Football Manager 2026

[Beliall]

The return of International Management and a review of FM26 | Football Manager 26

 

 

[moore_94]

10 years to get Shepshed Dynamo from the 8th tier of England to the Premier League!

 

 

It was pretty straight forward over the first five seasons as we managed to win the league 5 years in a row. We then had a 2 season stay in League One, and have just managed to win the league after a 3 year stay in the Championship

 

Thankfully since getting to the Championship I have been able to generate some very good money from player sales - nearly £81m total - which has allowed me to massively boost my wage budget a lot quicker than usual, massively improve all of our facilities, and spend a bit of money on players when I have wanted to.

 

We are due to move into a new stadium in the upcoming summer, our training facilities are excellent and in the middle of being upgraded again, good youth facilities, and exceptional in both academy coaching and youth recruitment, so we are going to be hitting the Prem whilst already have nearly top tier facilities all around and wont have to worry about spending much money improving them further.

 

 

We have been given a decent enough budget to help me improve my squad where I need to this summer (although a good chunk of that wage budget will disappear on promotion wage rises)

 

[Tommy Fresh]

Finally caved and started a South American save, hadn't done Uruguay in a while as the past few years I'd just done Chile really. 

 

League format is an opening and closing stage, winner of each play each other to then play whoever finishes top of the overall table. There's also a stage between opening and closing where the league splits in 2 and you play an extra 7 games that count towards the overall standings. Relegation is decided on average points over previous seasons. Good to get back in to a crazy South American league after Chile being a standard format. 

 

Got about 10 games left of the first season with Defensor, done fairly well with a team of kids, second in the opening stage, probably going to finish second in the closing and third in the overall table.

 

Finished second in my Sudamericana group and had to play Independiente del Valle in a playoff round, who'd dropped out the Libertadores and lost both legs to them.

 

[Beliall]

please boss, please let me play, i can be really good, please boss.

3 minutes later

own goal

[Miquel The Work Geordie]

On 11/05/2026 at 20:08, moore_94 said:

10 years to get Shepshed Dynamo from the 8th tier of England to the Premier League!

 

 

It was pretty straight forward over the first five seasons as we managed to win the league 5 years in a row. We then had a 2 season stay in League One, and have just managed to win the league after a 3 year stay in the Championship

 

Thankfully since getting to the Championship I have been able to generate some very good money from player sales - nearly £81m total - which has allowed me to massively boost my wage budget a lot quicker than usual, massively improve all of our facilities, and spend a bit of money on players when I have wanted to.

 

We are due to move into a new stadium in the upcoming summer, our training facilities are excellent and in the middle of being upgraded again, good youth facilities, and exceptional in both academy coaching and youth recruitment, so we are going to be hitting the Prem whilst already have nearly top tier facilities all around and wont have to worry about spending much money improving them further.

 

 

We have been given a decent enough budget to help me improve my squad where I need to this summer (although a good chunk of that wage budget will disappear on promotion wage rises)

 

 

This guy was always going to be Resolute with that monobrow, what a beast

[Dan]

On 06/05/2026 at 17:41, Dan said:

I often think friendlies even against rubbish teams can be a quite good measure. You're going to win the game, but how convincingly it's done is often an indicator. With the two new January signings of Mateja Premovic (goalkeeper from 2nd tier Smederevo) and Elie N'Tamon (Ivorian CB from Stade Brestois) I thought I'd plugged probably our two main weaknesses, and very encouragingly we beat Bulgarian 2nd tier Bdin Vidin 0-9 in a friendly before a 3-0 win over 2nd tier Radnicki.

 

We have a storming February and March, winning all bar one game with yet another loss to Radnicki Nis doing the damage meaning we got just 1 point from our 3 games against them this season, but on the flip side, we had 7 from the Zvezda games. We had clearly gone up a level.

 

 

I saw very little weakness in our team at this point. Bubanj up front was quite streaky but passable. The trio behind him though... goodness me. Three pacey teenagers and nobody in the league bar Radnicki Nis seemed to have an answer to it. The Romanian Gotea had really settled into the team after an injury hit first half of the season. Australian Donno on the left was dangerous even if the average ratings weren't massively showing it. But the star of the show was Aruban winger Jayden Croes. Taken as a bit of a risk free punt in the summer, he was absolutely ripping the league to bits and I felt it was kind of inevitable one of the Belgrade clubs would pinch him off us. Enjoy him while he's here I guess.

