NineCloudNine

All my junior teams automatically use the same tactic as the first team and when I change anything it updates for junior teams as well. I don’t recall ever having to set this. I do individual training only for junior teams. This has been the case in multiple clubs with different staff. Have you tried with the default skin to see if your bespoke one is causing your problem? I can’t think why it would, but I also don’t have any other explanation.

Andorra is not in Spain and there is no clever place-of-residence trick in FM so unless there is a specifically coded rule in place the answer is no, a loan in Andorra will not count towards the Spanish nationality clock.

That leaves one defender back, with all your midfielders and temporary midfielders roaming around, a very high line, your keeper rushing out and wide attackers who don't defend much. A smart opponent would go wide, bypassing your cluttered midfield and exploiting the wide open spaces which you're trying to cover with one defender. You have a fantastic team that either cost you £500m or you built in the editor, so it might just work, especially since the AI struggles against overwhelming attacking numbers. Newcastle's 4 fast and wide attackers seem to have found that weakness though!

What are you trying to achieve by using a Libero and 2xIWB?

I play a very similar 4-1-3-2 and made the exact same journey moving the AM back to CM strata. Very solid midfield and fast attack. I have gone with a HB and 2xCWB-S so attack slightly differently to you, but it's a variation on the theme.

This is true. I'd add however that the game makes it easy to set up a small game and even encourages it with the performance rating it suggests. There is no description or warning of any negative effects of running a smaller database. Depending on how the player wants to play, there's also often no reason to run multiple countries. Given this, the transfer/squad building code should be able to adapt. In this case I don't agree that £258 for Rodrygo can ever be justifed. He is in the database - world class but in no way worth 25% more than the current highest ever transfer. The only time numbers anywhere near the Neymar record have been mentioned is for Mbappe, who is currently a in FM, which is on a different planet to Rodrygo.

Flippant answer: doesn’t matter, it’s OP and will work no matter what. Serious answer: stamina, work rate, teamwork, decisions, positioning.

I think your idea is that the IF goes inside and the Mez goes outside but in practice they will get in each other’s way. I find IF-A is just too gung-ho. SS is also very aggressive and your P doesn’t move around much so you are crowding the box. FB-D is too conservative for me, they don’t move up to support at all. Suggestions: Use a DLF rather than a P; IW-S rather than IF; CM-S or A rather than Mez; FB-S rather than D.

I don’t think there is a solution. The role no longer exists in football, having been squeezed out by DMs and pressing. Players who would in the past have been ’classic #10s’ are now playing either as CMs (De Bruyne, Pedri), or wingers (Kvaratskhelia, Grealish). This enjoyable thread is one of a rich lineage of people trying the same thing and it almost never works. An exceptional player will have the occasional great game agsinst weaker opponents or favourable formations, but it won’t be consistent. I wish this wasn’t so.

I looked at this from a save where both my WBs were leading the league crossing stats and … no, not very often. Very few long balls from our own half. I think most of those I did see were clearances. My WBs do cross ‘early’, but that means the first half of the opponents’ half, like the diagram in the instructions implies.

They are separate logic modules. The targets one was bolted on for FM24. It's not a surprise that it doesn't interact seamlessly with existing modules. FM has become something of a Frankenstein's monster of patched-together systems as new features are crowbarred in each year. If I was in charge of the world I'd instruct SI to massively streamline the game. Fewer, better-working features, with player interactions given an enormous overhaul.

Even though it is staring me in the face I never thought to add a start year for new squad rules! It is heartening to hear that the AI does adapt. I will give this another go, thanks!

Based only on that heatmap your wide players and striker are isolated and your midfield are all doing similar things. Newcastle are much more structured. I have found that you have to force a midfield three to make space, by giving one a DM strata holding/defend role and one a CM strata attack/creative role. Especially if you have a high line/press compacting the play.

That’s a bit deep for me

It’s great to have you chipping in to threads, thank you. I’m a little surprised that it’s the Orsolini transfer that has caught your eye. +£70m for a high-performing winger doesn’t seem wildly out of line with real life (Nicolas Pepe, Jadon Sancho, Antony…) whereas £258m for Rodrygo is very hard to rationalise.

For those two transfers it looks to me like the AI has been coded to place greater weight on performance rating and potential rather than just CA, but it’s been over-tuned.

On the thread topic, I always add foreign player / homegrown rules to leagues I play in. The challenge is that existing squads have been created to different rules so there’s a 4-5 year period of adaption and even then AI squad building is not able to cope well, giving the player an even greater advantage (for example planning seasons ahead with homegrown players coming through and foreign players ageing). There are also oddities with nationality. For example in FM24 foreign players in England who previously had ‘settled’ status have now been given English nationality, which is just factually incorrect. Other nations have different rules for nationalities considered ‘foreign’. All this is surmountable with editing, but it is a lot of work!

I spend a lot of time in the editor and it is pretty clear that researcher quality is very variable and also that researchers have different priorities. Some are very good at playing histories but casual about achievements; others get personal factual details right but not the dates of transfers. German researchers seem to be obsessed with huge lists of favoured personnel. The Spanish team is particularly weak on hidden character attributes, many of which are left at 0 even for very senior players. There is little consistency in how playing histories are presented. I understand how enormous an undertaking this is and also that researchers are volunteers. There is also an enormous amount of info per player and many of the editor sections overlap and interact in odd ways when shown in-game. My impression is that - like many aspects of the game - it has become a huge, out-of-control monster and needs dramatic simplification.

I think the problem is how FBs are coded to interact with wingers. I play a 4-1-3-2 with WBs and a HB. The 3 are B2B-AP-B2B. The 2 are TF-AF. My WBs bang in cross after cross, from all areas. They are consistently the top 2 in the league for crosses attempted, by miles. Using a 4-3-3 with the same players as FBs but with W or IW ahead of them and they barely cross at all, preferring to seek out the W on their side or recycle to a CM.

Your injury list is still not as bad as some clubs IRL. Losing all three keepers is unlucky, or maybe you are just training too hard. Bear in mind that SI gave deliberately tuned injury rates DOWN vs real life, by about 25% IIRC. This is one reason players can get away with playing full-on high-tempo gegenpress all the time. Many players use a realism mod which increases injuries.

Post your tactic in the tactics forum and ask for advice.

I don’t have any of those problems.

I swear that if I ever put my fist through my screen playing FM, it won’t be because a player did something boneheaded, or even because I got asked a random question about my U19 striker just after winning the League, it will be because some column has arbitrarily re-sized itself and I cannot work out where the divider is between two columns that appear to be next to each other but in fact are not.

Late to reply to this … he asked to leave because he didn’t believe there was a path to regular first team football. He was probably right under Mourinho but De Rossi would have loved him. First thing I did in a Roma save was undo Faticanti leaving and plant him permanently at the base of the midfield.

It you were to make a clean sheet tactic with basic roles and put players in those positions with no instructions, they will be perfectly able to play football. Defenders will defend, midfielders will run about and pass, wingers will dribble and strikers will try to score goals. What you will notice then is the importance of PPMs and personality attributes. A CMs with gets forward and shoots from distance will not play the same as one with high aggression and dives into tackles. This is what the older managers you are referring to paid attention to. So players with the right personalities, skills and tendencies were put into positions where those exact things were needed. It’s hard to do this in FM because so many roles have fixed instructions. Some if these - like playmakers shooting less - enrage me! But it can still largely be done and it’s a very rewarding way to play because the emphasis switches entirely to training, team cohesion and smart recruitment.