wazzaflow10

Yeah i misread what you meant initially not realizing it was deeper into the clip than I realized. The CF starts tracking and gives up and passes him off to the midfield. That's what I thought you were referring to. After that then its 2v2 and the wide player cuts across the horizontal channels and it seems like the FB doesn't go with him immediately. The FB and RCM aren't sure who should take the runner inside so he seems to pause as a result of confusion. Lack of anticipation/decisions/concentration would be the first attributes that govern this sort of behavior. I don't see much wrong really here. Its just an uncommon play with a lot of little mistakes from the defensive team that culminates to a goal.

Well he looks like hes the CF for the opposition. No one thinks a CB is going to run the length of the pitch unchallenged. So he allows his midfield to handle it and in the event the CB loses the ball its now 1v1 upfront. I'd take those chances. Prime opportunity to counter attack. If you also look at the moment the ball is crossed the team in white has two players on screen that are sitting above what should be Rashidi's holding DM. One ball past him and its 3v2. It's a high risk attack that worked out but could very easily turn into a dangerous counter attack imo. Edit: Apologies I misread what defender you meant. At 9/10 seconds the winger cuts across. Seems like it was a moment of confusion on who should pick up who there. I don't think that's unnatural. Its actually quite a good visualization of indecisiveness imo.

I don't think that's an exploit as the AI can also do it. You're not doing anything that would be considered extreme. There's a reason why most teams do it. Its just how the game is played. Its fine if you want to give yourself a "handicap" greater than most but I don't think anything about short distribution on its own is an exploit.

I use it because the long distribution from GK is so poor. Half the time their kicks or punts will be to no one. I understand if they are under pressure but there's no reason punts or goal kicks should be going to the other team's left back when my forwards are on the right side of the pitch. I also just like keeping possession.

The only way to do that would be to fire all the Man Utd staff I guess. I could try it I guess but not sure that adds much to the test. The issue I saw was that when I was Derby and scouted in 23 and 24 I got similar results of about 500 players scouted. When I was man utd I got 700 plus scouted in 23 (and probably would have had more if I had more leagues loaded) but only 500 in 24. Everything about the saves within teams were the same, same focuses, same number of scouts, same starting seed point. The only difference was the game version. I had a long term save going that I ported over from 23 to 24. When I ported it over I had about 2500 players scouted about two game years after I switched to 24 and played post 24.2 update my total number of players scouted was about 1400. Some of my focuses were different but I was still scouting large swaths of regions. So something, somewhere isn't connecting properly in my opinion. If the idea is to slow the human down I get it but it is a clumsy, frustrating way to do it.

I'd guess its because he's interested in a loan but he can't be loaned either as far as I know. I'm fine with SI saying players have no interested in being sold until they're 18 as a form of short-cutting to mimic more realistic behavior from the game and to stop people from signing every talented 16 year old when they appear in game. We should still be able to scout them though. The current guidelines would make it seem like the only club in the world who knew who Leo Messi was at 17 was Barcelona. Or more recently the only club who knows who Endrick is was Palmeires and then magically at 18 he just appears on everyone's radar. I'd rather SI use the tools they have built like playing pathways and current squad depth and reputation and historical transfer patterns as a guide to determine which contract a player will accept. Using Endrick again, I know he's already signed with Madrid but hypothetically, given how often Brazilian players move to Spain v England would make it more likely he'd accept a transfer to a Spanish club than an English club all else equal.

There's zero difference in the number of players scouted whether you're Derby County or Man United. I literally just tested this and posted the problem in here. Something changed between 23 and 24 at the very least. Long story short - You can have 30 scouts or 5 scouts it all comes in at the same rate. I noticed something was up around December. All they tweaked was the "number of recommendations" but the issue is that it doesn't matter what team you are or how many scouts you have it all. The issue was never the number of recommendations it was that the number of players scouted looks to be a capped/fixed number. If you're a big club its going to reduce the recommendations because if you scout 500 players so few are going to pass the threshold compared to a League One club. So in League One you'll get inundated with reports and if you're a top 4 club you're wondering what the **** is going on. We've also been told in there scouts won't scout players who are uninterested in joining your team at that very moment. That makes no sense to me if I'm doing a standard or ongoing focus type. If I'm scouting England I want to know all the players in England that meet the parameters. It also applies to U18 players overseas. They won't appear in your scouting until they turn 18 and CAN actually join. So if someone becomes available or I'm planning on replacing someone in a year or two I know what the possibilities could be. Its ruined really any long term save for me.

no match engine updates for 24.3. Try telling your players to relax. Usually when you start down that path its easy to get caught up in criticizing or telling them to prove a point etc when really you should be saying things like there's no pressure on them or ignore the media praise just relax. Its a fine line between feeling pressured/over motivated and being complacent from a team talk/management perspective. Green doesn't always mean good for these things.