 

What was becoming clear though was we had a genuine shot of the league title. Zvezda were having a pretty mediocre season. The cluster of teams at the top had broken up and the title looked like bar a miracle it was heading either here or to Partizan, who had also massively picked up in the new year. We have another pretty flawless month in April bar a draw with struggling IMT and a 1-0 loss at Partizan. We were scoring for fun.

 

 

The wins over Vojvodina and Cukaricki the obvious highlights. These are clubs that at the start of the game were probably ranked 3rd and 5th respectively in Serbia. Not only have we taken two of Cukaricki's better players but we're now absolutely massacring them in games. I said Bubanj was streaky and I wasn't joking - he got 3 against Vojvodina, 2 against Radnik Surdulica and 4 in the Cukaricki win including the eventual goal of the season winner at the end of the game where he dribbled from his own box near enough, unchallenged granted, and curled one in from 25 yards. We were taking the piss. But Partizan were matching us every step of the way.

 

At worst, we were going to finish 2nd. We also had a cup semi final away at Zeleznicar Pancevo - funnily enough our home ground. This felt like such an opportunity.

 

We win 0-1 in the semi final, admittedly totally dominating, but we're into our 2nd final in 3 years and will face, surprise surprise, Partizan.

 

We're then hit with the old foe of the save. Macva bloody Sabac.

 

 

It's just funny at this point against them. It doesn't seem to matter what I do, how we're playing, how they're playing (they've gone to pot after a good start), we just do not beat this team at home. That's 7 attempts and we're still yet to beat them. We've only scored in 3 of the games. This just feels a cursed fixture.

 

We do only need 4 points from our final 2 games to seal the title though and one of the games is against already relegated Mladost Lucani away, who we swat aside with tease. We just need a point on the final day at home to TSC, not the easiest fixture, to be sure of the title. Partizan strangely host Zvezda on the final day. Good luck to the authorities.

 

We make bloody hard work of it, and a bumper crowd of 1,872 (....) witness history.

 

 

 

Partizan ended up losing anyway so it didn't matter. But we got it. It did require buying virtually an entirely new XI but we earned that money as far as I'm concerned and pretty much every signing nailed it. Bubanj won the golden boot with 23 goals. Cvetkovic and Jankovic in midfield were perfectly balanced. The trio behind the striker were great and Croes ended up getting 25 G/A from 30 games - in-fact his average rating from January onwards was north of 8.00. N'Tamon and Premovic I think did make the difference and allowed us to play even more aggressively, N'Tamon acting almost like a poor mans Van Dijk in style.

 

The one blot, however, is another cup final defeat.

 

 

And honestly, it was a miserable showing. We were comfortably 2nd best and lucky it was only 1-0. I do think Partizan are better than we are (well them and Zvezda obviously have better players), but we capitalised on them. What it does mean is that if I'm sticking true to what I said in that I want to go into these leagues and win the league and the cup, then I have to stick around here until we've secured the latter. But I've got a bit of a hankering for a save in the lower leagues of Japan for some reason. I will stick with these for at least another year, but I think that's where I'll head next.

Another season done, 2030/31...

 

Budget not as generous this season but it was never going to be. We still spend around a million net and brought in a few decent, albeit not gamechanging players. Key ones of interest were Vasilije Novicic and Igor Jovanovic of relegated IMT, and once again we bullied Cukaricki taking their number 10 Uros Miladinovic. Entirely domestic based recruitment again.

 

The absolutely non rigged and totally fair fixture computer sent us to a 2-0 loss at Partizan as title holders on the opening day which was predictably bleak, but we were given a generous CL qualifier against Qarabag and beat them 8-0 on aggregate, Qarabag firmly getting the 'greyed out' treatment I'd imagine. We continue our bullying of Cukaricki by beating them 5-0. Our start in the league is reasonable but we're knocked out of the CL by RB Salzburg after a 2-2 draw in Austria and a 1-2 loss at home - no shame in that at all really. We're given Kairat Almaty in the Europa play-off and beat them 5-0 on aggregate. Europa League it is.

