SI, this is why I'm done with FM after 11 years

[Cougar2010]

11 minutes ago, Zanman777 said:

Do you purposefully rotate players to avoid them complaining of lack of match time?

 

I have my preferences in terms of players. Whenever I can choose my "favorite" players, I do. And I don't rotate unless there's an injury, a suspension, a really bad performance run or a tactical idea. 

 

I can tell you every 2-3 months someone is complaining they want to play more. Even players with the "reserve" setting on their squad status.

You should always rotate to keep players fit.

Maybe this is where people are going wrong, I've always rotated and have very few issues with playing time.

[Zanman777]

Just now, Cougar2010 said:

You should always rotate to keep players fit.

Maybe this is where people are going wrong, I've always rotated and have very few issues with playing time.

This somewhat puzzles me. The goal in football isn't to keep players fit, it's to play well / play the best you can and hopefully win. To do that I choose the best players I have at hand. I don't care who becomes less fit because of that. Doesn't that make sense?

[XaW]

1 minute ago, Zanman777 said:

Do you purposefully rotate players to avoid them complaining of lack of match time?

I have my preferences in terms of players. Whenever I can choose my "favorite" players, I do. And I don't rotate unless there's an injury, a suspension, a really bad performance run or a tactical idea. 

I can tell you every 2-3 months someone is complaining they want to play more. Even players with the "reserve" setting on their squad status.

I have my favorite 11, more or less, a couple of spots are up for contention, but that is as it should be. This is my team, sorted by age since everyone under 20 will get limited football and are mostly there for getting a match or two if they are major talents. For the rest, most of them have played a fairly decent amount of games. Some players have not. Husek have been injured the entire season and will be released in the summer, because I know I won't be able to give him enough matches.

Bernard are a social leader and one of my longest serving players and have stayed on as a backup and to not release all the influential players at the club. This season he has played too little and he will be released in the summer. He came to me earlier and asked for more matches and I told him that would not be possible and that I would sell him as soon as possible. I offered him out in January, but no one would take him and he seems pleased enough with my efforts. He will also be released in the summer.

Cashman is a backup and another I probably won't extend the contract with, since he are poorer than I had hoped he would be when I signed him. The others are youngsters and or backups, but they are not unhappy.

My dynamics overview. As you can see 1 unhappy player in Bernard and I have told him I'm trying to sell him (and have made an effort to do so) so he isn't going to start anything. And even though he is unhappy, he still supports me! In fact, the only 3 players who don't support me, as neutrals, are fairly new to the club. Cashman came in August, Lowton and Shaw in January.

I had issues with this at the start of the game, but then I got rid of a lot of "deadweight", but those players were very influential, so when I got rid of them it created a void in leadership. So lesson learned and I have made smaller and smaller changes to the squad each season, and after two season in Vanarama North, I have had 3 promotions in a row up to League One. I'm not anywhere near promotion to the Championship, but seeing as most of these players have been with me from the depths of English football I can't really complain.

Back to your questions, I have a main core of 15-16 players who contend for the main 11 spots. Then I have the "mostly backups" and then the youth. Most of them gets their chances, either because of tiredness or injuries. I never start anyone with less than 95% condition, but they might be on the bench if necessary.

The thing you need to realize is that even a player with the squad status "Backup" still expect to play around 5-15 games each season! In FM terms the "you will never play unless we have a major injury crisis" status doesn't exists! While that might be needed, very few players will accept it. Other than goalkeepers you won't find many players between 23 - 32 who don't play around 5-15 matches every season, and if you do they have most likely been injured or on a contract way above what they should have and are just in it for the cash. Of course there are some who might do so, but certainly not many, at least in professional football.

I have no idea if I'm the luckiest guy around and everyone have major issues with this, but at least for me this haven't been an issue. At least not after I threw out all the influential players in the first season!

[Cougar2010]

15 minutes ago, Zanman777 said:

This somewhat puzzles me. The goal in football isn't to keep players fit, it's to play well / play the best you can and hopefully win. To do that I choose the best players I have at hand. I don't care who becomes less fit because of that. Doesn't that make sense?