This game for me is so close to being very good for me personally but scouting is so broken compared to 23. Did a test with Derby County and Man Utd. Both had the same number of players scouted in six months. Not recommendations, just total number of players scouted. You'd never know that one team had 5 scouts and the other had 36. That Man Utd scouting job must be super cushy in the game like it is in real life.

@Zachary Whyte So I did a test starting with a quick start save from 23 because I only have the demo version. Only England is technically loaded as a playable nation. I took that save and ported it over to 24 to run concurrently with 24 to compare results. Everything between the two saves is identical except for the version. First attempt I was Derby County I had four focuses League One, League Two Championship and England. They have about 5 scouts total. I saw no differences in the number of players scouted between versions. In six month time I have about 515 and 525 players scouted between both FM 23 and FM24. That's a reassuring result to me. The second attempt I was Man Utd. They have 30+ scouts. When the game boots up not all of them are utilized in a recruitment focus initially. I delegated the assignments to the Chief Scout so all 36 scouts should be utilized. Now this next part is very perplexing to me. In FM 23 I have 738 players scouted. Great! More scouts results in more reports. I could argue that it should be much higher given the number of scouts Man Utd has is 7x higher but its at least in the right direction. Could be that there's just not a lot of players loaded because its a quick start game, not overly concerned at this point with that. The next point is what is most concerning to me. In FM 24 I received 515. Why does a team of 5 scouts return the same amount of reports in the same amount of time as a team with 36 scouts? Especially when the previous version of the game shows 200 more players scouted? I really don't understand why a team, especially a world renown level team, is not allowed to flex its muscles and scout significantly more players than a League One team. I've uploaded both sets of saves to the server. Man Utd 23 to 24 Port Scoutinging Test.fm Derby Comparison to 23.fm Man Utd 23 to 24 Port Scouting Test fm23.fm Derby 23 to 24 Port Scouting Test fm23.fm

The lack of injuries also has a huge impact on so many other parts of the game too. Like getting youngster gametime or rotating players. Similar to your AI transfer post of one player being bought but not playing at all. A lack of injuries is going to prevent natural rotation that, in my opinion, stabilises other parts of the game.

@Zachary Whyte Would you be able to either share a save or a bunch of screenshots of how your test games play out with the recruiting focuses at a top club over periods of time (6 months, 1 year, 2 years etc)? I don't have much of an issue with a team like Derby County because there's tons of available players. It would be helpful for me at least to see what the intention of the developers are when setting up focuses as well as what results you get back and compare it to what I am getting.

I find it very bizarre that a player has to be interested at the moment you scouted a region in order for a scouting report to be filed. Especially considering that there is a a transfer and loan filter in the player scouted tab that will filter out players who are interested between none and extremely interested. It's like they put the criteria for top priority scouting where you're interested in making an immediate signing and applied that to standard and ongoing even though the point of the latter two is to gather a good database of players regardless of status. It just slightly breaks immersion for me down the line - how do I know how good my player really is if I can't see what the best player looks like even from a far distance. I just remember prior to one of the iterations of this game (it seems like 24.2 to me) there used to be 99+ scouting cards or recommendations playing as Man Utd. that I'd have to sort through. Now? I don't even think the email even registers on my radar as something to do. I don't need an admission that something is broken from them but something definitely changed somewhere along the lines for my games.

I don't disagree with this idea but there's a vast difference between not knowing a player exists at all and having perfect scouting knowledge of a player. Besides the people who are interested in gaming the system won't use scouting. They'll just use the player search in scouting, set a criteria, and sign the best players. For my 2 cents I don't think its worth trying to stop those people from doing that via scouting limitations. This reads to me that the idea behind whatever tweaks were made between 23 and 24 was to slow the human player scouting efficiency down. The chief effect being you can't sign all the best young players before the AI even realises they're good. I don't have a problem with that in theory because it's going to be basically impossible to mimic the transfer market perfectly. I think we'd also run the risk of making the AI so preferential towards young players you can't sell anyone over the age of 24. Just an unsolicited suggestion for upcoming iterations of the game. If this is a major factor in changing the difficulty of the game why not make the fog of war effect stronger? I don't know if it has to be as extreme as something like the attributes shown are based on a scout or coaches judgement abilities. I think a happier middle ground here for many of us here and those who question what has happened to scouting in the general discussion thread is this idea - our scouts know of a player but attributes have much wider ranges and take longer to get a single value. I'd even go so far to hide personality for quite a while until you get to something like extensive or complete knowledge of a player. Personally, I'd much prefer a system where scouts tell me they think they've found a potentially useful player who meets the critera of their focus and asks me if I want to scout them further or not. The system basically does this already so I don't think its a drastic change on that end. Right now though, the "fog of war" for scouting is just around if you even know a player exists. I'll end on this note in a Chelsea save I've been testing/play for this issue the top 50 "wonderkids" news article showed up in my game. I had zero knowledge of most of them. I can understand an obscure country with a player I don't have info on but we're talking about the top young players in the game world and I dont know any of them exist at all according to my scouts anyway.