 

The one thing that massively underpins my season in a negative way is that I think unless I've misinterpreted the rules of the league, we were benefitting from something last season that we shouldn't have been, and my squad building didn't take it into account. In this league you must have two U22 Serbians on the pitch at all times and we definitely didn't last season - it seemed to take Donno (Australian), Gotea (Romanian) and Croes (Aruban) as qualifying for this and it never really mattered. Unless U20 players just count regardless of nationality, but I see nothing that suggests that and this would make the entire ruling quite self defeating anyway. Anyhow, Gotea has gone, Croes and Donno are no longer counted as domestic U22 players, so we're constantly having to rotate our team to ensure that two of them get in the side. Luckily new signings Novicic and Jovanovic are both U22 for this season, but neither were signed to come straight in as I had pretty key players in their positions anyway. This meant bring in a couple of loanees, promoting a couple of academy players a bit early (one of whom is actually really coming along quite well tbf) and generally rotating. It was so annoying though. It meant I'd built my team meticulously around something that wasn't ever actually going to be achieved. So our entire season by default became a bit transition.

 

I won't go into huge detail in the league itself because for this reason primarily, we were miles off the big two this year. Zvezda won the league on the final day, drawing with Partizan to secure it when a loss would've sent it the other way. We hit a horrendous run in April where we lost 7 games in a row in all competitions, but we finished very well and clawed ourselves 3rd place, and a Conference League play-off.

 

 

For those who believe in xG - this season was a complete piss take. In pure xG terms we were by an absolute mile the best team in the division, I think finishing over 10 expected points ahead of 2nd place. But it's useless if you're letting every shot in and pretty much every forward is scoring less than they should be. The entire season was a bit frustrating domestically, but at least we finished well and at least we've got Europe again. A new stadium coming next season.

 

Europe deserves a bit more attention though. Some royal nights were had.

 

We win our opening league phase game at home to Croatian Osijek. Once again we come out on top in a balkan tussle and even funnier is that Partizan went out to this lot in the qualifiers. We lose 1-0 at FCSB in a pretty bleak showing but follow it up with probably the best result so far of the entire save.

 

 

It massively flattered us but once one goal went in AZ just tumbled after largely dominating us in the first half. I couldn't believe the way they folded, every time we got the ball we seemed to score.

 

We lose 4-2 at Celtic but win another balkan game away at Zeljeznicar Sarajevo 1-5 - they were truly awful. We beat Antwerp 2-0 before something even more mental. Now it's worth pointing out that Roma have clearly totally underestimated us and played their reserves (including Jordan James) but this was an extraordinary result;

 

 

We draw 1-1 with Basel to put ourselves in the last 16. Unfortunately though Feyenoord are too much for us, we lose 2-1 in Rotterdam, scoring a last gasp goal where I actually thought we'd go through, but we don't really show up in Serbia and lose 1-3. No shame in the exit but a bit disappointing. This came in the run of 7 straight losses.

 

 

A few points on this. We largely dominated Cukaricki and conceded 3 out of basically nothing. Think Leeds Leicester in 2024. Javor-Matis we had a red card after 4 minutes. Vojvodina we got heavily FM'd. These came in the midst of tactical changes as well - I think again it was just very bad variance. Confidence dipping. But we did beat Javor-Matis at home the game after, worth saying they also had an early red, and we never really looked back from it - powering to 3rd place in what was quite a tense battle with Cukaricki and Vojvodina. The league table is actually about as accrate a reflection of the level of the teams in it as possible, it was not far off exactly as predicted.

 

The huge, huge black mark on the above screenshot though, the elephant in the room, is Graficar. The cup is the big one for us now. Out of Europe and presented with a very nice quarter final at home to Zvezda's farm club in the second tier. We completely dominated, only managed 1 goal, had 4 ruled out for offside (Jovanovic's low work rate really showing up here), concede a late penalty and I just knew what was coming after. A huge chance blown in a year where Partizan had suffered an early exit too.

 

So a very mixed season. Tough circumstances. Some great results, some horrific, but a very steady finish overall really and even more money bagged from the European run. And you'll never guess which Serbian club my top transfer target this summer plays for!

[Dan]

BOLLOCKS!

 

The defender from Cukaricki has turned us down, citing a "strongly held love and passion for Cukaricki". That's a hammer blow because with this Serbian U22 thing, I'm going all out for anybody who fits this bill that will start every game. I'm seriously struggling to find many of them, but this Maksimovic absolutely did, and we didn't get him. Bollocks.

[shen]

@Dan It's fun reading! 

