Daniel Evensen

China Locomotive This one wasn’t even close. One of my assistant managers recommended that we start both Parra and Rovaglia as strikers, and that we stick Suphanat Mueanta out on the left wing. I thought it might be good to put Delfi back on the right wing to see what he could do. The result was a huge victory, much bigger than I had ever expected. Rovaglia wound up scoring 4 goals and getting an assist. Mueanta had 2 goals of his own, and Parra contributed 1. Younes Delfi wound up with the Player of the Match award, as well as the Player of the Week award, for his 3 assists and excellent contribution. We’ve now won 35 straight league games. If you count our Chinese FA Cup run, we’ve won 40 in a row. We show no signs of slowing down at all. This has been an amazing season, much better than I ever anticipated. And the real crazy part is the fact that these players are so young. Devastating Injury It’s bad enough with Juan David Torres out for another two months or so. I received word of a training injury that hurts even more. Camil Jebara, our great 20-year-old Swedish left winger, is out for 8 to 10 months with damaged cruciate ligaments. This is one of those injuries that might completely derail his career, and there sadly isn’t anything we can do about it. We do have other players who can play his position (Mueanta, for example, as we saw in our last match). However, I fear that Jebara will never be able to make up for the lost training time, and that he might never be the same again. I stuck him on the under 21 roster. It will take him some time to heal, and then we’ll take a look and see what his future is like at this club. Month in Review We’re losing money each month, but we’re still a rich club anyway. Most of that money lost comes due to player wage expenditures, which isn’t a huge issue. We’re still far below the allotment the board set. The board is happy in general, but remains lukewarm about our match performance. They also aren’t thrilled with my transfers, mostly because of the young players with questionable potential that I continue to sign. I think that this investment will pay off in the future, however, and I’m not going to give up my quest for wonderkids. The supporters are much happier, though they are also very critical of my transfer decisions. Ye Jie is currently the closest we have to a squad leader. There’s good unity on the squad, but still not too much by way of cohesion. We’re slowly pushing our general squad personality towards something more professional, which will hopefully start showing through once we reach the summer transfer season. Taiyuan University of Technology We’re heading out to Taiyuan for our next match. A win here might clinch promotion for us, assuming that Jiangsu FC lose. Yes, that’s right: our new rivals are currently in second position. If we crush Taiyuan and they lose, we’ve clinched promotion and can relax a bit. We’ll still play every game like it’s out last, though. I’m not going to take it easy.

As an American, I can only commend you on your patience. I don't think I'm ever going to have an MLS save in FM.

Jiangsu Nantong I thought we were going to roll on to victory again. I was wrong. We scored two quickly. Luciano Parra scored a quick header in the 3rd minute. Then came Younes Delfi, scoring yet another goal from the right wing. That made it 2-0 before 20 minutes were up. And then they came back. Tao Hongqiang, the Nantong striker, scored a goal in the 25th minute, and then tied the score with a penalty in the 29th. I was shocked. We haven’t given up this many goals in a league match in months. Thankfully, Suphanat Mueanta came back, scoring two penalties for us. A final goal by Jacob Dicko Eng gave us our 5th goal, leading us to a 5-2 victory. Still, that one has me worried. We should have crushed this team. China Locomotive We’re back at home again, this time to face China Locomotive. At Charlotte’s behest, I’m going to start Lee Jin-Yong again. My assistant manager thinks we should stick Mr. Kwon back out there, but I just can’t handle his inconsistency. I just hope we don’t keep letting in goals. Liu Shaoziyang is supposed to be the best young Chinese goalie in the world. I’m not sure what’s going on.

That was back during the pandemic. Those were dark times, my friend. I had a save for every day of the week, and played the game for like 8 to 10 hours a day. It's more fun if you slow things down, focus on one save, and get deep into the story.

Tagging on here just to mention that FM23's Linux compatibility is stellar. I switched over to Pop!_OS a few months ago and haven't missed a beat. If anything, I think the performance on Linux is better than on MacOS. I'm not surprised to see the Steam Deck verification here. Proton works wonders.

