I regularly play FM with a friend of mine, and I’ve started to notice the same pattern in almost every save we play: no matter what kind of challenge we start, he eventually overtakes me in the long run.
I’m starting to think the main reason is recruitment and transfer strategy.
For some context, I spend quite a lot of time on the forums, especially during our FM periods when we can easily play 8-hour sessions on our days off.
In our current save, we’re playing in Poland. I’m managing Stal Rzeszów, while he is managing Pogoń Siedlce.
Season 1
As usual, during the first season, before recruitment really starts making a big difference, I beat him.
I finished as champion, he finished second, and we were both promoted.
This is actually something that happens in almost every save we play: I probably outperform him in the first season around 99% of the time.
Season 2
At the beginning of our second season, I made a few changes to my squad, but nothing major.
I ended up finishing 4th, while he won the Polish top division.
That’s usually where the cycle begins.
By winning the league, he qualified for the Champions League qualifiers. To make things worse for me, the top three positions gave European qualification: one Champions League spot and two Conference League spots.
There was also a Europa League place available through the cup, but we were both eliminated. Ironically, the club that won the cup ended up being relegated, meaning they got the Europa League place while I had no European football at all.
From that point onwards, the gap started growing.
And this is what happens in most of our saves: I fall slightly behind, and as the seasons go by, his advantage becomes bigger and bigger.
Even when I eventually build what I consider to be a strong squad, he somehow has an even better one.
At this point, I sometimes wonder whether it’s actually possible to catch him once that gap starts developing.
Season 3
We’ve now reached the end of our third season.
I actually started extremely well and spent quite a while at the top of the league. Then I suddenly had a terrible run despite having no major injuries, good morale and good squad cohesion.
I only picked up 4 points from 4 matches, and went from 1st to 4th.
By the end of the season, I was fighting Legia for second place, while my friend had an almost ridiculous end to the season, winning game after game and going on an incredible run over roughly the final 18 league matches.
So now we’re in the same situation again.
Next season, I’ll be playing in the Conference League qualifiers, while he’ll be back in the Champions League qualifiers.
That means he potentially gets another huge advantage in terms of money, reputation and player attraction, and I feel like I’m falling further behind.
Where I think my problem is
The frustrating part is that when our squads are relatively equal, I usually beat him.
My problem seems to start when recruitment becomes important.
I’ve tried following the so-called meta attributes and building my transfer strategy around them, but I didn’t really get better results. If anything, it was actually worse than what I’m doing now.
At the moment, I mainly look at pace, acceleration and staff recommendations, alongside the general quality of the player.
I don’t really struggle with FM itself. In single-player, I generally find the game fairly easy.
But playing against another human has exposed a weakness in the way I build squads over multiple seasons.
And the funny part is that I’m the one who originally taught my friend how to play FM. He basically learned the game from me over several years, but at some point he simply became better than me at this part of the game.
So now I’ve hit a wall, and I’d really like some help understanding how to get past it.
How would you approach recruitment in my situation?
How do you prevent another club from snowballing financially and in reputation once they get Champions League football?
And if I’m already one or two seasons behind, is it realistic to catch up, or do I need to completely change the way I recruit and build my squad?
If you need any additional information about my squad, transfers, finances, tactics, scouting setup or anything else, feel free to ask. I’ll be very active in the thread because I genuinely want to turn this save around.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this and help.
You probably need to be way more aggressive with transfers. After the first season you should be looking to overhaul your entire starting 11 and then keep improving year after year as much as the budget allows you. Can't get too attached to players who got you promoted from 2nd division. While they can maybe even be decent top division players you should be looking for much better.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning.
Yarema said: You probably need to be way more aggressive with transfers. After the first season you should be looking to overhaul your entire starting 11 and then keep improving year after year as much as the budget allows you. Can't get too attached to players who got you promoted from 2nd division. While they can maybe even be decent top division players you should be looking for much better.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning. Expand
Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
In my opinion, there are several factors that impact a season, so it is hard to point out where exactly you can improve. What I can say is, if you want to play a multi-season game with a friend, it is often better to play different leagues, so you can both win together, instead of having a winner and a loser. Competitive saves are better in the same league, but the nature of football is that teams winning get more resources to keep winning, while others chase with much less.
That being said, the most important aspects of the game are the tactic you play, the players you use (including transfers), and people management. By people management, I mean keeping players in top shape (condition, match sharpness and fatigue), optimize contract and transfer costs, develop the most important attributes (pace and acceleration), and keep players with high morale and not unhappy.
Dkstick said: Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently? Expand
Scouts can only work in a number of players at a time. Do not waste them in players you would not want to hire. Make sure to tell them the attributes you want in players, especially a high level of pace and acceleration. Having fast players is probably the most impactful way of winning. Slow players are just bad, even if their other attributes are amazing. The best tip for someone wanting immediate results is to aim to be the quickest team in the league, with the fastest players. From there, market is all about developing your players or replacing them with even faster ones, or players with the same speed and better overall attributes.
