Gaming Football Manager 2024

First big result of the save in season 2 in the CL qualifiers. Praying we can do something at home in the second leg now!

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Incredible scenes! Talbot my GK had an absolute blinder.

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2nd again and picked up both both domestic cups. I don't how much better we can be in the league but will persevere.

There was a spell in the season where we were 7 points behind Liverpool and won 10 in a row. Cut it to 4 by beating them during that run but they won their other 9. We then lost 3 in a row to Spurs, Chelsea and City in April and it was all over.

Got properly FM'd by Atletico Madrid in the Champions League last 16. :lol: 5.38-1.05 on xG over the 2 legs and lost 2-1 on aggregate. The only goal we could score was a penalty.

Might switch up the formation again, thinking of going with 1 CM and 1 DM instead of 2 DMs. We have a lack of depth in DM, and Wales doesn't seem to be producing much there in the save. Our squad players in DM are a big of a drop off from the 2 starters and are now 30 and 31.

There is a fairly promising CM out there available on a free that still has a lot of improvement in him. Not PL standard yet but should be soon enough once he gets games in a big league. All our DMs can play CM anyway.
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Not much else will be happening with transfers, got the Welsh market almost completely locked down. A couple of 16 year olds have spawned at Villa and City (they and West Ham keep producing Welsh players for some reason), but I don't know if they'd want to come yet and would be ridiculously expensive. Often better to wait for these kinds of players once it starts to look like they're not going to make it at those clubs.

That youth intake was brilliant in the end. Alright, there's an eccentric 'keeper and a forward with 8 acceleration but these are sure to be good enough for my first team squad eventually.
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Also have been spinning up a game in FM 2024 again at the start. Managing St. Pauli but something just dawned on me. The shitty AI managers ruin all the fun. I got promoted in my first season, finished 6th in my 2nd season, 3rd in my third season and won the treble, Bundesliga, DFB Pokal and Champions League beating Real 3-0 in the final. Like seriously? My team is shite, prediction in the league was 12th that season, I had the 3rd lowest wage budget in the Bundesliga and I didn't play one of the meta 4231/424 tactics. It's just that the AI is completely useless it seems.
 
I had suspicions that the games were heavily biased toward physical attributes, but seeing the extent of how broken the game is through those shared tests completely ruined it for me.
 
Think we're definitely going to dip in performance the next season, going for the new formation using a cm + dm instead of 2 dms. There's not much out there in either position for the future but probably a little better in cm.

Also just confirmed our 2 biggest sales so far, not that money is really relevant in this save. Fans are pissed off, gave me a 'D' for selling both. :lol:

Out goes Cameron Williams to Saudi for £17.75m after 6 seasons with us. Huge profit on him. Signed him when he reached the Championship and was our first choice left winger for 4 seasons followed by 2 as a squad player.
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Jordan Lloyd is taking his place in the squad, out on loan last season at Watford where he helped them win the Championship. We had him loan from City when he was a youngster, but changed the system we were playing not long into the season so they took him back and then I ended up signing him eventully before loaning him out a couple of times myself.
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Selling Ashley Phillips too, 31m to Atletico. 4 seasons with us, he really helped us establish ourselves in the Premier League but was only a squad player last campaign. Good time to sell as he's now just turned 30.
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Moving this Chris Edwards fella from DM into central defence as his replacement as part of the formation shift.
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CMs is where it's a massive punt, brought in these 2 who are nowhere near ready, but we're going to develop them and give them plenty of gametime. Griffiths as starter, Jones as backup to him.
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Longer term we have a couple of decent CMs in the under 18s, 3.5 and a 4.5 star potential. Just hope the dip isn't too bad, expectations are growing now. We now have to finish top half according to the board. Should do that, but I'm not sure finishing 2nd like we did last 2 seasons. Definitely weaker now.
 
I started playing cm01/02, it's still better than anything produced afterwards.


It's a classic! Have you looked into using updated databases or anything like that? Not that using the players of the time wouldn't be a lovely nostalgia trip anyway.
 
