Gh0zt

As Mike Bassett said, if you're old enough, you're good enough. Interesting that a lot of FM players buy young players just to flip them later, creating a wonderkid factory is very fun but it's not how most clubs operate. I like signing old legends, sometimes just to come on as a sub, or bringing back a former player to finish their career. In the lower leagues I prefer signing older players since your young prospects will get poached quickly anyway.

It's sounding more and more like FM25 is a beta test for FM26. It'll be a skip from me, still enjoying FM24, see no reason to "upgrade".

I used the same database to manage my local club in the 8th tier and encountered the same. Even the worst coaches out there were too expensive. Not sure what you can do except use the in-game editor or research the clubs yourself and add some staff before you start a new game, the game just isn't really designed to scale that far down into the lower leagues.

Physical attributes have been OP for years now, I don't even look at players with less than 14 pace or acceleration (depending on the league I'm in). There are very few players in the database with perfect 20s though, and it makes some sense that being the fastest footballer in the world would mask poor finishing, but even 15-16 is good enough for most leagues, 17+ is elite. First touch and dribbling also important, but passing, positioning, tackling, off the ball etc? Not so much. The best players in the game like Mbappe, Haaland, Salah, Vinicius Jr. have good technical attributes but they also have good physical attributes. Slower, more technical players in the mould Berbatov or Klose will never perform as well as the pace merchants. The match engine is ultimately a lot of lines of code and can be exploited like in any other game... Does anyone remember CM0102 legend Maksim Tsyhalka? He could score more than van Nistelrooy because he had high meta attributes in that version of the game.

My first CM/FM games were Championship Manager 01/02 and 02/03, both on the Xbox. From what I remember, Roma and Man Utd were the most difficult clubs to beat.

Always play 3D with key highights with speed up a few notches. I'm a one club man, don't like abandoning a team I created and letting the AI ruin it. I love having tonnes of affilate clubs, makes me feel like I'm running a football empire. I spend a lot of time sending scouts to national youth teams, I usually have a lot of leagues running so I check player stats in the youth divisions and cups and scout anyone with analytics that stand out as well. I'm pretty tight with wages, if someone wants too much, I ship him out. I freshen up the squad often, keeps it interesting. I also don't like overpaying for players, but when I'm in the financial position to do so, I break this "rule" by making one marquee signing every couple of seasons, Real Madrid style. Will sign former club legends as backroom staff, even if they're rubbish. Don't stand for any nonsense from players, if they complain, they can either deal with it or get transfer listed. I've transfer listed players for getting defensive too many times after I've praised them for playing or training well, I don't like whiners. I will make a keeper do the walk of shame and sub him off if he's having a bad game.

When it comes to CBs you're better off looking at the player performance tab under reports to see their stats (blocks, tackles won, headers won etc). The game massively overrates goals scored so a player can have a bang average game, score a simple tap-in and finish with a 7.5. It could also be that you're dominating a match so much that they don't actually have a lot to do.

One thing I've noticed about player contract negotiations is that almost every single player wants increased wage after 5/10 games and yearly wage rises. Most of the time you can remove them but it's odd that even 15 year olds in your youth intake demand 20K p/w after 5 games. I mean, it doesn't even make sense since those players won't be seeing the first team for years and their initial contract will have run out by the time they're first team ready.

I keep getting bombarded with 0% wage, fringe player offers as well. Seems like a bug tbh since these players are standard or good players for the league and I can get full wages/fees and important player from clubs of a similar stature.

Tbh I think SI are damned if they do and damned if they don't when it comes to difficulty. Take fatigue/injuries, people complain all the time about "too many injuries" but the stats show the game has way less injuries than irl. I can play a high intensity tactic all season by micromanaging training and rotating players. Same with morale, it's too easy to manage by patting players on the back every week for training well or smashing an amateur side 14-0 in a friendly, and that extra boost from morale is significant. But people would rage quit if they had half a dozen of their first 11 injured as happens to real life teams. For new/casual players, sure the game is daunting and a challenge, really because most of the playerbase are not gamers, I mean they're football fans who play FM and maybe Fifa and nothing else. I actually find the same when it comes to other strategy/sim games, I know people into stuff like Crusader Kings but that's it... So they're not into metagaming and looking behind the curtain, but if you do and learn the meta, most OP tactics, player roles and attributes etc. it does become very easy. I genuinely think the match engine looks better than ever in FM24 but it's a breeze to play no matter what team you pick.