NineCloudNine

No-one is suggesting that active development of academy/young* players should happen all the time, or with every club, or with every prospect. You are right that it is fiercely difficult to break through to a top team, but it does sometimes happen when a gem emerges. Alexander-Arnold, Saka, Foden, Rashford and Lewis Miley (to pick some examples) did not come out of their academies as ready-made first team regulars, they were actively developed. There are some clubs and some coaches who never prioritise young players. There are also some situations where clubs or coaches who once did, don't do so now, and clubs or coaches who never used to, starting to. The point is that this is dynamic - there are clear preferences and differences in coaches and club culture, both long-standing and evolving. That is simply not the case in FM. I agree it should be hard to do and I agree it should not always work, but those preferences and philosophies (which do exist in the game) should mean something in the game world. * These two things are often conflated but they are different. Your point about smart talent identification and use of data is correct - IRL Brighton use this to find and excellent young players around the world and actively develop them for sale upwards. FM Brighton, on the other hand, make the exact same transfers as everyone else.

It’s possible - though fiddly - to change competition squad selection rules to be as restrictive as you want on homegrown (club and nation) players and foreign players. The AI does adapt over time because AI clubs/managers do ‘know’ about registration restrictions. You can also add youth team development to club culture and board preferences. As mentioned these seem under-tuned and should act to differentiate clubs, but used widely would presumably make some difference. This shouldn’t be necessary though. The tools are there in the game, they just don’t make much or any difference.

It’s hard to answer this definitely because only SI know the weighting and potency of all the variables. Traits mean a player will do that thing more often than if they didn’t have the trait. How much more and how often that is depends on a vast number of things, including their mental stats, your tactics and the nature of the trait. Same with tactical instructions. If you tell a player to do something more or less then they will do it more or less. How much more or less and when they do it depends on the same variables as above. If you give a player an in instruction which conflicts with a trait, you’ll get a warning about it on the tactical screen. If you give them an instruction which matches a trait they’ll be happy about it. So the game clearly thinks it matters. How much? Who knows! Not all traits are alike. Most are multipliers (do X more often) but some are characteristics (dictates tempo, shoots with power). Some change the way a role operates (eg a B2B with gets forward when possible is different to one with dives into tackles). tl;dr No one knows for sure! Personally, I like telling players to do more of the things they like to do and I put them in roles where I want those things to happen.

I have never, ever had a problem rotating a star player out of the team for the odd game. Mind you, I have never managed Mo Salah...

No because if the game thinks they are a ‘star player’ then they are very likely to be better than everyone else in your squad.

There’s a big world outside the EPL . There are entire leagues - Brazil for instance - where developing young players for sale is the econonic model. There are big clubs - Benfica for example - who fund their annual budget selling players from their academy. There are famous clubs - Ajax for example - where use of the youth team is deeply rooted in the cultural identity of the club. Even in the PL there are clubs - Man Utd for example - who take pride in their academy players. Every club sometimes gets a gem who can be nurtured into a star with care. None of these are reflected in the game. As another poster said above, every club makes the same transfers. The variety and cultural difference does exist in the form of club culture and chairperson preferences and expectations, they are just not given any consequence.

This is brilliant

I do this. I have a very strong PC. Huge game worlds. AI still sucks at developing young players. Large game worlds produce more players from more places, but AI managers still don’t develop them. Young player development needs to be an active process. AI managers play kids/newgens with high CA, but they do not take low CA/high PA players and actively develop them.

Sounds fun! That’s interesting - I’ll go and take a look at how that’s set up because I’ve not had a Board enforce its preferences before, though I don’t recall ever managing a club with a mandate to sign players of a specific nationality.

I do similar things, though not to the extent of actually being a famous ex-player. I am currently managing Barcelona with Xavi as my DoF, Carles Puyol as Technical Director, Sergio Busquets as my Assistant, Sergi Barjuan as HOYD and Albert Ferrer & Victor Valdes on the coaching staff. I’ve undone every paid transfer in since 2020, replacing them with free transfers who Barcelona were strongly linked with IRL. I’m bringing through youth and am only allowed free transfers, with one exception… …Marcos Leonardo, who I have turned into a recreation of the original Ronaldo and who tore up records in Brazil before I bought him in Jan 24 with a ‘bank loan’. FM is one of the best role-playing games I have played, and I have a history of role playing gaming going back to tabletop Dungeons & Dragons at school in the 1980s! .

