Cal585

Preseason: We start the journey with a number of friendlies and a few cup games already completed. No idea who The Gap or Ipswich City are, but beating Adelaide United is handy. There are a LOT of holes in the staffing roster, along with some not so great current members. Staff wages are an issue though, so I mostly keep those already in place for now (except a 2nd GK coach and 2nd AM) and offer liberal cup bonuses to try and get around max wage restrictions. Throwing the Cup is starting to sound quite tempting. It's not ideal but should help live up to my promise to improve the coaching team which I made to try and convince some of my squad to listen to me given my low starting reputation. We now have the best coaching team in the competition, so that's something. My players are still looking forward to improvements though. Apparently they refuse to settle for the best. I offer a heap of trials to high reputation players trying to fill my last Designated Player spot. I can unregister 1 young GK without consequence (delisting any others gives mutual contract terminations), giving me space for exactly 1 player. Unfortunately my 5 foreign spots are all taken with no easy way to adjust this, so most of my trials are pointless (though several are snapped up by other teams in the league who thank me for bringing the players to their attention). I do give Erik Paartelu a friendly game though and decide to offer him the last spot to return, but his other old club in Brisbane Roar beat me to his signature. Likewise Bruno Fornaroli is released on a free by Perth who seem to be hoping Daniel Sturridge stays fit but he promptly goes to Melbourne Victory instead (just like real life the traitor). My only remaining option seems to be an aging James Troisi who has just injured himself for 3 months, so I guess no signings for me at the moment! Australia Cup: First (or next) up in the cup we have new boys Macarthur FC. Based in Southern Sydney, they are the newest A-League team having just participated in their first season finishing 6th. Historically they actually win this competition in 2022 but I am hopeful of a result here despite the fact that they have already beaten Newcastle Jets, Central Coast Mariners and Perth Glory to reach this stage. They have just had a couple of their big name players retire (Mark Milligan, Adam Federici) but still have some danger men including their new captain Ulises Dávila, new CB Adrian Mariappa from Watford/Bristol City and a couple of Australian Internationals in Tomi Juric and Apostolos Giannou. They also took Craig Noone from me in the off season, so I have something to prove to him here. With players still fresh and other friendlies following this to give game time to backups, I go in with a full strength squad, minus CB Curtis Good who is out injured. Time to see if the tactic holds up against better opposition... During the first half we settle into our game and 23 minutes in Leckie picks out Nabbout at the back post to put us ahead. Sadly the lead doesn't last as Toure slots home from a well weighted cross in the 35th to equalise. Leckie and Nabbout both head over shortly after and we go into half time with the scores tied. We are dominating possession but the XG is equal due to a number of shots off target from us. My halftime talk fails to get any sort of reaction so I sit back and wait. Eventually Maclaren's complacent attitude annoys me and I drag him off for Pucciarelli. Jamieson is injured but manages to hobble through and Juric almost wins it for them in the dying minutes except for a strong Glover save. We head into extra time and almost score when their goalkeeper turns it onto the post for a corner. That's as close as we get though and it's through to penalties. At this point I realise half my team are hopeless at this, so hopefully we don't need to go deep! Then disaster strikes as Nabbout misses the 3rd penalty. Glover fails to save their 4th and up steps Jenkinson who also fails and just like that we are out of the Cup. A crushing way to lose my first competitive game in charge but the stats are promising. We managed to dominate away from home in our first game in the new system. If we continue to play like this we should be fine. 2 more friendlies, then we get the chance to set things straight with Macarthur in the opening league game. My boys will be itching for revenge!