Really weird seasons for my team and in general.
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Just lost 2-1 at Anfield, would have been top if we won. Everyone's a bit rubbish.

We got 19 points out of 21, 12 out of 36, now 25 out of 30. A lot of it fixture related, played many of the wealthier/better teams during the bad spell and couldn't beat them. About to play them all again so and just started with that defeat against Liverpool so not too hopeful. Would be very pleased if we even make CL.

Wouldn't say no to Europa, would have a chance of winning it.

Not sure on the tactic I've been using. Might switch back to what we previously used but seeing as I'm going Welsh only I've been switching up depending on who is out there. If the game suddenly produces a great Welsh raumdeuter chances are we'd be playing with one of them!

Can always retrain player's positions from the youth team to help fit a specific tactic, something I've never done intentionally and am hesistant on that. Does it stunt their development or something?
 
Finally did our kits in this save. Always like the Puma ones in Kitbasher, lots of choice by default.

Anyone know if you can download more templates anywhere or is that it?

Proper role-playing the sponsor, they apparently own a shopping centre in Merthyr Tydfil and a few others around the country although we're at the point where we could/should have internationally renowned sponsors to be fair. Still, looks good!

Loving the the little Welsh dragon on the sleeves.

Not sure on the badge on the 3rd kit, wanted to make it mostly black with yellow but couldn't for some reason. Was coming out as two-tone black. Could get it to do mostly yellow with black which wasn't bad, but it had a white border around the shield which didn't look that good. Still better than what I have here but I'll live with this one for now.

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If you have an itch for another management game, f1 manager 24 is free on epic this week (You'll own it forever)

Nice one, might grab that.

One of the FM content creators, Work The Space sometimes plays that too. Never really took a look at it but I like these kinds of games.
 
Keep harping on about this save, it's just so much fun! Going to shut up soon until we either win the league or CL, it might be a while.

3rd this season, won the Comminity Shield for the first time but that was it for silverware.
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About to move into our new stadium for next season, capacity 26331.

What I love about this save is that it feels a bit more like a real football club. In FM you can normally improve your squad year after year until you just dominate everything to an unrealistic level. Not sure I'll ever be able to do that with an all Welsh squad although the youth academy is currently producing a lot of top talent which should make us a little better than we currently are.

Wales just qualified for Euro 2036, the first tournament they'll be in since I started paying attention in the save. 15 of our players in the 24-man squad plus 3 former players. Feels like those European teams of the past where a huge chunk of Romania squad would all be Steaua, the Hungary squad at Honved or the Yugoslavia squad at Red Star. :lol:

The nature of the save makes us keep players for a bit longer too which I like due to there being no upgrades from Wales. It's fun to keep them for a while and it's like they're having proper careers and from the point of view of imagining them as part of a real club it's nice..

About to say goodbye to the first of these players whose contract is expiring and we're not going to renew. Was huge for us when we first got to the Premier League. Undecided on the second one, who we have a 1 year extension clause. Neither very good in a normal save in the sense that you'd never sign them for the Premier League but they've been great in this one.
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Got loads of players like that, 11 in the first team squad for 5+ years and quite a few more who have been there 3-4. I like it for some reason. This player is the club's record apperance maker and goascorer at the age of 26.
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It's a classic! Have you looked into using updated databases or anything like that? Not that using the players of the time wouldn't be a lovely nostalgia trip anyway.
Haven't tried other databases, playing as United from 2001 is a blast though.
 
New stadium is ugly. Before and after, the old one looked better. I even spent some time doing a dodgy photoshop of Columbus Crew's ground from America for the picture they use in game. :( :lol:

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Won the Premier League in 36/37 with my all Welsh Merthyr, not sure where the save goes from here. Might be over.

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Not won anything in Europe, suppose that could be the goal if carrying on. In a way it would be better we were worse, think we could easily win the Conference League or Europa. Never even played in those competitions.

