Harper

Expectations unchanged. Tiling may still be promising, but reserving judgment until seen in action.

My understanding is (and could be outdated or just entirely wrong) that height doesn't actually matter, if a 5'9 and 6'3 player both have a 14 Jumping Height attribute, they both have the same apex when jumping. But height does correlate with height in that taller players more frequently have higher JH attribute. And weight has correlated with strength (heavier players more commonly have higher strength).

This was my take a year ago. The non-match day UI/UX will be drastically different; the kinks and quirks of the Match Engine will look more refined with the new Unity-based match animations. This was what I wrote in the other thread after today's blog. I think the concerns about the full fat FM being degraded are a little unfounded. My experiences with the mobile versions have also left me a disappointed because they lack the depth the PC version lets me explore. SI has been making the mobile/console versions as a sort of FM Kiddie Pool/Shallow End while PC is the Adult Swim/Deep End with noticeably different UIs. I hope and expect that SI will continue pruning some of the depth features in Mobile/Console and maintain the full fat FM.

Personally, tiles and cards UI/UX is promising. It's easy to have negative expectations. Frankly, it's prudent to have low expectations. But, my initial gut reaction, as someone that has played every iteration of CM and FM since 2001/02, is that the variety of option in form factors of these tiles and cards will allow the user to have greater customization of what and how information presented on player and team profiles. Hopefully the tiles can be dragged and drop around the screen so I don't have to select tiles in order to get them to go to where I want. (Think Android home screen layout rather than Apple's soon to be retired autosnap functionality). Maybe it's just the excitement of FM25 news that's got me huffing that hopium, but my gut reaction was positive (if not abundantly hopeful and disregarding the prudence of holding low expectations). If the user has agency in selecting which tiles, and at what sizes, various tiles appear on a player profile, this will be a MASSIVE improvement for the UX. If a user can export and share their tile setup and share it with the community, it makes the skinning community much more accessible. Or, in the negative, the community is absolutely flooded with nuanced variations of the same thing. If the user can create custom cards, it allows the skinning community to focus on extracting the appropriate statistics, rather than fidgeting with panel size parameters or maintaining hi-res and lo-res versions! Or focus on introducing unique color palettes or patterns/textures that can be applied to the UI. One of the most tedious and discouraging aspects of tinkering with a custom skin is trying to make those tiny adjustments to panel sizes to accommodate a given resolution. I've tried several times and end up just forcing someone else's skin to work to my needs. But with these, I imagine a world where @Wozzie or @_Ben_ or @TCSSkin and all the other skinners can produce their unique skins and data representations, but not have to caveat what resolution the skin is made for. Whether you are on a 13" MacBook or plugged into a 49" Ultrawide, you can use a same skin and the tiles and cards adjust to the appropriate size to fit the monitor! I'm less concerned about color scheme, as that should be something that a user can customize...or the skinning community will find a way to customize All in, I believe this is has the opportunity to be great for customizing how we can pick and choose what we see on our screens.

Absolutely. There is a not insignificant number of people who will experience FM for the first time because they can manage the women’s team they support. There is a whole generation of kids with pocket computers that need to be introduced and hooked to the game. It’s not a given that the next generation will just buy Football Manager because it exists. Expanding the game to include the women’s game adds another angle to entice those wide-eyed tweens that will fill up the Emirates this weekend.

Adding the women’s game is about growing the user base (e.g., the women’s football/gamer market). Migrating to the Unity engine is more about modernizing the tech stack than it is enticing EA\Konami players. Probably has a benefit in widening the applicant pool for entry level positions and reducing the onboarding/learning curve there.

Isn't 2.1 billion in the range of the maximum value for a signed integer? But realistically, if a club was accruing several hundred million and not re-investing it into player/staff wages, academy, community; you can bet owners/shareholders are taking profits. I thought the game handled this by “investing” a large amount to bring the number down. But maybe that was just the overall balance.

Not sure about the core of the question, but I brought Mamar in to be my back up on the cheap (£3M); played him in domestic cups. He performed well, but he started complaining about match time and needing it to be in contention for the Georgian NT. Thought I would be able to sell him for a decent profit after a good season as back up. He had 18 starts, 12 clean sheets, 8 conceded, 7.16 average. Included there were 4 starts in the FA Cup with 4 clean sheets and a 7.53 rating in the FA Cup; 10 starts in the Premier League, 6 clean sheets, 4 conceded, and a 7.05 rating; 3 starts in the Champions League, 2 clean sheets, 1 concede, 7.03 rating. Everyone who wanted to buy him offered maximum 3 million, not one team wanted to gamble £9-12 million one a prime aged goalie with good performances in top level competitions. Bizarre. I did end up loaning him to Celtic with an option to buy for £10.75m; but I don’t anticipate them exercising the option. I don’t think I’ve ever had a team exercise an option to buy when loaning from me.

I'd keep it in windowed mode and use the keystrokes to maximize the window on match days (Windows Key + Up Arrow), or snap it to half the screen between match days (Windows Key + Left/Right).

Two things helped me get back some mojo for the game. First was getting a MacBook. It’s powerful enough to run at speed without being plugged in. So I can take the game with me to the kitchen or the living room or the bedroom. Doesn’t have to be a MacBook, but a laptop with adequate battery life under processor use is 🤌 . FM is the only game I play now, so need for a true rig of a desktop isn’t necessary anymore. Second is to choose a start date in the middle of the season. Dropped in like a mid-season manager change. Only focus is to get the team playing one tactic right. Delegate everything except tactics and team talks. Have all scout reports delivered in the scout meeting to reduce the inbox clutter. Load up the laptop play a match or two, then shut it down for the evening. Once the first season ends, I’m more invested in the save and it’s easier to break down the traditional startup tasks into chunks. Refine my back room staff before pre-season starts. More thoroughly setup tactics. Review scouted players and make contract/transfer offers. Then start taking back some responsibilities based on how I want to play; particularly in the scouting and youth team training.

To illustrate the point, attributes rise and falls by increments of 0.2 (I believe, kind of guess work) and the game truncates the float values. Here is a player's attributes with an indicator of decrease in is long shot ability Hovering over the attribute in the progress tracker on the previous month (August 2026), you see "Long Shots - 13" On the current month (September 2026), you see the slight decline from the previous month, but the information when hovering over the data point still reads "Long Shots - 13" Different play (new signing, but with a more dramatic arrow indicator). The darker red arrow, indicating a sharper decrease indicates the integer has changed, but the decrease isn't a significant decline. Here the player has 13 stamina The following month, the integer is 12, but it may have gone from 13.0 to 12.8 (maybe 12.6).

I’d expect they do a beta release early in the day so devs are on the clock if anything major comes up in the immediate hours after release. I think the post I saw several pages ago was the time of gold release

Transfer my FM23 save and see how that works. I just finished a season so I can start relative close to the turnover date. See how/if the new squad building AI, intermediaries, and transfer room bits work. Probably start a new save after full release.

A bet a day keeps the beta away.