Other keys is making sure who ever is in the DLP and Left CB position are athletic enough to cover the hole created by Chilwell pushing forward. In an ideal world the LIF is more of a playmaker type player than Sterling. I often put him on the right. If you're generating chances and not scoring try dropping the mentality, and upping the tempo and give balanced width. Or if teams are really sitting back (i.e. playing a 3-4-2-1) you can push the DMs into an SV role and make it more like a 3-1-6.

Luke Littler right on cue then.

My post was already long so I didn't want to add more but I have saves from 2023 where as Man Utd I had over 2500 players scouted. When I stopped playing that save because of the scouting issue that seemed to appear in December I had 1600. Where did those reports go? I know there's a 1 year filter on the reports but it's not like I stopped scouting. I used to have 100+ report cards to review, to the point it was almost way too much to check acknowledge on there. Now? There's nothing. Literally nothing. I know they say nothings been changed but something related to scouts finding players has broken. I'm utterly perplexed as to what has happened. I don't own 23 because I hated how badly away teams were nerfed but I really wish I could go back and compare over a longer save.

Hi Zachary, Thank you for your team's consideration for this bug report. I have a few follow up questions/comments for you and the team. Apologies for the length in advance. I think we've covered in here the function for IF a player is recommended in a focus. Your note above makes perfect sense if recommending a player for Derby County v Manchester United. In the quick tests I've conducted since 24.3 release I've seen that recommendations are much easier to come by if your team is of a lower quality. I'm 100% on board with that concept. Could you shed some light on the process that covers IF a player is scouted and/or how the game chooses what players to scout? It seems odd to me that if I have Derby county with all 5 of their scouts and Manchester United with their 30+ scouts, both have scouted the same number of players over the same period of time. More scouts + more budget should equate to more reports - maybe not perfectly linearly, but certainly the advantage of being a large club is the scouting network is much more extensive and comprehensive. Attached screenshots below show the same number of players scouted for both teams. Just to put it concretely - If Derby County has one scout assigned to scouting England and Manchester United has two or three or four scouts assigned to scouting England the number of players scouted for Manchester United should be significantly higher than that of Derby County. It seems to me that there is some ambiguity between what the recruiting focus concept is and what the recruiting focus UI is instructing the game to do. Below are two prevailing thoughts I've had on how it works or supposedly should work. I hope this clarifies some of the pushback myself and other have provided. What it sounds like you are telling us: When creating a focus, the min CA and min PA and Age applies to determining IF a player is scouted then clearly there are fewer players for Manchester United to scout based on default focus values. It should stand to reason then if I am playing as Man Utd and set the min CA and min PA to 1/2 silver stars I want to scout the entirety of the region/competition that I've selected. However this does not happen. No matter my CA/PA threshold the number of players scouted is unchanged. Thus, the intense frustration of not being able to find players. We know they are there but the game will not uncover them for us with the tools we have been provided. We don't have a good explanation in the game as to why our scouts appear to just be sitting around. What I believe to be the intent of the recruitment focus mechanism is below: If the assumption of min CA and min PA does not factor into if a player is scouted, but rather IF a player is recommended, then Man Utd should have a significant and sizeable scouting database advantage over a team like Derby County. Ultimately, the number of players recommended would be much smaller due to "failing CA checks" or "Lack of interest due to playing for rival teams". This assumption is in line with your statements in my opinion. Assuming this is correct the following is the disconnect between what we experienced prior to one of the patches and 24.2. In this situation, ALL scouted players who fail a recommendation check (for any reason) would go into the scouted players tab but not be designated as a match for a recruitment focus. This to me makes more sense from a technical and strategic perspective. If I am Derby County - do I waste time scouting the Premier League? I'd likely get zero recommendations for transfers but maybe a handful of hopeful loans. Or if I'm Man Utd do I bother scouting the Championship and below hoping to uncover a gem for cheap? Again very few recommendations due to failed CA checks but maybe I find an interesting breakthru prospect with good PA. If I do scout those leagues I should have comprehensive of knowledge of them whether they generate recommendations or not - provided I scout the league long enough or have enough scouts to warrant comprehensive knowledge. To level set all this - the expectation for me isn't that the human manager would have complete or perfect knowledge of every single player in the game or an area. In fact I think we should have more imperfect and asymmetrical knowledge of external players (for another day). To use a previous example, if playing as Man Utd we would know that someone like Haaland is likely not interested in joining at game start. If we are extensively scouting England or the Premier League, however, a lack of interest on his part should not preclude us from having minimal or marginal scouting knowledge of him. I don't have an expectation that he would ever be interested in joining during the save. Along those lines, who would have ever thought Neymar would be interested in joining PSG until he did. The main point I'm trying to address is if I'm looking for a striker I want to know as much of the universe as I can given the resources I'm allotted in both scouting manpower and monetary budget. If I'm told no by Haaland's agent and no by Osimhen's agent and so on until I get to Rasmus Hojlund that's more realistic to me than the game "pre-filtering" who shows up based on a black box algorithm. I can sympathize with the idea that the black box would prevent complaints of "why is so in so not interested in my team when I've won the Champions League 5 years in a row. Everyone should be interested in my team." Sometimes ignorance is bliss. By no means am I trying to game/hack the scouting system or ask you to make it insanely easy to spot and sign wonderkids. There's the player search tool for people who want to play the game that way. My interest is keeping the game somewhat realistic in the sense of as manager I have a network of scouts who build a repository of players that I can then ask to further scout or discard. I sincerely appreciate you and the rest of the SI dev/qa team's hard work to address these challenges given the magnitude of changes happening in the next 6 months.