I look at the bigger picture.

The goal is to achieve the best league position/best cup performances over a season which lasts for 10/11 months.

If you hammer the same starting 11 game after game then they will quickly become injured/unfit.  When that happens your others players aren't in a position to step in and perform well because they are not fit & not match sharp meaning generally a poorer performance from what are poorer players to start with.  You also have a knockon issue that you then have to play several reserves in the same match which again leads to a much poorer performance.

With that in mind I try to keep a squad of around 20 players fit, match sharp and ready to play.  I then aim to rotate so that my better players whilst playing a higher % of games are also available to play against the games I need them in leaving the weaker players to get game time in matches where we should win comfortably or have no chance in.  I'll also add here that I don't play all my reserves in the same matches, in each match I'll aim to start say nine first teamers with two rotation/backups.  This way the overall performance of the team is more level throughout the season and hopefully leads to better overall results at the end of the season.

 

EDIT

Something I've missed off above is some of those reserve players are up & coming youth players who might be reserves now but in a couple of seasons time could be starters providing they get game time.  If you don't give them that game time they'll never become starters and you'll have wasted their talent.  I like to give players the chance to fail rather than no chance at all.

[Cougar2010]

I'll add examples as well, it'll maybe help.

This is FM17 and the club have played 23 league games + one cup game that we lost.

 

DLs

My first choice is a 29yo 3.5* player in his prime - He has started 17 of the 23 league games so far this season.

My second choice is a 23yo 2.5* player with potential to improve further - He has started the other six league games & been a sub four times.  By giving him those games he has stayed fit, match sharp, happy and improved by 0.5*CA this season.

 

DRs

Again my first choice is a 30yo 3.5* player in his prime - He has started 20 of the 23 league games and been a sub once.

My second choice is a 30yo 2* player who is declining.  I'm aiming to phase him out this season so I'm just keeping him semi fit to fill in when needed.  He has started the other three matches and been a sub four times.  He has also raised a complaint with me about playing time this season which is fair and we came to an amicable agreement where he decided to wait for his chance.

[pdjacks]

17 hours ago, Cal585 said:

As stated previously, Touch removes most social interactions like press conferences, team talks and dynamics. This can make it harder to arrest a bad run as you're restricted in how you can increase morale.

Otherwise Touch condenses a lot of things. Scouting goes straight to 100% overnight, youth teams are combined into a reserve team, tutoring is auto-assigned, staff are limited to one per area and are presumed to keep their own teams beneath them, there are no home grown rules or FFP, and there is no tactical familiarity which means you can freely change things up over the season (and lots of people use Touch to test tactics for full). Otherwise it's the same I believe. I play it on tablet sometimes as well, but I prefer the PC version with extra leagues and bigger screen (and mouse). I wouldn't necessarily call it easier, just quicker and more streamlined.

Full FM is a far more detailed simulator and the editor allows lots more possibilities. FM Touch takes a step back for improved playability. It's still a great game, it just nitpicks less. I keep finding myself going back to it, just because I can play the game more and get further into a save instead of getting caught up in juggling everything around the club. I tend to do 1 save on full and a couple of different ones on Touch. IMO FMT is definitely the best option for online/network play.

Cheers Cal (and Dave) 

I appreciate you taking the time to explain - I don't think it sounds like my cup of tea though. 

The way I used to play, was to literally turn on every single league and competitions, manually handle everything at the club, and then play a long long slow game where I'd start unemployed and see where the game took me - I was playing FM11 until 2016 when my last laptop broke (I think I still would be if I could get the save to work properly on the new one). Even then I was disliking the social interactions coming in, but I was hoping that it'd be a one off trial thing which would then get abandoned (like the training above) I can't believe that seven versions later that it's still here and becoming more of a focus within the game. 

