Football Manager Series Catch-All

29 games gone in season 2, and my Stoke City are in 2nd place, with an 8 point cushion over 3rd placed West Brom. It's looking good. Aston Villa are in 1st, 5 points ahead of us, and have only lost one game all season so far, which we handed to them.

Some factoids about the wider simulated world, should anyone be interested...

- Chelsea are Premier League Champions, comfortably finishing ahead of Man City.
- Man Utd won the FA Cup, Leicester won the EFL Cup.
- Villa, Brighton and West Brom relegated.
- Juventus won the Champions league, 1-0 over Man City, with a winner from Cristiano Ronaldo, who else...
- Arsenal finished 11th in the league, but qualified for the Champions League by virtue of winning the EURO Cup (3-2 in the Final vs Real Madrid).
- The European leagues were all won by the usual suspects. Nothing to see here...
- Netherlands are European Champions for the first time since 1988, beating Germany in the delayed summer showpiece.

I'm now checking for the webcam that Prederick has obviously hidden in my living room.

Obviously I haven't found all of them.

My Day 1 Review - The passing and finishing is so much better.

EDIT: How much better? Well, for one, I saw a move in which my team strung together 8 passes before setting free my left-back who went on a marauding run to the goal line before cutting it back to my striker, in space, to tap home. Something that literally never happened in FM 20.

Then, in another game, the opposing striker ran onto a lumped longball upfield and volleyed it in from a solid 30 yards before the ball touched the ground.

My own personal problems with FM 20's gameplay appear to have been addressed, and I am very, very happy.

EDIT v2: HOLY sh*t I JUST SAW A GOAL GET CHECKED FOR OFFSIDE AND IT WASN'T OFFSIDE

Helloooooooooo.

Honestly, though, this is arguably one of the three most consequential mods in FM history. An absolutely, wholesale game-changer.

And the technology behind it is completely terrifying, but y'know.

That's incredible. Downloading today.

Also, f*%k brexit, I can barely sign any foreign players as Stoke after new restrictions were passed on 1/1/2021.

Thanks all.. I probably stick to Fm 01/02

It's amazing, for sure, but are we supposed to add another 10.000 or so tiny jpegs to the graphics folder on top of all the other graphics packs?

I once made the mistake, instead of unzipping it from USB, to set the OneDrive folder on my gaming laptop to 'always keep downloaded', thnking it would than keep it in sync with whatever I did on my desktop PC. I got all kinds of sync errors on both computers for weeks, and it took ages to get it deleted. Just opening one of those folders takes forever.

I just need one graphics pack, for everything, to unzip and never look at again.

Season 2 in the books with Stoke City, and we have reached the promised land! Promotion (comfortably in the end) and I hope we can play a nicer brand of football than the last time Stoke dirtied the Premier League waters!

We finished in 2nd place behind Aston Villa, who set a new points record for the Championship with 115, AND won the FA Cup, beating Liverpool 1-0 in the final. We managed 105 points ourselves, promotion was secured with room to spare. Now to prepare for staying up, let's hope my scouts have earned their keep and uncovered some cheap gems!

Elsewhere....

Premier League - Man City snatched it from Man Utd at the death, winning 1-0 at Old Trafford in the penultimate game to take top spot for the first time, then triumphing over Fulham on the final day to secure it.
FA Cup - As mentioned above, won by Villa.
Carabao Cup - Another trophy for Man City, beating Leeds 2-0 in the final.
Champions League - Real Madrid win their 14th (but not the Spanish League) after beating Man Utd in the final. A bad end to the season for the red half of Manchester.
Euro Cup - RB Leipzig beat Lazio to the spoils.
Relegated - The Premier League bids farewell to West Ham, Crystal Palace and Blackburn.
Promoted - As well as Aston Villa and ourselves, Middlesbrough join us after winning the playoff final against QPR.
European Leagues - Very little of interest, Barcelona, PSG, Bayern etc... Actually I didn't think to check whether Juve won Serie A. They probably did.

Until next season...

"And the Blues may have had their troubles in recent weeks, but the appointment of a new manager could change all of that around. So let's welcome davet010 to....Schalke 04"

Yes, I'm starting my FM21 journey (once I'd found all the relevant facepacks, logos, team name fixes, correct cup pictures etc) with a club from the not-particularly-beautiful environs of Gelsenkirchen. Struggling in RL (no wins in the last 21 Bundesliga games), and with low-ish expectations (mid-table is OK until yr 5), it looks like a place to do some long term work without pressure for instant success.

One month in, and FM mirrors real-life in many ways

The squad is largely journeymen.
Those who aren't are troublemakers (looking at you, Bentaleb)
I've signed an Italian striker. Who's now out for 6 weeks.
Still, that's better than my star midfielder (Suat Serdar, star of some of my previous campaigns), who's out for 7.
Our first competitive game is a cup game away at BL3 side Dynamo Dresden. We lose 1-0.
Our next game is the BL opener. Away. At FC Arrogant.

Right, let's check flight times back to Blighty then.

Good luck Dave! Speaking of luck, my opening fixtures in the Premier League were Chelsea (A), Liverpool (H), Man Utd (A). Talk about baptism of fire. We somehow made a mockery of the xG and beat Chelsea at the bridge, 1-0 with ten men. Then it was back down to earth with a 0-3 loss to Liverpool. United up next...

I even enjoy the asskickings in this game.

I'm at Red Star Paris in the Championnat National and we managed to get all the way to the Ninth Round of the Coupe de France by beating up a bunch of even lower league teams.

And then we played Lille.

There really is some fantastic finishes in this game. I know, because I watched their striker pull a Zlatan from the edge of the box and backwards kung-fu kick the ball over my GK and my CD and into the net to make it 7-0 after 66 minutes.