What another bizarre season with some incredible highs (that Roma win, phwoar) and that soul-shattering run of defeats and bitter cup exit.
Are you already seeing a coefficient effect on club and league? 
Probably a good thing you didn't leave Vrsac just yet although the U22 restriction is just one of those things that when catching you by surprise could be the push that would make me want to quit.

[shen]

Diegem half-season update:

 

So far, things are going swimmingly.

In the Jupiler Pro League, we've been keeping pace with USG, getting some convincing wins, but also six tight 0-1 wins relying on our defense (only conceded 7 in 18 games, two less than USG and eight less than Anderlecht) and hoping we're sharp with our 2-4 chances we create per match. Our only two defeats have been away to Standard and Antwerp - we should've drawn or won against the former and the other I was tactically too confident. 

This is despite a major injury crisis where we played five games without three of our four DMs (my formation consistently uses two DMs). We were fielding six central defenders at one point.

We got a brilliant 0-0 away at USG which was a pretty even game with the league's two best defenses showing their mettle. Unfortunately, USG have won their last two games with an 11-0 GD, so we're effectively 5 points behind them with a game in hand. 
OHL are the surprise challengers, while I expect to stay ahead of Club Brugge at this point as they're nine points behind us.

 

 

In Europe, our first Conference League is going way above expectations. We finished third in the league phase, behind Roma and Brighton who won all their games. We only narrowly lost 3-2 away to Roma. The defeat could've been avoided if I had been more tactically astute as all three goals came from through balls through the middle. We convincingly beat APOEL, Molde, IFK Gothenburg, Flora Tallinn and Borac (never heard of these, surprisingly strong players!) and we're potentially the only Belgian side in the knockout rounds in all European competitions if Charleroi don't make it past the playoffs.
I will say that the luck of the draw makes this feel almost unfair. Viktoria Plzen in fifth had fixtures against Shamrock Rovers, Ljungskile SK, Randers, Brøndby, Buducnost and Pyunik... 

 

 

The target now is to cement second place, keep the good form going, cross fingers for no major injuries and dream about a deep run in the ECL.

 

The money received so far is a major bonus for next season. We're basically investing the money into infrastructure to help increase our reputation, but the board still won't let me take coaching badges, so I'm still absolute trash on the training pitch 

 

Edit: Completely forgot the cup! I had the worst possible draw getting Union SG away as the first tie. Literally the hardest fixture possible and in the middle of my injury crisis. Even game, but I lost 2-0 as they had superior finishing. Bitter as I really wanted to push on and increase the reputation of the club.

Edited 16 May by shen

[moore_94]

First season in the Prem went well with Shepshed as we managed to finish 8th - we started as expected for a newly promoted side with just 3 wins in our first 10 games, but some really good form in the 2nd half of the season helped us to fly up the table and well away from the relegation zone

 

 

Israel Lamas was definitely our star signing from the summer - joined us from Hamburg for £15m where he had been pretty poor last season (2 goals in 31 games), but joined us and was brilliant all season with 12 goals and 9 assists in 36 Prem games

 

 

Although finishing 8th in the Prem in our first season is obviously brilliant, the best news came as we managed to win the FA Cup for the first time! Can definitely say we had a pretty favourable run with League Two Mansfield in the quarters and then mid table Championship Stoke in the Final, but not going to complain!

 

 

An 8th place finish and FA Cup win means we have qualified for the Europa League group stage, and we have been given £43m and £300k budgets to improve the squad, which should be fine for what I am planning

Edited 16 May by moore_94

[Tommy Fresh]

Defensor save file corrupted for some reason, so I've started a fresh one in the second tier of Chile. Started really well and actually enjoying it more than my Defensor save so quite pleased that messed up

[lfu]

1 minute ago, Tommy Fresh said:

Defensor save file corrupted for some reason, so I've started a fresh one in the second tier of Chile. Started really well and actually enjoying it more than my Defensor save so quite pleased that messed up

I always keep multiple rolling autosave backups for that reason, I find when saves get above 400MB in size it can sometimes be a cointoss as to whether a file will get corrupted

[Tommy Fresh]

12 minutes ago, lfu said:

I always keep multiple rolling autosave backups for that reason, I find when saves get above 400MB in size it can sometimes be a cointoss as to whether a file will get corrupted

I was only about a season in, so wasn't overly bothered

[Beliall]

5 file rolling autosaves and saving every week has been my go to in fm26. too unstable to have it any other way

[Dan]

14 hours ago, shen said:

@Dan It's fun reading! 