An overview of the competitions we will be participating in and the historic targets to meet/beat: A-League Currently sitting at 11 Australian and 1 New Zealand team, this is the only professional league in either country. They have announced that teams from Canberra and Auckland will join soon, which might help with the unbalanced schedule. There are a lot of calls for a promotion and relegation system which is not really possible in the current financial state of the league, which, in addition to the NZ Knights, has also seen the North Queensland Fury and Gold Coast go bust. Essentially the A-League is MLS-lite, with all the "fun" salary cap rules and designated players. It also embraces the Australian love for a finals systems. The team that finishes first in the regular season wins the Premiers Plate, while the top 8 teams compete in the knockout finals series and the winners are crowned Champions. Which is more important is up for debate. The Champions are probably regarded as the overall winners but the Premiers are the ones who qualify for Asia (ironically the finals series is regarded as the secondary cup competition so 3rd qualifying place is given to the league runners up over the champions). Melbourne City historical result: Premiers, Grand Final runners up Historical winner(s): Premiers - Melbourne City, Champions - Western United Australia Cup Australia's version of the FA Cup. Includes all the Australian amateur and semi-pro clubs and introduces the A-League teams in the final rounds. Played in pre-season of the A-League. The winner qualifies for Asia. Frustratingly the early games start before the FM season. Melbourne City Historical result: Quarter finals Historical winner: Melbourne Victory (2021) Asian Champions League The big one, it has only been won once by an Australian team; Western Sydney Wanderers. A-League teams do not have a good showing in the competition. Historically it has been dominated by clubs from Saudi Arabia, South Korea or Japan. China, Qatar and UAE are all also better represented than Australia. Even Esteghal in Iran if you go back a little bit. It's also a bit weird as it has historically run on a different schedule to the domestic league meaning that playing squads change rather drastically for A League clubs during the campaigns. To add to the confusion, all A-League teams withdrew from the 2021 competition due to covid, though this isn't represented in game. So the 2022 version was actually the first one that Melbourne City competed in. Teams to watch: Al-Hilal (4 wins, 4 runners up), Pohang Steelers (3 W, 1 RU), Seongnam (2 W, 2 RU), Al-Ittihad (2 W, 1 RU), Jeonbuk (2 W, 1 RU), Urawa Red Diamonds (2 W, 1 RU). 2022 Melbourne City Historical Result: Knocked out in group stage Historical winner: Al-Hilal (2021) Urawa Red Diamonds (2022) The Season Ahead I have one of the best teams in the league, though simulations only gave them the odd title. Up front is Jamie Maclaren, record goalscorer. Australian international Matthew Leckie also joins, capable of playing anywhere across the front. The team has mostly played a 4-3-3 for the majority of its existence, so I plan to copy this as my base, with an alternate 4-2-3-1 variation to shake things up. I shortlist club favourites Mooy, Arzani (controversial inclusion, given the short time he was at the club and the fact he's now played for all 3 Melbourne teams) and Fornaroli in case the opportunity comes up to bring them back. I see Fornaroli is transfer listed by Perth, but unfortunately transfers are blocked between teams and not sure he'd be happy being backup to Maclaren. I also add an old club favourite of mine to the shortlist in Aziz Behich (recently re-signed in real life) and look up Paartelu to see that he's a free agent. He could provide good cover in DM but wants to be a fairly high earner. My initial tactical plan is to overload the left and see if I can get the right winger operating as a second striker for a long switch. This is what they did that season, though then they switched to the box which is all the rage. I will see how this goes in the league before worrying about what to do in the ACL next season. In real life City have just sold Marco Tilio and Jordan Bos for record transfer fees, so definitely want to develop them. Tom Glover (previously a Spurs youth) has also just gone to Middlesbrough, so he's a lock for GK. That's a decent core of youngsters and I hope I can develop some more talent in my time at the club. Up the other end Maclaren is one of the greatest ever strikers in the league with almost 150 goals to date and Leckie was the big name Aussie international signing so I will be building around them. The A League is still trying to build it's brand a bit, so I want to make a conscious effort to sign some high profile/rep players in the team. I have 1 DP slot remaining I can use for this purpose, though no immediate targets and I'm already at 23/23 roster slots (seems awfully low). I have a bunch of scholarship players as well which are youngsters that don't count towards the cap which helps. Current Designated Players: Squad Overview Goalkeepers Defenders Midfielders Forwards So I have a pretty good squad, with some versatile players that should help me go strong for the League title this season and see if any of my youngsters are ready to step up for next season when I will need to do a bit of a squad refresh.

