Freakiie

From my experience in FM and looking at how the AI approaches squad building with teams that tend to have relatively few players in real life (Bayern is great for this, small squad irl and lots of money to splash in FM), the core of AI squad building is a 23 man squad. 3 goalies, 20 outfield players, so the first eleven, a back up for every outfield player and two back up goalies. Add to that a couple player extra due to youth players moving to the first team, the AI generally being very proactive with their budget so a lot of teams buy before they sell, then buy again after they sell, AI having a weird quirk of double purchases and you'll see the bloat beyond the original 23. One of the major issues is that the AI is horrible at slimming down a squad. Player requests a transfer because he never plays? AI sells him, then instantly uses that money to get in a replacement for a player that left because he never played. Sometimes the new player is actually so good that he can replace one of the old players (who then requests a transfer half a year later because now he isn't playing any more), but often these replacements that clubs pay silly money for never play either and end up getting sold for half the price a year later. Only to then get replaced again in a never ending cycle. Also, this 23 man squad framework seems pretty universal, so even clubs that play 1 match a week for almost the entire season run around with back ups for every position, that obviously will never play, because the first eleven is never tired. Doesn't help that AI managers are horrible at rotation, even if they have high rotation stats. As a result, even teams that should play enough games that their players should get plenty of matches have a bunch of players unhappy about play times and a bunch of players that are about to kick the bucket because they play way too many games.

The AI aren't complete strangers to retraining player positions, not to mention a lot of fullbacks tend to be somewhat accomplished in the WB position as well. As to why they're bidding for your players? You're a newly promoted side, so your reputation will generally be relatively low, at the same time you're performing really well so your players are probably getting good ratings. So, from the AIs perspective they see some strong performances from players at a club with (probably) lower reputation, so they hope they can attract said players being the bigger club. From your perspective it might be weird because their players have better attributes, but the AI is heavily influenced by actual performance, so if your players, despite worse attributes, are performing well the AI will be interested.

If you look at the offside lines the game draws, they can be a bit funky at times. I guess that if the game were to draw the line right there it would put it on the half way line (even if the 3D presentation doesn't look like it at all) and thus considers the player to still be fully within his own half. Would be interesting to see a 2D replay of this situation and see where that puts Lautaro at the point of the pass.

Fullbacks in general are some of the most foul prone players in the game, so dirtiness, even at levels where your coaches won't rate it as a negative (so say a super clean player at 1 vs a not dirty but not completely clean player at 10) can make quite a difference in how many yellows they accumulate over a season. As for your final point, I think one of the big differences here is the importance of matches. A cup match as an underdog isn't going to put your players under that much pressure, a big match in the Championship when you're cruising towards promotion might not be the most worrying thing either, however, if your team is set to fight against relegation in the Premier League, every point matters, which might stress players a lot more. I could very well imagine that under the hood the importance of say p1 vs p2 in the Championship is completely different from say p17 vs p18 in the Premier League in the aspect of how important getting 3 points is. Add to that, as a top team in the Championship you will generally be winning a lot more, as a result your morale will also be much better and there will generally be way less frustration within your team.

Well this seems like a fair contract offer, let me just adjust my budgets a bit and see if I can negotiate out that 10% yearly wage rise. Player: I'm instantly aware that there's suddenly more wage budget available, you better give me triple my initial demands!!!!! Meanwhile, if I simply adjust my budgets and accept their initial demands he's perfectly happy to sign for that measly 4m/year (and yes he has that 10% YWR, but that's still way less than the 11m/year otherwise....) I know this is a thing in FM and it's why I always keep my wage budget at the lowest amount possible, even if it means I don't keep any money from transfers because "our wage budget is doing poor", but geez, this was one of the most extreme examples of this nonsense I've seen in a long time and SI really should address this nonsense at some point....

Yeah, I've generally was relatively successful in getting rid of bloat visions the board loves to add every year (Hey, we had some minor success in the past 2 season, so go sign high profile players already! Who cares that we're supposed to be a club focused on bringing in young players and developing them!). Although this season it seems to be "make the most of set pieces" that just keeps getting thrown at you sooner or later. Personally, I really don't mind that one since I don't sign CDs that can't jump anyway, but it's really weird to be told to make the most out of set pieces while you're at a club like Barcelona!

What's your reputation and coaching badges looking like? With multiple promotions you might be going up the leagues faster than your trainer profile can keep up, so only clubs from leagues beneath you would be interested, but since you're at a higher league club they don't bother approaching you?

Yeah, I'd try to up the mentality a bit first. With your current tactics your CDs will be very low risk and will quickly resort to the save option of hoofing it up field the moment they're under any pressure. If you don't want to change things too much I'd start by simply changing one of your CDs to a BPD, giving him a bit more freedom to take some risks and try to build from the back, rather than hoofing it up field. Could also try "play out from defence", but with the Cautious mentality you will probably still see a lot of hoofing it up field under pressure.

Yes, Belgium clubs can have Tycoon takeovers.

His attributes make it a bit more likely that he can unlearn the PPM, as it does not suit a player with good passing, but once a PPM has been learned it can be incredibly hard to get rid off. Best bet is to push his passing up even further and just keep trying over and over.

Please don't get me started on "comes deep to get ball" I really don't understand why so many pure goalscoring strikers are picking that trait up in FM21/22. And then of course you can't get rid of it because supposedly it suits one of the attributes your player has really well! Same way a lot of full backs/defensive midfielders end up getting cursed by "stays back at all times". Always ironic to see the media description say "attacking fullback" and then the player has "stays back at all times, plays short simple passes" as PPMs. Definitely what I'd associate with an attacking fullback! Anyway, rant aside, the PPMs I like a lot are plays one-twos, as that's not really something you can selectively encourage on a single player and plays through balls (can't encourage those enough right?). I also really like gets into opposition area/arrives late in box as movement PPMs for CMs, but I very rarely get players that actually can learn it. The occasional player you find that has one of those PPMs though can be an absolute menace. Other than that, there aren't too many PPMs I actively go out of my way to teach. Round goalkeeper is one I occasionally use with the weird newgen strikers that never learned how to shoot, the other finishing PPMs I'm honestly not sure whether they really make a difference. I've had a lot of "places shots" players and I can't say they felt like more efficient finishers with the PPM than without.

It's anecdotal, but in the couple cases where I took over an AI team at some point and they had someone wearing the captains band at time with high dirtiness my team started collecting yellows and reds for fun. Then, as soon as I realized that and sorted out the captain structure to ensure that guy would never wear the band my discipline got way better.

It's a hidden attribute, if your coaches/scouts tell you a player has a competitive streak it means he has high dirtiness.

I strongly question the description suggesting that it's a one way street with higher leadership being better though. From experience I know that a Captain with negative personality attributes can be a horrible influence on the team. So, why would a high leadership player with a bad personality suddenly be a solely positive influence? He might not be as influential as whoever is wearing the band, but I'd still be very wary of a high leadership player with high dirtiness or poor handling of pressure.

Player value constantly fluctuates, so this isn't really a bug in that sense, but it sure is annoying. Basically, if a players value drops a tiny bit (maybe his form got slightly worse after the last game, so the game shaves off 100k), his maximum accepted value drops a tiny bit and as a result the 10m he was previously fine with is now only 9,9m and he'll complain. If you don't try to push your players to their maximum asking price, but leave it 1-2 clicks below it, it shouldn't be quite as big of an issue unless something forces a really big value drop.