El Payaso

Would you be able to provide us somd basic information (preferably a screenshot) of your formation, roles and team and player instructions?

Huge respect to you @Ruuger. Always nice to read these kind of posts and also see how FM applies to people of different ages. I have been playing since the Championship Manager days when I was 8 years old and didn't know much English as in Finland we start to study the language at the age of 9. Back in those days I always played with Manchester United as David Beckham was my first footballing idol.

I have been thinking about this thing for a long time. For me it must be that the AI that we are facing has to be using full match instead of any highlight modes when managing in a match. Or is it using the same highlights mode as the player is using and making decisions based on that? If the AI is using full match and the player is using for example key highlights to observe and make changes, shouldn't this give a clear edge for the AI and make it more at more competitive?

I'm speechless with the start. Absolutely fantastic writing and appealing graphical presentation. Really nice to see you in Italy too. Going to follow this very closely.

Always wanted to have this feature in the game but I think it fights against the idea of creating your own managerial journey. I had a strange thing happening in FM 2009 when I took over Mexican national team as Luis "Matador" Hernández with right birth dates, places etc (don't remember which were included in the game back then). For some reason my manager profile also had the correct amount of caps and goals. Hard to think that this was any kind of luck as back then I don't think the game in general added any info like this even though you chose to go with international footballer experience (again not sure if this even existed on FM 2009).

Okay, I thought it might not have anything to do with this. They are just naturally a bit too adventurous to my liking. I honestly haven't played a lot of attention to positional play. But it is a nice feature to see the AI at times for example changing their ring-back to a role that moves to the middle. Certainly creates a taste of something new. In general I feel that it is possible to play the game with fairly traditional systems and let the whole positional play flow with it's own weight.

I don't agree on this. Through-balls are by far the most reliable source of goals for me and I'm seeing through-on-goal type of chances every game even against lower defensive lines. I also give away these type of chances quote regularly even though I play a lower line myself. What I see problematic with the positional play is the difficulty of having players holding their position. I would like my defensive minded wing-back and defensive midfielder to be more of a stay-at-home as I usually combine these roles with either cautious or defensive team mentality and still see them quite active going forward. Even an anchor man is at times at the edge of the opposition penalty area to end attacking moves. In general I see players being a bit too adventurous and taking too many risks when applying a cautious style of play.

I think this story has many of the same aspects as @SteinkelssonFMhad with his excellent Ajax career update. These kind of approaches with clear philosophy and aims, instead of just casual gameplay, make career updates with larger clubs super interesting. Will be following this closely.

You are a fantastic story-teller @_Ben_. I haven't read this career update nearly as much as I should but that is more down to my inability to concentrate on long texts. The dream is to read through it throughly one day as I can see between the lines that this is a master piece. I have secretly hoped to see a new save game from you on FM 2024 as it would be way easier for me to jump on board of a new story. This community needs more content creators like you. Thank you for your service.

I'll try to remember including them in my next post. I normally use attributeless Skin but for my own attributes it is okay for me to see them.

Thank you so much for the kind words. I think many good threads here might have gone unnoticed for many people who actually might be interested in reading the story. I'm glad to see that my post in the tactics forum has found some of the interested readers. Obviously I'm not as good FM-writer as many more experienced but I've had a really good time with this one and I think I have finally also found my graphical style. I also think that I made a perfect choice of a club in Torino which aligns really well with the style I want to play with.

Don't follow. FM is a simulation, yes and it does simulate real world better way better than it used to do in the past. Features like totally randomly working simulation of real life and human players' need to overachieve are not features that a simulation type of game should have.

So, you are Las Palmas and in the Champions League in season three and apparently again fighting for a good position in La Liga. So you are already overachieving quite heavily, so what more are you expecting? To your question about the matches against bigger teams: if you are not willing to take 1-2 steps back, losing heavily should be the likeliest scenario. Despite you playing a balanced mentality, the team instructions make your style of play fairly aggressive and while it brings results in most of the games, there are still plenty of teams in the league and Champions League that can hurt you. I'm not a big fan of 4-2-3-1 formation itself even though it is one of the most used ones. What I would do in the big games is moving the AML and AMR to ML and MR position on try to build from there. I would also take a notch back in pressing and the height of the defensive line and get rid of counter-press.

Just learn the basics of Canva and utilize their templates and you're on a good road with limited skills needed. I would never accept any if my graphical designs at work but as this is only a free time hobby, I can go with something way more basic and especially less time-consuming.

Thank you once again for your kind words. Believe it or not but I am finally quite happy with the graphical representation and also quite interested in writing the updates, hopefully both of them are showing in my content. Looking forward to your career update to start. Serie A is obviously going to be appealing to me and when you combine that with my favorite tactical approach, you have a keen follower. For all the readers: I am already at the end of September which means that there should be an update coming up soon.

Because that is what you call simulation. I think nobody wants to see a totally unrealistic game-world as this totally destroys the immersion. My views have nothing to do with what I personally want. They are just aligned with the fact that FM is supposed to be at least a semi realistic simulation of football management. These are not opinions but rather cold facts that no-one should be able to disagree on. I don't understand how I am insulting people if I mention that I don't understand adults who are unable to take a defeat in a video game.

