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In the transistion screen there is a "Distribute over opposition defence" option - I am not sure how it works but it should help with the long ball game.

I think with Aston Villa you have been shown that team can achieve big things with an average budget. Two seasons ago you would not have thought that they would be a Champions League team finishing above teams with a bigger budget - Man Utd, Chelsea, Tottenham and Newcastle. The Champions League money now will help them compete more. There is also the fact that for other team's supporters winning the FA Cup was the same as winning the league. I know when my team did it in 1988 it felt wonderful. Getting that piece of silverware. There was always league teams and cup teams. If I took over someone like Brighton I would want to play good football - focus on the domestic cups and the the European ones. The league has been bought and paid for by City, unless United get their act together, so that will never be the focus.

Reading again what Miles said about the shouts was that they didn't work and made little effect on the match engine. I play on console now and we have four shouts, do you have more on the full PC version?, and I find it hard to see how they would affect the match engine: Praise - this may mean don't change anything and can only affect morale. Probably best used when you are knocking at the opponent's door or if you are away at an opponent like Man City and are defending well and are still 0-0. Whilst morale may be lifted, for a short while, will it change things? Fire-Up - whilst it might mean be more positive and get stuck in what does it affect in the match engine. Demand More - I cannot see what this would change - maybe morale? Focus - when you defending a lead/draw or just scored. Isn't this just the same as change to a Cautious mentality? Or move the mentality down one? A lot of things the shouts do can be changed in the tactics menu. You should also decide what part morale or player engagement plays in whether they listen to the shouts. Shouts should never be a magic win button and like, real life, their effectiveness should change depending on the situation. You get the impression that some players are not totally listening to what Southgate or his team are shouting to them. That should also be an aspect of the game.

I think that what Miles meant that real life managers do not spend their lives looking at emails on laptops. He did not mean us and the way we play the game.

Just out of curiousity, how does a manager like Ancelotti succeed then when he very rarely makes touchline shouts? Yes, he has had some good teams but he was also Everton's most successful manager, and Everton haven't been a top side since the 1980s, since Howard Kendall with this relaxed attitude. He is known for letting players decide on the pitch.

I think a lot of what you are doing will more the case of us editing stuff in the tactics screen. For example, playing a higher or lower defensive line, asking a player to play narrower or wider, asking them to play at a higher tempo or a lower one. The shouts were meant to be a quicker way to do this without pausing the game and doing it.

I think the point that some people are missing is that the "shouts" that managers use are dependant on the manager IRL. For example, Ancelotti very rarely uses shouts and he is seen to be mostly serenely sitting and watching play go on. He will only change things tactically if he sees something not working. He would never use the fire-up shout as that is not his way. Other managers Klopp, for example, is more demonstrative. But looking at the England performances would Gareth asking his players to Focus or Demand More really fix the clear tactical problems with the team? The shouts may make a manager feel good and that he is actually trying to do something but in reality it does diddly-squat in changing a match in real life - so it shouldn't be in a game. Now, changing a formation from a 4-3-2-1 to a 3-4-2-1 may have a change but you do not need shouts to do it. And if your dugout is to the left of the centre line and your right back is on the other side how is he going to hear it? The modern manager has match plans not shouts. Players know what they should do. Shouts are more for releasing tension then being effective.

I think touchline shouts are not what really happens in real football and in real football I wonder how useful they are. What I have been experimenting with in the console version is the Match Plans which seems to be more in line with what happens in real football. You can see with the England side we are relatively positive until we take the lead then we change to Cautious/Defensive. That matches would you might do in the real life. I wonder how much managers can actually change things with shouts - players either ignore them or they do nothing if you are the inferior team. I think the better teams work to match plans rather than touchline shouts. I would like a more limited ability to change things outside half-time - you can make subs, change formation etc. but things like asking them to sit deeper (that is not covered in match plans) should be less effective. Half-Time is the place to change the match plans. Let make half-time more important as it is in real football. I would like match plans integrated into the main game and not just the instant result. I would the belief in setting up differently for each match with these plans like top coaches do. Ancelotti had a plan for Champions League final but it didn't work in the first half and Madrid were lucky to go in level. Changes were obviously discussed at HT and Dortmund were less effective in the second half. It was the HT talk that was more effective than touchline shout as Ancelloti doesn't do that a lot.

