El Payaso

This topic has worked as a big inspiration for me in my Torino save where I have gone from the attempt to play counter-attacking football to more catenaccio style with a low-block and fairly passive closing down. How I would change your current approach is going a bit more towards defensive style of play. The formation itself is fairly aggressive and with an attacking duty attacking midfielder it probably almost works like a 4-2-4 which a really aggressive formation which was mainly used on older FMs when searching for a goal at the end of a game. It is also worth noting that both of your full-backs are going to be contributing a lot in defense and the midfield doesn't really have a holding player either. This combined with aggressive closing down, high defensive line and counter-press should see you struggling defensively which you also currently are? How I would change things around would be looking the team instructions again and take a notch or two out of the aggression in them. I would also look at the player roles: if you want to keep your wide players and attacking midfielder like they are at the moment, I would focus on the double pivot and make them more of a holding duo. Maybe I would go in a hybrid in this case and make the left hand side more defensively balanced while still keeping Oyarzabal as the heartbeat of the team, maybe as a roaming playmaker. On the other side I would make Zubimendi more of a golfing option which would allow Barrenetxea to bomb forward.

@TheFalseNine I salute anyone who approaches things in your way. It might be time consuming but a way more logical why than just trying your luck. I wouldn't personally start with a clean slate though as I would instead create a basic framework to begin with. For example if I want my team to play defensive minded counter-attacking football, the basic fundamentals would probably include adding the counter attacking team instruction, have either low or mid-block, higher tempo and pass into space activated. Those would be the things that I think are necessary things to include in my desired style of play. In terms of players, 1-2 attacking duties would be the maximum while I would also make sure that we would always have enough players under the ball. I would then start watching the game and seeing how I can improve things and troubleshoot if something doesn't work in a desired way.

I would like to add one point of view more to this discussion which might be playing a significant role. This is a thing I used to ask often about ten years ago: are through on goal type of goals and scoring chances too common on FM compared to real life? I don't have stats on this but based on what I have seen both in the game and in real life, I would claim that they are and always have been. I remember back in the day playing FM a lot with Chelsea while watching all their games in real life too. And there was always a huge difference especially with these type of scoring chances. In real life they very rarely got those even when having more than capable strikers up front while on FM you had even multiple of them in practically every game. This is common especially when using a striker duo where one of them is a striker who drops deep and the second one works as the runner. It used to be at its worst on FM 2017 and 2018 where a simple deep lying forward or false nine combined with runners would break the match engine. It is nowadays better but it is a rarity to see a match without a single scoring chance like this. Sometimes you might get 4-7 and even against an opposition with defensive approach. If we look at for example Haaland in real life, I think he only scored three or four goals last season in the Premier league by getting through ob goal. One if those was gifted by Manchester United defenders and in one a Sheffield United(?) defender slipped allowing Haaland to dribble past him before scoring. Would be interesting to see how many of these type of goals he scores on FM, especially under human manager.

Mentoring is one of those features in the game which works at least close to how it should. I haven't played any long term saves on FM but I have noticed that patience is the key with mentoring. For some players you can see some results almost immediately but then on the other hand you have to take this as a process that can take years to complete and also fail. I know it isn't a feature that takes lot of time or micro managing but it is definetyle one of my favourite features in the game. Way better than it used to be and hopefully it works as a good platform for SI ehen they look to develop other features like training and creating style of plays.