Nope. Every save is different. If you think the game is too hard, go manage Manchester City and score all the goals. If you think the game is still too hard, go into the pregame editor, give your squad max reputation, take away all debts, give yourself a huge transfer budget, and add on a front-end sugar daddy owner who will never leave the club for good measure. Conversely, if you think the game is too easy, go manage Ingolstadt 04 and see how you do with a mostly injured squad, no money at all, and expectations for success today. I lasted 9 matches, lol.

I would actually argue that most FM players want to become immersed in a realistic story, and aren't just looking for total sandbox wackiness. Having said that, you can use the pregame editor to remove squad registration rules as you like. I'll warn you, though, that the joys of managing FC Seoul start to fade away when you realize your squad doesn't have a single Korean player. Trust me: I've been there.

Just 1, as a rule. I once had as many as 7 going at once. It's not worth it.

Honestly, my biggest FM regret is letting myself become burnt out with FM22 about 7 or 8 months ago or so. I was spending far too much time playing the game and wasn't really enjoying it anymore. My advice is to slow down and enjoy the ride. Don't think that you have to conquer everything right away to have a good time. Let the game develop the story for you.

I can't answer your question, sadly. I can say, though, that you can play on a sand pitch, which is freaking awesome. I'm looking forward for the next version of the Around The World Megapack so I can go back to Kiribati and enjoy my sand football again.

Beijing University Well, the experiment paid off. We won this match easily, 3-0. Neither Zhu Bin nor Shi Jiayang looked bad out there. Shi Jiayang had a poor first half, but got it together and had a number of shots on goal in the second. And Zhu Bin is already the best at taking free kicks on the entire squad — all at the tender age of 16. Younes Delfi was our only goalscorer. We didn’t need contributions from anybody else, as it turned out. He scored an easy hat trick despite playing in the unfamiliar right attacking midfielder position. Delfi is a great signing and has all the signs of being a great player. And that makes it 33 matches in a row. The dream season just keeps moving on. Mueanta was too tired from our cup match to start this one. Pietro Rovaglia and Cheng Binbin were leading the line for us. Neither had a particularly good match. I’m worried that Rovaglia might wind up on the outside looking in by the time we get to the summer. But we’ll worry about those problems later. Parra’s New Contract Oh — Luciano Parra now has a new contract. Right on the heels of becoming the best goalscorer in our league, Parra has signed a new contract worth a whopping 32 million RMB. I just hope it doesn’t get to the 20-year-old’s head. The key aspect of this contract is that it completely removes his previous release clause. Parra’s here to stay. The spokesman for the supporters is concerned that Luciano might not have a place on the squad, which is hilarious. I can see him being a problem when we get to the Champion’s League in a few years, maybe. At the moment, though, he’s our big star. We’re going to make sure he’s paid. Jiangsu Nantong We’re going back south, this time to play in Nantong, Jiangsu Province. We’re going to win this match easily. Maybe we should keep the kids in there.

Unfortunately, I no longer have a copy of FM22 - nor can it be purchased through any means I'm aware of... otherwise I'd absolutely give IC22 a few years of playing time.

These are excellent. Thank you!

