endtime

Extremely surprised that you were able to sign a player directly from Celtic, I thought transfers between fierce rivals were practically impossible in FM nowadays.

Imagine being so triggered by the inclusion of women's football, jeez.

Player valuations are based on values entered by researchers into the database for each reputation band, here's the values for Hungary (spoilered just in case): I don't know how the game extrapolates values for players above the 131-140 range, the highest reputation player in the Hungarian league in the original DB is 135. The game should probably give players a bigger reputation boost for good displays in European cups or international tournaments, or better yet, the whole reputation system should be overhauled.

It appears that the game no longer displays an inbox message when another team offers a contract to one of my players, is this something that got broken by the latest "patch"?

Players will usually (always?) postpone their retirement date until after the final game of their team's season

My biggest gripe with the match engine (apart from GKs being rubbish) is that you can't play proper route one football anymore. Even with max direct passing and centre backs set to NCB, players simply refuse to bypass the midfield. In previous FMs I loved playing a low block, where we would win the ball near our own penalty area and then play a long ball to forwards left up top on attack duty. In FM24 when teams win the ball in their own half they pass it forward so slowly that the opposition always has time to get back into defensive positions, counters happen only when a bad pass is intercepted in the opposing team's half when they mess up playing out of defence. Or maybe I'm too dumb to figure it out, I don't know.

I feel manager tendencies and club cultures have zero effect in the game, every AI club makes exactly the same type of transfers.

My biggest gripe with the transfer AI in FM24 is that it regularly splashes a lot of cash on players that it apparently doesn't need or want. These players either never play at all or make a handful of appearances and are sold at a loss or just sit in the squad until their contract expires. Some of the most egregious examples in my current game: João Mário, bought by Arsenal for 43m, makes 6 appearances and is sold at a loss 6 months later Joe Willock, goes on loan to Tottenham, makes only 3 appearances but is bought out for 26.5m Jan Thielmann, bought by Arsenal for 37.5m, 8 appearances Unai Simon, bought by Arsenal for 21.5m, makes one appearance and is sold at a loss 1 year later Joey Veerman, bought by Arsenal for 43m, 3 appearances Lewis Hall, bought by Newcastle for 28m, 4 appearances in 2 years Enzo Barranechea, bought by Tottenham for 24.5m, 5 appearances Jhon Duran, loaned in and then bought by Ajax for a combined 10m, 2 appearances in 2 seasons I don't understand the logic behind these transfers, it's not even that these players were signed by an outgoing manager and the new manager then used a different formation that they didn't fit into. And this is with an editor file that increases the frequency of injuries, so theoretically there should be more opportunity for rotation.

I'm pretty sure people have been complaining about set pieces in one way or another since FM 05. There are some long-standing issues with the game and at this point my assumption is that SI can't rather than won't fix them. Plus, announcing a new game by saying "we didn't add anything new to this edition, but we fixed some bugs" will not be as enticing to the player base as some people here seem to think. Ultimately, it's your personal decision whether to buy the game or not. If you have experience with the series and SI's release cycle then you know what to expect. For me personally, this year has been particularly bad because SI have made some promises and I don't think they've delivered on any of them (AI squad building - same as or even worse than before, finances - I can't see any improvements, they introduced negative transfer budgets but I've read they don't work as they should, better interactions - absolutely not, better match engine - improved in some areas but worse in other aspects, etc.) and then pretty much gave up on resolving the issues and went radio silent, so I'll probably skip FM25.

Having a competitive product on the market would be nice, but it's easier said than done. EA tried and failed with FIFA Manager, there was an Anstoss/Goal game last year but it got bad to middling reviews. The match engine gets a lot of criticism but it must be an insanely difficult thing to get right.

I played 10 seasons and there were two newgen players in the annual "top 50 players list", so not much really.

This has not been my experience, players who are uninterested still appear in focuses and can be filtered out using the "not interested" checkbox. Can someone check if scouting competitions now produces any results?

Ah, I guess no FM25 for me, I really don't want to support this development philosophy.

FM is primarily made for casual players, people who manage Man City or Newcastle, use downloaded tactics and premade wonderkid shortlists, not for obsessives with 15+ years of experience and a FIFA coaching licence who will spend hours tweaking their libero's instructions to achieve perfect movement and passing in the zona mista or whatever.

Focuses for positions seems to work ok, but scouting specific competitions/countries usually yields zero players.