Football Manager 2017 League/Cup changes?

[Stewart1111]

 

Hi. This will probably be a long message, but please read it. I know FM17 hasn't been released yet so no one will be able to give me a definite answer (unless someone who made the actual game replies to me) but before I buy the game I wanted to know a couple of things, and I know before they release the game a few weeks before they like to announce some of the new features in the game, but I don't think they'll mention what I'm about to ask. Anyways, I know Football Manager tries to replicate the game to real life as possible but I was wondering if anyone could let me know about certain league/cup changes. There’s four things in total I would like to know, but if they're planning to reveal this before the release of the game then let me know and I’ll happily wait.

The first two things I wanted to ask are about the Betfred Cup (Scottish League Cup) and the Irn-Bru Cup (Scottish Challenge Cup) - These two cups have been completely revamped this year and I was wondering if they'll do the same in Football Manager 2017. The League Cup has changed to a group stage format. These group stages are played at the START of the season between the 15th and 31st of July, each team play every three days so the group stages for each team is over in just 10 days. The group stages involves 40 clubs - 38 SPFL teams not involved in European competition plus the winners of both the Highland League and the Lowland League. There are eight groups of five teams, each play each other once (2 games at home 2 games away) adding a total of 4 games per team and each group contains one seeded club, one second seed and three unseeded clubs. A win is 3 points, but all drawn games in the group stage go straight to penalties. So a team that wins on penalties will get 2 points and the losing team on penalties will get 1 point, the only time a team will get 0 points is if they’re beaten within 90 minutes. The eight group winners and the four best runners-up progress to the second round where they are then joined by the four teams in Scotland competing in Europe (as of now that would have been Celtic, Hearts, Hibernian and Aberdeen) The seeded teams in the second round are the four clubs competing in Europe and the four group winners with the highest points totals. The tournament then reverts to a traditional knock-out format from the second round onwards, with games decided by extra time then penalties if the match is a draw. Second rounds are played on 9th/10th of August, Quarter-finals 20th/21st of September, Semi-finals 22nd/23rd October and the final played on the 27th of November.

The Challenge Cup has been expanded to 54 entrants, all thirty teams from the Championship, League One and League Two. Four teams from the Highland League, and four teams from the Lowland league, plus the Under-20 teams from the Twelve Premiership clubs and two teams who finish top of the Welsh League, and two teams who finish top of the N.Irish league. The Under 20’s are drawn in the first round and cannot be drawn against each other, the N.Irish teams and Welsh teams are drawn in the fourth round, all four teams (2 from Wales and 2 from N.Ireland) must be drawn with another Scottish team. One team from N.Ireland and one team from Wales must be drawn at home. I have left a link that shows more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016%E2%80%9317_Scottish_Challenge_Cup

The next two things I wanted to ask, is will they be adding the Highland League and the Lowland League in Scotland in FM17? I don’t know why these leagues have never been added, they don’t have to be manageable but we should at least be able to see who has won the league because the winner of both leagues play in a play off to decide who plays the team at the bottom of League Two at the end of the season. In previous Football Managers the team that finished bottom of League Two didn’t get relegated or play in a relegation match against whoever won the play off match against both teams from the HL and LL. This needs to be fixed if you say you try to replicate the game to real life as possible. And lastly, the Champions League will also change, as of 2018/2019 four teams from the top four leagues in Europe (currently England, Spain, Italy and Germany) will now automatically get to the group stages. Will this change also be in FM17? Also something that’s never been done in Football Manager (at least I don't think it has) is when a team qualifies for the Champions League group stage, the clubs from the league of the team that qualified for the Champions League group stage get to share a UEFA solidarity payment pot of more than £2million. So for example this year when Celtic qualified for the group stages, all the other clubs in the Premiership got a bonus of £250k to spend on transfers or whatever, and if more than one club qualified from the same country then the solidarity payment would double to £4 million etc etc. I've left another link that shows more information http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/celtic-land-scottish-premiership-clubs-8696106 - I would hope everything I stated will be in Football Manager 2017. I wouldn’t care if they didn’t change anything about Football Manager 2017 as long as you changed the way these Cups are played in the game, but these are just the things I wanted to know because League and Cup changes are important. This was way longer than expected, and I probably didn’t even need to explain half of the stuff I wrote, but I just wanted to be sure. Thanks for reading.

[forameuss]

All competition changes will be in as long as they're officially announced.  That's always been their policy, and I doubt it'll change now.  The League Cup and Challenge Cup changes ate 99.999% likely to be in, therefore.  The Highland and Lowland changes were in the last version as far as I know, but the leagues will continue to be unplayable.

However, you're unlikely to get official confirmation.  If it really matters to you, don't buy until you try and demo and confirm yourself.

[cris182]

I would be massively surprised if they aren't in the game as they are in real life. And that is based on past experience 

[Morrissey]

Stewart,

Best answer I can give you (from the past games) is that the cups will definitely be updated, as will the promotion/relegation from League 2 as this was included in FM16 - you could only see the playoff ties themselves mind you.

As for level 5, the Highland League will have a lot of data including decent squad information. The Lowland League was much weaker in this respect last year however I understand this was as a result of the league itself being less than co-operative with SI.

I (and others) do an add-on every season to activate these leagues as close to real life as possible, updating the respective club reputations and stadiums amongst other info. These are really easy to add to your game and *touch wood* are relatively accurate. I also do all the real kits for the Highland and Lowland sides to make things more authentic.

Hope this helps!

[Dagenham_Dave]

On 07/09/2016 at 13:55, Stewart1111 said:

 

 In previous Football Managers the team that finished bottom of League Two didn’t get relegated or play in a relegation match against whoever won the play off match against both teams from the HL and LL. This needs to be fixed i

It doesn't 'need to be fixed' given it was in last year's game.