Victory in the Snow We did it. I don’t know how we did it, but we did it. We had a decimated squad, hampered by injuries and sickness. We’ve had to deal with colds and the flu. We wound up having to start teenagers at centerback. And yet we were still able to beat Zhejiang FC. It was a snowy, wintery evening. Our players were slipping and sliding all over the place. And yet we were still able to force mistakes from Zhejiang, helping us on our way to a close and hard fought 2-0 win. Jacob Dicko Eng scored both goals for us, and came within a whisker of a hat trick at the end of the match. We were on our heels for most of the first half, but wound up with a wonder goal from Eng not long before halftime. Eng’s second goal came on the back of an amazing pass by Lee Jin-Yong, sending the ladies in the crowd into a frenzy. That one came in the 81st minute, and was enough to make the victory complete. It wasn’t all roses, of course. Wang Tong was sent off after an absolutely ridiculous tackle in the 67th minute, one that led to a straight red card. He didn’t need to make the tackle, and I guess he just got caught up in the moment. Mueanta made his debut, but wasn’t able to do much, unfortunately. I took him off at halftime to try to conserve his energy and avoid another injury. The conditions were really treacherous. We won, though, and that’s what counts. Playing The Youth Our squad is in pretty bad shape. It’s not the injuries, either. It’s the weather. We’ve got 4 players out with either the flu or colds. I’ve been sending players home left and right. We do have enough to field a squad, but we’re going to have to use some interesting players. We’ll start Zhu Bin in our next match. He’s a 16-year-old left winger who came up through the youth academy. Zhu Bin has made enough progress to get a taste of first team football, but I’m not entirely convinced that he’s really good enough to play for this squad. He will be in the future, but I don’t know if he’s good enough right now. I suppose we’ll see. The other experiment will be Shi Jiayang, a 16-year-old centerback who is clearly not good enough at the moment. We bought Shi Jiayang from Qingdao Qingchundao in the 2nd tier for 450,000 RMB. He came in on January 1st, spent about a week or two in the under-21 squad, and now has to make it work on the first team. It’s pretty crazy. The coaches tell me that he probably doesn’t have the required ability or potential for this squad. However, he’s young, he’s tall, he knows how to play the position, and he’s on our team. We’ll play him whether it works or not. We’ll see if starting him haunts us. Beijing University We’re playing on the road at Beijing University again. We should be able to win this match, though I’m not sure if our young players are going to be ready for it or not. We’ll see.

LOL! Yeah, you need scouts who have at least some kind of adaptability rating. It does make a difference, as I've learned. However, I've grown weary of trying to min/max my staff. I just let the technical director make those signings and work with what I've got. Except for the HOYD, of course — nobody can touch that but me.

In addition to stuff like the Increased Realism Megapack, I'm using a random Chinese lower league file that I found on the Steam Workshop. It includes a window for the top Chinese Super League team to reach Europe. It's pretty well done, and includes resurrected versions of Chinese clubs that have gone bankrupt over the past few years. The finances aren't perfect, though, and I wasn't able to get it to work quite right with @Daveincid's Chinese finance fix: as I recall, one of the add-ons was done with the advanced rules editor and the other with the basic rules editor, and I just didn't have the time or patience to get the two to work together. Anyway, it's been a lot of fun. I made a slight adjustment to take my team out of debt and give us a frontend sugar daddy owner. You'd think it would make the game easy, but we're actually having quite a few issues with squad cohesion and morale. It turns out that reputation plays a huge role in the sort of players you can attract to your squad even if you're rich. I'm hoping to start fiddling around a bit with the pregame editor to come up with some stuff on my own in the future. Of course, that means spending less time playing the game, which is no easy task...

I can address some of your points, though not all. I actually use the squad planner. I play with all stars and attributes turned off. The squad planner makes it a lot easier for me to understand how my assistant manager thinks the players compare with each other. I think it's a good development, though I would prefer it if I could prevent the assistant manager from throwing in players on my shortlist and players we've purchased that haven't come in yet. It's a good start, and I don't understand the hate. I haven't seen a drop in goal scoring at all. My squad has scored 171 goals in 32 matches. Now, we are in a fictional Chinese third tier, and some of the opposition is really bad. However, I can say for certain that I haven't seen any major offensive nerfing with the latest match engine updates. I'm really surprised that you cite better youth candidates as a positive aspect of FM23. There was a really big discussion on here a few months back about how young players were not developing correctly in FM23. In that respect, I really highly recommend using the Increase Realism Megapack that Daveincid has produced. That will help address some of the glaring issues with AI squad development and young players not having high enough reputation to play internationally. Daveincid's adjustments help keep Football Manager in line. Honestly, I think SI should seriously consider hiring him to help develop the game in the future: his work is that good. Now, the transfer issues are valid, though I remember people complaining about the same issues in FM22 and FM21. The game also slowed down a bit for me after the last patch, and you can see a difference in the choppiness of video footage in almost all the major YouTubers. And, yes, for some reason having two DMs is incredibly powerful in the current match engine, and I don't quite understand why. Finally, the problem of the beta and first version of the game being incomplete has been a thing for years now. I resolved last year to refrain from buying the newest game until after the final patch came out. As you can see, I wound up giving in before then. However, it's worth keeping that in mind for future years. Some of my favorite mods, such as the Around the World Megapack and Darthfurion's World Super League, usually aren't fully ready until after the final update is complete. My goal this time around is to start a really long and deep save once those are ready, probably a hexagon challenge with Dave the Editor's files. When I finally finish that project, I figure that version 24.4 should be ready, which means it will be time for me to buy the next game. Of course, that means staying away from the FOMO associated with new and shiny games: no easy task!