Ok I thought that was the case - It seems to appear in the focus but hard to track in the players scouted tab. If you want to move this to the UI section that is fine by me since it seems to fit that category better.

Yes this is my fear. I can already picture a RCB will bolt for an IF immediately after a change of possession and allow way to much space for a CF to run into. In real life its much easier to coordinate the timing of when the man marking should happen obviously. I'd like to think that when facing a front 3 that you could coordinate a sort of defensive back 4 that accounts for each player and provides defensive cover with an extra man. Appreciate the theory and tips in this posts. I've already incorporated a good deal into my save and am seeing some fantastic results and patterns of play.

We've all been through this. WHo are you playing as. I did some testing on 24.2.1 where I took Derby County, Newcastle and a Man Utd and simmed a month for recruiting results over the same time period. Derby County had bucket loads. Newcastle had a good amount. Man Utd had virtually nothing. I'm trying it on 24.3 now that I've updated it. But I really hope this isn't some issue that the size of the team is pre-filtering results or the CA/PA buttons are broken.

From 10/10 to 11/10? Is that possible?

The difference is that one is a legitimate bug and the other is a preference about if you should ever be allowed to score on a throw in or corner. There were definitely issues on release in November. Those have since been fixed. But I've yet to see a direct free kick go in, and no one seems to complain about that. It does get a bit annoying when the same group of people fill the boards with "ME sucks, games broken, only GGPress works" constantly despite being told there's other ways to play. The whole scouting module is/was actually very broken - not just who got recommended. I went from having a pipeline of potential recruits and alternatives like most teams to there's only one left winger known to my scouts. I once needed a replacement goalkeeper after the December patch and my scouts found no one in a top priority focus. Not a soul. That's a huge deal. I had to sign someone who was already in the scouted players tab prior to the module being broken. Even my DOF couldn't recommend someone for a transfer. I'm not crazy in the need to find and sign every single u18 wonderkid on the planet. I started a save with Chelsea a months ago and you wouldn't know that anyone on Man City or Arsenal existed let alone players from other leagues. Its crazy to think that a team like Chelsea doesn't have a pretty extensive network and at least aware of the vast majority of top level players or players who could potentially make it. In 3 months of scouting I only knew of 120 players in the whole of England and that was starting with 75 when I joined. How do you play a save longer than a year or two unless you're doing a youth only or DOF signings only game? The crazy part to me is that I don't recall scouting even being touched in any update. I don't know what they changed to cause it to break initially. If its still broken (haven't played yet) I'm hoping its not cover to stop you from signing players to give the AI more chances to be competitive or snap up wonder kids before you. I doubt that's the case but it's a thought in my head.

I'm a couple hours away from being able to play and try it out. Wish there was a way to save 24.1, 24.2.1. and 24.3 and run a scouting report in each and compare. Wonder what it would take for SI to release let you play different versions of the same game (understanding issues from older patches won't be fixed if you have a bug).