Not my analysis, but someone else's. But it seems Spain have come up with ways to beat the aggressive high press. They keep their full backs deep either leaving free men or weakening the press in the centre. They are also prepared to play a long ball to the target man Morata. They also try and engineer one-on-ones with their wingers. And it seems wingers being wingers, instead of inverted ones has also been used. Are we seeing coaches start to neutralise the effectiveness of the high press. We have seen how Man City are prepared to beat the high press with long balls to Haaland. We have also seen how City can struggle with the low block - both Madrid and Man Utd used the low block counter to win against them in the Cup ties. Could we finally see an end to the dominance of the high press? With the resurgence of the supporting rather attacking full backs, more traditional wingers and target men?

I wonder if the move to Unity engine is because the current engine limits what can be shown graphically.

The thing is that whilst attributes like pace, acceleration, off-the-ball and anticipation do determine whether you get to the ball first a second set of metrics determine what you do when in possession. An example of a slow player using other metrics to succeed is Franco Baresi - a slow defender but one of the best. On the ball other metrics become more important. Passing, Finishing, Vision, Flair and others determine what you achieve and things like pace and acceleration are less important. I do not know how hard this is to programme but we need to have different calculations for on the ball and off the ball. It may already be in the game - I have zero knowledge of how the ME works, like most but I would hope that a fast, unskilful player does not over perform any more than a skilful player with bad mental abilities.

Mbappe and Vinicius would not be the elite superstars that they are if they did not have the technique and mental ability to go with their pace. That is the point you seems to be missing. I support a L2 side and I see plenty of players with either speed or strength who do not make it any further because they lack the technical ability on the ball and the consistency from their mental attributes. I won't name him but we got a player when, on first glance, we wondered how he was at our level and not higher. When he faded during the season we saw why. It seems that in the game the guys with pace do not fade or their lack of technique does not hamper them. That Nottingham Forest side would have been relegated in real life. We saw that with three promoted teams getting relegated because they do not have the ability to compete. No-one is saying that this is an easy fix but to pretend the game cannot be improved is wrong. I play other games and all can do with some fixing - that is the way of game. We are working as volunteer QAs for the game and maybe by pointing out things that can be broken (because of our love of the game) so it can help SI to develop the game into a better one. Sweeping it under the carpet doesn't not help SI in any way.

That is another fault then. The simulation should work in the same way as playing it in real time. If formations get adjusted to playing the slow path then it should be adjusted to in the simulation. You have the choice of an instant result in the console version - does that exist in the full game? When you see the end of season results you should see that the formation gets adjusted to and that could show you the how and whys

In real football we have seen plenty of players with pace who has started well but as teams adjust to them they become less effective. Their pace means they can have an advantage but without the technique they never become elite. That is what I believe needs fixing. Players can get by with their physical attributes but without the technical stuff they do not develop. The game does not have the balance between the player's abilities and their physicals right in the same way it doesn't have ability against tactics. We saw in the Champions League final that Adeyemi's speed got him into the one-on-one but he lacked the technique/mental ability to finish it. In the same situation Vinicius Jnr put it away as he has a higher technique/mentality than Adeyemi. People like Zealand and I are not looking for reasons to dig out SI. We come from a place where we love the game and want it to be as best as it can be. I will be buying FM25 and will love it but I will not pretend not to notice things that can be improved.

It has been released today on You Tube so you can watch it if you want. His premise if that you can over-achieve with players not good enough to play in that division as long as have high pace and/or acceleration stats. He ran a test with Nottingham Forest. These were real players with no editing in the their stats. The only criteria was that they were below Premier League standard. The CA of the players were below that of every other team but the pace had to be high. They finished 12th and 11th in two try outs. Another player got them to 4th with the same inferior players. How does this factor in with my belief that the match engine favours the wrong things. I believe it values tactics over player ability too much and it seems it values pace over player ability. This is something that I hope FM25 addresses.