The tactics that exploit the ME and weaknesses of the AI always seem to include the same pattern which is that people tick practically every possible team instruction possible and even take this further with player and opposition instructions. And these seem to be the way that the AI is not able to deal against, even though the style itself doesn't make much sense at all. How these kind of "tactical approaches" should work is that your team should be all over the place and they should simply get you sacked in no time as you are practically doing everything wrong in terms of approach. But in reality it is quite the opposite. I know both SI and many users have said it many times that the game doesn't have a bias towards human players but I strongly disagree on this based on my own experience. I doubt that the AI would be able to get away with such mindless approaches. I would also claim that the lack of winning the ball back and counter efficiently lack in the match engine and this plays a part. You can thereby get away with really top heavy tactics. You might concede a lot of goals but are sadly able to score even more. Something like André Villas-Boas at Chelsea (playing adventurous football and high line with slow defenders and fail miserably) sadly doesn't really happen on FM. I don't create my tactics to beat the AI but to instead achieve something specific in terms of style. For example with Palermo I was looking to create a style around some traditional Italian player roles while at Torino I am trying to master the low-block and counter attacking style of football. Neither of these have brought me a single virtual trophy which don't matter to me at all as I enjoy more having somewhat realistic simulation instead of huge overachieving. I don't find creating your own style of plays anything to brag about as in my opinion SI have simplified the whole process way too much already. But then on the other hand I don't understand the want to win trophies and overachieve either as this is not the general idea of the game which is to simulate a career of a football manager instead of watching a movie where everything comes together for the hero.

Based on the screenshots, it a Manchester City Advanced forward aka probably Erling Haaland. Wouldn't be too worried in this case. * Two main things seem to be there: the 2D match engine and the pitch not being there middle of nothing make the interface look way better. Hoping both of these also being in the main version. The match screen used to be both nice looking and customizable in the past and hopefully this will be back on FM 2025. * = yeah, I do realize it was a joke.

AUGUST 2024 August is almost like a continuation of our pre-season as we will only feature in one Serie A match while looking to qualify for the new league phase of the UEFA Europa Conference League. I would expect the team to do well during the month as we are probably considered favorites in all three fixtures. As the season is now starting, it would be a good moment to talk about the aims for the upcoming season. I don't think that the team has strengthened a lot compared to last season, maybe even the other way. This means that we will be aiming for a top-half finish along with a solid defensive record which could mean that we concede less than 35 goals in Serie A. In Europe, we are looking to make our way to the league phase and thereby get as many starts as possible for our youth players. Jacopo Sassi, Alessandro Dellavalle, Marc Casadó, Gvidas Gineitis, Emirhan İlkhan, and Demba Seck are players whose development should be getting a nice boost thanks to our participation in Europe. This will also allow us to keep them in the first team. Out of singular players, I am most excited about Stefano Sensi who will be playing the advanced playmaker role while mentoring young İlkhan who will start the season with an ankle injury. Sensi's contract is only one season long which is probably good to test out the 29-year-old who decided to join the team with rather high salary but with a fringe player squad status. I will probably write a separate post about the team, squad hierarchy, and player development at some point in the first half of the season. KRISTIANSUND (A) Starting the season just four days after the last pre-season game turned out to be not a good idea. We slightly controlled the first 45 minutes of the game but the hosts got the upper hand in the second. 8 shots against 6 and 0.68 against 0.54 in xG aren’t disastrous numbers and I think the backups in our defense did a fairly good job here while Jacopo Sassi finished his debut with a clean sheet and 4 saves in total which are good stats. SALERNITANA (A) The initial plan for us was to keep things solid at the back and hit Salernitana back once or twice. This plan went to the drain early on as we conceded after just 14 minutes. After that, the hell was loose which saw us coming back to the game three times before taking the lead in such a typical way through Pietro Pellegri. It wasn’t meant to be though as we conceded the second corner kick goal of the game in the 7th additional minute. If playing in front of Marvin Keller is going to be like this, it is going to be a long season for us. Out of 9 shots in total, the young Swiss conceded 4 while saving only 3. It wasn’t his fault though as we looked uncomfortable throughout the whole 90 minutes. We were always 1-2 steps behind when defending against their passing moves and shaky in set pieces. The defeat meant that it was time to say goodbye to Yasinthe Oinsou who had only joined the club as a set-pieces coach in May. After his arrival, our deadball defending has been woeful which means that we have to look elsewhere for a more solid option. On the positives, Raoul Bellanova continued where he left off during pre-season. The Italian wing-back recorded a goal and two assists which means that he has surpassed his last season’s goal contribution after just one game. KRISTIANSUND (H) I would like to call the 3-0 victory a routine performance but cannot say so. We deserved the victory here and should probably have scored 2-3 goals more against the Norwegian side. The biggest worry was though the fact that we were constantly leaving their midfielders unmarked close to our penalty area for pull-backs. A better side would have punished us more than once with these gifted chances. Gvidas Gineitis was the standout player here in his segundo volante role. The Lithuanian had almost moved to Cosenza on loan just a day before but we luckily canceled this loan deal. I think the minutes in Conference League are going to be extremely helpful for the 20-year-old who is already a key player in his national team. FIXTURES ANNOUNCED These don’t look too bad. If we play well, the second team should be able to get us a decent mix of results here. SEPTEMBER FIXTURES Will be adding these later...

