Lord Rowell

Exactly! SI have made a good decision here.

Actually they have colossal amounts of data on how single players play the game as FM / Steam (however it works) sends this kind of data back to SI. There is an opt-out / in (can't recall which way around) so if you made that change, its true for you - but factually incorrect to imply that they don't have this data - they very much do. I always leave it on - if it helps SI all good.

On the height / weight issue re. match engine. Someone said they wouldn't sign a 5'7" centre-back. Well I disagree, I would - because I wouldn't even look at their height, I'm only interested in things like jumping reach, heading, bravery re. aerial ability. As I understand it, the attribute is all that matters, not the height, which is trivia in terms of the ME. However, height matters in so far as influencing jumping reach. So, researchers will be instructed to, by default, give small players lower jumping reach like-for-like than tall players. Hence, height influences jumping reach so it indirectly affects the ME - but not the data point of height on its own. I would assume the same for weight re. strength, and of course other attributes in play re. physical challenges, ability to change direction etc. that have been mentioned already in this thread e.g. balance, agility. That'll be why weight will be "under the hood" as its a part of researchers decisions in judging actual ME attributes.

Absolutely nothing here that is game-breaking or brand-breaking, for me. I think the jump to Unity was always going to be challenging - if I did have ONE criticism of SI, its that's they've maybe been a little too optimistic in their communications? Re. the latest announcements: - International Management - ok its a disappointment for some, I get that, but if it leads to a better experience for FM26 and beyond, it seems like a sensible move - Removal of weight as a visible stat. I am curious of the reasons to this, and wish others would think and show a little more curiousity themselves. Purely my own guess is due to the toxicity of social media, particularly towards certain groups e.g. ethnic minorities, people with disabilities, LQBTQ+ community, and women. Consequence could have been a zillion screenshots on social media of specific player's weights going up and down, purely for mysogynistic reasons as part of people's own agendas. So, I think SI have made the right decision. All that said, we've got a fantastic new whole world of play in women's football coming, and we've got the new Premier league license (this in itself would be a selling point in most releases). No, I don't work for SI. I'm not a happy-clappy, I've been VERY critical of SI in the past. I just happen to think they're going in the right direction, for the right reasons. One genuine question for SI staff, if you know the answer. Obviously international management isn't going to be playable, and will be background only - so will we still be able to "watch" the matches as a spectator if we want to, or is that not possible for now?

Have you tried with different screen resolutions? Just wondering if column is too small and hence removing the image.

The highest expectation I allow in my teams is "regular starter". When I lower the expected playing time, I try to convince them with a friendly chat, usually on line of competion for places. Sometimes they throw their toys out of the pram, but later, as in the words of the late great Brian Clough, "we then agree that I was right all along".

I DID POST THIS IN THE SPECULATION THREAD. I HOPE PEOPLE DON'T MIND ME POSTING HERE AS WELL AS ITS APPROPRIATE TO THIS THREAD. Just on this, quoted from Miles' blog post. "The same is true of crafting a design that’s platform agnostic, enabling ease of play whether you’ve got a mouse and keyboard, a controller, or even a touch screen. " Enabling ease of play with different devices is especially important for people with disabilities e.g. motor-control issues. I suspect going down this route might make FM more accessible to some people? I know Miles / SI (I think) are supporters of https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/ - a charity that enable gamers with disabilities to be more easily able to access games. In this discussion on this issue, I'd ask everyone to give this at least a little thought. I hope this is part of the motivation for this route and it would be good to get a response from someone from SI about this.

Just on this, quoted from Miles' blog post. "The same is true of crafting a design that’s platform agnostic, enabling ease of play whether you’ve got a mouse and keyboard, a controller, or even a touch screen. " Enabling ease of play with different devices is especially important for people with disabilities e.g. motor-control issues. I suspect going down this route might make FM more accessible to some people? I know Miles / SI (I think) are supporters of https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/ - a charity that enable gamers with disabilities to be more easily able to access games. In this discussion on this issue, I'd ask everyone to give this at least a little thought. I hope this is part of the motivation for this route and it would be good to get a response from someone from SI about this.

But if they're Model Citizens, they're going to be exemplary at taking care of their own fitness and professional development. Hence the need for coach-led training will be diminished.