The other I wasn't liking as a 'recent' development (recent given that I've been playing the series for a couple of decades) was the whole star rating system. It really bugs me that the game is basically telling you who the best player at the club is, and not only that, also who will be the best players in the future. I think that takes away a lot of the onus on the player to actually spend some time looking at their players in order to work this out for themselves. I used to get a real kick out of watching a player's performance over a few games to see whether I'd found a gem or not. I really enjoyed checking out the youth squad too, checking through all their stats to see how and where they were progressing and then having to decide for myself who to promote to the firs team and who to let go. To that end, I was really happy when I saw how scouting was being changed this year, I thought it might be a step back towards putting the onus back onto the player to work their own team out. Instead, you not only now get a star rating for each player, but the game also tells you what role and position to best play them in... so what exactly is left for the player to do?

Oh right yeah, you can just keep on signing any player that's better than those in your current team, and in between transfer windows just keep responding to endless inane and repetitive social interactions... 

I guess there's always 2019... 

[MBarbaric]

1 hour ago, Cougar2010 said:

I'll add examples as well, it'll maybe help.

This is FM17 and the club have played 23 league games + one cup game that we lost.

 

DLs

My first choice is a 29yo 3.5* player in his prime - He has started 17 of the 23 league games so far this season.

My second choice is a 23yo 2.5* player with potential to improve further - He has started the other six league games & been a sub four times.  By giving him those games he has stayed fit, match sharp, happy and improved by 0.5*CA this season.

 

DRs

Again my first choice is a 30yo 3.5* player in his prime - He has started 20 of the 23 league games and been a sub once.

My second choice is a 30yo 2* player who is declining.  I'm aiming to phase him out this season so I'm just keeping him semi fit to fill in when needed.  He has started the other three matches and been a sub four times.  He has also raised a complaint with me about playing time this season which is fair and we came to an amicable agreement where he decided to wait for his chance.

^This

You need a competitive squad that can get over injuries, suspensions, sales... If you only play the first XI, young prospects you will need in two years will not develop, some players will become restless for not playing, and most importantly, when your first team player gets suspended in a vital game late in the season, his substitute will play the first match in 6 weeks... All these things can pull you down when you want to get high up the table. in short period and long.

[Cal585]

5 hours ago, pdjacks said:

Cheers Cal (and Dave) 

I appreciate you taking the time to explain - I don't think it sounds like my cup of tea though. 

Yeah, definitely sounds like you want the big, in depth simulation, which is fair enough! Haven't played full FM18 yet, so unfortunately I can't really help there.

[Guest]

Might be time to run a real life to FM selection comparison to see if how FM’ers have been conditioned to use match squad selection to avoid public spats with their players is close to how managers in the real world approach match squad selection.

[sporadicsmiles]

11 hours ago, Zanman777 said:

This somewhat puzzles me. The goal in football isn't to keep players fit, it's to play well / play the best you can and hopefully win. To do that I choose the best players I have at hand. I don't care who becomes less fit because of that. Doesn't that make sense?

As a counter argument, what happens when two or three of your players get injured in a row, and each of your replacements is unfit and has had no game time that season? Surely that is going to make your team as a whole suffer, and so you are suddenly not doing as well as you should.

I rotate my squad heavily, for essentially two reasons.

1. I want to rest players, particularly key players, so they are in peak condition. This minimizes injury risk, stops players becoming jaded, and allows me maintain most of my players in top condition. That this allows me to keep my rotation and squad players fit is a bonus. I do not want to hammer my team into the ground so they have nothing left to give at the end of a season.

2. I want to give young players game time so they can improve. This is just as important as my first point. Not only do players need to play to get better, I need to see them play so I can get an idea of what to expect from them so I can make long term plans for the squad. I try to make sure every youth prospect I think has a future at my club gets 10 starts per season, roughly. Less if they are not quite up to standard yet, more if they impress. In my current save I have found a DMC, LB, AMR , CD and GK who have a future at my club doing this. I also have sold players who I decided either did not fit my team, or would not ever be at the standard I wanted.

I think I have used something like 28 players in my current season (I remember it being in a media interaction), although this is inflated by playing a youth side in an early cup round (I play in Germany and got a much lower side in the first round). I am not saying everyone should rotate this much, but definitely some rotation is required.