Squad is ageing a bit for FM standards, suppose I could get something out of bringing through the new generation and the youth team is looking great. Got 3 players over 30 and 6 who are 28-29.

I don't know.

Something that was fun is that after 1 year in a new stadium we're extending it and will temproarily be housed in the John Hartson Arena. It was built in the game for Wales co-hosting Euro 2028 I think, opened in 2026. A 50k stadium sitting empty in Bridgend all that time.

Might have actually fecked the stadium expansion. They were planning to do it and I requested it anyway. Got 2 notifications about it. 1 to say we're going to 39k and another to say we're making our stadium 57k. I hope the 57k one wasn't about the Hartson Arena and them thinking I wanted that one expanded but it could be the case. If it is I've cost the club £39m and we'll never even play there after it's finished. :lol:

Edit: Can't figure it all out, this is what the game is showing me.
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Started a save with one of those data updates from the SI forums along with their "yugoslavia reborn" mod. Wanted to just sim through until June 2030 and start my save from there, basically giving the yugoslavian league time to develop itself into being somewhat decent and let the world develop a bit and just see how it plays out. Always interesting to see what happens to United in these.

Turns out that United sacked Amorim in his first season, and then Lopetegui was manager for a couple of years and then the club went into administration (9 point deduction) in 2026/27 season despite spending 0 and selling 186m worth in the 2026/27 season.
 
If you have an itch for another management game, f1 manager 24 is free on epic this week (You'll own it forever)
Nice, I had great fun with 23 but never picked up 24. Will pick it up for sure. I'll have got both fm24 and f1manager 24 free from epic. Nice.
 
Apparently theres a mod for the match engine that makes this much better and players play in a more realistic way. Might download it and give it a try.


 
Apparently theres a mod for the match engine that makes this much better and players play in a more realistic way. Might download it and give it a try.



There's several mods by now. A Chinese one, Korean one and one combining the two.

Does it affect which attributes are important?
 
There's several mods by now. A Chinese one, Korean one and one combining the two.

Does it affect which attributes are important?
I think the newest one those, passing and decisions etc.. seem to be vastly improved but hard to know cause lots of youtubers are full of shite and placebo effect could be in full flow.
 
Going to see if I can play as Hammarlands IK next. Not sure what division they're in, Swedish lower leagues. Guessing I'll need a database. Just discovered them on wiki.

Similar thing I did with Welsh players in the English league system with Merthyr, this would be Finnish players in the Swedish divisions although they might not see it as a source of pride!

They're based on the Aland Islands between Sweden and Finland. It's an autonmous area of Finland with a lot of self governance. They have their own flag, postage stamps, people are exempt from serving in the Finnish military. Think the people associate much more with Sweden and Swedish is the main language.

Still, at the end of the day they're Finnish from an administration point of view and FM has filled their squad full of greyed out Finns in my Merthyr save so I'm going to see if I can do that in a playable one.
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There's several mods by now. A Chinese one, Korean one and one combining the two.

Does it affect which attributes are important?

This one too.

Claims greatness, will certainly have a look at the youtube channel they're launching for it.
 
So that latest mod is 4 different ones.

1 - FM Tweak, designed to elevate your Football Manager 2024 experience by refining the match engine for greater realism, balance, and tactical depth.

2 - FM Tweak Lower Leagues, designed for those who love the raw, gritty, and hard-fought battles of lower-league football. This mod slows the game down, making every match a real test of resilience, defensive organization, and sheer determination—just like in real-life lower divisions.

3 - FM Tweak Arcade, designed for players who want a faster, more exciting, and unpredictable Football Manager experience. If realism isn’t your top priority and you’re looking for high-energy, end-to-end matches, this is the mod for you!

4 - FM Tweak Insanity, this mod pushes every parameter to the extreme, creating a Football Manager experience that is completely unhinged. Really good for testing that you’ve definitely installed a custom match engine.


 
Started a new game on the weekend. City signed Mbappe (along with still having Haaland) and finish the season in 10th place, now they meet me in the CL final. Love it when random stuff like this happens.
 