What another bizarre season with some incredible highs (that Roma win, phwoar) and that soul-shattering run of defeats and bitter cup exit.
Are you already seeing a coefficient effect on club and league? 
Probably a good thing you didn't leave Vrsac just yet although the U22 restriction is just one of those things that when catching you by surprise could be the push that would make me want to quit.

I actually took the U22 thing into account until I was given what felt like a pass with the three players last season - it's like having a rule dropped on you that you had been told and assumed to avoid after you've made all your signings. It meant for example Bubanj, golden boot winner last season, had become a rotation player when he was never meant to be. It's something I want to rectify in the summer but annoyingly, that defender at Cukaricki is the one single player so far I've found that is attainable, affordable, Serbian, U22 and actually starts for us, so for him to stick with Cukaricki is a real blow. There are other options and I'm going to have to get a bit creative, and we will still be probably having to rotate a bit, but I can mitigate against it knowing the rule exists this time around rather than constantly patching things up. I'm wondering if it's a reason we did fairly well in Europe rather than the league.

 

Co-efficient is improving but I'm taking full credit. No thanks to the pathetic showings of the other Serbian teams. Zvezda knocked out of the Conference play-offs by Odense. Partizan knocked out of the Europa League play-off by Osijek (who we go on to beat) and then the Conference League play-off by Dinamo Bucuresti. Vojvodina knocked out of the Conference League second round play-off by Sparta Prague. So we were the only one to even make a league phase. Carrying this shitheap of a league on our backs. The others should be ashamed.

 

Somehow we have five European places this year. I'll play on because I'm still kind of enjoying it and I need the cup, but I do fancy that Japanese save.

[Dan]

 

Incase I haven't explained it correctly, but this is a random game I've taken from that season. In that team, the only player who was both Serbian and U22 is the right back Jovan Vojnovic (who has been superb by the way). That team according to these rules is not a legitimate XI so I've kind of forgotten that it exists, and did my transfer business without really taking it into account, meaning I've had to get a couple of inferior players on loan and promote a couple of academy players just to be able to have two in the team at all times and rotate them accordingly. What it meant was the likes of Cvetkovic and Bubanj, two absolutely key players of the season before, had to be rotated out for inferior players and didn't play that many times in the league. The easiest way around is to bring in a Serbian U22 player who gets into the first team but it's bloody hard. The Cukaricki centre half is comfortably better than Serafimovic so he would've been an easy box ticked unless he got a bad injury. All this while considering club grown players for Europe as well (home grown is a piece of piss with these due to how domestic my side has remained).

 

That being said I don't think we exactly did badly. 3rd behind the big two is perfectly reasonable and we really did drop some silly points. haven't got the xG table now but it was ridiculous, we were miles in front of everyone but just didn't really convert it enough.

[Dan]

Partizan  why do we even bother boosting the coefficient? Gone out of the Europa League play-offs to St Mirren, dropped into the Conference League, gone through, drawn St Mirren again and lost again!

 

The others are a complete joke in Europe.

[Beliall]

starting to really hate it here in SA. started well in my first full season with leicesterford but we're falling off again mid season and might be struggling to avoid relegation. trying to keep on it though because i have started enough new saves but its hard to swallow. people claim this is the easiest FM but for me it feels like the hardest. we play ok in matches but we miss a lot of good chances and lose. tried not to change things too much but we have a 2 week break now so im switching from the 424 /4411 tactic to a 433 for the second half of the season

[Lineker's Lugs]

Now that data exports are back (albeit using a third-party mod) I’ve finally been able to get back to my preferred moneyball type of save.  Data, spreadsheets, what’s not to like?!

 

I started in WSL 2 with Southampton and adopted the dark arts moneyball system from the YouTuber MunstermannFM.  It’s based on performance data rather than player attributes, and ultimately I found that to be a problem.  I’d find players who fitted the bill based on their performance data at the end of a season, then when I looked at the end of the next season they had done nowhere near as well.  A few continued to perform but most didn’t.

 

We finished 8th of 12 in the first season before the moneyball aspect had kicked in because the performance data needs that first season to build into a decent sample size.  We did ok, finishing 8th of 12 when the board just wanted to avoid relegation.  Once able to recruit based on data, things did improve as we finished second but lost the playoff - to Leicester of all teams.

