Jonthedon26

Isn't this just another example of what is being talked about? Whilst it isn't as extreme as some, it still seems like the most success is had playing positive, counter, counter-press, higher defensive line and trigger press more often. I play as Birmingham City every version as they are the team I support. On FM23 I managed to get a good 442 wing play formation to work, that involved regrouping and sitting behind the ball. This year I tried the same tactic and it was horrible, so I switched it up (kept the 442 wing play) and had some success, losing in the playoffs first season. Second season I started well and was top by about November but then went on a bit of a slump and I simply couldn't score a goal, kept drawing 0-0. I decided to try the high press and low cross combination and no word of a lie I scored something ridiculous like 19 goals in 4 games, I had to revert back to my old tactic as it seemed way too overpowered, I was crushing teams.

Interesting, will give this a try as well, cheers.

I will give that a try see what comes from it, thanks. **EDIT** just coming back to this as I have fired up FM this evening. The PA in recruitment focuses is a "minimum", so surely a minimum of 3 and a half star should pick up more than a minimum 4 and a half star, as the 3 and a half star should pick up that level and above, as it's a minimum, right @metallimuse? So 3 star CA and MINIMUM 4 and a half star PA is a narrower search?

I agree it is fairly specific, but I want someone who is basically around first team level who is pretty much in their prime. There should be far far more than 2 results for that criteria, in fact I imagine half of the players in the Championship alone fit that criteria for my current squad. I don't play the game as often as most people and only get through about 5 seasons per yearly release, so I don't want to search for a load of 1 star CA with 4 star PA that will be good in several years time, I like to look for people who are first team ready now, and it seems that doesn't generate many results.

I have tried all sorts from narrowed down focuses to much broader searches, setting transfer values to leaving the values as open ended, selecting a position, selecting an age range, and basically none of them work. One current example of a broad search - I have requested a scout search for any position for my tactic, in England, 3 star - 3 and a half stars, ongoing. I am Birmingham City, have some decent scouts, this scout has exceptional knowledge (apparently) of England, and I have had back 2 results all season, one of which is Adam Wharton who I manually scouted. I don't have scouts or analysts on multiple assignments so this is literally their only scouting assignment. I would love someone to explain to me why I am not getting loads of hits on that assignment. The only assignment I have had multiple results on is scouting for out of contract players, any position from my tactic, across the whole of Europe ongoing, I got 20 recommendations on that. Again I would expect there to be hundreds, but with this years scouting mess I deem 20 to be a success.

This is a very good post. Scouting currently feels like a completely broken mess to me. I either get no results at all for very basic parameters that you would imagine there should be hundreds of matches, or very few results that keep getting recommended to me over and over again. I often see other teams signing players who are decent from a region I am scouting and I sit there scratching my head as to why they were never in my recommendations. I would go as far as saying I hate the new scouting system, especially as scouting is such a big part of the game.

The scouting issue is outrageously bad this year!

I have noticed this a few times. Managing Birmingham City we start with Drameh on loan, he played loads of games, was happy at the club and performed well, season ended and I tried to extend the loan for another season and he had zero interest. Instead he spent the next season sat rotting in Leeds reserves listed for loan.

Obviously what people deem as quick or slow is subjective, but my game speed is literally half a star and to me it is absolutely fine. Never wait more than a few seconds between processing through days.

Yeah transfer values are a complete mess in this game. Managing Birmingham City, young(ish) left back Longelo has a value of something like £4.5 - £5.5mil, I can't remember the exact figure, but he isn't in my plans, never plays and when he occasionally does play he is rubbish. He is only on £4k per week and has about 2 years left on his contract. When I have offered him out to clubs I get messages back such as "so and so are only willing to pay £200k for him". How is there such a difference between the in-game valuation and what teams are actually willing to pay for him? Now me personally, I would be happy to let him go for about £1mil, especially as I am in financial ruin, so I am really interested to know where the £4.5mil+ valuation is coming from.

Yep I do the same, saves on the wages

I agree with this. I went through a rough spell towards the end of the season which saw me drop out of the playoff places, so I switched up my tactic slightly and won 3 of the next 4 games 1-0 and drew the other 0-0 to squeeze into the final spot on the last day of the season. I actually very rarely see high scoring games.

I am still a big fan of the way OOTP Baseball does it: "In OOTP, players have a number of skills that are assigned numeric ratings approximating the player's ability. The higher the number, the better the player is at that particular skill. OOTP's scouting model is enabled by default. That means that the player ratings you see on the screen may not be the players' true ratings, but instead they are your scout's assessment of that player's ratings". So you never truly know the players attribute rating, you have to go more on attributes, your own assessment and actual stats from the matches. Too often on FM I find people (naturally) select the player with the best attributes, so even if your star striker got injured and a worse replacement came in and scored 10 goals in 5 games, many would replace them straight away for the striker with the better attributes as soon as they recovered. There is a lot more room for busts in OOTP as well, because as it says the attributes aren't a true reflection. It also makes you rely heavily on your staff, and your need for better staff to better assess the players.

