he's not rated highly means he doesn't have the attributes to excel in that role, so don't be surprised if the player won't perform. As for yellow cards, players definitely take less risks if they already have a yellow card. However, positions that will make a lot of tackles or telling someone on a yellow card to tackle hard remains a pretty big risk. Even if they don't pick up a second yellow, there might be moments they don't step in because they're afraid of fouling the opposition, so it's definitely something to keep an eye on. As for aggressiveness, aggressiveness is how likely a player is to make a challenge. It's largely a positive attribute, as you want your players to be making tackles and winning the ball back. I guess there are some combinations that could be bad, like a fullback (generally the position in FM that makes the most tackles) that has very high aggressiveness and poor tackling that might end up causing lots of fouls. Most of the time though, high aggressiveness is no issue. The players you want to watch out for regarding tackling harder are those with high dirtiness. It's a hidden attribute, so you need to rely on the scout/coach report to see it. If the player has a negative trait along the lines of "has a tendency of bending the rules" it means he has high dirtiness and those players you definitely do not want in areas where they make a lot of tackles, as they tend to be absolute card magnets.

Most of the templates aren't necessarily weird, aside from the absurd amounts of AFs with single digit finishing and there being way too many dwarf CDs. However, templates tend to be very one dimensional and further development tends to be centred around a select few roles, which results in newgens having very little uniqueness, as their stats all end up being very similar.

Players will drift towards the general personality of the squad, so players with above average determination for your squad can slowly see their determination drop. So, if you want to increase it, get players that are very influential/team leaders with high determination. You can also criticize players when they play poorly (6.4 or lower) and at times that will boost determination and/or work rate. In case of young players you can also mentor them.