I understand the idea of playing in two different leagues, but I think we're both really drawn to the fact that we get to play against each other throughout the year in the league and domestic cups, on top of the major competitions.
I genuinely think that rivalry, and the desire to beat each other all year long, makes our saves much more exciting. It forces both of us to improve at the game, while also making us much more invested in the save and making it a lot more fun overall — especially when I'm the one winning, obviously.
I play with the Autumn 4.5 tactic almost all the time, so I think I already have a pretty competitive tactic lmao. I rarely have issues or arguments with my players, and team cohesion is usually very good.
I think I'm better when it comes to developing wonderkids and young players. My youth academies are often much better than his, to be fair. But I have to admit that his squads are simply built better because he recruits better players than I do, and my recruitment approach clearly isn't good enough.
I do have an Excel spreadsheet and I try to properly analyse and think about my signings, but I'm obviously making mistakes somewhere.
I also admit that I often struggle to properly judge the overall strength of my squad. Once I have an idea of my starting XI and my 11 backup players, I often end up replacing a starter who isn't performing as well statistically with a player who has worse attributes/stats but a better average match rating.
I usually build two separate teams, and on average Team 1 plays around 3/5 of the matches during the season, while Team 2 plays the other 2/5.
ZaZ said: In my opinion, there are several factors that impact a season, so it is hard to point out where exactly you can improve. What I can say is, if you want to play a multi-season game with a friend, it is often better to play different leagues, so you can both win together, instead of having a winner and a loser. Competitive saves are better in the same league, but the nature of football is that teams winning get more resources to keep winning, while others chase with much less.
That being said, the most important aspects of the game are the tactic you play, the players you use (including transfers), and people management. By people management, I mean keeping players in top shape (condition, match sharpness and fatigue), optimize contract and transfer costs, develop the most important attributes (pace and acceleration), and keep players with high morale and not unhappy.
Where exactly do you think you are failing? Expand
ZaZ said: Scouts can only work in a number of players at a time. Do not waste them in players you would not want to hire. Make sure to tell them the attributes you want in players, especially a high level of pace and acceleration. Having fast players is probably the most impactful way of winning. Slow players are just bad, even if their other attributes are amazing. The best tip for someone wanting immediate results is to aim to be the quickest team in the league, with the fastest players. From there, market is all about developing your players or replacing them with even faster ones, or players with the same speed and better overall attributes. Expand
For example, I recently spent quite a lot of money on an Austrian player with 14 pace and 14 acceleration, which is very good for the Polish league, and over half a season he had an average rating of 6.02, which was extremely low compared to the rest of the squad.
Yet his CA was more or less around the league average, and the rest of his attributes were generally decent as well.
Dkstick said: For example, I recently spent quite a lot of money on an Austrian player with 14 pace and 14 acceleration, which is very good for the Polish league, and over half a season he had an average rating of 6.02, which was extremely low compared to the rest of the squad.
Yet his CA was more or less around the league average, and the rest of his attributes were generally decent as well. Expand
There are some people with posts about how to optimize the performance of players based on attributes. One thing to watch is the scout reports for hidden attributes. I usually value a lot players with high professionalism, consistency, low injury proneness and dirtiness. You usually see in the scout reports if those hidden attributes are low or high, and I personally find players with low professionalism to be the most problematic (speaking about ratings).
What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need?
Kamas1 said: What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need? Expand
Dkstick said: Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently? Expand If you want to improve scouting I strongly recommend Second Yellow Card's tutorials on Youtube, including the use of "transfer room in" if you are on FM26. And again you aren't looking for players who have average CA for Polish league, you want to find better or at least players who in a season or two can become much better than the average. For that you need to be scouting the world (Poland has quite lenient transfer and registration rules) and it helps if you know where to look.
I'll reiterate that if you are starting in 2nd division your first 3 seasons should probably be a complete squad overhaul during the summer (don't ignore winter either) unless you find an absolute gem before. In order to get more value out of your transfer and wage budget sign players right at the end of transfer windows.
Kamas1 said: What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need? Expand
Alright, I’m going to look for players who are good enough in terms of CA, with at least 13 Pace and 13 Acceleration, while also excluding players with negative traits such as being inconsistent or not enjoying big matches. Out of 1,600 players, I’ve found 60 who meet all these criteria.
I regularly play FM with a friend of mine, and I’ve started to notice the same pattern in almost every save we play: no matter what kind of challenge we start, he eventually overtakes me in the long run.
I’m starting to think the main reason is recruitment and transfer strategy.
For some context, I spend quite a lot of time on the forums, especially during our FM periods when we can easily play 8-hour sessions on our days off.
