Football Manager 2026

[Dan]

On 22/10/2025 at 11:28, EnderbyFox said:

 

It's going to be extremely cathartic to get rid of Soumare, Daka, Skipp, Faes etc in the first window

I was waiting until a new laptop for FM26 but honestly might just have to buy it now and do it. I'm going to drop an absolute bomb on this squad.

[moore_94]

12 minutes ago, Gamble92 said:

Do they all accept a new contract?

Evans and Nelson accepted new contracts for me - although Nelson demanded a release clause for higher division teams so need to get promoted first season really

 

Monga and Page have their IRL pro contracts in game it looks like so you don't need to offer them new contracts

Edited 23 October 2025 by moore_94

[Dan]

1 hour ago, Mark_w said:

We're actually going to be a genuinely fun save based on this. Loads of 5 star youngsters.

[Dan]

31 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

Games broken, I am getting £15m for Faes

 

 

**** me it's gonna be a doddle isn't it.

[Mark_w]

 

I'll be doing this every single save thanks. 

[Mark_w]

 

Working on the others, Football Manager's so much more fun when we're shit

[Dan]

It's great but looks like it'll remain a total doddle with the AI being as dumb as ever with transfers.

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, moore_94 said:

Games broken, I am getting £15m for Faes

 

 

You can get at least £1m more. Winks and Choudhury go for good money too, imagine Soumare does.

 

One thing that does seem to be missing is a proper financial breakdown. We start off with ,£100m(?!) in the bank but projected to be minus at the end of the season and massively down on future years without a massive explanation. Mind you, there's another £20m in clauses to sell at the start so you could easily have £50m to spend only selling a couple of players 

[Fear Of The Fox]

And...refunded. Wow. What a complete mess they made with the UI. I can't believe I've just refunded a Football Manager game I'm playing since the first iteration in the 90s.They had 2 years. 2 years and they came up with this abomination of UI and I'm not even certain they haven't used AI for it. 

I'll wait and see if someone manages to completely mod this farce. 

Well done Miles. Is this the way to treat your loyal base of customers for decades? Very disappointed here. 

[Gamble92]

8 minutes ago, Fear Of The Fox said:

And...refunded. Wow. What a complete mess they made with the UI. I can't believe I've just refunded a Football Manager game I'm playing since the first iteration in the 90s.They had 2 years. 2 years and they came up with this abomination of UI and I'm not even certain they haven't used AI for it. 

I'll wait and see if someone manages to completely mod this farce. 

Well done Miles. Is this the way to treat your loyal base of customers for decades? Very disappointed here. 

Really that bad??

 

I have seen a couple of comments similar to yours floating around on socials but everyone is quickly shutting them down.

 

I'm away for the week so won't be playing until next week. Got less expectations for it now. 

 

What's the game engine like?

[moore_94]

6 minutes ago, Gamble92 said:

Really that bad??

 

I have seen a couple of comments similar to yours floating around on socials but everyone is quickly shutting them down.

 

I'm away for the week so won't be playing until next week. Got less expectations for it now. 

 

What's the game engine like?

The UI is pretty different and certainly has a few bugs/issues currently but I quite like it so far after getting used to it

 

I really like the match engine, all the movements are so much smoother

[Aleksz]

16 minutes ago, Fear Of The Fox said:

And...refunded. Wow. What a complete mess they made with the UI. I can't believe I've just refunded a Football Manager game I'm playing since the first iteration in the 90s.They had 2 years. 2 years and they came up with this abomination of UI and I'm not even certain they haven't used AI for it. 

I'll wait and see if someone manages to completely mod this farce. 

Well done Miles. Is this the way to treat your loyal base of customers for decades? Very disappointed here. 

 

6 minutes ago, Gamble92 said:

Really that bad??

 

I have seen a couple of comments similar to yours floating around on socials but everyone is quickly shutting them down.

 

I'm away for the week so won't be playing until next week. Got less expectations for it now. 