Welcome to my save where I restore the Melbourne Heart identity to a team since absorbed into the City Football Conglomeration! I used to have a Melbourne Heart season ticket/membership back in the day. It was good fun getting along to live football, even if the team was rubbish and never going to win anything. We were the underdogs against our much bigger Melbourne rivals in Victory, then the City group bought out the club and everything changed. Suddenly there was money for facilities and we were linked with exciting players (David Villa being the first). But we were also no longer an independent club and there was a lot of grumbling particularly from people who supported EPL teams that were rivals of City. Then there was the change of identity with badge, name and colours all changing. First it wasn't too bad, we played in white (as opposed to red and white) for a couple of seasons with the sky blue trim and the red stripes as the away kit. But then we went full sky blue, the same as one of the other 10 teams (but we had different coloured shorts I guess). And now Melbourne City are a team constantly competing for the league title and fun to watch but almost a completely new team that just replaced Melbourne Heart. And I honestly don't know what to think about it. I've mostly stopped following them because I feel conflicted supporting a Manchester City feeder club (I also moved away from Melbourne) but there's still those years of emotional investment. In this save, I am rewriting history so that CFG still invested in the club (Heart desperately needed some cash injection to become competitive) but treated it more like their recent acquisitions, leaving the club identity alone. I briefly considered undoing the City takeover, but the fact that they have now existed longer as City than they did Heart means it would feel a little too unrealistic to completely disassociate them. Likewise, an editor forced sale to a new group reinstating the Heart identity was too complicated for me. At least this way we get the identity back and enough money for proper ice baths! I have chosen to play in FM22 mostly because I haven't bothered to upgrade to FM23 but also because we start in Melbourne City's/Heart's first championship and therefore continental qualification for the first time. It's before covid tanked Australia's Asian coefficient due to all the A-League qualifying teams withdrawing which is a nice bonus if I want to build league rep. Also I don't want to wait until FM24 and compete with the Saudi wealth in the ACL. Goal: Dominate the A League. In real life, Melbourne City keep losing out in the finals series. If possible, I'd like to try raising the quality of the league, though inbuilt restrictions make that challenging. But the main goal is to win the Asian Champions League if possible and replicate Western Sydney Wanderer's feat. Given the salary and roster restriction compared to some of the big clubs in Japan and Saudi Arabia, this will be tricky! Really though, I just want to change the way I've been playing the game by recording and interacting more with the narrative and less focus on grinding through results. Game setup: I am using the pre-game editor to reinstate the Melbourne Heart identity and adding more Asian nations to make the competition more dynamic. I have also edited the A-League itself, to encompass the expansion. The next teams to join will be in Canberra and Auckland, so I am accelerating the timeline and from 2nd season adding Canberra United and reinstating New Zealand Knights. The Auckland team is likely to be a new creation but I figured I may as well just revive the extinct club rather than create a new one to fulfil the same function. Then I rather ambitiously thought why stop there, so I have added Gold Coast back in as well as promoting Wollongong Wolves further down the line to take the competition to 16 teams. This seemed to work on my simulation tests, but we will see! Unfortunately I couldn't work out a way to increase salary cap or squad roster sizes which seem to be hardcoded. I also moved Melbourne City manager Patrick Kisnorbo to Troyes where he moved during the season (becoming the first Aussie to manage in a top 5 league just beating out Ange Postecoglou), gave Bruno Fornaroli Australian citizenship and a couple of minor player tweaks that I felt were wrong or just updated to reflect FM23.

Sorry, I had somehow missed the Overloads part, which is quite similar to what I'm trying. I'm just making it harder on myself with a less supportive FB and an attacking striker which kinda takes away from the overload theory unfortunately. Do you find that play narrower is a useful team instruction for this? I hadn't thought to try it. Also was there a reason you ended up going IF(A) over Raumdeuter? Also, really appreciate your various musings in the thread which I don't think I've said yet!