In our current save, we’re playing in Poland. I’m managing Stal Rzeszów, while he is managing Pogoń Siedlce.
Season 1
As usual, during the first season, before recruitment really starts making a big difference, I beat him.
I finished as champion, he finished second, and we were both promoted.
This is actually something that happens in almost every save we play: I probably outperform him in the first season around 99% of the time.
Season 2
At the beginning of our second season, I made a few changes to my squad, but nothing major.
I ended up finishing 4th, while he won the Polish top division.
That’s usually where the cycle begins.
By winning the league, he qualified for the Champions League qualifiers. To make things worse for me, the top three positions gave European qualification: one Champions League spot and two Conference League spots.
There was also a Europa League place available through the cup, but we were both eliminated. Ironically, the club that won the cup ended up being relegated, meaning they got the Europa League place while I had no European football at all.
From that point onwards, the gap started growing.
And this is what happens in most of our saves: I fall slightly behind, and as the seasons go by, his advantage becomes bigger and bigger.
Even when I eventually build what I consider to be a strong squad, he somehow has an even better one.
At this point, I sometimes wonder whether it’s actually possible to catch him once that gap starts developing.
Season 3
We’ve now reached the end of our third season.
I actually started extremely well and spent quite a while at the top of the league. Then I suddenly had a terrible run despite having no major injuries, good morale and good squad cohesion.
I only picked up 4 points from 4 matches, and went from 1st to 4th.
By the end of the season, I was fighting Legia for second place, while my friend had an almost ridiculous end to the season, winning game after game and going on an incredible run over roughly the final 18 league matches.
So now we’re in the same situation again.
Next season, I’ll be playing in the Conference League qualifiers, while he’ll be back in the Champions League qualifiers.
That means he potentially gets another huge advantage in terms of money, reputation and player attraction, and I feel like I’m falling further behind.
Where I think my problem is
The frustrating part is that when our squads are relatively equal, I usually beat him.
My problem seems to start when recruitment becomes important.
I’ve tried following the so-called meta attributes and building my transfer strategy around them, but I didn’t really get better results. If anything, it was actually worse than what I’m doing now.
At the moment, I mainly look at pace, acceleration and staff recommendations, alongside the general quality of the player.
I don’t really struggle with FM itself. In single-player, I generally find the game fairly easy.
But playing against another human has exposed a weakness in the way I build squads over multiple seasons.
And the funny part is that I’m the one who originally taught my friend how to play FM. He basically learned the game from me over several years, but at some point he simply became better than me at this part of the game.
So now I’ve hit a wall, and I’d really like some help understanding how to get past it.
How would you approach recruitment in my situation?
How do you prevent another club from snowballing financially and in reputation once they get Champions League football?
And if I’m already one or two seasons behind, is it realistic to catch up, or do I need to completely change the way I recruit and build my squad?
If you need any additional information about my squad, transfers, finances, tactics, scouting setup or anything else, feel free to ask. I’ll be very active in the thread because I genuinely want to turn this save around.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this and help.
You probably need to be way more aggressive with transfers. After the first season you should be looking to overhaul your entire starting 11 and then keep improving year after year as much as the budget allows you. Can't get too attached to players who got you promoted from 2nd division. While they can maybe even be decent top division players you should be looking for much better.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning.
Yarema said: You probably need to be way more aggressive with transfers. After the first season you should be looking to overhaul your entire starting 11 and then keep improving year after year as much as the budget allows you. Can't get too attached to players who got you promoted from 2nd division. While they can maybe even be decent top division players you should be looking for much better.
And don't forget in order to have plenty of great transfer options available you need to be on point with scouting from the beginning.
Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently?
In my opinion, there are several factors that impact a season, so it is hard to point out where exactly you can improve. What I can say is, if you want to play a multi-season game with a friend, it is often better to play different leagues, so you can both win together, instead of having a winner and a loser. Competitive saves are better in the same league, but the nature of football is that teams winning get more resources to keep winning, while others chase with much less.
That being said, the most important aspects of the game are the tactic you play, the players you use (including transfers), and people management. By people management, I mean keeping players in top shape (condition, match sharpness and fatigue), optimize contract and transfer costs, develop the most important attributes (pace and acceleration), and keep players with high morale and not unhappy.
Where exactly do you think you are failing?
Dkstick said: Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently?
Scouts can only work in a number of players at a time. Do not waste them in players you would not want to hire. Make sure to tell them the attributes you want in players, especially a high level of pace and acceleration. Having fast players is probably the most impactful way of winning. Slow players are just bad, even if their other attributes are amazing. The best tip for someone wanting immediate results is to aim to be the quickest team in the league, with the fastest players. From there, market is all about developing your players or replacing them with even faster ones, or players with the same speed and better overall attributes.
I understand the idea of playing in two different leagues, but I think we're both really drawn to the fact that we get to play against each other throughout the year in the league and domestic cups, on top of the major competitions.