Started a new game on the weekend. City signed Mbappe (along with still having Haaland) and finish the season in 10th place, now they meet me in the CL final. Love it when random stuff like this happens.
City and signing forwards about the most consistent thing in the game :lol:

I'm in my 9th season, and they just randomly buy up all the forwards and right backs while still only managing 4th place. A 4th place only happening because Haaland is a cheat code.
 
If you play as Atheltic Bilbao does the media speculation link you with non-Basque players or is it set up not to?

Asking because it's fun to me I get linked with non-Welsh players in my Merthyr save despite not signing anyone else in 14 seasons now. I don't blame the game, haven't hardcoded the club's transfer policy into the save with the editor which I believe is something you can do. Guessing Bilbao's is and was wondering if it makes a differnce out of curiosity.

Now manager of Wales too, funny I get accused of bias every time I pick my squad with 16+ players from my club in it. Previous manager (Steve Cooper) was picking just as many.
 
If you play as Atheltic Bilbao does the media speculation link you with non-Basque players or is it set up not to?

Asking because it's fun to me I get linked with non-Welsh players in my Merthyr save despite not signing anyone else in 14 seasons now. I don't blame the game, haven't hardcoded the club's transfer policy into the save with the editor which I believe is something you can do. Guessing Bilbao's is and was wondering if it makes a differnce out of curiosity.

Now manager of Wales too, funny I get accused of bias every time I pick my squad with 16+ players from my club in it. Previous manager (Steve Cooper) was picking just as many.

They only link them with Basque players
 
They only link them with Basque players

Cheers for that.

Not a big deal, and I skip through press conferences on auto pilot, spam clicking the second option from the left. Still, sometimes see "are you interested in such a such player?" when I'm thinking only if he's Welsh. Could leave it to the assistant but I like to se that media handling bar full up on my manager profile screen.

Good to see you don't get that on Bilbao saves!
 
City and signing forwards about the most consistent thing in the game :lol:

I'm in my 9th season, and they just randomly buy up all the forwards and right backs while still only managing 4th place. A 4th place only happening because Haaland is a cheat code.

Well, they've finished outside the top 8 for the second season running and Halland was unhappy about it so i've going and spent my entire budget on him.... this is usually around the time I get bored of my save...
 
Fun little whinge from one of my players given the circumstances. Backup goalie, which is also his squad status asking for more playing time in order to boost his chances of playing at the World Cup when I'm also his international manager.

He's 2nd choice for club, 4th choice for country. First choice for country is also first choice for club.

Not sure how he figures that will work out for him. If I picked him more for the club which would make us weaker I'm still not picking him for the international squad barring an injury. Can't tell him that, wish I could.

Sent the club captain to tell him shut up and he dropped his concerns.
 
Doubt very much the title gets retained in my save. Just too far back even if the xG table has us top. United and Newcastle with ridiculous overperformances.

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Going to be some fresh faces soon. This player in his last year now, was a good signing for 27m. Playing him at centre back for 4 seasons really helped us become a regular top 4 club, then he was an absolute revelation at left back last season with 17 assists. Relegated to second choice left back this season with his physicals falling off the cliff.
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Keeper says he's considering his options with 18 months remaining. He's the best Welsh goalkeeper there is. Not sure where we go from here. Money doesn't mean as much when playing a save with players all from one country. Would normally seek to sell him under these cicumstances. Don't know, might just let him run his contract down or hope he decides to stay.
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We do have a young goalie in the U21s with loads of talent. Could be the future but his eccentricity scares me.
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Then there's this fella, sort of a utility player in the attacking roles and also in the ML slot when we were playing a tactic that used that position. He's kind of shit but it's been a lot of fun having him at the club. Ridiculous amount of sub appearances for him during his time. 112 starts, 120 apperances off the bench and 69 goals in all comps. Over half his goals coming in the cups.

