NineCloudNine

Thank you, yes understood about Argentina, bad example as it’s only a single round-robin, not home/away. I’d love to see/use the calendar leagues if it is something that makes it to the top of your to-do list. Thanks in advance!

Something I would love to have is files making the South American Apertura/Clausera leagues into annual calendar year leagues. Currently Colombia, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia have different forms of two-part seasons. I'd much prefer to play them as single calendar year leagues, home and away with the league leaders as the champions and whatever relegation and continental qualification seems appropriate. Basically the same format as Brazil and Argentina. My eternal gratitude to anyone able to create such a file for each of those countries (order of preference the order in which they are written). Thank you editors!

In the vanilla game, yes. But the wonderful work done by modders in the free pre-game editor and my own tinkering give me the game and game world I want. And the IGE exists to remove dumb player meltdowns !

Two different modules, written by different people at different times. Part of the Frankenstein’s monster that FM has become! I doubt there is a single person at SI who knows how it all fits together .

I like telling players to do more of things they are good at. PIs that match PPMs make everyone happy. PIs that conflict with PPMs are silly. So, I recruit players who are good at doing things I want from them then train them to do those things better. I use very few TIs.

What is sad about examples like this is that it must be obvious to them what is going on, but they are unable to do anything about it, even when they are older. Some come from really difficult backgrounds of course and unhelpful influences can be hard to shake off, so I know it's not easy.

It doesn’t take many minutes to get the first few levels of positional familiarity. A single match may get from zero to awkward. After that it becomes progressively more difficult.

Like you I have also come to the conclusion that the analytics struggles to distinguish clearances, passes and crosses. I’m also not sure that headers ever count for assists, though I may be wrong on that. I use the data centre for average positions and broad guidance on play. Deeper analysis is either to obscure, too fiddly or not obviously reliable. This is one of a dozen FM features which have been introduced with fanfare and then largely abandoned, with little or no development post-launch.

This won’t happen, it’s too expensive. If difficulty levels were introduced then it would work the same way as every other numbers-based game, which would be to artificially boost AI numbers and/or nerf players’. Every calculation with a 10, 20 or 30% modifier etc. I can see the case for that, but I bet that for every person using such a system to make their game harder, 10 will use it to make their game easier . The game can already be as hard as you choose to make it.

This is true but it is never going to change and I hope it doesn’t because the commercial survival of the game depends on it appealing to a large casual base. Where my sympathy wanes is players (not saying this is you) doing all the things they know will make them win and then complaining that the game makes it too easy to do those things. Gegenpress OP? Don’t use gegenpress then. Too easy to buy wonderkids? Don’t buy wonderkids then. And so on. For all its faults FM gives us a huge sandbox to play in. For your Sampdoria save, what’s the story you created? Youth team players? Former legends back as coaches? Using links to one or two countries? Does your manager have a character you play? Do you scout by personality? What limits do you have on transfers? Maybe you’ve done all these, I don’t know. But you can!

Ferguson was brilliant at hiring Assistants who would bring new ideas and approaches - an example of him being way ahead of his time, as he was in many ways. Contrast with Wenger, who over the years hired a series of yes men and became ever more entrenched and inflexible in his thinking.

What I suggested in my first reply . The advantage of using an IFB is that when they tuck in to make a three, they and the CB on the other side stay wide, effectively becoming WCBs. This is defensively solid. For your striker a AF is never a bad choice. If you have a DLF their movement helps your IF. Depends where you want your main goal threat to come from.

I think that’s the OP’s intention. But with two wingers and an attacking CM it means that on the ball he has four players high up the pitch, a clump of four in the middle, only two defenders and no-one protecting the flanks.

IGE costs extra. PGE is free.

Custom database files can only be added during the initial setup, not once the save is underway.

Tactical knowledge, man management, discipline, judging player ability, plus the attributes for whatever specific training you want them to do on top of creating schedules. It helps if the Assistant has a preferred formation and playing style that matches how you want to play, though I would go for attributes over that personally. I always do position/role training myself and I always set it to what I want them to play and never change it. I let the Assistant recommend specific focuses in the weekly meeting and accept if I agree; same for PPMs. Friendlies aren’t important enough to consider Assistant attributes for.

You are far too exposed at the back and especially down the flanks when you lose possession, especially with the high line. I guess you’re being hit by counters and long / through balls behind your defence. Two IWBs and a Libero is over-thinking things. Either make one of the IWBs an IFB, or make the Libero a regular CB. Personally I don’t like Poachers as lone strikers as they don’t move enough.

For ludicrous meltdowns like that I just use the IGE to remove unhappiness. I know it grates to pay for something to address problems, but I just think of it as part of the price of the game. What you see here happens because club reputations don’t change fast enough, and because the algorithm that determines when players kick off doesn’t have sufficient sense-checks built in.

Sacking you 2 days before a final is clearly silly and this module does seem rather too sensitive. On the other hand you made a promise to the Board which it doesn’t seem like you made much of an effort to keep. Established 22-year old first team regulars are not youth team players and your wonderkid just spent two years on loan so isn’t counted as coming from your youth team (and playing him alone wouldn’t be enough anyway). Lesson learned eh?

It is entirely possible that a checkbox was omitted from one or other award, to stop it counting when it should, or it might be that only ‘of the year’ rather than ‘of the season’ awards count (there is a setting in each award’s database entry which defines what period it is awarded for). I can confirm that using modified databases does not prevent achievememts accumulating. I have loads of pretty Steam badges but have never once started a game with the default database.

Not if he has his back to goal, is being tightly marked by a player behind him and has another closing in. But who knows? We’re discussing a 3 second animation of an action by a small circle of pixels representing a player in a graphics interpretation of a match engine. Looking at that and going “thus would never happen in real life!” is absurd. We can’t even properly see what happened, let alone what match engine calculation it is supposed to represent.

You are reading a whole lot into the movement of two small circles of pixels. I’m assuming he had his back to goal and was being tightly marked, plus another opponent is closing in. Turning and shooting isn’t as easy as you suggest. So he takes a low risk option. But it’s not really possible to tell for sure from that animation. The graphics engine and the match engine both do weird stuff. It can be misleading to assume that what the GE shows you, especially in 2D, is a perfect reflection of what the ME is doing.

Of course you can. He was for a while. Now he wants to play more. So someone else moves up. I rarely have anyone over 23 on my benches. It is completely normal for a young player to want more game time as they get older/better. All squads are in a constant state of change of this sort. The balance is one of the core skills of managing a team. What did you expect, that a 23 year old is going to spend his career being an impact sub for you? That role is designed for older players who can’t manage whole games. I still don’t know what you think the “bug” is. The player interaction module as a whole needs a lot of work, but you’re complaining about an example of it working well.

This all seems reasonable to me. 23-year old wants to be playing regular football. You can't give it to him so he asks to leave. What's the problem?

Another poster who cba to look up how the match engine calculates results. It’s been explained a dozen times. Spoiler: it’s not scripted .