The Football Manager thread

Away End - General Chat
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Depending on what date your at, look for released players from the Premier League and Championship, and offer trials to anyone in the 17-20 age and then do the same for Leagues 1 & 2 but increase the age to 30.

You should be able to rebuild a squad easily enough with a transfer budget of £0, but if you are past the contract release date, the number of freebies does drop fairly fast.

Edit. When you go to the Transfer tab, go to your DoF and ask for recomendations for every position that is a free agent or loan target. They will come back with upto 3 options if there are any that they rate, then you offer a trial if not signed with anyone or scout them if they are at a club

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thanks @aussielad, My transfer window perhaps wasnt as efficiently done as your suggestion but seems to have gone well so far. I’ve pretty much built up a new squad with just 4 or 5 lads from last season and have created sufficient depth that I can rotate them more easily to keep fresh and hopefully minimise injuries. Biggest issue may be keeping them all happy - I promised too many of them that they are star players or that they will play the key games :rofl: I just hope that we continue winning and that by rotating regularly they will not kick up a stink about it.

Went with the 424 wing play as I have picked up some good forwards. I’m 7 games in to the season, winning 6 and drawing 1, dominating most of those games. So managed to meet the immediate target of 8 pts in 5 games and pick up a manager of the month award too!

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You should apply for the United job

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Back in the day when I played (probably 25+ years ago) the earlier FM games that was what I did. I had two jobs one with Utd to ruin them as much as possible, and one with Liverpool to try to win everything. :rofl:

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I create another player and took the united job and spend all their budget to buy Voronin, I get alot of money to buy players and they got their season screwed with no money to buy other players

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Finally got round to finishing the second season this week. Finished top of the Vanarama south. Admittedly, I did save scum about 7or 8 matches with a view to trying to better understanding the match engine/ tactics - but I can safely say I didn’t learn anything from doing so :rofl:

So now trying to navigate the end of season/ start of season period and figure out which players I can look to keep. It looks like it is going to be much busier than I had anticipated.

Two of my favourite players (my starting keeper and my top scoring target forward) are now out of contract and asking for a sizeable bump in wages to stay, so given we have got promoted and will be playing against theoretically stronger teams, I’m not sure If I can justify paying them £1100 and £1700 respectively (plus bonuses) (was paying them about £700 + bonuses before).

I’ve got another forward expecting to be sold because I didn’t play him as often as I promised, and I’ve just released a centre midfielder for the same reason. I’ve got another two or three players leaving/ retiring now too.

So that leaves me with needing to sign about 8 players just to stand still on numbers from last season.

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:rofl: My same problem every summer until I get into the Championship and am at as level where I can feel comfortable walking away if the demands don’t match my judgement of their ability

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The difference between National League N/S and National League isn’t that big, and if you can pick up the right level of ex-Premier League youth players, they should develop really quickly playing regularly. You also need to be careful bumping wages that much as the level of finances is not that great at that level of the pyramid

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Well, I wimped out and re-signed the two players - one was my leading scorer last season with 25 goals (and a heading ability of 15 - I’m struggling to find any forwards with a heading ability above 8 and I want to have that threat from set pieces) and the other my keeper with 22 clean sheets. Both are very influential figures in the dressing room.

I’ve now got a third player demanding a transfer because he thinks I have let him down over playing time (despite him as a 20 year old pretty much playing every other game in rotation with a 35 year old who I’ve just released).

I’m hoping I can sell him and the other forward I’ve listed quickly enough to bring in some of those prem/ first division youngsters - I’ve already missed out on two I really liked the look of.

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I love a couple of big meaty boys (+6f 2) as defenders with good jumping reach to use as a double target for set pieces.

PS. I love a cold, wet night in Stoke :rofl:

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Anyone else on the FM26 beta or are you all waiting for the full game release in November?

I’m in January managing Liverpool, currently 3rd in the league. 6 points off Arsenal.

