Football Manager Series Catch-All

In case it helps, here are the add-ons I'm using in my game:

Logos: TCM Logos 2020
Skin: FM20 Skin TCS 2020
Kits: SS Kits (I've only installed England Leagues 1-6 and Leagues 7-8 at the moment)
Official League Names, etc: League Fix FMScout
Small Stadium Images (for custom skin): Stadium Mini-Pack
Faces: DF11 Megapack (Update 1 and 2)

I'm bone idle, so I just copied all of my 2019 stuff into the 2020 folder.

Worked well so far, though I must have rolled the scroll wheel on my mouse at some point and ended up with everything in Danish.

So, having started my career at Man City, I have a few minor queries..

- Why have they removed the direct link to the u23 squad on the side bar? It's a PITA having to go through the dev centre now.

- I was also going to ask how to change the colour of your player numbers (white on light blue is not a good choice), but I've found it now in the editor.

davet010 wrote:

- Why have they removed the direct link to the u23 squad on the side bar? It's a PITA having to go through the dev centre now.

Not sure.

Agreed. I've read many similar comments.

Hopefully that's something they can patch in easily. There are a few other interface problems that weren't in FM19 that have me scratching my head.

Selecting 1st team players to play in the U23 or U18 teams seems way more fiddly, and it's annoying that the 2 weeks of training don't all fit in the visible area, cutting off the intensity bar at the bottom of the second week, to name just two...

There are numerous improvements to the interface though which I'm liking and I'm having fun already, about a month in with the mighty Eastleigh (go the SPITFIRES!)

Starting to get in some time with the game this weekend, fun to be playing the new edition. Random thoughts...

On the whole I'm kind of "meh" with the current engine. I'm not seeing anything appreciably better than FM19 engine-wise, and am seeing things with the engine and the game that seem to have regressed...

• 1-vs-1 breakaways simply do not score. I've seen 20-25 occurrences over a dozen league matches and only 2 of them have gone in. I'm playing with a relegation candidate at the moment, so the whole direct-counter type tactic is frustratingly ineffective because of this. The players (usually strikers) either kick it right at the keeper or miss the goal completely. Usually they just kick it right at the keeper. At least it's happening to both teams, so when the other team gets a breakaway, my first reaction is "Whew, safe!"

• Defender and goalkeeper game performance ratings are too low, by about .3 to .4 on average. This might seem like a little thing, but it causes spin-off problems. It leads your board and your fans to rank your defensive signings lower. The only defenders with good ratings are the ones who score or assist, so it seems like goals/assists are weighted too heavily. Also, in the last eight matches we've played, there have been 13 players with the "red" performance ratings for both teams, all of them defenders. All in all, without meaningful and comparable defender ratings, it makes it a crapshoot who your good defenders are, and makes it hard to figure out what part of your team you should improve.

• The match engine seems a touch wonky. Slightly direct passing, for example, seems to result in everyone on my team kicking the ball straight up the pitch, regardless of whether anyone on my team is even in the general area. This was noticeable in FM19 too, and to a certain degree I'd expect it in the lower leagues, but proportionately it seems just way too over the top.

Blackice wrote:

Selecting 1st team players to play in the U23 or U18 teams seems way more fiddly, and it's annoying that the 2 weeks of training don't all fit in the visible area, cutting off the intensity bar at the bottom of the second week, to name just two...

Yes, it's fiddly in that when you slot a player to play on the U23 or U18 team it then immediately closes the window so you can only do one player at a time.

However, I like that it now shows you who will start the game and that they'll actually play. In previous editions, it was really easy to request playing time for two left wingers, for example, and only one would play.

Alright, so i've installed all my mods, and i'm ready to start anew. The only question is, where?

- Fulham, my favorite team
- St. Pauli, the team of football hipsters across the globe
- Notts County, who were just relegated from league football for the first time in their history

Also, they've got to get a few more... uh... "diverse" facial models, because my manager looks like Lloyd Griffith dipped in tea.

A few games in, and yeah, there's some patching that needs to be done. "Low Crosses" is still just a vague suggestion, and I'm willing to blame my team's tendency to interpret "more direct passing" as "HOOF IT" because we're a Conference National side.

Also, I had a friend of mine describe LLM perfectly, I think. Whereas at good teams, you're trying to encourage greatness, in a LLM scenario, you're really just trying to contain incompetence (glares at my back four).