 

What's the game engine like?

Miles warned that it would take some serious getting used to to be fair, but lots of the content creators saying that after giving it a solid 10-15 hours they’re used to it and quite like it. It is very overwhelming, I’ve only put 2 hours in or so but feel the first poster should have given it some more time.

[Aleksz]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

We're actually going to be a genuinely fun save based on this. Loads of 5 star youngsters.

Agreed. The opportunity to drop a bomb on the club and use some of these youngsters (actually reflected well) is going to be so so good. 

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, Dan said:

We're actually going to be a genuinely fun save based on this. Loads of 5 star youngsters.

Worth remembering that the star rating is relative to the league/quality of the squad so it's pretty possible that some of those won't have potential of much more than a passable PL squad filler. Particularly with somebody like Alves who's got really low current ability (surprised it's that low).

 

And the other thing is that I imagine all of them will have random potentials which means that some of them could swing from being a decent championship player to a top player for a non 'big 6' club/back up for one of those. I suspect that's where some of these guys sit, though Monga I'd imagine will at worst, have a range of good PL to world class, but probably 1 up from that (I know some people don't know about the numbers behind the scenes so wouldn't have a clue what a -9 or -9.5 is).

[Fear Of The Fox]

About the UI. Ofc you'll get used to it eventually but this doesn't mean the design is decent. Far from it. It's very bad, it's not ergonomic, it's not intuitive, it's like an IPhone UI designed by AI. 

Played 2 games before refunding, ME looks good, not quite sure all my instructions were reflected there but I don't expect this to happen 100%.

I've got Gamepass anyway so the refund was a bit easier to do at this stage because the game will be on my library on the 4th November but I can't say I'm not disappointed. 

[dmayne7]

29 minutes ago, Fear Of The Fox said:

And...refunded. Wow. What a complete mess they made with the UI. I can't believe I've just refunded a Football Manager game I'm playing since the first iteration in the 90s.They had 2 years. 2 years and they came up with this abomination of UI and I'm not even certain they haven't used AI for it. 

I'll wait and see if someone manages to completely mod this farce. 

Well done Miles. Is this the way to treat your loyal base of customers for decades? Very disappointed here. 

A slight overreaction. I get the sentiment as FM is the ultimate habitual game where you expect to pick up a new version and be right at home. It's a pretty big shift but there is also a lot that is kind of the same. Some elements are definitely going to be better, some bits, probably not. But as he said (and I think he comes across as a bit of narcissist so not defending him because I like him), it's probably going to take 30-40 hours for people to properly get used to it.

 

Do whatever you want as it's your money but I feel like you should probably try and stick it out for a bit.

[Aleksz]

This isn’t meant to be completely FM as we knew it, Miles has peddled the narrative that this is the first of the next 20 years of games. It’s going to be a culture shock and it is, so I understand why you’d take one look at it and your head explode. 

[EnderbyFox]

 

 

Hello Darkness my old friend

[dmayne7]

14 minutes ago, EnderbyFox said:

 

 

Hello Darkness my old friend

Luckily he's actually ok on the game and probs easy to sell for big money the following season

[Dan]

2 hours ago, dmayne7 said:

Worth remembering that the star rating is relative to the league/quality of the squad so it's pretty possible that some of those won't have potential of much more than a passable PL squad filler. Particularly with somebody like Alves who's got really low current ability (surprised it's that low).

 

And the other thing is that I imagine all of them will have random potentials which means that some of them could swing from being a decent championship player to a top player for a non 'big 6' club/back up for one of those. I suspect that's where some of these guys sit, though Monga I'd imagine will at worst, have a range of good PL to world class, but probably 1 up from that (I know some people don't know about the numbers behind the scenes so wouldn't have a clue what a -9 or -9.5 is).

I know that it's relative to the current squad but I think it's fair to assume that some of our players will be rated already as PL level - to have a few five stars tells me that we probably have at worst about 2/3 Premier League players in our academy.

