nms1987

In that case shouldn't I at least get a notification that a player has agreed to terms and do I want to trigger my option? That's what seems to happen for the AI teams, as that option is always triggered immediately after a player agrees to terms elsewhere (ie, with me). Again, I would beg you to look up how this works IRL. A player simply isn't free to sign a contract with another club while his current club holds an optional extension.

If you sim forward a day to Jan 12 you should get another similar email, I just did anyway. This time about a young center back of mine Ni Rodrigues, who I have been trying to loan out. "Rejected bid: Sporting Covilha have informed you that Ni Rodrigues is not for sale for any price"

You know, now that I think of it @Zachary Whyte, there are many times when I will agree to terms with a promising young player in the last 6 months of his contract and think I have him signed, only the next day to get an email saying the signing is called off because his current club have opted to exercise their one year option on him. In light of that, surely the experience I originally described is in fact a bug, no?

It has never been mentioned that these options essentially have deadlines that occur 6 months before the end of the contract! "Until the option is activated it is just an option and not an actual contract so the player is free to agree a deal elsewhere." Isn't the point of such an option that I can, unilaterally, contract that player for an extra season... regardless of what the player wants or any other agreements he might have? Is that really how it works in real life? Doesn't seem like much of an option for the team if the player is allowed to essentially void the option by accepting a different contract. I'm thinking of real life this year, where Anthony Martial entered the final year of a deal with Man U holding a one year option. I don't recall reading that Martial was free to agree to a deal with another club in his last 6 months until Man U declined their option. In fact, I recall some discussion that Man U were thinking of activating the option not because they wanted him back but in hopes of some Saudi club buying him. Does this work the same way for conditional options, such as those tied to games played? Those would often activate in the second half of the season, after the games played threshold is reached, so after a player might have accepted a different contract. So if I have a player entering the last season of a deal, with an option for another year after 20 games played, and he plays his 20th game on Feb 15, but the week before he agreed to a contract elsewhere.... that contractually agreed option year basically disappears? I know there are emails notifying you of whose contracts are expiring, and if they have extension options, but maybe it should be made more explicit on those screens that you must accept the options before the last 6 months of the contract or players can void them.

B teams in general need to get blown up and reworked. from scratch.

This also happens a lot when looking for coaches for youth or B teams. You select guys interested in being, say, B team asst manager and then they'll refuse any position other than on your first team coaching staff

Travel periods in general need to get reworked. 1, yes, no need to travel home and then leave again in many cases. 2, in many leagues "away" games with travel aren't any more "travel" than a team traveling from their training ground to a home match. FM thinks Benfica needs to travel to and from Amadora or Sporting. It's a 20 minute walk! I pointed out previously that this travel obsession makes the international tour feature unworkable. If you go on tour, your team will travel to and from and then to and from again every match. So there is no benefit to calling it a tour.

I've always assumed this situation was to reflect immigrant family kids, who are eligible for a different nation but came up in youth football in the club's nation. Kids with African parents but raised (and often born) in Europe. So, a Cabo Verdean kid from Lisbon. But yeah, the lack of African talent in FM24 is so so aggravating. Something needs to be done, crazy that I can send scouts to Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, ect and they come back saying "nah, nothing to see here" I like the agent idea. Clever, and would make agent relationships more important in the game.

Agreed. I assume for top leagues that there is some stat database out there that tracks the average number of times in a time a post or crossbar will be hit. I would LOVE it for SI to then compare the amount of times it happens in an FM match in those same leagues and see how (dis)similar they are. It's every 10 min in some of my matches! Would also love SI to do the same comparison for offsides calls...

Sometimes you'll be prompted in Press Conference to give guys a day off after a win, or cancel a day off after a loss. Would be neat to be able to promise that in the preseason as a constant thing, as is often the case IRL. In other words, in your preseason meeting you could tell your squad "Any time we win, you get a day off the next day!" or "Any game we lose, you'll be in for conditioning the next morning!" Like with other promises it could make your players like you more, or pizz them off, depending on their character and your reputation, ect. And maybe you could break the promise sometimes on a case-by-case basis... so if you win, but in weak fashion at home against a bottom of the table team maybe you cancel day off after that. Or you lose, but you played heroically on the road to a better team, maybe that's still worth a day off. Hopefully players could understand (or even appreciate) occasional breaks of that promise, but do it too much, or for not a good enough reason, and you lose the dressing room

Point taken in general but for the Spanish/Lat Am thing all of those countries allow dual I believe, and I would hope the game has it coded that EU citizenship is always desirable ASAP for a player playing in Europe, or who would like to play in Europe, as it allows you to not count towards foreign limit in Spain and Italy. 730 days in Spain for guys from most Latin American countries (like Chile). 10 years if they're coming from anywhere else. And yeah, continuous. IIRC you can take a small break (less than a few months) and have it still count as continuous. IE, if you're an Italian team you could sign a Chilean, loan him to a club in Spain, then he comes back in July, then in August you loan him to Spain for another year, that month gap doesn't break the continuous. However, be careful about screwing up what I once screwed up... there is an unpredictable lag (like IRL) between hitting the 2 year mark and actually getting the paperwork finalized. As a Spanish club I once signed an Argentine, he spent 2 years with me, then I sent him to my affiliate in Belgium thinking he had spent his 2 years in Spain he was EU now. Nope. He hit 2 years but didn't have paperwork done yet, so him leaving the country before paperwork was done reset everything to zero... womp womp