I wouldn't say they are logical even though you are not using an asymmetric formation. I've never been a fan of asymmetric formations as in my opinion those give human players unfair advantage and based on what I've seen, the AI is not usually able to deal against them. I also believe that the AI never uses those, so SI should chop that option from human players too. In my opinion there are way too many team instructions which makes the whole system a bit too Micro-managerial to my liking. Also you need to take into account that there has been a lot of talk for years about high pressing systems being too effective. Your tactic is practically as aggressive as it could be with the current setup. I have never used high press on FM 24 or the previous ones so I don't know how they work in practice but based on the general feedback, high press seems to trigger something that the AI is not able to deal against. And before anyone comments about gegenpressing only being easier to setup: if simply activating high press results in unrealistically goof results, then it is a thing that is not well balanced. Obviously it is possible to play successfully in other styles too, but none of those have this kind of overachieving button available. If you are looking for a realistic gameplay and a challenge, I would suggest reverting to a mid- or low-block system with a relatively low intensity. You are probably going to overachieve with that approach too but not as heavily as you currently are.

SERIE A SEASON PREVIEW Title-holders AC Milan go to the season as the number one favorite. Rossoneri are closely followed by local rival Inter who had a disappointing season under Simone Inzaghi last term. Unai Emery is the man trying to bring glory back to Nerazzurri. After the two Milan-based clubs, there is a clear gap to Juventus and Napoli. This is again followed by a pack of two local clubs Lazio and AS Roma who are predicted to finish 5th and 6th. Atalanta came close to a Scudetto last season but the team that has used 62 million euros this summer, has only been ranked 7th. Fiorentina’s hopes for another European qualification took a big hit as their biggest star player Nicolás González was sold to Tottenham in a deal that could reach 77 million euros. Another team qualified for Europe, Torino, are ranked 9th. Out of the three recently promoted sides, Como, are predicted to fare the best as the team is ranked 16th in the season preview. The team has been strengthened with no less than 13 new players out of which the most interesting are experienced Davy Klaasen arriving from Inter and young Claudio Cassano who joined the club from Cittadella. The two other promoted sides Spezia and Brescia are predicted to finish in the two last places. At the same time, last season’s survivors Frosinone and Salernitana are thought to be battling against relegation this year too. DREAM TEAM The defense is expectedly dominated by AC Milan players as the meanest defense in the league is still led by excellent Mike Maignan. The biggest surprise probably is the fact that three Juventus players make the cut and the team thereby beats Inter with one player difference. The attack is brutal as so many good names such as Lautaro Martinez get excluded. BIGGEST TRANSFERS The already mentioned Nicolás González transfer to Tottenham has been so far the biggest signular deal that we have seen in Italy. The second biggest one was Paulo Dybala’s 39 million euro transfer from AS Roma to AC Milan. Atalanta on the other hand have bolstered their defense with young Lorenzo Pirola who moved to the club from Salernitana for 30 million euros. Elsewhere Napoli captured AC Milan’s Tomasso Pobega for 29,5 million initial fee. Another larger domestic one has been Davide Frattesi’s 27 million euro move from Sassuolo to Inter. Arthur also expectedly joined Fiorentina permanently on a 19.25 million deal. Interesting younger players have arrived in Italy too. Oscar Gloukh made a 15.5 million move to Juventus from Red Bull Salzburg and Devyne Rensch moved to Atalanta from Ajax. Atalanta also brought in Alexsander for 10 million euros from Fluminense. The more familiar names include João Félix’s move to Inter with just a 9 million euro initial fee. The deal might reach 27 million euros if the included clauses are fulfilled. AC Milan on the other hand brought in 32-year-old Danilo Pereira to even further improve their defense. MANAGERIAL MOVEMENTS It has been a quiet summer in terms of managerial movements. Vincenzo Italiano is the only one who made his move out of the country after being offered a position at Barcelona. Simone Inzaghi was the one to replace the promising 46-year-old at Fiorentina.