Yes, its effectively 1-200 in terms of individual data points. Each attribute is ranged from .0 to .9. @Spalloon the player profile screen, menu bar, when you go to "development" and look at player progress, you'll be able to see that in decimals e.g. 15.1, 15.2 etc. @NineCloudNinethere are many little nuggets of info like these that people don't know. Even as an experienced player, I still learn new things

I have watched the video. I would just gently suggest that watching the video, and watching / reading anything before comment, is pretty important, especially in our age of disinformation, clickbait and fake-news. People should know better. Its actually not Zealand's experiment, its from someone else. Zealand then tried to replicate it. Zealand has replicated similar tests in the past, and debunked them so I think he's getting some unfair comment here on start point, and methodology. FWIW I have my own views on the wider issue, that actually even with the results I don't think the ME / FM is broken at all, I put my own thoughts earlier in the thread. In short, even IRL, you give one team (or a person in an individual sport) one or two excessive advantages, it'll overpower everything else.

Pretty certain this already exists... check FM Scout. Many 90s onwards DBs have now been done. So if I had to pick a season, fully appreciating colossal level of research, it would be 1973-74. - Man Utd relegated - would take a lot of honesty to do the right attributes for formerly great players there - Sunderland (my team) have won the FA Cup and have some fantastic players (selfish reason) - Interesting World Cup with the great Total Football Netherlands side, Brazil in decline and a strong Scotland side - Ajax at peak, also Liverpool well on the way

I'm not convinced this is a particularly significant issue. If one team, or individual, has a small number of characteristics that are far in excess of the opponent, they're going to have a disproportionate effect on the outcome. Say you have two teams IRL. One womens, one mens. Assume the women's team are better technically, mentally, and tacticaly. The men would still win due to their physical power i.e. pace and strength. To a lesser degree, I suspect this is what's happened in this simulation. It would be interesting to do this with other attributes in the same way though e.g. decisions & composure, workrate & stamina, and so on, to see if there were any similar effects.

You've done well to get Stockport to the top of English football so quickly and really glad you are enjoying the save. When its run its course, or you've achieved all you want to achieve and want an even bigger challenge, consider managing s smaller club that isn't in the big European leagues, so for example Eastern Europe or Scandinavia. As well as trying to get to the top of the country you choose, you'll have the added challenge of trying to compete in European competion, but without the big TV revenues that the top leagues get.

I think it would be fun. Agree with others that those clubs will recover, but it does create a bit of short-term chaos.

Your transfer budget is low because Man Utd are loaded with over £600m of short-term debt in the game. Repayments of that debt start in season 1. If you go to your finance page, then under "debt & loans" you'll see total debt and the repayment schedule. IIRC you're paying out approx £13m per month to service the debt. Once you get to about 2027, most of the debt is cleared and you'll start to get more financial resources. I think the final repayment for all loans is August 2029.

I can't post links to other sites here, but its possible other, independent fan forums have created, using things like in-game editors, time-lapsing etc., save files where you are straight at the tournament. But SI have never done this.

I just interpret this as a reflection of the individual player's personality, the kind that is never happy and always finds something to complain about. Its pretty much always the same players in my experience.

My instinct, given the change to the Unity engine, is that we'll get some info a little earlier than usual and I'm specifically thinking about the specs needed to run FM25. Other than that, I guess just be patient

I think the text commentary needs a lot of love and new lines, old lines removing / editing and so on.

Its Football Manager. Not Football CEO, commercial manager, economist etc. A manager would never get involved in setting ticket prices, aside from it being well outside of their role they don't have the expertise.

Not from direct experience as I didn't continue the particular save quite long enough to see the long-term outcome but... I believe and remember in FM2008 there was an issue with newgen players being unbalanced. Specifically, their technical and mental attributes were higher than average, but they had very low physical stats. So, when the DB was full of newgen players, the "greys" from what I heard, while not as good, simply over-powered them. I did see the beginnings of this in my Man Utd save at the time but as aforementioned, didn't play it long enough to witness the endgame, as FM2009 with its snazzy 3D animations came out and I switched to that.

1. I think they'll just train for their best position in a generic way 2. You can go to a player's individual training page. There's a drop-down menu for extra training e.g. Quickness, and many other options - but you can't ask them to do no other training - that's not feasible or realistic. As for increasing an attribute from 5 to 15 by training - no chance at all of that, its completely unachievable IRL and of course in the game.

That's exactly right. So if you want women's only gameworld, or men's just select those relevant leagues. I'd presume as well that if you want to add / remove leagues during the save, you could do so in the normal manner.

Yeah its going to be all one gameworld. So as long as you have those leagues running, you could manage a women's team, then a men's or vice-versa in the same save - just as if you were moving from Italy to Portugese club management in any version of FM.