BML

'mon the Humbugs! I picked your series up from the club tweets, KUTGW!

My experience since this feature was added was that this is random. I've seen nominal, typically 5%, of next transfer, a 10-15% on profit (as you've got here) and a sliding scale of money based on appearances (5, 10, 15, 20 or 10, 20, 30, 40, etc.). In my saves, the latter rarely pays off and is always the clause I sell without deliberation if it's an option.

Fantastic idea, I'll definitely be following along to this one. Have you noted any squad rules/restrictions for the B Team? From my experience (admittedly not in Spain) they tend to have rules in place to ensure the biggest clubs don't use them to chuck all their first team/foreign wonderkids in, creating an unfair advantage. For example, on my Bundesliga save year, I wasn't able to move any non-EU players into the squad once they got promoted to a playable league - making it much more difficult to bring through South Americans and Africans as 'home grown'.

VGB kid aside (like everyone else, I love an obscure nationality) I also spy a non-Alloa born Scottish kid. I'd have assumed the second nationality 'nudged' his birthplace, but then you have the other 4 SCO/2nd kids all born in Alloa.

Yeah, that full back is worth every single penny. Incredible stats and a MC to boot!

Rochdale putting you to shame this season! Incredible an AI managed team paying nothing in wages is well up the league in November.

I'm happy that you moved on from Swansea, as finishing in England at a Welsh club would feel a bit strange! I hope for his sake Fogg wasn't going around Swansea town talking about how happy he was to be back in England...

It feels like the constant board cuts are going to make it harder and harder to compete, regardless of what style you use for your team, so I'd say leave and see what's around. As for destination? Lower Serie A would be realistic based on overachievement in Serie B, as would something in Switzerland - which would offer a realistic stepping stone into Germany or France (or a tube to North London). As you've already said there are only a few other Italian teams you'd consider, something mid-tabley Swiss would get my vote.

So you don't have to resign due to the game's reading of weird league tables? Personally, I'd have gone to Chile despite the 'normal' league schedule. The board and fan culture were perfect, and you'd have made light work of the league rules regarding youth players. It would also have been interesting to see if the Chilean players you produced were a different type of player to your Columbians.

Huge. Congratulations corinthiano!

I would put this down to the game struggling to correctly marry up the different league phases with the correct news items/records. It has been an issue for a while (I seem to remember having a conversation with somebody on here - may have even been in one your threads - last game cycle about the same thing) as it has definitely affected me in South American saves in the past. I would imagine that spinning the game on a few days until the defined end of season/season reset will see you crowned champions based on the Overall Table. Otherwise what's the point of the first stage? You could rotate and save players for the closing stage each year to give you a title advantage. To me, that seems crazy even for South American leagues.

Be careful with this request. Unless they have changed it in FM24 (doubt) then the game gives you no indication of how much this would cost (not that I could see anyway). In my Stuttgart save last year I'd completely forgotten I had requested this and spent a long time trying to work out where ~200m went from my accounts... I was already on the fence about shelving that save, and that action clinched it.

It's quite common these days for companies to soft launch betas in specific regions/countries only. (Looking at you Blizzard) Just putting it out there....

This will be the new rule that gives the two best performing countries (by coefficient) from the previous season a fifth CL entry. Typically this is England + Spain/Italy, although you do sometimes get a fun outlier like Lichtenstein if Vaduz clear a couple of rounds. Just another concession from UEFA to keep the big teams in the big comp.

Same. Road Warriors would also be acceptable.

27/28 would have been a tough one to take for me in this timeline!

Aren't all your job offers technically overseas?

Personally I put little faith in the Letter and Star ratings on this preview message. This is based on my own (limited) sample size from playing the game every year (was it 2 or 3 versions ago this was introduced?) and a larger sample size from reading about youth only saves, like yours and others in this forum, and the YAC thread in the Challenges forum. I'm also unsure where these ratings come from - as in, who's opinion is this? You could infer from the message that these ratings are based on the HOYD's opinion (in which case his JPA/JPP comes into it) or does the "early assessment" come from the hidden youth staff that deal with kids until they appear every intake? If the former, I tend to pick my HOYD based on personality and formation first, with attributes an afterthought (with maybe a bias toward WWY) so the ratings are even more likely to be incorrect. If I do do anything with this message, it's to look at the positions coming through as it can give me an early indication of which youth players could be bumped up a level/released or sold, but as I very rarely run Youth Only saves, I generally tend to pay little attention to this particular message - preferring to concentrate on the actual intake when they come through.

I checked and it's my HoYD, but only because I've been burnt before so I make a point to check when I hire someone new. As part of my 'pre season admin' I also check that the best staff are giving me advice for each part of the backroom meetings, so I'm on the Staff Responsibilities screen often enough in case I miss it. I'd agree there needs to be on option on the 'Hired' message to assign them to the duty, much like when you hire a scout or lose a youth/B Team manager.

Just catching up, but a Kosovan/Swiss player who has never played outside of Kosovo signing for a Brazilian top tier club is one of the most 'FM' transfers I have seen for a while. And people complain that the AI doesn't know how to play the transfer market like a human manager!

Some strong progress there with Karbalaa. Are you thinking about moving on again to help push the league/country forward or do you have other plans for that?

They're starting to roll back on it already, which is good in a way, but does imply they'll probably go back on this sometime again in future. https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-marc-whitten

You're looking at Bosnia Jimbo, you're playing in Kosovo mate. Congratulations on the Europa win, hopefully the lack of qualifying games this season (I assume the winners of Europa still go straight in the CL Group Stage in the new format) prevent any early season injury crisis.

38j Qose (Temp) must have something about him if you're keeping a Temperamental player who plays in a position you don't use. I've been burnt trying to use such players so many times in the past they are usually an instant pass from me.

I know this post was a few days ago (I tend to catch up on threads during my working week ) but I thought you'd like to know that this achievement has always seemed to have a weird relationship with some leagues with how it is awarded. While I haven't experienced it this year, with my save primarily being in Germany, in the past I have received this for completing a Championship/Relegation group - such as seen in Belgium, Wales, Scotland etc. - undefeated, despite losing games in the regular season. Last year I also received it for completing one of the Opening/Closing league stages (popular in South America) undefeated. My assumption is that the game code that awards these achievements treats these 'mini leagues' as it's own season, and awarding this achievement accordingly (Purley anecdotal, but I'm sure I've received top scorers/least conceded achievements in the same scenarios in the past). With only 6/8/12/18/whatever games, it would be far easier to remain undefeated - causing this achievement unlocking percentage to be far higher than expected. Of course, this is all anecdotal from years of playing these games, and I haven't actually done anything to properly test my memory of this - but with most things in my life I'm almost certain I'm correct!