Nice to see you bringing back some familiar names. That is exactly how I would also play a save game with RoPS.

Okay. I haven't noticed any myself. Even when playing goalkeeper as an outfield player.

NEW SIGNINGS ARRIVE 1.7.2024 - New signings Jacopo Sassi, Marvin Keller, Marc Casadó, Stefano Sensi and José Manuel Lopéz join the club. At the same time, Demba Seck, Emirhan İlkhan, and Nemanja Radonjić rejoined the first team after their loan spells. Another loanee Yann Karamoh becomes the first player to leave the club as Alavés made an offer worth 2.5 million euros to sign the 26-year-old winger who spent last season playing with Montpellier in French Ligue 1. FRANCE TAKE THE EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP France continued as the dominant force in Europe by winning the EURO 2024 tournament. They beat Germany narrowly 1-0 in the final thanks to the Golden Boot winner Kingsley Coman. Torino was well-represented in Serbia’s team where Vanja Milinkovic-Savic, Ivan Ilić, and Nemanja Radonjić were all included in the final squad that were eliminated in the first play-off round by Wales. Nikola Vlasic continued his strong form by scoring 4 goals for his country Croatia. The midfielder was thereby joined second in the goal-scoring charts. Norway was the surprise package of the tournament as they made it to the semi-finals. PRE-SEASON STARTS 15.7.2024 - All the players have returned to training. We will first train for one week in Italy before heading out to Austria for our week-long training camp. The training season started in a less ideal way as both Pietro Pellegri and Jose Manuel Lopez injured themselves in the first training sessions. Pellegri’s injury would keep him out for the next two weeks while Lopez would only miss about five days. DORTMUND MAKE THEIR MOVE FOR ILIC 17.7.2024 - The pre-season started with Dortmund coming in for midfielder Ivan Ilic with a bid worth 28 million euros. The bid was rejected, which unsettled the young midfielder. After a chat, we agreed that we would accept a 38 million bid for his services. Ilic would have been happy with a promise for Champions League football but I doubt that we can make that happen next season. The good thing is that Dortmund are currently the only team interested but not prepared to place a new bid due to the high asking price. THE BIG RELIEF 19.8.2024 - José Manuel Lopéz cannot be registered to the Serie A squad as he is currently counted as an extra non-EU player. We finally managed to get past this by selling Nemanja Radonjic, who had recently signed a new contract with the club. It took weeks of persuading to finally get Everton to offer us the amount our board was satisfied with as the Serbian international joined the Liverpool-based club for 5.25 million euros. This would mean that Lopéz would be allowed to represent the club in the first leg of our Conference League draw against Norwegian side Kristiansund BK despite missing the whole pre-season due to being ineligible. PRE-SEASON RESULTS I decided to take a different kind of approach for the pre-season this time by arranging three cup competitions and sanctifying the Austrian training camp purely on training. The rotation worked in a way that the first team would be taking care of the cup semi-final fixture and the rotated squad would play full minutes in the final or third-placed playoff fixture. This will allow both the starters and rotation players to have five efficient training days a week, one match day, and one rest day. The training schedule itself consisted of mainly two physical training sessions, followed by one general training session. This excludes Friday which ended in a match tactics session. Due to the high workload, we struggled quite a bit with injuries. Pietro Pellegri was the least fortunate as he suffered two knee injuries, which kept the Italian forward sidelined for most of the pre-season. As mentioned José Manuel Lopéz was unable to represent the club due to his non-EU limitations which means that at the beginning of the season, we only have Demba Seck and Antonio Sanabria match-fit. Otherwise, things seemed to work out well enough. It is going to be interesting to see whether the team will have some kind of edge thanks to the hard physical training later on in the season. In terms of performance, the team looked fairly poor. We were error-prone and conceded a lot, especially from corner kicks and throw-ins which is a worry. TACTICAL APPROACHES We haven’t changed much compared to last season. We will be looking to utilize all three formations and try to keep things as simple as possible by having only a few team instructions as well as including mainly the same set of roles in all tactics to maximize tactical and role familiarity. Team instructions In possession Pass into space Slightly higher tempo Run at defense Transition Counter Out of possession Low block Lower defensive line Close down more The style of plays aims to keep our end as tight as possible while encouraging counter-attacking football. During the season, we will have the team split into halves: the first team will be taking care of Serie A which is our main priority while rotation, backup, and youth options will play UEFA Europa Conference League fixtures. AUGUST SCHEDULE