Sounds really frustrating, drives me crazy how much of FM24 was left incomplete. Part of this issue, it sounds to me, also stems from FM's inane insistence that transfer budget and salary budget are different. As in, it sounds like you have salary budget to sign some guys on frees, but you still need a 50k or something to give them a signing on fee and agent fee because counts as transfer money, and transfer money = 0. Even though there is that money in the wage budget

I'm genuinely not sure why this isn't already an option, but it would be so nice if we could set the tactics our youth and B teams play with. As far as I can tell, right now, those teams either just play with whatever tactic the youth team manager likes, or they play with your main squad's tactics. Lots of good main squads will be using tactics built around specific players, often using roles that are not suitable for most players (like Regista or Complete Forward), so in my youth setup I'm stuck having to make some poor teenager play in a role really poor for his development. It would be nice to set up a different tactic for those squads to best suit the development those youth players

I mean I know I can just let the guy go, but is it not any kind of a concern to SI staff that FM24 just seems to constantly do these insane things for no reason at all? Might be worth getting to the bottom of why this keeps happening, I would love to know. The constant bugs are a real drag to the experience and raise questions as to the quality of the product As for the u-19 vs B job, just go on that same save and try to hire guys for the B team. Tons of coaches will reject B team position but will accept same position w u-19s. IRL I don't think that is ever the case... in fact, frequently coaches work their way up from u15, u19, u21s, B, ect.

Has anyone managed to take a look at this in the last few weeks?

Any idea what the deal here is guys? Any other expiring coach contract results in the guy staying on in a month-to-month basis without contract, or occasionally choosing to leave the club when the contract ends. It is just this B team manager position that auto-renews. Very frustrating.

Yeah, I have since figured out from other complaints that if I go back move my transfer budget to salary budget at the end of the season I can double my salary cap to about 60 million or so. Which is very stupid, that is simply not AT ALL how La Liga salary cap works! You don't tell La Liga how much you're allowed to spend and they set the cap there, La Liga tells you! Just embarrassingly bad, lazy design. I actually started this save, a long time ago, because I was looking forward to the challenge of La Liga finances, of having that obstacle to maneuver around, but finding out the FM version is just a complete fairy tale has really taken the wind out of my sails. BTW - That 60 million is still low, I think, compared to real life for a club already in a good financial status that made that much profit and had that much money in the bank. Its less than half my previous year's profit, and less than 20% of my current bank balance. Real Sociedad and Athletic Club, in real life, are maybe good comparisons to my current save. Not financial powerhouses like Madrid or Barca, but financially secure clubs that are usually in Europa and occasionally Champions. Their IRL salary caps are 100 and 125 million a year respectively. 60 million is Mallorca/Almeria level, and Almeria/Mallorca IRL don't have Europa/Champions money nor have they made transfer profit like I have. This is compounded by the fact that FM salaries are a little inflated (I think) compared to real life, so that 60 million in payroll buys less in FM than it does in real life. Also, once that limit is set in FM, in late July I think, I don't think it changes all year. If it is 60 million on Aug 1, it is 60 million on Jan 1 and June 1. IRL, I am pretty sure, if you make sales you can improve that limit. So if your limit IRL is 100 million, but you make a big sale in August, that limit might actually go up to 110 or 120 million, because you have brought in more money. And, conversely, making a big transfer spend can reduce your salary allowance, so making a splashy signing has to be carefully considered. That critically important detail is missing from FM's version. Really sad state of affairs

Any idea on what this is about guys?

Thanks @Zachary Whyte, that's a very very cool feature I didn't know about. In this save (granted, a few months afterwards now) I appear to be tied with 3 other clubs for best in country with 4.5 stars. My "superb" youth facilities are only 4 stars, while Real Sociedad's "superb" youth facilities are 4.5 stars. I am a close 2nd in graduates in La Liga (22 vs Athletic Club's 24), and in top division graduates (Atletico Madrid 30 top division graduates to my 29). The Real Sociedad 4.5 vs my 4 star youth facilities when both are superb is strange. I can't upgrade mine any further (and I don't think its a board thing, I'm "rich" and owner "loves the club") I could see a case where I'm not THE top academy in the country I guess but I'm pretty clearly one of the top academies in the country. Not sure if that's a bug or not, how the game is defining "best" in a pretty close race. At the very least probably should be a middle ground between "failed" and "passed" for something like this

Many current Head Scouts will only accept a job with you if that job is Head Scout. They will not accept a regular Scout role. Unfortunately, it is not possible to filter Scout vs Head Scout positions in Staff Search. It is, however, possible to search Performance Analyst vs Head Performance Analyst. What gives?