On the media interaction, I have only once had a dressing room mutiny which cost me my job. It was my first save after this was introduced as a thing (in FM16 was it? I forget). I quickly learned that if I make a promise to a player, I keep it, or I do not make the promise. That is just like real life. If my boss promises me something and does not deliver, I am rightfully unhappy and will complain to co-workers.

I also found some of the things people get annoyed with are just bad man management. If a player asks for playing time, and I do not want to play him because he is not in my first team plans, I would tell him so. Maybe he is in my future plans, in which case I tell him so. If he is unhappy with that, then I will just sell him and find a replacement. Backup players can be replaced. If you want to keep him, then you play him more. If a player wants to leave to join another club, I will either say no if I do not want him to leave, or say if they meet the asking price. We almost never agree on an asking price, and often a player is unhappy about that. I let it play out, stick to my asking price, and if it is not met he stays. Almost always a player lets it go when the buying team loses interest. Currently I also have a player who wants to leave back to his country, but nobody will buy him. I promised to find him a club 2 transfer window's back now, and have not. But I actually tried to find him a club, and nobody is interested. So he understands I have tried, and is happy that I did so. So he wants to leave, but he does not blame me for keeping him and so views me in a positive light.

99% of player interaction is common sense. Media interaction is also kinda important, or at least keeping your eye on what people are saying is. I do find it more tedious though. But the moral and the media side are all part of football. I want to manage a squad of players and win things, in all aspects. If I just wanted to plug in a tactic and play, I would probably not be playing FM.

[XaW]

6 minutes ago, sporadicsmiles said:

On the media interaction, I have only once had a dressing room mutiny which cost me my job. It was my first save after this was introduced as a thing (in FM16 was it? I forget). I quickly learned that if I make a promise to a player, I keep it, or I do not make the promise. That is just like real life. If my boss promises me something and does not deliver, I am rightfully unhappy and will complain to co-workers.

I also found some of the things people get annoyed with are just bad man management. If a player asks for playing time, and I do not want to play him because he is not in my first team plans, I would tell him so. Maybe he is in my future plans, in which case I tell him so. If he is unhappy with that, then I will just sell him and find a replacement. Backup players can be replaced. If you want to keep him, then you play him more. If a player wants to leave to join another club, I will either say no if I do not want him to leave, or say if they meet the asking price. We almost never agree on an asking price, and often a player is unhappy about that. I let it play out, stick to my asking price, and if it is not met he stays. Almost always a player lets it go when the buying team loses interest. Currently I also have a player who wants to leave back to his country, but nobody will buy him. I promised to find him a club 2 transfer window's back now, and have not. But I actually tried to find him a club, and nobody is interested. So he understands I have tried, and is happy that I did so. So he wants to leave, but he does not blame me for keeping him and so views me in a positive light.

99% of player interaction is common sense. Media interaction is also kinda important, or at least keeping your eye on what people are saying is. I do find it more tedious though. But the moral and the media side are all part of football. I want to manage a squad of players and win things, in all aspects. If I just wanted to plug in a tactic and play, I would probably not be playing FM.

Exactly! People tend to think to football clubs as a despotism where the manager have unlimited power. And for many things this is true, but at the same time it's also a place of work for a lot of people, players, staff, and many others. If you went to your boss and told him you are not happy with your tasks and ask him for something else and he promises you to find something and then don't deliver, you might not want to work there for a very long time. 

If you want to keep a player, he needs to, you know, play. If not, then get rid of him. Of course there is a scale here, and I have had young players who are not ready to play come and ask for more time. Either I tell him needs to step up his game to have a chance, or I try to loan him out. If I feel he is a disturbing element I ofte tell him I will release him if he continues and most of the time they back off, if not, he is gone.

For the final part? Common sense seems quite uncommon these days...

[tajj7]

BTW have people tried 'ask so and so to intervene?', never worked for me in Fm17, but with the dynamics vice-captain and highly influential player James Ward-Prowse has turned around 4 players over wanting to leave for bigger clubs, he failed with Virgil Van Dijk but he has a very ambitious personality so that is understandable.

I'm generally getting the hang of it and you can see the benefits of a tight nit and happy squad.  Also having support in the dressing room is huge. 