That Milan defense is really mean even under the AI but you have certainly taken it to another level. Nice to see the traditional Italian roles utilized. I tried to do the same thing with Palermo but failed at it.

My biggest hope for FM 2025 would actually be that the game would demand more concentration on small details like attributes for us. As far as I know, it is still possible to play even your backup goalkeeper as an outfield player without major setbacks in terms of performances. I would like a lot if the game would be developed in a totally different direction which would lead even world-class players struggling to perform if they are played in wrong kind of role or system. Just like what is happening with England at the moment: Harry Kane being the wrong type of striker to perform as the highest player to set up an effective pressing style. We should even run into scenarios where the style of play is logical and well built but fails because we don't have the right type of players.

Interesting stuff. In my opinion a solid system and general tactical approach can do most of the job. This is also why I nowadays very rarely use opposition instructions at all. The only situations are when I can clearly notice an opposition player (usually wide player) having too much effect on the game. In those situations I am more than willing of taking the risk of getting my player booked by going hard on the. Also otherwise the opposition instructions that I apply are fully based on what I can see in the heat maps and highlights. Sometimes I try to stop the feeding of a certain player by directing the opposition players to another side by showing into foot etc. I have also seen plenty of situations where someone might claim that they are playing a low-block system but they then apply full on closing down to basically the whole defensive line of the opposition. Not sure what is the official status on this but I think this kind of approach is then very far from a low block. And like @Fox-7- above me wrote: I see opposition instructions as something related to the style of play and individual style of the specific opposition. Setting a permanent set of opposition instructions in the tactics screen that you will apply against every opponent is again something more related to finding the meta instead of approaching things in a tactical way.

Nothing official. Since club legend Zeddy Saileti arrived to Rovaniemi, he was recruiting his countrymen to the club. This ended around 2010 when the vast majority of players were caught manipulating the results of the matches. The Finnish Wikipedia has lot of information about this and also previous cases including mainly Russian speaking players.

All three signings look fantastic. Wouldn't be to surprised to see all of them as national team regulars. It's actually surprising that with his history Bohinen hasn't already made a senior debut.

It is a club with lot of history and respect. When they played in the league, there was a common thought that teams and fans didn't like the long travel to north and many people hoped for their relegation. The club thereby had a slogan "Sorry South, RoPS will never be relegated" which was also used in RPS Brevery's beer cans (each Veikkausliiga club had their custom can). Another thing that used to bug people was the Zambian connection that lasted for almost 20 years. At worst 8 of the 11 starting players were from Zambia and that is obviously something that is bound to cause strong reactions.

No problem. I think both me @Federico know quite a lot about the club. Obviously I'm not anymore that keen follower as it is impossible to go to the games anymore but they are always going to be my team in Finland, no matter what. Basically the downfall of the club was some questionable actions related to money when the team was regularly competing in Europe. This has also brought a significant gripe between the club and the fans who obviously felt cheated by the previous members of board who were responsible for the downfall. The same fact is probably going to prevent some previous players returning to the club and many of them have chosen Rollon Pojat (RoPo) instead in the latter parts of their careers. What is interesting also is the fact that the club was practically saved with a public fund raiser where people all over Finland participated. I personally wrote about this idea after their relegation and when the financial problems first came to the daylight and was then laughed off by the domestic football community.