That's great, thanks for the update! In fairness I am still playing my save from the beta so that transfer logic may have been pre-patch so maybe it will work better going forwards.

I don't like to complain about this game as the series has been in my life for as long as I can remember, however it is becoming all the more frustrating. I am in January with Birmingham City and I was having a look through some Premier League squads for possible loan signings, I noticed Liverpool signed Emerson Royal in the summer for a wild fee (think it was £60mil) and he has literally made zero appearances and is currently unhappy. He hasn't had any injuries or anything that has kept him out either. I thought the "Improved AI" was one of the main "features" this year. This isn't a one off either, some of the transfers the AI makes are just baffling, signing players they really don't need, for crazy fees and then rarely playing them. I obviously don't know what goes on behind the scenes in the making of FM, but it really feels like the team spend all the development cycle working on the match engine and data input, and everything else gets left behind. There have been certain bugs/issues in the game for years and years that haven't been addressed still.

Not sure if this has been mentioned before as a potential bug, or whether it is even a bug at all, but I have noticed that when my players are on loan from the summer until January, the club they are on loan to all come in with offers to extend the loan, and every single time for every single player the "agreed playing time" is always set at fringe player. Ever when the initial loan it was regular starter, important player, key player, whatever, the renewal always comes back as fringe player. Also, some of these players have started every game from the summer to now, so they are clearly being used as more than a fringe player currently. Anyone experienced this before?

Most issues I can put up with, however, the AI lack of rotation/subs is really bugging me. Pretty much every game I play is against a tired first 11 and a bench full of players in terrible shape and out of match sharpness. I am Birmingham City and I am currently 3rd in the league coming up to January. I am literally praying that I don't get promoted as it is boring going up first season, I want a few seasons working my way out the championship first.

Just one shortlist, I filter by position when I want to look at at that way. I review the shortlist twice per season and remove anyone I no longer want/need on there.

I saw someone post on Twitter over the weekend that they feel momentum is out on this version, in that when the AI scores a goal in the last 10mins they are almost guaranteed to score another straight after it. I have noticed a couple of examples in my save but have also seen plenty of instances where this isn't the case. Super frustrating wen it happens, but as a Birmingham City fan I know all too well about this happening in real life (see Ipswich game last weekend).

Amazing, thank you! Definitely going to visit Oslo for sure. I'll add that to the list, thank you!

Amazing! Whereabouts are you located (if you don't mind me asking?). I have visited Bergen, Alesund, Haugesund, Stavanger, Hellesilt and Olden so far. Would love to check out Oslo and Tromso soon! Anywhere else you would recommend?

Great post! I love playing "the old fashioned way" on FM, not quite the route one battering ram style you talk of, but the traditional 442 get it out wide and in the box to the big man kind of way. Glad to see there are others out there that aren't all tika taka gegenpressers!

XaW are you from Norway or just a huge Norwegian football fan? Norway is my favourite country on earth, a great place! I might have to start a save there, I was thinking Alesund or Haugesund.

Well then they should make you pay for searching in the first place, make it a real tough decision as to whether you go down the intermediary route or not. As it stands at the moment it feels totally unrealistic to me. Basically as it is now the DoF goes out to various intermediaries and they just come back and say "no we won't be able to sell him" without even attempting to do their job as an intermediary and find any potential interest? My implementation (if possible in the coding) would be DoF goes to various intermediaries with player X, you get a list of said intermediaries that are either local, regional, continental, worldwide and you can choose which level you go with. Each one has a cost for shopping around/drumming up interest in player X, for ease sake £10k, £20k, £30k, £40k, and you pay that up front for them to go around and shop around/drum up interest, then there is also their intermediary fee for an actual sale (like 2%-5% or whatever of the fee). If they don't or can't garner any interest in the player, it has still cost you £10k or whatever to hire the intermediary to go out and look for interest in the player. I don't feel like in real life a whole host of intermediaries would just come back to you straight away and say sorry we wont be able to get any interest in that player without actually going out and looking for/drumming up interest in the player. That's just my take anyway.

I feel like that intermediary screen should be available every time you try to sell a player via intermediary. You should be able to select which intermediary you want to use based on their fee/expected price, then if they can't drum up the interest they should come back to you saying so, and saying there is no fee as they haven't been able to drum up any interest. You shouldn't know if there is interest before you have selected an intermediary to actually go out and establish if there is interest.