 

Season three brought promotion as champions so the moneyball thing was getting results despite the variability of performance stats. 

 

The first season in the WSL was going ok but by mid-season I chose to ditch the performance data approach and focus on attributes instead.  I spent a day setting everything up but Southampton’s lowly standing meant it was difficult to find players who would improve the side.

 

And then Aston Villa came knocking and despite having intended to stay with Southampton the whole save, my head was turned by a wage budget triple that of Southampton and a transfer budget ten times bigger.  Villa were actually below Southampton, but we went unbeaten to the end of the season to finish one place above them in 8th of 14.

 

With eleven players out of contract I was able to massively change the squad and we had a great season, only to be pipped at the post in both league and cup.  Arsenal hammered us in the penultimate game when a draw would have meant we were top going into the final round of matches.  Instead the last-day 6-2 win over Everton meant nothing.  Then we threw away the FA Cup Final in one of those games where it just feels FM has decided you have to lose.  2-0 up to 2-2 after 90 minutes, lead twice more in extra-time only to draw 4-4, have a penalty to win the shootout but miss it and ultimately lose.

 

Midway through the next season we have won all 6 Champions League matches to qualify for the QF, are still going in both domestic cups and are second behind Chelsea in the league on goal difference, but with a game in hand and ten to play.

 

The save has changed from true money ball – unearthing hidden gems for low fees and low wages – and become more about using the data to identify which of the expensive players are the best fit for our tactic which is 433 gegenpress.  But I’m looking on it as a test run before I use the approach on a pentagon.

[moore_94]

1 hour ago, Lineker's Lugs said:

Now that data exports are back (albeit using a third-party mod) I’ve finally been able to get back to my preferred moneyball type of save.  Data, spreadsheets, what’s not to like?!

 

I started in WSL 2 with Southampton and adopted the dark arts moneyball system from the YouTuber MunstermannFM.  It’s based on performance data rather than player attributes, and ultimately I found that to be a problem.  I’d find players who fitted the bill based on their performance data at the end of a season, then when I looked at the end of the next season they had done nowhere near as well.  A few continued to perform but most didn’t.

 

We finished 8th of 12 in the first season before the moneyball aspect had kicked in because the performance data needs that first season to build into a decent sample size.  We did ok, finishing 8th of 12 when the board just wanted to avoid relegation.  Once able to recruit based on data, things did improve as we finished second but lost the playoff - to Leicester of all teams.

 

Season three brought promotion as champions so the moneyball thing was getting results despite the variability of performance stats. 

 

The first season in the WSL was going ok but by mid-season I chose to ditch the performance data approach and focus on attributes instead.  I spent a day setting everything up but Southampton’s lowly standing meant it was difficult to find players who would improve the side.

 

And then Aston Villa came knocking and despite having intended to stay with Southampton the whole save, my head was turned by a wage budget triple that of Southampton and a transfer budget ten times bigger.  Villa were actually below Southampton, but we went unbeaten to the end of the season to finish one place above them in 8th of 14.

 

With eleven players out of contract I was able to massively change the squad and we had a great season, only to be pipped at the post in both league and cup.  Arsenal hammered us in the penultimate game when a draw would have meant we were top going into the final round of matches.  Instead the last-day 6-2 win over Everton meant nothing.  Then we threw away the FA Cup Final in one of those games where it just feels FM has decided you have to lose.  2-0 up to 2-2 after 90 minutes, lead twice more in extra-time only to draw 4-4, have a penalty to win the shootout but miss it and ultimately lose.

 

Midway through the next season we have won all 6 Champions League matches to qualify for the QF, are still going in both domestic cups and are second behind Chelsea in the league on goal difference, but with a game in hand and ten to play.

 

The save has changed from true money ball – unearthing hidden gems for low fees and low wages – and become more about using the data to identify which of the expensive players are the best fit for our tactic which is 433 gegenpress.  But I’m looking on it as a test run before I use the approach on a pentagon.

I really like MunstermannFM, different from the usual FM videos you see these days

 

I will admit that I usually zone out when he starts talking about the formulas he uses though 

[Lineker's Lugs]

7 minutes ago, moore_94 said:

I really like MunstermannFM, different from the usual FM videos you see these days

 

I will admit that I usually zone out when he starts talking about the formulas he uses though 

It can get a bit involved but all seems pretty logical.  Rather than try and work it out too much I just joined his Patreon for a month and downloaded all the resources.  The spreadsheet needed a tweak, but nothing complicated.