Wanted a loan at the age of 30 to secure more first team football so I tried the reverse psychology trick of saying I'd have to sell him He agreed and is now transfer listed by request. There are some young forwards on our books who could take his place just fine and I will sell him in the summer but will be sorry to see him go after 7 seasons of good service.
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A few more players getting on in FM terms, 7 altogether who are 29 or older. We do have all the best young Welsh players too but I'm not confident the ones that are coming through are going be quite as good in the end. CMs and DMs in particular, there isn't much out there.
 


This whole FM25 debacle has actually been good, in the sense that all these mods are coming out that improve the quality of the game overall. It's always been the interfact, but being able to simulate more real world finances and also improve the ME have been big steps forward. It also throws SI under the bus a bit more with the lack of effort into fixing underlying issues. Not that they care.
 
Doubt very much the title gets retained in my save. Just too far back even if the xG table has us top. United and Newcastle with ridiculous overperformances.

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Going to be some fresh faces soon. This player in his last year now, was a good signing for 27m. Playing him at centre back for 4 seasons really helped us become a regular top 4 club, then he was an absolute revelation at left back last season with 17 assists. Relegated to second choice left back this season with his physicals falling off the cliff.
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Keeper says he's considering his options with 18 months remaining. He's the best Welsh goalkeeper there is. Not sure where we go from here. Money doesn't mean as much when playing a save with players all from one country. Would normally seek to sell him under these cicumstances. Don't know, might just let him run his contract down or hope he decides to stay.
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We do have a young goalie in the U21s with loads of talent. Could be the future but his eccentricity scares me.
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Then there's this fella, sort of a utility player in the attacking roles and also in the ML slot when we were playing a tactic that used that position. He's kind of shit but it's been a lot of fun having him at the club. Ridiculous amount of sub appearances for him during his time. 112 starts, 120 apperances off the bench and 69 goals in all comps. Over half his goals coming in the cups.

Wanted a loan at the age of 30 to secure more first team football so I tried the reverse psychology trick of saying I'd have to sell him He agreed and is now transfer listed by request. There are some young forwards on our books who could take his place just fine and I will sell him in the summer but will be sorry to see him go after 7 seasons of good service.
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A few more players getting on in FM terms, 7 altogether who are 29 or older. We do have all the best young Welsh players too but I'm not confident the ones that are coming through are going be quite as good in the end. CMs and DMs in particular, there isn't much out there.
Enjoyed that.
 
Dunno if I’ll ever get round to playing. But which FM challenge seems better:

Overall aim: get one of Millwall or Preston to the PL for the first time. But with catches

With Millwall: I can only sign players, or retain academy players, who have 17+ aggression, determination and work rate. Basically create a dirty bastard team who’ll work hard.

Or with Preston: I can only do 2 things. Sign aging legends (34+) to get the last dropping from them before they retire, like they did with Bobby Charlton, and by producing my own players from the academy - so I would need to put lots of money into improving the youth team
 
Dunno if I’ll ever get round to playing. But which FM challenge seems better:

Overall aim: get one of Millwall or Preston to the PL for the first time. But with catches

With Millwall: I can only sign players, or retain academy players, who have 17+ aggression, determination and work rate. Basically create a dirty bastard team who’ll work hard.

Or with Preston: I can only do 2 things. Sign aging legends (34+) to get the last dropping from them before they retire, like they did with Bobby Charlton, and by producing my own players from the academy - so I would need to put lots of money into improving the youth team

Preston one sounds fun to me. Some people play youth academy only saves so it's like that with a little extra help.

There's always plenty of older players available every summer on a free transfer after being released.

One problem might be how the game loves pace and strength, all the physical attributes and they're dropping off a lot at that point. Not sure if you'd need a specific tactic to take into account you might have slower players out there or not, but maybe some sort of posession based, lower tempo setup? Or even putting the 'hold position' instruction on lots of individuals so that they're not caught out when you lost the ball? Could always drop the age a little 32 or 33 I suppose, they're still veterans.
 
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