Thanks! I just hope we can keep the good times going. I'm surprised that we've had so much drama so far; I would have thought that all this winning would have prevented some of these players from getting so upset. Oh well...

Dominant Win It won’t surprise you to hear that we wiped the floor with Jiangchuan-xian Wenhui. This one was like playing against a team that wasn’t there. Wenhui didn’t get a single shot off, and had an xG of 0. Our 5-0 win was so dominant that it wasn’t fair. Ariel Guzman made a first team start for the first time, but didn’t play particularly well. I wound up going with Ye Jie in the second half. Ye Jie played better, but his upset feelings about the Fan Xiang transfer make me extremely reluctant to rely on him. Luciano Parra wound up with 4 goals in an absolutely incredible performance. The 4th of these put him in first place for the time being in league goals, with 29 total in only 17 games. We’ve now scored 171 goals this season, and keep scoring no matter who starts for us. I still think we likely have the best team in the country. Charlotte and the famous Lee Jin-Yong fan club were extremely happy when Lee Jin-Yong scored a goal of his own. He wound up wandering deep into the Wenhui penalty box and scored one from point blank range. He’s not much for long shots, but he’ll punish you if you leave him open for long enough. We’re doing well, and I feel very good about this team. Pressure The good times might be ending soon. Four days after that big league win, we host Zhejiang FC in the quarter finals of the Chinese FA Cup. Chairman Guo stopped by a few days before the match. He walked up slowly to my small desk, gave me a big smile, holding a cigar in the left side of his mouth, and started talking loudly. “I’m looking forward to holding the Chinese FA Cup in my hands,” he said, giving me a wink. That got a rise out of everybody in the area. “You’ll beat Zhejiang,” he said. “I know I can count on you.” I feel nervous. Zhejiang are one of the better Chinese Super League sides. We’re expecting snow for this match. I’m happy that we’re at home, though I’m not sure how much of an advantage it will give us.

I'm surprised people would be upset with you for linking him here. Max's work is excellent, and I haven't noticed any backlash for linking to him (which I do often). Here's the link to his channel.

I would be extremely surprised if things were different in FM23. In addition to FM23 and FM22, EBTS also works very well on FM21 and FM20, and I'm guessing it works well on earlier games, too. In other words, I really don't think Sports Interactive is making super secretive behind-the-scenes changes to how training works.

He has released one - it's in the link in my post. If you missed it, here it is again. The video explains the training schedule, and the link to the file is in the description.