 

I couldn’t achieve results as good as his, probably because he understands his own methods better than I ever could so can spot problems and fix them where I can’t.  But it still gave me a head start for my own version.  The data exports have really rekindled my interest.

[Beliall]

15 hours ago, Lineker's Lugs said:

Now that data exports are back (albeit using a third-party mod) I’ve finally been able to get back to my preferred moneyball type of save.  Data, spreadsheets, what’s not to like?!

 

I started in WSL 2 with Southampton and adopted the dark arts moneyball system from the YouTuber MunstermannFM.  It’s based on performance data rather than player attributes, and ultimately I found that to be a problem.  I’d find players who fitted the bill based on their performance data at the end of a season, then when I looked at the end of the next season they had done nowhere near as well.  A few continued to perform but most didn’t.

 

We finished 8th of 12 in the first season before the moneyball aspect had kicked in because the performance data needs that first season to build into a decent sample size.  We did ok, finishing 8th of 12 when the board just wanted to avoid relegation.  Once able to recruit based on data, things did improve as we finished second but lost the playoff - to Leicester of all teams.

 

Season three brought promotion as champions so the moneyball thing was getting results despite the variability of performance stats. 

 

The first season in the WSL was going ok but by mid-season I chose to ditch the performance data approach and focus on attributes instead.  I spent a day setting everything up but Southampton’s lowly standing meant it was difficult to find players who would improve the side.

 

And then Aston Villa came knocking and despite having intended to stay with Southampton the whole save, my head was turned by a wage budget triple that of Southampton and a transfer budget ten times bigger.  Villa were actually below Southampton, but we went unbeaten to the end of the season to finish one place above them in 8th of 14.

 

With eleven players out of contract I was able to massively change the squad and we had a great season, only to be pipped at the post in both league and cup.  Arsenal hammered us in the penultimate game when a draw would have meant we were top going into the final round of matches.  Instead the last-day 6-2 win over Everton meant nothing.  Then we threw away the FA Cup Final in one of those games where it just feels FM has decided you have to lose.  2-0 up to 2-2 after 90 minutes, lead twice more in extra-time only to draw 4-4, have a penalty to win the shootout but miss it and ultimately lose.

 

Midway through the next season we have won all 6 Champions League matches to qualify for the QF, are still going in both domestic cups and are second behind Chelsea in the league on goal difference, but with a game in hand and ten to play.

 

The save has changed from true money ball – unearthing hidden gems for low fees and low wages – and become more about using the data to identify which of the expensive players are the best fit for our tactic which is 433 gegenpress.  But I’m looking on it as a test run before I use the approach on a pentagon

 

 

 

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does this mean the hidden attributes skin or mod is back now? could you give us a link please if so. thanks

[Lineker's Lugs]

2 hours ago, Beliall said:

does this mean the hidden attributes skin or mod is back now? could you give us a link please if so. thanks

It''s not a skin but hidden attributes can be added to views by right clicking a column heading.

 

The export side of it is explained here for anyone interested, with relevant links in the description:

 

 

Only the squad and player database search screens are included so far I think.  From my experience you need to select the top and bottom rows of data, but there's a imit of 5000 rows.  If your data has e.g. 6000 rows you need to reduce it below 5000 by changing a search parameter such as age range.  Just selecting the top 3000 and printing, then the bottom 3000 and printing doesn't work.  The first half might, but not the second.

 

 

 

[Beliall]

29 minutes ago, Lineker's Lugs said:

It''s not a skin but hidden attributes can be added to views by right clicking a column heading.

 

The export side of it is explained here for anyone interested, with relevant links in the description:

 

 

Only the squad and player database search screens are included so far I think.  From my experience you need to select the top and bottom rows of data, but there's a imit of 5000 rows.  If your data has e.g. 6000 rows you need to reduce it below 5000 by changing a search parameter such as age range.  Just selecting the top 3000 and printing, then the bottom 3000 and printing doesn't work.  The first half might, but not the second.

 

 

 

oh i meant a skin that hides all the stat numbers. got into it in 24 fm and i really miss it. 

[Dan]

Haha I've just watched a couple of his videos and I'm hooked. Great stuff.