 

I think for anyone who is relatively good at the game we will be a quite easy fix - particularly if you can still get £15mil for Faes, Soumare etc.. - but it will still be fun to actually carry out. With basically every team I manage, my second summer is normally manic with probably 30+ incomings/outgoings combined. With the contempt I have for our squad this will be probably happening in the first summer.

 

I very rarely manage Leicester for long. I'm about due a proper lower league England save to be fair. But my general method of playing the game is to spin a wheel to pick a new country, and club to manage and work my way through. On 24 as a result I won leagues in Sweden, Croatia, Czech Republic, Austria and Isra*l (I think if I post their actual name it moderates my post ). Had a hell of a lot of fun doing it and got plenty of leagues to chip through still.

[Dan]

2 hours ago, Fear Of The Fox said:

About the UI. Ofc you'll get used to it eventually but this doesn't mean the design is decent. Far from it. It's very bad, it's not ergonomic, it's not intuitive, it's like an IPhone UI designed by AI. 

Played 2 games before refunding, ME looks good, not quite sure all my instructions were reflected there but I don't expect this to happen 100%.

I've got Gamepass anyway so the refund was a bit easier to do at this stage because the game will be on my library on the 4th November but I can't say I'm not disappointed. 

You've gone a bit early refunding it based on a couple of hours. I very rarely like a new FM in the first couple of hours but get used to it and enjoy it.

[Danizen]

I had a little go on it last night. It's all very unfamiliar and probably a little unfinished. The tactics looks like a bit of an improvement (I haven't played any games yet).

 

I did find a bug. I was trying to set up a 3-4-3/4-3-3. I needed what would have been a halfback on the old game so the WBs could push forward. Every time I set the player to CB/DM, he'd revert to Target forward/DM. 

 

I'm not much of a tactical revolutionary but if I can find someone like Fellaini (but good), with the stamina of prime Kante, I might just give it a go.

Edited 24 October 2025 by Danizen

[moore_94]

There are definitely quite a lot of issues around the new UI - displays not scaling properly, being thrown back to the wrong page etc. - it really annoys me that the windowed mode doesn’t work properly

 

But I certainly have the “New FM itch”

 

Played it for 3-4 hours last night and I am currently sat at working really looking forward to getting home and playing it again

Edited 24 October 2025 by moore_94

[pmcla26]

What in and out of possession combinations have people used so far? And what’s been effective? 

[dmayne7]

7 hours ago, Dan said:

I know that it's relative to the current squad but I think it's fair to assume that some of our players will be rated already as PL level - to have a few five stars tells me that we probably have at worst about 2/3 Premier League players in our academy.

 

I think for anyone who is relatively good at the game we will be a quite easy fix - particularly if you can still get £15mil for Faes, Soumare etc.. - but it will still be fun to actually carry out. With basically every team I manage, my second summer is normally manic with probably 30+ incomings/outgoings combined. With the contempt I have for our squad this will be probably happening in the first summer.

 

I very rarely manage Leicester for long. I'm about due a proper lower league England save to be fair. But my general method of playing the game is to spin a wheel to pick a new country, and club to manage and work my way through. On 24 as a result I won leagues in Sweden, Croatia, Czech Republic, Austria and Isra*l (I think if I post their actual name it moderates my post ). Had a hell of a lot of fun doing it and got plenty of leagues to chip through still.

Yeah you should have at least a couple of on each save. I see FM scout put up a list which in assuming is scanned from the database and the potential ranges don't look as good as I hoped. Even Monga at the low end of what I expected (Jay Robinson has the same potential), with Evans particularly disappointing. 

 

I try not to do such big changes each season as that but then I still end up exploiting the system by loaning out players so you can sell them the following year to maximise the budget, signing players just because you'll make money etc. Hard to not game it and it's always pretty easy.

 

If there's one name I expect to see in this thread on the very rare occasion I have visited it, it's yours telling the story of your save in Lithuania or the 3rd division in Zambia