Okay. This is interesting! I was born one hour away from Rovaniemi and lived in the city for 7 years during which I went to almost all the home games. The story of the team is rather sad as four(?) years ago they managed to get themselves relegated with probably the worst team ever played in Veikkausliiga. This was followed with an all or nothing season where RoPS narrowly lost in promotion playoff against AC Oulu and after that due to their financial status nearly went to bankruptcy. The youth development is still on a good level and if the positive momentum continues, we might see them back in Veikkausliiga in a couple of years. Going to follow this really closely. Hope that you can make it to Veikkausliiga and get back some of the talent that other top tier clubs have poached from them. Good luck! E: any reason for not starting in 2024? I'd say you could find a really good data update through steam which would probably include the new league structure in Ykkönen and for example Honka's bankruptcy.

2004/05.

Hope so. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised to see Vanja transfer listed in a few months as he is unlikely to get much game-time at Arsenal. But obviously re-signing him would only be possible in summer 2025 the earliest, and this also only if our current keepers clearly aren't up to the job.

Hope so. The only worry is that he won't be able to develop his kicking and aerial ability to the level where Vanja was. Luckily Sassi is already close on those and like said, he might even be more promising of the duo. Strange situation to start the season with two new goalkeepers. Now I'm just hoping that we won't lose any more of our starters.

THE FIRST HIT Our board accepted two bids for Vanja Milinkovic-Savic between the 13th and 14th of June, 2024. The Serbian international, who had been called to represent his country in EURO 2024, chose Arsenal, who paid 28 million euros for his services. Vanja could be considered a club icon as he joined Torino in 2017/18 when he appeared in one Serie A game. It took four years and three different loan deals for Vanja to establish himself as a Torino stopper which he finally did in 2021/22 by appearing in 27 Serie A games. After that the tall Serbian has been the first-choice keeper, playing all 38 games in 2022/23 and 33 games last season. Even though Vanja’s performances dropped significantly during the second half of last season, the tall Serbian will be missed. THE REPLACEMENT The replacement came from an unlikely source as we opted to go for a young Swiss goalkeeper Marvin Keller who spent the last season on loan at Winterthur in the Raiffeisen Super League. The youngster had a break through season as he appeared in 35 games, conceding 38 goals. The former Swiss U-21 international joined our club for 7 million euros from Young Boys where he had only appeared in three league fixtures since joining the club in 2022 from Wil. What I was looking for from a new keeper was first of all a financial profit which turned out to be 21 million euros when you take into account the value of Vanja. In terms of attributes, I was looking mainly at two: Aerial ability Long distribution While Keller is worse than Vanja in both of them, he is still good enough already to handle these areas well enough for Serie A level. Our scouting and coaching staff also rate the young Swiss as a good Serie A goalkeeper already and at the age of 22, he should still have a lot of room for development. Replacing an experienced international with a 22-year-old who only has one full season as a professional in the top flight is going to be risky but a risk that I am willing to take. Keller is going to start as our first-choice keeper in Serie A while Jacopo Sassi will be the one taking the wheel in the domestic cup and Europe. The good thing about Sassi is that after more comprehensive scouting, he looks more promising out of the two. What made it easy to sign Keller was the fact that we had been scouting Vanja's replacement ever since December last year when things were about to go ugly with him due to interest from Saudi-Arabia. We had multiple options available but due to salary requests, finances, and long-term plans, I opted to go with the young Swiss. Welcome to Turin Marvin Keller!

I think most of them in mine are on the lower side, especially Kane and Haaland. The thing is that the numbers usually level up quite well when the season progresses. I'm a big fan of low scoring games myself as this makes each goal a joy. Obviously when it comes to Torino, in the upcoming season it would be ideal to have a striker who scores at least 15 in the league. If Pellegri continues like he did last season, he could easily do this as he was actually the best goalscorer per 90 minutes in Serie A.