I genuinely think that rivalry, and the desire to beat each other all year long, makes our saves much more exciting. It forces both of us to improve at the game, while also making us much more invested in the save and making it a lot more fun overall — especially when I'm the one winning, obviously.
I play with the Autumn 4.5 tactic almost all the time, so I think I already have a pretty competitive tactic lmao. I rarely have issues or arguments with my players, and team cohesion is usually very good.
I think I'm better when it comes to developing wonderkids and young players. My youth academies are often much better than his, to be fair. But I have to admit that his squads are simply built better because he recruits better players than I do, and my recruitment approach clearly isn't good enough.
I do have an Excel spreadsheet and I try to properly analyse and think about my signings, but I'm obviously making mistakes somewhere.
I also admit that I often struggle to properly judge the overall strength of my squad. Once I have an idea of my starting XI and my 11 backup players, I often end up replacing a starter who isn't performing as well statistically with a player who has worse attributes/stats but a better average match rating.
I usually build two separate teams, and on average Team 1 plays around 3/5 of the matches during the season, while Team 2 plays the other 2/5.
ZaZ said: In my opinion, there are several factors that impact a season, so it is hard to point out where exactly you can improve. What I can say is, if you want to play a multi-season game with a friend, it is often better to play different leagues, so you can both win together, instead of having a winner and a loser. Competitive saves are better in the same league, but the nature of football is that teams winning get more resources to keep winning, while others chase with much less.
That being said, the most important aspects of the game are the tactic you play, the players you use (including transfers), and people management. By people management, I mean keeping players in top shape (condition, match sharpness and fatigue), optimize contract and transfer costs, develop the most important attributes (pace and acceleration), and keep players with high morale and not unhappy.
Where exactly do you think you are failing?
ZaZ said: Scouts can only work in a number of players at a time. Do not waste them in players you would not want to hire. Make sure to tell them the attributes you want in players, especially a high level of pace and acceleration. Having fast players is probably the most impactful way of winning. Slow players are just bad, even if their other attributes are amazing. The best tip for someone wanting immediate results is to aim to be the quickest team in the league, with the fastest players. From there, market is all about developing your players or replacing them with even faster ones, or players with the same speed and better overall attributes.
For example, I recently spent quite a lot of money on an Austrian player with 14 pace and 14 acceleration, which is very good for the Polish league, and over half a season he had an average rating of 6.02, which was extremely low compared to the rest of the squad.
Yet his CA was more or less around the league average, and the rest of his attributes were generally decent as well.
Dkstick said: For example, I recently spent quite a lot of money on an Austrian player with 14 pace and 14 acceleration, which is very good for the Polish league, and over half a season he had an average rating of 6.02, which was extremely low compared to the rest of the squad.
Yet his CA was more or less around the league average, and the rest of his attributes were generally decent as well.
There are some people with posts about how to optimize the performance of players based on attributes. One thing to watch is the scout reports for hidden attributes. I usually value a lot players with high professionalism, consistency, low injury proneness and dirtiness. You usually see in the scout reports if those hidden attributes are low or high, and I personally find players with low professionalism to be the most problematic (speaking about ratings).
What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need?
Kamas1 said: What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need?
Sounds like a reasonable approach.
Dkstick said: Regarding scouting and recruitment, what I’m currently doing is simply assigning my scouts with the silver star Current Ability and Potential Ability judging attributes to search for players in Central Europe, since that’s basically the extent of my scouting budget at the moment.
I’ve also set my entire scouting team to continuously look for players between the ages of 18 and 27.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I increase the number of scouts I can employ, as well as improve the club’s training facilities and youth facilities.
Should I be doing things differently?
If you want to improve scouting I strongly recommend Second Yellow Card's tutorials on Youtube, including the use of "transfer room in" if you are on FM26. And again you aren't looking for players who have average CA for Polish league, you want to find better or at least players who in a season or two can become much better than the average. For that you need to be scouting the world (Poland has quite lenient transfer and registration rules) and it helps if you know where to look.
I'll reiterate that if you are starting in 2nd division your first 3 seasons should probably be a complete squad overhaul during the summer (don't ignore winter either) unless you find an absolute gem before. In order to get more value out of your transfer and wage budget sign players right at the end of transfer windows.
Kamas1 said: What do you think about the idea of adding attributes from FM Arena tests to Genie Scout—but skipping Pace and Acceleration—setting the other attributes according to Genie Scout's weighting, and then manually selecting players who have, say, at least 15 or 16 (or higher) in Pace and Acceleration, depending on the need?
Alright, I’m going to look for players who are good enough in terms of CA, with at least 13 Pace and 13 Acceleration, while also excluding players with negative traits such as being inconsistent or not enjoying big matches. Out of 1,600 players, I’ve found 60 who meet all these criteria.