I suspect it is harsh to blame the keeper entirely. If he got a 5.5 conceding 8 goals, the game doesn’t think he was at fault for all of them!

This is exactly right - it clearly doesn’t work correctly. In fact it’s not easy to see how it is calculated at all - I’ve rooted around in the editor and there’s an option for ticking on or off ‘club specific salary cap’ but no indication of how that cap is arrived at. In the end I just took the salary cap out, it just messes up La Liga saves.

I think this is a really good point. Some clubs have youth development deeply embedded in their culture, others are known for buying stars. Managers similarly differ. This is absolutely not reflected in the behaviour of clubs or managers in FM, even though those culture and preference tendencies are indicated on club and manager profiles. Chairperson (and thus club) objectives also allow for a wide range of transfer preferences, none of which are ‘enforced’ in the game. It does seem that dialling up the importance of these already existing tools would go a long way to making youth development stronger, as well as providing significantly greater variation in AI club/manager behaviour overall and offering a wider range of challenges for players.

It’s just you

Holy #walloftext !

This must be very frustrating but if random contract offers were a thing, there would have been an uproar about it here. Your issue sits somewhere in FM’s labyrinthine and fiddly menu system! I sympathise and hope ticking all those boxes solves the problem.

Theory - the players involved were actually in your U21 squad but you had the filter on which meant they showed up in your first team squad page. So although you think they are first teamers, the game thinks they are U21s and your DoF gets to negotiate new contracts. Just to be sure, take responsibility for all three yourself. You will get notifications and team meeting agenda points for players who want or deserve a new contract or whose contract is running down.

This is very good advice

You have missed a setting somewhere. Contract renewals are a separate responsibility to new player signings. Go more carefully through the responsibilities pages - you’ve missed one .

The most obvious answer is that you are somehow mistaken about him signing a new deal with you. This would be stated in the relevant emails about him accepting either your contract or the other club’s.

One thing that used to catch me out - though I have no idea if it’s a factor here - is that appearence fees and goal/ clean sheet/ assist and trophy bonuses are not counted in your listed salary commitments but do come out of the wage budget. This can lead to a significant overspend. I no longer offer appearence fees in contracts and I have never had a negotiation fail as a result.

Take a read of the Marca article I linked to above. It looks like the payout is based on the last five league positions, which would explain your payout going up. From the outside it looks like a system guaranteed to reward the big clubs who regularly challenge for the top spots.

Yes, although one will always be top of their list. Many roles have similar attribute requirements so are much easier for a player to have equal familiarity. I have had success with players moving seamlessly between roles in a tactic, especially in midfield, but as you imply it is sensible to largely train and play them in the same role.

The classic Barcelona 4-3-3 with Busquets (one of my all-time favourite players) at HB had a similar back 4 to @Safe Hands - one attacking FB and one IFB. I have used that in FM too but I find it constrains the structure - you are very tied in to specific roles in specific positions, which means specific players. All very Guardiola-controlly but personally I like a little bit more variety, flexibility, even chaos! and having too many positional rotations limits that. Edited to add: I also always play with a SK-Attack and train them to try killer balls and long passes. That can be a lot of fun.

I have found that the HB works brilliantly with very aggressive FB/WBs. However, having players in the AML and AMR slots inhibits those fullbacks - they fight for similar positions and get on top of each other, or the WB doesn’t push up as much, cluttering the midfield. I solved this by using a 4-1-3-2 with two CWBs, the DM as a HB and the middle of three CMs being an aggressive AP (who is basically a #10 starting deep). The left and right CMs can be B2B, Carrileros or Mezzalas depending on the patterns you want and the opposition. I like B2Bs for the extreme verticality - counter attacks are awesome! Almost any combination of support/scorer strikers work. The HB role here is extremely demanding, basically a CD with playmaking skills. Trained with long passes and switches to wide areas they can become an awesome quarterback. So not a 4-3-3 strictly, though it attacks with players in similar positions to a 4-3-3 which has wide players tucking in. I’ve just had more success creating that attacking shape with the structure described above than with one that starts as a 4-3-3.