Most of the choices/routes also seem pretty logical to me and often the reactions follow the player's personalities.  So I think long term it is about building a squad of players who are professional and determined as you'll have far less of these problems.

To be honest I really like this because I think signing a good person, good pro, etc. IRL is very important, a lot of clubs do a lot of work beyond looking at a player's footballing ability to see what kind of person they will be and how they will fit into the dressing room. Previous years FMs touched on this in the scout reports but it never really had an impact but with the dynamics you can see that impact.

Now signing that leader or professional player might have more benefits than just his direct benefit on the pitch. 

My only two issues are this -

1. Players who have recently joined or recently signed a contract, as in within the last year or so asking for a new one.

2. Player's who in their personal profile have you as a favourite person, but then don't support you in the dynamics screen, that makes no sense. 

 

[Loren1983]

I proved FM Touch 3 years ago when my first son borned. Best discovery of my life.

I love FM, but FMT is just what I need now in my life (3 years old son and 11 months old daughter)

One person definied FMT as" Football manager without the things that ruins Football Manager" 

[Cougar2010]

2 hours ago, Barside said:

Might be time to run a real life to FM selection comparison to see if how FM’ers have been conditioned to use match squad selection to avoid public spats with their players is close to how managers in the real world approach match squad selection.

Speaking for myself I don't feel thats the case.

I treat the players in game more or less the same as I have treated players in the teams I coached.

Within a squad I try to give everyone a chance so that they feel part of the team whether that be FM or RL.  Overall this then has the knock on effect of benefitting the team as a whole.

The only time I really look at playing time is when I have made a promise to a player in game and again this would be no different IRL.  If the player came to me and said he felt he hadn't been playing enough and I promised to use him more he would be more in my thoughts when I chose my team and I would make more effort to use him.

[mr broker]

morale is closer to reality , in modern football is very important. what i dont understand is why since fm 2016 Maurizio Sarri always gonna get fired by Napoli. after 3 months, ba, fired. always. how ? one of the best manager of europe, always fired. cmon

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, Cougar2010 said:

Speaking for myself I don't feel thats the case.

I treat the players in game more or less the same as I have treated players in the teams I coached.

Within a squad I try to give everyone a chance so that they feel part of the team whether that be FM or RL.  Overall this then has the knock on effect of benefitting the team as a whole.

The only time I really look at playing time is when I have made a promise to a player in game and again this would be no different IRL.  If the player came to me and said he felt he hadn't been playing enough and I promised to use him more he would be more in my thoughts when I chose my team and I would make more effort to use him.

We probably manage squads in a very similar way, ever since the interaction aspect was updated I have rarely had complaints about playing time (other than backup keepers) but my gut feeling is that how we use players in a squad & the expectations of those players does not line up with real life.

If I find the time I look to collate the real life data & then wait for a free weekend or heavy discount before collecting comparative data from FM18.

[andu1]

5 minutes ago, mr broker said:

morale is closer to reality , in modern football is very important. what i dont understand is why since fm 2016 Maurizio Sarri always gonna get fired by Napoli. after 3 months, ba, fired. always. how ? one of the best manager of europe, always fired. cmon

because FM cannot replicate Napoli's style of play. Same like Guardiola at Man City, they almost always underperform and United overperforms because the game is tuned more to a direct approach rather than a passing style.

[Cougar2010]

1 minute ago, Barside said:

We probably manage squads in a very similar way, ever since the interaction aspect was updated I have arely had complaints about playing time (other than backup keepers) but my gut feeling is that how we use played in a squad & the expectations of those players does not line up with real life.

Of I find the time I look to collate the real life data & then wait for a free weekend or heavy discount before collecting comparative data from FM18

The one thing I would say is FM is clearer, it puts the info down in black & white.

You know instantly how fit a player is, when his last match was, how many he has played etc etc.

IRL its more muddy/cloudy and its easier to have wrong info in your brain.  Fitness isn't measured in numbers you have to use your judgement, you don't instantly know how many matches a player has started or if he started last week, what about the week before? can you remember?  You then have to go look at your records, how well are they organised? years ago this was sheets of paper, nowadays computers make it a little easier to source information.