EDIT: Oh, and perhaps it's the level, but Zilla is dead-on about the defender ratings. My entire back four will be playing 6.5's 30 minutes into a match when we haven't surrendered a goal.

EDIT v2: Rescinded the criticism. I need to tweak my tactics before I yell about "there's no through balls!"

What club did you pick, Prederick?

Prederick wrote:

EDIT: Oh, and perhaps it's the level, but Zilla is dead-on about the defender ratings. My entire back four will be playing 6.5's 30 minutes into a match when we haven't surrendered a goal.

SI has acknowledged the issue with match ratings issue, so I'm guessing that they'll fix it in the next patch.

Prederick wrote:

EDIT v2: Rescinded the criticism. I need to tweak my tactics before I yell about "there's no through balls!"

I've been seeing them too. I concentrated on center mids with good vision and decent passing. They send a striker through on goal all alone and he kicks it right at the keeper.

I wonder how long before they patch the game again? If it's going to be a few weeks I'll likely try to shift to a 4-2-4 because the counter-attack tactics just don't work in this version.

Dan Maguire : I've been on a fringe of the team recently and feel I should play more.

Me : If I give you a chance you'll have to prove you should stay in the team.

Dan Maguire :
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/AGBUsdz.jpg)

Godzilla Blitz wrote:

What club did you pick, Prederick?

Notts County. I need a good story when I play, and I can think of few stories more appealing than "Oldest league club in the world gets relegated to non-league, try to make them Premier League champions for the first time in their history."

It's probably about time that I stepped away from the bigger clubs (puts folder hurriedly on top of Man City save where I have only won 2 of my first 7 games - drawn all of the others...)

So, in the spirit of other people, help me pick a team from the following..

Port Vale (because few people know where they are).

Grenable Foot 38 (because they sound like an army division, and there's something slightly exotic about teams with numbers in their name...apart from almost every Bundesliga club).

Barrow Their badge includes a nuclear submarine. What's not to love (apart from the town, which is bleak beyond belief.)

So, help me decide, and updates will follow.

Get out of England, experience some football en français.

Honestly, in France, toppling PSG might be significantly harder than breaking into the top of the Premier League in England (assuming PSG keep their financial muscle).

I won League 1 in FM19, albeit with Lyon.

I'll wait until tomorrow, but will go with Grenoble unless other votes appear.

If those are the choices I'd go with Grenoble.

I would have suggested Queen's Park in Scotland, but they finally voted to end their Amateur-only status this month after 150+ years.

Just going by name, Grenable Foot 38 hands down.

New patch is out!

I'm usually a pretty easy-going gamer but I was frustrated with the previous version, and had run into display issues with the match engine to boot. I'm hopeful this version is an improvement, looking forward to digging back in.

- Improvements to finishing in clear-cut-chance situations
- Improved through ball decisions in final third

Can't say they don't listen, at least.

Sounds like they've addressed match ratings too, yippee!

I'm excited to dig back in tonight. Fingers crossed that I can live with whatever bugs remain.

I'm still hearing that people are getting fired for no reason (consecutive promotions, under wage budget, but get sacked for being over the wage budget). I'm hopeful that's an outlier.

Literally 5 minutes into my first post-patch game and I saw a great through ball for a CCC, followed by an intelligent low cross for our opening goal. Pleasing!

EDIT: WOW is it better. We (Notts Co) just crushed Curzon Ashton 4-0, and it's not just THAT we did it, but HOW we did it. And "Low Crosses" finally actually WORKS.

Prederick wrote:

Literally 5 minutes into my first post-patch game and I saw a great through ball for a CCC, followed by an intelligent low cross for our opening goal. Pleasing!

EDIT: WOW is it better.

Awesome! The reports on the SI Forums are positive as well. I'm excited to give it a shot tonight.

Yeah, I've been playing all night and my goodness, the match engine feels... I don't want to say "totally different" but pre-patch I'd have made this a "if you're a FM addict" recommendation. Post-patch this has genuinely been a "Wow" experience.

Like, obviously the Vanarama National isn't La Liga, but players even at that level know how to cross, how to play one-twos and how to hit a through ball, and I went from seeing little to none of that pre-patch, to seeing my team score a goal that I'm genuinely frustrated I couldn't save (intricate play from the middle, sprayed out to the right, before given to an onrushing fullback who drew it back from the byline to my striker who swept home from the penalty spot. Like 8 passes in total, it was AMAZING).