No Surprise We defeated Qinghai Oulu, just as we thought we would. The final tally was 5-0, though it could have been a lot better. Our xG was 8.15, which is simply incredible. I think we hit the woodwork 5 or 6 times in the match, and Younes Delfi missed a penalty in the 85th minute. That makes 31 wins in a row, and it’s not going to stop. We’re still on a roll, and I think we’re getting better and better. I think, that is. Big Injury Juan David Torres, who has been an incredible centerback for us, tore an abdominal muscle while doing weight training. He’s going to be out for 3 months, which puts him out for the rest of the season. We’ve got a few options to replace him, though none of them are great. There always is Ye Jie, but he’s in a bad mood, and I really don’t want to play him. We need to look for other options, and I particularly want to see if we can’t use this opportunity to develop some young Chinese players. We’ve already pushed Yan Kun up to the senior squad. He’s a 20-year-old 196 centimeter Chinese central defender who is coming off an injury of his own. Yan Kun came in during our first transfer window. We bought him for 4 million RMB from Jiangsu in another one of our big signings from that club. Everything about Yan Kun looks good, and I really am eager to see how he’ll play once he’s ready. But he still needs some time to recover. The other Chinese option is Shi Jiayang, a 16-year-old centerback from Panjin who is already 192 centimeters tall. We bought him from Qingdoa Qingchundao not too long ago. I bet he never guessed that he would wind up straight with our first team, but that’s where he is now. It’s not clear if Shi Jiayang has what it takes, though, and he hasn’t played a game for us at any level. This is a huge risk. The final option we have is Ariel Guzman, a 19-year-old Chilean centerback who is only 181 centimeters tall. Guzman comes to us from Universidad de Chile. We bought him for 1.25 million RMB, and we’re going to need to get our money’s worth quickly. Guzman is probably the best of our options. The problem, though, is that he isn’t Chinese, and we can’t put out a team of only foreign players. Transfer Day It’s February already. The transfer window is now closed. Our Director of Football surprised me by putting an offer in for yet another attacking left midfielder. His name is He Chen, he’s 26 years old, and he looks like he’ll be fairly good. The Director of Football agreed that he’ll be an important player, which likely isn’t going to happen. However, it’s good to have Chinese players who aren’t total disasters. Meanwhile, the Wu Ping saga has come to an end. I finally put him on the transfer list, and Wuhan Three Towns bought him off of us. Their 900,000 RMB offer is nowhere near what we thought Wu Ping was worth when I first came on board, but we’ll take it. Beggars can’t be choosers. Even with all the money we’ve spent, we weren’t the highest spending club in China during the transfer window. Shanghai Port spent 365 million RMB, beating us out by about 100 million or so. We did bring in 125 players, though, and also sold 34 players, which was more than anybody else. Most of the Shanghai Port transfer total came from buying Goncalo Inacio from Sporting CP for 300 million RMB. I think we had the better transfer window, to be honest. Jingchuan-xian Wenhui We’re playing that obscure team from western China once again. We’re going to win this one without many problems: that I can guarantee.

Another Win Yeah, we beat Shaanxi easily. The final score was 6-0. Did you expect something different? New signing Zou Jiancong scored on his debut, showing that our scouts actually know what they are doing. I guess I haven’t introduced him yet; I’ll talk more about him below. In the end, though, it was Frenchman Paul Wade, a familiar face around these parts, who wound up with the Man of the Match award. He’s young, he’s excellent in defensive midfield, and I think he’s going to be a mainstay on our squad for years to come. The good times just keep on rolling. That makes 30 league wins in a row without a single defeat. And we’re sure to win our next match, too. I guess I owe it all to Charlotte’s magic. Selling Our Captain Oh, by the way, I sold Fan Xiang. This wasn’t really even a business decision. I made the move because it’s getting to the point where he’s just not good enough for this squad. I figured we might as well cash in now. Everybody’s upset about it. Ye Jie was absolutely furious and demanded to speak with me. I did my best to calm him down, and even appealed to his role as a leader and mentor in our squad. He still wouldn’t listen to reason, and stormed out of my office. And so I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time. I put Ye Jie up for sale as well. Eastern in Hong Kong came in with an offer for him, which I accepted. It wasn’t much money, but I figured I’d salvage what I could of our morale. Ye Jie wound up rejecting the offer in the end. However, I might have another trick to stop him from ruining our morale. New Affiliate Club It took me a while to realize that April 25 in Pyongyang is one of our affiliate clubs. I love having affiliate clubs. It gives me a place to stick those players who aren’t quite good enough for our main club. We can give them game time and let them develop without taking a risk on them playing poorly for our first team. Of course, it also gives us another place to stick those pesky players who are upset about decisions that I make. After all, I’m all about pushing people around and making sure that I can do what I want. We don’t have any room for dissenting views on this club! Anyway, I went to the board and asked for another affiliate club. It took a while, but they finally agreed. Our new affiliate club is Yanbian Fayuan, or the Yanbian Law School. Don’t ask me why we’re suddenly able to send our 20-year-old foreign players to law school without paying anything. This isn’t my country, and I don’t make the rules. I just do what I’m told, like a good soldier. Yanbian Fayuan are an amateur side that could really use some of the help our loan players could give them. I think this will be an excellent relationship. Qinghai Oulu The only question coming into this match is whether we’re going to win by 10 goals again.

That's a good observation, @Mars_Blackmon... Do you know of any "cheats" to help the AI out with better training? Is it something that can actually be done in the pregame editor?