I just started working on a short save in FM21 last night. I haven't played a match yet, just took over the club and putzed around with setting a tactic, training, and going through the initial press conferences and whatnot.

The press interaction changes are interesting, but in just two conferences I already got the same question twice, and they seem to take more time, with the "hands out", "smile warmly" options and stuff. Not sure I care that much either way, but I imagine I'll be sending my assistant to handle a lot of those going forward.

The scouting meeting with staff was kind of cool, but again, it almost feels as if it's a lot of wrapping around something I could do with a few clicks in FM20.

On the whole, so far, it doesn't feel much different than FM20, which is fine with me.

If the game accurately represents what the schedule is going to be like around the world cup in 2022, then it's going to be a weird time. I didn't have a fixture from 10th November until 29th December.

kergguz wrote:

If the game accurately represents what the schedule is going to be like around the world cup in 2022, then it's going to be a weird time. I didn't have a fixture from 10th November until 29th December.

FM20 did that, yes. Just a big hole in the schedule for the top teams. I was playing in the lower leagues in England in 2022 in FM20, so it had no impact down there.

Does anyone else get the issue of 200K+ in Facepack images leading to OneDrive errors? OneDrive keeps trying to sync them, which fails because there are too many.

dejanzie wrote:

Does anyone else get the issue of 200K+ in Facepack images leading to OneDrive errors? OneDrive keeps trying to sync them, which fails because there are too many.

OneDrive syncing has been a PITA in general for me, not just relating to FM, so I've turned it off.

I have never used OneDrive.

I've started a short YouTube series with FM21, called The Sodfather. It'll be about ten episodes. I try to survive one season with a "family" run Juventus, with a couple of other "conditions" that make for an added challenge.

I won't clog the thread with my own stuff, but I thought some people here might enjoy this, so I'll just post the first episode. Feedback welcome, and I'm looking for ideas for what to do after this as well. Thanks in advance if you check it out.

Couple weeks in, and still fully enjoying myself. As we've said, it's iterative, but the changes made so far to FM 2021 have addressed many of my issues with FM 20.

While watching a Tifo video today though, I did have a single thought which is that, FM needs to deepen the drama that happens at executive levels at the club. The game does not depict the hilariously, genuinely disorganized and dysfunctional board situations we've seen and continue to see at clubs across Europe. There's no situation where you're trying to build a competent team but constantly forced to sell because the owner has laden you with so much debt that you'd have to win the CL every year to break even.

I mean, I get it, it's probably that way for the same reason there's no COVID-19 in FM 21, but still.

I don't know. My last real game was with Anderlecht in FM18, and I had to sell my best player Dendoncker because of their huge debt. I remember thinking this was impossible, because they had just sold Tielemans (now at Leicester) for a record amount back then.

Turns out Sports Interactive was better informed than the public, as the club had to sell Jeremy Doku this season for 27M just to break-even.

kergguz wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

Does anyone else get the issue of 200K+ in Facepack images leading to OneDrive errors? OneDrive keeps trying to sync them, which fails because there are too many.

OneDrive syncing has been a PITA in general for me, not just relating to FM, so I've turned it off.

If anyone else ever encounters this issue: there's no way to exclude a specific folder from Syncing within OneDrive, but there's a workaround to make sure FM looks for your data in another folder.

So I'm now copy-pasting the entire shebang to another folder and pointing FM in that direction.

edit: ouch, apparently OneDrive has been taking up 10% CPU power + 1GB RAM constantly while trying in vain to sync up.

And thus, with the Red Star Paris board selling both of my best players, my first save comes to an end after I tendered my angry resignation.

Season 3 Review - Stoke City in the Premier League!

The season started with a 1-0 win away to Chelsea, ended with a 1-0 win away to Man City, but in between was a sea of mediocrity. Mediocrity is what was required though, as we reached 40 points and a nice safe and cosy 14th place, beating relegation by 10 points which delighted the board. The win at Man City on the final day was our first win for 3 months. We really struggled after the AI seemed to have 'figured out' my tactic. I'm happy enough though, and have made some decent signings and taken greater control of training going in to Season 4.

Elsewhere...

In the Premier League, an awesome 3 horse race saw the top 3 finish like this-
1st Man Utd 87 pts
2nd Liverpool 86 pts
3rd Arsenal 85 pts (managed by Klopp).
Man United won a treble, also triumphing in the FA Cup and Euro Cup. Neighbours Man City were beaten on penalties in the Champions League Final by Milan.
It was nice to see some variation in the european leagues, with Lyon comfortably winning the french league, and Dortmund knocking Bayern Munich off their perch.

Blimey, I don't think I've ever seen Klopp leave Liverpool that quickly, unless he leaves to take over the German national squad. I have seen him retire after season 5 though.

Prederick wrote:

Couple weeks in, and still fully enjoying myself. As we've said, it's iterative, but the changes made so far to FM 2021 have addressed many of my issues with FM 20.

I'm really enjoying this year's FM too. The improved match engine is ++. That's such a big part of the game that that single improvement has made me happy. The other improvements I'm not so keen on. I think the UI has taken a step backwards. But yeah, super fun times.

Prederick wrote:

While watching a Tifo video today though, I did have a single thought which is that, FM needs to deepen the drama that happens at executive levels at the club. The game does not depict the hilariously, genuinely disorganized and dysfunctional board situations we've seen and continue to see at clubs across Europe. There's no situation where you're trying to build a competent team but constantly forced to sell because the owner has laden you with so much debt that you'd have to win the CL every year to break even.

An event system like CK3 has would be super fun.

There's no Peter Lim/Oyston Family/Mike Ashley in FM, which I understand, because that might be a little too realistic.