I just bought Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I was COMPLETELY ENJOYING that and now I'm like "Crap, I don't have time to be addicted to BOTH of these games like this."

EDIT: Oh, and another thing, I've said a billion times before that FM Messi never plays like real-life Messi. Well, in my game, thus far, Messi has 14 goals in 13 appearances, 6 assists and a 8.38 rating, which, yeah. Messi.

Totally agree! I just had time to get in one match tonight, but I was impressed as well. It's hard for me to put a finger on it, but it just felt more entertaining and surprising, and like real football.

And I see you just picked up the 10 consecutive wins achievement, Prederick! Nice work!

The only negative I experienced was I'm still occasionally getting a repeated ball-kick sound at odd times during the match. No biggie, but I'd like to clean it up.

Really looking forward to cranking it up tomorrow and getting going on my career.

Can we slum it and still talk about FM19? Oh good.

Because after spending some time with Other Games I played through Christmas into the new year and... kinda went top.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/v1wFFLO.png)

But that's ok, because I immediately lost 1-0 to Leyton Orient the next game and slipped back to third.

But that's ok, because seven days later I had Leyton Orient again in the FA Trophy and smashed them 4-1 for revenge.

The best thing though is that out of the blue I was asked what I thought about speculation linking me to the vacant job at Derby in the Championship. I answered that I didn't think much about it, which was true because I hadn't realised I was linked to the vacant job at Derby in the Championship.

My board was delighted with this and then Derby gave the job to someone else and we all moved on.

Then I got asked what I thought about maybe becoming the new Manager at Notts Forest.

This is all preamble though, because I don't care about any of that. However, the Manager at my real life favourite team - Ipswich Town - is "insecure" because he's led the team into the Championship relegation positions (something he also did in real life).

In 25 years of these lower league Manager runs I've almost always been a one-club man, but at the same time I haven't managed my own favourite team now for eleven years. If the job comes up I'm going to be really tempted.

First check in from the new manager of Grenoble Foot 38.

Board expectations are mid table finish, which might be doable. Side is fairly weak, but I've been able to truffle around in the loan market, signing a couple of loan players from England (Bernabe from City's u-19s being one), and we are off to a reasonable start (4-2-2 in the first 8), although we are yet to play any of the favourites apart from Guingamp.

Did have to laugh when I walked in, had a look at the fixture list for pre-season and the first match was against PSG.

Mr Bismarck wrote:

Can we slum it and still talk about FM19? Oh good.

Honestly, I don't feel like there is an appreciable difference between FM19 and FM20.

I haven't messed with the Development Centre much yet so my opinion might change, but the Club Vision mechanic feels like a work in progress. I think for long saves the Club Vision thing could be really cool, but it sounds like they're still working out issues with it, and the implementation hasn't quite lived up to the vision yet. Kind of like my current FM20 career, come to think of it.

Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Mr Bismarck wrote:

Can we slum it and still talk about FM19? Oh good.

Honestly, I don't feel like there is an appreciable difference between FM19 and FM20.

I would've agreed with you until the patch. I think, outside of the match engine, you're right, but within the match engine, some significant improvements have been made. Not huge or game-changing, but significant. Really, they're fixes to the 19 engine but y'know. XD

I was having a good time last night until we lost to freaking Brackley Town in the first round of the FA Trophy. Thank goodness the board doesn't care about that competition and wants us to go up, first and foremost.

Prederick wrote:
Godzilla Blitz wrote:
Mr Bismarck wrote:

Can we slum it and still talk about FM19? Oh good.

Honestly, I don't feel like there is an appreciable difference between FM19 and FM20.

I would've agreed with you until the patch. I think, outside of the match engine, you're right, but within the match engine, some significant improvements have been made. Not huge or game-changing, but significant. Really, they're fixes to the 19 engine but y'know. XD

Good to know, I'm basing my opinion on one whole game with the new patch. I should be able to play more with my Nuneaton save tonight. Excited to get through the second month.

Almost got through a full season with Notts County but......

.......I'm a Fulham fan. And as good as Scott Parker has been, I still want to see them go up and start taking f**king names. Guess I'm restarting.