Dereka

Quick update. Since my previous post I've trained 'Routines' once per week for the last four weeks and the set piece effectiveness has already increased to 'Good'. Seems that by adding a session weekly it's quite easy to bump this up. Now hopefully it pays off in terms of output as well!

I was browsing through the Steam achievements and noticed there's an achievement for achieving full set piece effectiveness. Since I hadn't heard of this before, I went to check in-game. I was positively surprised to see that for each set piece routine there's an indicator of the effectiveness. Presumably this is something that was added in this year as part of the new set piece creator? This of course raises the question: How can I improve the effectiveness of my set piece routines? I have set up my set pieces manually at the start of the save and haven't really touched most routines since then. In this save, I'm only about eight months in. Maybe the understanding of each routine improves over time, but I am not sure. I do have a dedicated set piece coach. As I play with Atletico de Madrid, he's quite elite at his job. However, as can be seen in the screenshot above, this doesn't seem to directly impact effectiveness. To be honest, the first thing I thought of was (team) training. However, none of the training modules references any impact on set pieces effectiveness. I was expecting here to see a message like how the module 'Routines' impacts the set pieces effectiveness. If I recall correctly then in previous versions of FM, one could choose different types of set pieces to practice and in the training module modal it would mention how this would provide a small boost for the upcoming match, similar to how in FM24 there is the inbox item that asks you to determine the match preparation by working on specific set pieces. However, in FM24 in the Routine modal, it doesn't mention any impact on the set piece effectiveness, it only mentions how it impacts attributes. Presumably, the team training module for 'Routines' might impact the Set Piece effectiveness, even if it's not explicitly stated. I say this because I cannot think of other ways to impact the effectiveness. I do all my team training myself, but I have never scheduled a 'Routines' module in FM24, which could explain my relatively why my set piece effectiveness is only 'Okay'. Long story, short: I just found this new feature and wanted to share. I'm also curious to hear if anyone has (1) been able to maximize the set piece effectiveness and (2) if you believe this has made an positive in-game impact in terms of goals scored and prevented?

A suggestion for a quality of life improvement on the Tactics screen. Scenario: I play 2 centre midfielders: on the left is a Ball Winning Midfielder while on the right is a Mezzala with Player Instructions. For my next match, due to the opponent I'm playing, I want to swap the two, putting the BWM on the right and the Mezzala on the left. I can do this, but this would take multiple actions, I would have to: (1) change the BWM's player role to Mezzala; (2) reapply the PIs to the Mezzala; (3) change the Mezzala's role to BWM; (4) swap the two players. This is quite tedious. I have a suggestion to provide an alternative to dragging & dropping to make this process much easier. Currently, when in the tactics screen, dragging and dropping only swaps the two players but doesn't change any roles or PIs. My suggestion is to provide an additional option to instead swap the role + PIs (without changing the players). Perhaps this could be achieved by dragging & dropping with the right mouse button for example; or by holding an additional keyboard button (CTRL + left mouse click).

With any player set to 'Go Forward' you can ignore the position within the visualization on the pitch, as they will attack a corner anywhere in the mixer. With 'Go Forward', their position in the visualization doesn't mean they will go specifically to the near or far post. Unfortunately the visualization of set pieces is quite bugged. Hopefully a feature in next year's edition of Football Manager includes an overhaul of the set pieces creator.

In general this thread is full of great insight, but I particularly loved your breakdown here Ben. Really appreciate you sharing your thought process step by step, great job!

FYI: There was no response so far, so I've gone ahead and raised a feature request:

I recently took over a new club and some friendlies were already arranged in preseason, including an away game against Man Utd. Normally I remove all friendlies to set up my own preseason, however, I can imagine that a friendly at Old Trafford can be quite lucrative. So I'd love to be able to understand what the fee is that my club is receiving for this friendly. But as far as I know this information is not available anywhere after a friendly has been arranged? Request: For an away friendly, display the received fee when selecting the friendly match in the Team Schedule. For a home friendly, display the expected income and the fee paid to the visiting team when selecting the friendly match in the Team Schedule.

