DavutOzkan

It's almost like, hey the new seasons are underway across Europe, people are getting excited to start new saves in the new FM, but no, radio silence instead.

Well the sentence right before it in the blog is about fantasy draft. I imagine it will be smaller modes like that, that are not related to the main game. Or for bringing in things that were originally removed from FM25 back to it.

It's probably not a good sign for the overall development of the game that they lead off the announcement by saying what isn't going to be in the game and then releasing underwhelming mockups of the UI.

Went back-to-back with La Liga titles in my game. Oihan Sancet retires afterwards as well which is a pretty good way to go out. I am probably at that point now where we will start to snowball. Made the semis of the CL a couple of times, and it is probably only a matter of time before we win it. That's always the point where these FM saves get a little stale, but there are still so many regens I want to see make it to the first team and see how their careers go. A benefit to playing as Athletic, I suppose, is that you get really attached to your academy players.

Yes.

Are you paying it all upfront without installments?

Yeah, it's always hard to see the AI do so poorly with them when you are not managing them.

I finally won the league for the first time in my Athletic save. It took until the 2034/35 season. It could have happened in the 32/33 season where we top on the final day of the season by a point only to lose to Osasuna, but at least we avenged it this year. It was pretty poetic for it to happen in captain Dani Vivian's final season as well. Real Madrid have been extremely dominant, as they won ten La Liga titles in a row prior to us winning it this season. They finally had a slip up of a season and we clinched it with three games to go. My entire first XI save for one player are all Lezama grads as well, which I love to see. It hasn't been purely Lezama-only in this save, but we have just so many great players come through that it hasn't really been all that necessary to sign outside players. My transfer budget is over 200 million at this point. I decided to splurge 100 million on a CB at one point just because I had the money to burn. I'd love to show some of the players that I have now, but I really don't have the patience or desire to screenshot them all and upload them here, but we have three world-class attackers including a French-Basque winger that came through in the first or second intake who is one of the best players in the world, although he has curiously yet to get a cap for France at age 24. With Vivian retiring, I'm left with only Sancet and GK Julien as the only first-teamers from the start of the save. Although Huestamendia and Eneke Ellakuria are still here as well as backups. I am definitely not going to stop this save now that we've won the league though. This has been the most enjoyable game I've ever played of FM, and now it is when it really gets good, I think, so I want to at least see it out for a bit longer. I am also planning on going to Bilbao later this year just because playing this save has really deepened my love for this club and I want to see their lovely city and surrounding areas as well. Aupa Athletic!

There is definitely a lack of researchers for the other top leagues in the world. For example, my team Athletic Club, are one of the biggest clubs in Spain but do not seem to have a dedicated researcher, and ratings for some of their key players this year have been really off (including Simon as someone mentioned earlier). There's been discussion about this in the thread dedicated to Athletic on the Good Player and Team Guides subforum here. And as was also alluded to earlier in the thread, the winter update really didn't change anything.

Can't this thread go back to dunking on how ugly the UI screenshots looked?

I sometimes just create the team's current manager as my avatar, so that way it isnm't unrealistic in that regard. For example, in my Athletic Club game, I started off as Valverde, and then I "retired" him with the editor, and then after a few years, I changed the manager to Iraola because Valverde is already pretty old, and then just retired Iraola in-game.

I think it's because right-sided players are on the left and vice versa.

Obviously, the UI is a thing I'll have to wait until I personally use before fully judging, but the first impression isn't good here, IMO. As others have said, it looks like a console/tablet version and very watered down.

Of course, you'll have to actually use the new UI to see for yourself, but on first look, I am not too impressed with the Portal screenshot at least. Looks really basic. I honestly don't even know what I am looking at in tiles screenshots. Is it supposed to be a player page?

I have gotten fully invested in managing a proper Athletic Club game this FM, and it has been my most enjoyable FM save ever, partly because of the cantera, but also because Spain is a great country to manage in for the reasons you've mentioned. I just wish SI would fix some of the annoyances regarding registration and salary caps though. It has also helped me to focus more on tactics than ever before. I used to be a simple "set it and forget it" type of manager in FM, but having to develop a tactic around the newgens has been interesting, and difficult at times. I am at the point know where I place top-three in the league consistently but Real Madrid have won something like seven or eight LaLiga titles in a row, and I just cannot seem to get close to them.

Hopefully Nico stays around for one more season at least.

Agree, managing in Spain and I have seen so many similar frustrations regarding B teams. Sad reality is that it doesn't effect England, so don't count on this being fixed.

For me, Vivian had his release clause triggered, but he allowed me to negotiate a new contract despite that, which he fortunately accepted. I don't know what I would have done without that. I wasn't so lucky with Unai Simon. He just got a new contract IRL too, and like Munian did previously, didn't even put a release clause in there, so I wish the game was a bit more realistic in terms of measuring Athletic player's loyalties. It's not even certain that Nico leaves this season irl, but in FM he is always gone after the first season unless you are really lucky. Fortunately, Julen has been great for the most part for me in goal, so Simon hasn't been truly missed all that much, but still.

Except, you know, when the media announces it. Nobody knew Lewandowski was signing with Bayern until the very day his contract ran out with Dortmund, right?

Even if it is "realistic", just based on how many emails the game already sends you about worthless stuff, it should at least send you one letting you know that a player has accepted a pre-contract with another club, regardless if I was going to sign them again or not. It's kinda nice to know where a player is going.

It'll happen soon after the CL final. Dont get your hopes up for Friday.

Essentially, the focuses don't return players who don't have transfer interest. When it comes to U18s, since most of them have no transfer interest until they turn 18, your focus won't return anything. It is very stupid, and I don't know why they changed this and especially why they didn't tell anybody, but it caused a stir in the bugs forum. It's supposedly to stop the user from hoarding wonderkids. You're better off just manually scouting the U18s of whatever teams you want. Very tedious. Really great decision by SI here. Here's the mega-thread on the bugs report forum where the users descend into madness until it is finally clarified by the devs:

Yes, my issue was that I can't see who is registered for my B-Team, and I do not have the option to look at registration for that team. I needed to call up a third keeper as one of mine got called up, and so I tried to call up a U23 keeper, but I kept getting "this player cannot be registered for this match" next to his name. Like I said, I think the issue is because my B-team is not in a playable league. Although, I was able to call up players in my first season (they may have since gotten relegated from a playable league, I didn't check). I loaded the league in, but I won't be able to test this out until the next season. I really want to take better control of my farm teams (playing with Athletic, so it's pretty important with them) going forward and I didn't realize they were in an unplayable league until now.

So how does one check which B-team players are registered and thus eligible to come up to the main team? My understanding is that U23 players who are registered for the B-team are available to be called up. Do I have that right? It seems that no matter which players I try to call up, I am still told that they are ineligible. Do I just have to hope that my B-team manager registered the ones I wanted? My hunch right now is that it is because Bilbao Athletic are not in a playable league (my fault for not loading every playable Spanish league, I don't know why I wouldn't have done that), so there are technically no games to register players for.

So how does one check which B-team players are registered and thus eligible to come up to the main team (I know they need to be U23). It seems that no matter which players I try to call up that meet the criteria of being U23, I am still told that they are ineligible. DO I just have to hope that my B-team manager registered the ones I wanted? Does it have something to do with my B-team not being in a playable league? I think they are in the fourth tier, and I only have the top three loaded, I believe.