I'm looking for some advice on recreating Melbourne City's old 4-3-3. Trying to form overloads on the left (IW + MEZ + WBA + Focus Left), with the striker being the main goalscorer and the RW being the 2nd striker or out ball with the idea to isolate him 1v1 with the FB. They would often build up down the left, and either combine through the spaces there or draw the opposition in and switch the play while the striker was always ready to break in behind. The right sided FB would be more conservative for balance reasons, while the right sided midfielder would push out to support the right once the switch was made. In my testing I'm struggling to make the RW effective. Any suggestion as to roles? I've toyed with making ST a Poacher, going a double Mez in the middle, DM or DLP in behind, an IWB on the right and a whole host of roles for the RW who currently has Stay Wide PI. Suspect a Raumdeuter might be better than an IF, though I've also experimented with a WTF but while this achieves the out ball option I want, don't think it helps with the left overload. Winger (A) would also be good if he was left footed...

I think they're getting it out the way early so as not to distract from FM24. Creates a lot of buzz and generates excitement for ithe brand while tempering expectations of what scope of changes to judge FM24 on. People won't be complaining about graphics and UI if they know it's coming a year later. And they've been some of the biggest complaints I've seen this year, so now people know they've been heard. I imagine this will be it until Q2 next year after the last FM24 update. There's still (at a guess) 3 months until FM24 release so plenty of time to build that up before it's release once all the FM25 excitement dies down a bit.

Super excited for changes coming in FM25! I didn't end up getting FM23 and was a bit meh on whether I'd get FM24, but if it's going to be the final "complete" version of this cycle of games with features that were missed out on FM23 (in addition to any already planned for 24?), I'm definitely on board.

Yes and no. Team mentality will change players mentality and so a high enough mentality will play like an attacking duty player on the ball. Meaning they will more often choose low percentage plays, through balls, pass it quicker and dive into tackles. However off the ball I've noticed a big difference in what position defend, support and attack duties take up. In general when their team mate has the ball, Defend duties will sit deeper and look to cover them, Support duties will present for the pass and Attack duties will look for a ball in behind their marker. I use this as a rough guide when building tactics to try and work out if I'm giving players the right passing options around them.

The FMFC website is definitely a bit of a headscratcher. Released to big fanfare and promises of unspecified exciting content and exclusives to come and then just forgotten about? Interesting to see if the feature blog will be the start of a revival for using the platform or if it's kind of been regarded as a bit of a failed experiment. I often forget it even exists unless I get an email about it.

I'm quite content playing FM22. Only things I can think of that would have made a big enough impression to jump on FM23 would have been an international revamp or improved match graphics. The features revealed are ok but not inspiring and there's nothing there that's really grabbing my attention to drop my current save. I'll probably pick it up on sale at some point next year.

I enjoyed the article and thought it was well written! I have a couple of questions for you though: What inspired the SK(a)? I hadn't thought about using one in a defensive formation before and I'm curious what drew you to it. How much importance do you put on set piece routines with "Play for Set Pieces" on? Are they a big source of goals and do they ever frustrate you by slowing down an attack? It's not an instruction I've used very often.

You don't think academy coaches have educated guesses about the rough talent potential for a player by the time they reach their mid to late teens? That's all the PA stars are. I've heard plenty of interviews with people saying that so and so was a special talent when he came through and they could see him breaking through into the first team or going on to big things. Managers don't seem to invest a heap of time into young players that aren't already similar standard to their existing squad players or have glowing reviews which is the complaint you have. And my experience of players that have had high CA but low PA is that they get high PA stars anyway that gradually dwindle over time. I've also had 2.5 and 3 star PA players who have had the actual PA to be the best player on my first team. Sure the current system has flaws but it's doing a reasonable job. Mechanically I think assigning a random talent ceiling thats specific to your game world to players isn't so bad. Not as convinced by some of the exact numbers on well known wonderkids but don't feel strongly on it. As for Determination, given it is the application of a player when things get tough, I can imagine it's very important in how they develop but also that youth teams might not have as much pressure and adversity to negatively impact the player too much where they can rely on their raw talent to succeed? Just conjecture as haven't invested a heap of time into such players. In addition to warnings and mentoring, squad character will also affect him. If you have a lot of determined and influential characters and leaders then he will naturally improve from their example.