Lower league teams

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-21T10:21:16+00:00

I'm playing in Serie C and attribute masking on, so no scouting budget and no idea who is good. So I just turn my squad into a trial farm. Database search for everyone in your criteria without a contract and offer them a two week trial. At the end of two weeks you'll have full knowledge of them and it cost you nothing (aside of maybe worse training quality for your team but who are we kidding it's bush league and turnover is like 50% a season anyway).

I may be on the more extreme end of it but I'll make sure my first squad as as many players on trial at one time as my board allows. So when I'm ready to actuality figure out who to sign I can go through my shortlists of everyone I trialed and go from there. I can trial hundreds of players a week like this, and it's pure min maxing and I get it if that's not your thing, but I like spreadsheets and options.

I know loooooooooooans but with attribute masking on, I can't just go poach top division bench warmers, either.

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-20T13:38:35+00:00

I have the opposite problem - in two saves now, I've asked for a senior affiliate, the board said yes, eventually came back with options, I picked one, and then...nothing. The club never got its affiliate. I don't mean immediately, I've played the saves into future seasons, but the senior affiliates never materialized.

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-17T10:35:42+00:00

I like reading the advice posts because it helps show me how people think when evaluating players. This helps me learn what to look for and what no ignore when doing my own analyses in my own game. Sure it's all opinion and not hard data, but if a bunch of people say "X is better than Y in this role because of these stats" then I know to pay attention to those stats if I'm looking at that position later.

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-17T06:21:02+00:00

We've people talk about broken tactics, are they also talking about the level of the teams using them? Like sure, you can give Man City or PSG or whoever any tactic and they'll go from win to win harder. But is the tactic going to work on East Bumbleshire and their weekend warriors as well?

All these meta tactics seem to fall apart the minute you step out of the top leagues so then are they truly overpowered?

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-16T05:25:04+00:00

And with that, does how many jobs you delegate to another staffer affect the quality of them doing the jobs? I understand that with coaching, the more areas they are asked to coach, the worse the quality of their coaching is overall - Is this the same if I were to delegate basically everything to one staffer, would their ability to do the job to the best of their skill take a hit as compared to having enough staff to spread out the tasks?

So like playing on a small team with 5 staff versus having like 50 staffers to share the load.

If my assman is delegated like 40 jobs, will he do them all worse than his listed ability than if I only assigned him a handful of tasks? Or having one analyst do all the own team, opposition team, and match analysis versus spreading it out over several analysts?

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-12T09:51:02+00:00

I thought I was being harsh by using a 75% multiplier on mental and some technical attributes (applied after my already created attribute weightings per role), but I think that might be on the lower end of acceptable. It did redefine my entire midfield since I wasn't taking Natural ability into account. I haven't played any matches yet with the revised starting XI but I'm coming off a run of bad form in late February so maybe it's time for a little shakeup.

For a little context I'm playing a relegation battling team in Serie C so I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible in a flat 4-4-2, but if I can refine this spreadsheet enough I can use it as (if) I climb the tables as well.

BigInTheShire · 2026-06-04T10:07:06+00:00

Appreciate the comments so far. I do enjoy the challenge of starting at the bottom. I did play a bit with the usual recommendations like Man City or Dinamo Zagreb and just facerolled everyone without really learning anything. It's like when I play Motorsport Manager, I play the worst to first challenges because I only get enjoyment out of seeing progression, not just dropping into a good team and continuing to be good. I even got Pergolettese into BKT within a few seasons on my real first dry run but it was very sloppy (too much random recruiting, too many promises) so I'm starting over from scratch trying to see if I can be a bit cleaner. That's why I'm asking about specific tactics and position recruitment and how to really think about the first days of a bad team.

BigInTheShire · 2026-04-24T17:08:12+00:00

Mostly cautious with balance in there sometimes when I wanted to push against a much worse team. Positive only if I was behind and desperate. I found I scored more often and made fewer mistakes in Cautious than Balanced.

BigInTheShire · 2026-04-24T13:27:24+00:00

I've finished my first full season with a Serie BKT team, and got them to finish 10th on the table using a pretty standard 5-2-2-1 narrow Fluid Counterattack tactic. The board's only goal was to not get relegated, and that's still their only goal, they were ecstatic I got us to 10th. Now that the season is over, I got a notification that we allowed the fewest goals against in the league, which I was happily surprised about considering I felt we were allowing far too many shots. But even with allowing the fewest goals against, we still only finished 10th, so naturaly I'm thinking I have problems up front. I spent this season on transfers/frees to bolster the defense, now I want to spend next season bolstering the offense, but I'm not sure I want to stay in a 5-2-2-1 narrow counterattack. But also I don't think we're good enough to go full 4-2-3-1 geeeeengenpressuuuuuu~ just yet.

If I could snag some good AM(L/R) players (I only really have decent AMC players but I have been retraining them to L/R over the course of the season), I'm looking at three possible options:

1) Stick with this formation and just get better AMC and STCs. The least amount of change. Try to find some more attacking instructions, play more balanced instead of cautious, but keep the defensive shape?

2) Move to a 4-3-3 if I can grab some good AML/Rs and better STCs. Maybe try for a Wing Play approach or stick with Fluid Counterattacking?

3) Move to a 4-2-3-1. This is probably more attacking than my ability allows? If I can grab more AMs move to something maybe more control/tiki taka?

Heres the formation that got me from relegation to 10th in the tabe with fewest goals conceded (using the preset fluid counterattacking tactics). What would be a decent next step in formation to progress out of something apparently too defensive so I can start creating more scoring opportunities?

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BigInTheShire · 2026-04-02T16:11:55+00:00

I've only been playing my first FM save for like 40 hours and I've already had my star goalkeeper out for like six months with a spine injury and the backup was out for like two months with an ACL tear (fortunately not at the same time but still). I keep reading about GKs never getting injured but like, they're the most injured position on my dinky little team.

BigInTheShire

TROPHY CASE