My biggest issue is getting both Issak and Ekitike firing at the same time as I am having difficulties finding a formation that gets both of them up front together with Salah and Wirtz in the team

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you’ve come to the right place, we’re all experts on tactic and formations on here,

if you cant get it fixed, just blame the ref…

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So your @jaffod’s 2nd account :rofl:

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Tbf on Jaffod, he’s not the only one!

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I’m waiting for full release as it will be available on Game Pass.

How are you finding it, I’ve seen streamers rue the lack of some of the features that existed in FM24 but love the match engine? Seems quite a few people are experiencing problems with soft locking too.

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Overall i am enjoying it. The new game engine is a lot better. The layout is totally different so am holding opinion as the streamers i follow most and Miles from SI all said long time players will take more time to adjust than new players to pick up the new layout. Although i do miss shouts during games.

In terms of bugs that a lot of players seem to be encounting, ive not faced any so far.

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I will offer 1 peice of advice for anyone wanting to take on Liverpool when you get the game. Don’t make my mistake of accepting a £70M offer for Allison from Arsenal in January as Mamardashvili will break his arm 2 days after the deal gets confirmed :man_facepalming:

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Finally decided to give FM26 a proper go last week.

As I’m terrible at these games I thought I would start at Utd. That way I might actually get to enjoy my frequent losses while I get used to the new game and data.

Despite beating Arsenal and Chelsea early on my season went worse than I expected. Got to late October when I had my first meeting with the Board and vote of confidence. A couple of weeks I had another one. So I decided to watch some online tactics videos. saw one on Carrick’s Utd tactics and tried to copy them manually. Two matches later, both losses, I got sacked and thought that would be the end of that career as my manager is 25 without any qualifications!

Looking at the quality of the animations, can’t say I blame them. Regardless of what I tried telling the players to do, they looked slow and ponderous. No whipping in crosses or heading to the touchline but doing those stupid pirouettes with the ball before passing it backwards or just blasting it out of play while under no pressure at all…

A month later I got hired by SKU Amstetten. A small club in Austria’s First Division. At the foot of the table with a 9pt gap to safety and about 12 games left to the end of the season. I know nothing about Austrian football and fully expected to not last long there either. This time though I downloaded the tactic (my first time ever doing so I think) rather than copy manually from a video. Similar tactic to before, but this is from Carrick’s time at Boro. I don’t think it is supposed to be one of those meta busting tactics, I just figured it would keep things simple and organised and reduced the likelihood of me picking instructions which clashed. Have tried to be more active on the training front adding in team bonding, match reviews and community sessions along with tactical reviews all of which I neglected before.

I haven’t signed anyone in the winter window, haven’t much of a budget and the club are overspending on wages. Did sell a really promising looking 18yr old forward to Salzburg who then loaned him back to help ease the financial situation if we stay up and the club keeps me on.

Have won 2 of 3 friendlies in the mid season break, losing only to Malmo, a much better side. Have won the first league two matches 3-1 & 3-0 with some great moves. Much more fun to watch. And, I feel this could be one of those great experiences of saving a club and helping build it into something. Although, I’m still 6 or 7pts from safety with 10 games left, so too early to be having those lofty ambitions right now!

If I do survive, most of the contracts expire in the summer, so it will presumably be a case of treating it like non league football with a mass of trials, loans and out of contract signings to rebuild the squad from scratch. If I don’t, hopefully I will have done enough to earn another job somewhere else!

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Another four matches played, still unbeaten at SKU Amstetten. 3 wins and a draw against the league leaders where two late goals put us 2-1 up only to see them nab a last minute penalty.

That run, scoring 16 goals and conceding 6, has seen me claw back the points so I am now just above the relegation spots by virtue of goal difference but have a game in hand.

Six games left to get through. 4 against mid table teams (6-9th as 15 teams in this division), 1 against the second placed side and one against the bottom placed team.