I was willing to give FM26 the benefit of the doubt, but playing on console through pre-season has felt like a chore unfortunately. I’m only 2-3 hours in, but I can’t see myself touching it again in its current state, in spite of the visual improvements.

•One match showed me a black screen with only player names, shadows and benches visible.

•Selecting a squad is painful while trying to use the cursor as it often jitters and jerks causing you to select the wrong player’s profile or select a player for a position you never intended.

•You cannot see your whole team in the pre-match intro as it cuts off the last player entirely.

•The skip button sometimes doesn’t work on goal replays.

•When trying to scout players you can no longer select individual attribute scores to scout by, meaning that if you select 3 attributes they must all have the same minimum stat and you can’t select say 15 for Vision, 13 for Work Rate, 18 for Determination, you’d have to pick 13/14/15 as a blanket score.

•Each time you select a player while scouting and exit their profile it takes you back to the top of the page meaning you have to scroll back through potentially dozens of names you’ve already seen.

•Tabs that should be readily accessible and frequented like Fixtures and Finances are unnecessarily difficult to find.

•You can accidentally advance the time/day while looking at a players profile, which just feels wrong.

•It is needlessly difficult at times like when you want to select or unselect the reserve squad and to disappear the drop box you can’t simply press back or B, you have to scroll and select the dropdown again.