And as I participated already in this thread: this was the starting point for me with Torino. During the first season I actually set to a two-striker formation and one AM instead of this but the main principles were the same. The attacking minded attacking midfielder turned into a advanced forward and the second striker was operating as a pressing forward, deep-lying forward or target forward based on the situation. In defense I have gotten rid of the libero and replaced this with a ball-playing centre-back, standard centre-back and a wide centre-back trio. The double pivot usually works as segundo volante and defensive midfielder in a defend duty. I nowadays also use a regular wing-back on the left and a complete wing-back on the right. I don't use any other player instruction except that I allow the AM to move into channels and roam. When defending a lead, I tend to change the left-handed wing-back to a defend duty, change the DM(D) to an Anchor, CWB to WB(S) and the right-side forward to PF(D). In team instructions, I have gotten rid of lower defensive line and step up more and replaced this by triggering the press slightly more often as I want us to be fairly aggressive in our own defensive third. I usually start with cautious mentality and change to defensive when defending a lead or while facing teams like Inter away. I also usually add get stuck in when defending a lead or when happy with a draw. Here is how I did in general in season 1: https://community.sports-interactive.com/forums/topic/585299-fm-2024-torino-fc-sogni-di-battere-la-juve/?do=findComment&comment=14432253

I would definitely start in July 2024 instead of 2023. As it is the pre-season just starting, this would be an ideal moment to do it. As this would also be a save where simulation speed doesn't matter at all, I would use a fairly big database, load most of the more interesting leagues and would simulate them in full detail. This creates a decent base for a realistic simulation. I would otherwise find this kind of save an intriguing one but I'm one of those players who lose interest in the previous version when the new one is out. Obviously for example FM 2008 is a version where I still returned in the early 2010s but otherwise I don't stick to an older version of the game.

I wasn't talking about you, sorry if you got that impression. Was just anticipating the feedback that I will be getting for my post. As this thing has been discussed so many times already, I'm not going to go there again.

This goes totally off-topic but as we already are there. I personally don't understand why even experienced FM players and community users are endorsing this type of approach and style of playing when it is 0% loyal to the main idea of the game which is supposed to be at least somewhat realistic simulation of a career. This kind of approach also prevents FM to ever take steps forward. SI can introduce all the fancy and exciting new features to the game but only see a minority of players using them because they are not forcing people to do it to be able to survive in the game world. You can criticise my views as much as you want but remember that mine are completely aligned with the general idea of the game while the opposite points of views are not. Yeah, you can always talk about sales. Including Russia still as a playable league in the game is probably a good call for the sales but does that make it acceptable?

Obviously I am not saying that seeing progress and being able to achieve things eventually isn't important part of the game. It might even be the most important. Then on the other hand a somewhat realistic simulation shouldn't work so that you will win the league in season one or even two with a team predicted to finish in mid-table. I don't understand the appealance in such game where you always know you are going to be successful. Okay, this might appeal to children but for adults... And please do not play down the outcome that you mention in the first part of your text. Outcome like that is quite a bit more loyal to the main idea of FM and for example I would love that kind of gameplay: being in mid-table for years, slowly developing the youth academy and eventually being able to take the next step with our own youth. Maybe I am just different but in general I don't get the idea why is it so important to win imagenary champions league trophies and then cry every time when the AI happens to beat you. This is not to mock anyone but actual reality that you see for example on YouTube. Grown up people actually raging when losing.

Not sure if YouTube links are allowed but here is a +11min tutorial: Had never installed these before but got them working on a first try. Gives so much extra to the vanilla version with 15 minutes if work, I always tend to wonder why so many people still use the faces generated by the game.

Why? Obviously I do understand that if winning and overachieving equals fun, then this would be the case. But in my opinion every adult should be able to get used to the fact that you're not always going to win. Based on what I have read for example on reddit, many people would like to experience this new kind of FM.

The problem with many of FM roles is that they don't explain it well how different roles defend and move in general. I would say that Regista is probably something between DLP and RPM and he doesn't drift that much to the flanks as the RPM does. This is something I found on Reddit: Back in the day it used to be quite a crazy role. I remember using Regista at AS Roma with Daniele De Rossi almost ten years ago and he was often even the highest player on the pitch ending attacks. Combine this with Nainngolan and Totti and you're in for a treat. I tend to take a notch back in these situations. It is quite common that when I change my double pivot from VOL(S) - DM(D) to a DM(S) - A (D) that the last 15 minutes if the game doesn't have a single attacking highlight for the opposition on comprehensive which tells me that the system is working. I think many people are afraid of using a low-block but for me it works very well most of the time. Obviously things go wrong at times, like they did for example in my season opener against Salernitana where I conceded 4 times against a fairly poor side. Those are the things that sometimes happen and when the snowball starts to roll, it is often hard to stop.

Yep, Regista is more of a solid option in terms of defending. The RPM was mainly a suggestion if you make changes on the roles either side of him as that would probably demand more from the left-sided DM in terms of buildup.