Is it possible to see the fee received for a friendly after the friendly has been arranged? Two uses cases: I have just taken over at a new club but some pre-season friendlies (away games) are already arranged. I might want to cancel these, unless I'm due to receive a large fee. A friendly has been arranged (home game) and I'd like to know how much I'm set to earn and how high of a fee I'm paying to the away team. I'd be happy to raise this as a feature request but I figured this might already be possible to view somewhere.

I have multiple routines set up, including a routine for the near post and another for the far post. If anything I feel I've scored more from far post corners this FM. For all variants I use an in-swinging corner kick taker.

Great job on completing 4 objectives! I may have missed it in an earlier update, what happened to objective #5 ?

One thing to add: I always become more conservative with the number of players I send up for set pieces, for corners specifically. Typically when the AI is down then in the final minutes they might leave two or three attackers forward when they are defending a corner. You don't want to get caught out on the break!

You might be setting up your team in an identical way, but I think you're selling the AI short. There is much more variety in the way the AI sets up. Even if they use a similar formation, there are a ton of different set ups. The most obvious one being whether they press high with a high line, or if they sit back. Additionally, one of SI's main features for the game this year is that AI managers adjust much more in game. If anything I've noticed that this year you cannot just click through games and expect the same result each time, but you have to actively do research in your next opponent and also pay attention during games. In my opinion this makes for a much better and realistic gaming experience.

Fickle indicates he has very high Ambition, which is great for player development. But you might struggle to keep him at your club and he might constantly ask for new contracts or for you to strengthen the team, so it's definitely a bit of a headache!

You could experiment with Opponent Instructions to press less and to not man mark the wingers and wing-backs, but do so at your own peril!

Has anyone noticed differences in what does or doesn't work in FM23 regarding youth development, when compared to FM22? I still use the same approach, but the only change I've noticed is that fining young players for poor performances seems to be less effective this year. It's probably a good change too, because it felt a bit too easy raising Determination and Workrate last year with constantly fining.

I have now played the match (without the 4 players available) and now after the game they are available again. They did not play for any other of my teams. Strangely for two of the players (Freira, Capasso) their condition level did decrease and now one day after match says "Tired after his last match". If I go to their profile and check 'Form' then they have not been listed to play any other match.

Have you tried to set your AM's personal instruction to man mark the specific player/position (by selecting either the DMC's name or position from the dropdown menus)?

Awesome Twitter moment! Great job on the Spurs result too. Do you find yourself applying your man-marking set-up in every game or only against the top 6?

Hi Siven, I had the exact same thoughts! Previously I always was conservative with the day after, I'd only schedule Recovery or the occasional Match Review or Team Bonding. Only for the last two months in-game I've changed to scheduling regular sessions, although I'm still a bit careful. I'll often schedule something like Recovery + Possession + Goalkeeping. What's important is that on the day of the match, right after the game, I manually select the 10 outfield players that started and Rest them for 1 day. So far so good, I haven't had any injuries and I hope my bench players get in a bit more exercise. I do worry that I might occasionally forget to manually set the 1 Rest Day for the starters though, but as you referred to they should then still have the automatic setting of no gym or pitch work if their condition is below a threshold.

In your tactics screen, go to a player's individual settings. When editing the player's instructions there's a pop up modal that shows this in the bottom right corner.

Hi, sorry a bit of a random, silly question about the forum here. On my laptop, when clicking the button to go to the next page within a thread, I often end up in the middle or bottom of the next page. This means I have to scroll back to the top to continue reading. I figured it might have to do with loading of media, but I'm not sure. Is there a configuration to change this behavior? I checked the settings but didn't see any configuration. On mobile this works perfectly fine, interestingly enough.

Huge compliment for your posts! Not only are the updates themselves interesting and unique due to your approach, but you have a gift for visualization A sidenote, as a Dutchie I love seeing the Netherlands (finally) win the World Cup in quite a few saves. I can only hope FM got this right

A shame you couldn't enjoy more of Alan Rodriguez, I had him in a FM21 save and he was a lot of fun. Regarding your search for the new Maradona, how are the club's youth facilities? Any chance of upgrading them for more promising youth intakes?

Absolutely loved reading this, great work! I'd love to read more, especially when you go up against different formations (f.e. Liverpool who play 433 I assume)