trades very rarely happen in FM, but yes you can. It's called a "part-exchange". When you see a player you want, go to make an offer for him, then instead of putting money there, look to the bottom where there's something like player exchange and pick a player to send. You can also send some money along with a player...

FM

I've seen about 5 trades/part exchange in my first Malaysian season.

I think trades rarely happen in real life.

And in the MLS, trade are the only thing you can do once the transfer window is closed. I hate this rule btw.

Yes not scoring and on the flip side, no clean sheets. It's a deeper problem than that, but to be honest, I see it as part of the larger morale/conditioning issue that SI is looking into. I won't rehash the arguments that easily can be found in the SI forums, but I'll say that I tend to agree with the people finding the game unpredictable. I won't say too hard, because I don't find it that.

Side question for those playing with fictional rosters:


I'm finding quite a lot of players who have exactly the same rating for most of their abilities -- guys with an 11, for example, in all but a few of their area of skill. I don't recall seeing this before, but now it's comon - both with players on my own team and those I am scouting.

Is this a new appearance of the "fog of war" concept -- where these ratings will change once I get to know the players better?

Or is this some sort of shortcut used when generating a new universe of players - making plenty of guys just basically "generic 11" players?

Or something else I haven't thought of?

Woo hoo!

After several looooong months of sitting and waiting (after starting unemployed), I finally got hired to a Conference North team one point away from relegation with a huge debt and no transfer funds available in February 2006.

Wish me luck! :eek:

I don't know a whole bunch about the rules and a quick scan through the manual and hints guide didn't help (perhaps I missed the answer), but....just messing around trying to figure things out and I want to promote a striker from my under 18 squad, since his ratings look decent. He's 15, but every time I move him up the game marks him as ineligible. I've brought up a 16 year old goalie with no problems, but am not sure what is wrong with the striker. Is he just too young to be allowed to play?

Is he signed to a pro contract?

Some countries will not allow anyone under 16 years old to play in the the first team. I don't have a full list of countries though.

is there a good site for rules for each league in fm?

Lowest age allowed for a player at professional level in England is 16 years old.

You can, but football works differently to football (if you see what I mean).

In simple terms, In football (soccer) generally a team pays cash for a player, as there is no salary cap in the majority of leagues, no drafts, etc.

So when Newcastle signed Michael Owen, they paid Real Madrid (his previous club) £15m - no players went the other way. Owens old contract was scrapped, and he renegotiated with Newcastle. The players get a say - if they don;t want to join a club, they are not obliged to do so, and if they cannot agree terms, the deal will collapse.

Occasionally, players will move between clubs as part of a deal (e.g. when Michael Owen joined Real Madrid from Liverpool, Madrid paid £7m cash, plus a couple of Madrid players joined Liverpool for 'free'. But if these players didn;t want to leave, or couldn;t agree a contract with Liverpool, either the transfer would have collapsed, or Madrid would have had to pay more money.

Basically every player has a value, and if another club is willing to pay that value or more, often the bid will be accepted, and the player can then discuss terms and decide if he wants to move or not.

Hope that helps.

For a summary of most of the rules that are important, go to the league table screen in FM, and then in the top right hand corner there is a drop down menu - select 'Rules' and it will give a breakdown of some of the most critical rules you will need to know.

I find that if you're sensible with your half time/full time talks, you can keep morale up fairly easily, which I assume helps explain my good form.

My Leicester career is blitzing that even of the great Martin O'Neill - at the end of Feb 07 we are sitting in 6th in the EPL, 4 points clear of 7th and only 4 points off 2nd. Although we lost to Liverpool in FAC round 4, and my reserve side lost in CC round 3 to Hull, we have just trounced Lazio 6-1 ovcer two legs and now face Celtic in the 2nd UEFA cup knockout leg.

I haven't seen the massive losing streak problem - we lost 3 on the bounce, but then stuffed Liverpool 4-2.

Tbh I nearly lost it the other day as my mind told me: IRL we're crap in the Championhsip, in FM I still have 3 of the back 4, my GK as 1st choice, 4 other players regularly in the rotation, and the majoirty of the others as 1st/2nd reserves, how are we doing so well?

But then I thought, 'Fuck it. It's a game and I'm having a blast! :D '

I think there is a complexity to the morale system, but after I followed Mark's advice for awhile and thought it through, I started making my own decisions on the talks, and it has paid off bigtime. I've snatched a few victories I shouldn't have, and shored up some possible "ho hum we must be going now" defeats. I have felt that my secret was to get the team to trust me, which I assumed was happening once a few players started naming me as their favoured personnel, and then LAYING INTO THEM!! when they deserve/need it. If a guy puts up a 5 performance, I tell him about it. I also don't praise too much since they start getting big heads, saying "feels the club should be able to win without too much effort" -- SLACKERS! Once, I lost a game 6 - 0 in the most embarassing fashion. Man did they get a telling off for that one.

It's basically what you really would do if you had all of them looking up to you as a coach. You would hold fire a whole lot more than you'd let loose because you don't want to ruin their confidence. But a well timed arse-kick works wonders.

But not overpraising is just as important. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been "delighted" with the whole team in the last two seasons. I've said "fantastic result!" exactly twice. And over the last three years, I've had two spells of bad morale, but both were short lived.

There is one more thing.. somehow you have to "feel" when you are going to need the "don't let up in the 2nd half!" talk. If you use it when you don't need it, your guys will suck, apparently. I did that once this last year. But three times I did it and the boys played even better in the 2nd half, scoring more goals along the way!

So I wouldn't call the morale thing broke, I'd call it wicked hard to ride, like a bull in a rodeo. But if you hit the stride, look out.

My problem is rather the parts that are bugged. I've got two coaches, for instance, who were once players on my team. If I try to get them to actually coach something, though, I get a crash. Ow.. that's 90 pounds wasted.

But I'm loving this game so much, I didn't get to sleep until 5:30 this morning, and then I played it all afternoon just now!

And here's an extra little rant about why I love this game.

I had a young striker, very good at his job but still had some learning to do. I noticed when I redid his contract he was "demanding" a certain sum of money. Other folks just "want" a certain amount, but this guy.. so I had my eye on him, but he was scoring goals left and right. He was up to 23 goals about 2/3 of the way through the season. Then he decides he needs another contract, for three and a half times as much as he's making now, and he needs it RIGHT NOW or he'll do something by golley.

I didn't like hearing that very much. I loved seeing the options for me to click to respond to his demands. I chose the one that said something like "you aren't worth that kind of money, but if you think you are you can go get it somewhere else." Then I transer=listed his arse.

Oh, he was all apology afterward. He didn't mean it, he didn't want to go, he'd play for what he was making now, honest..

That was kind of satisfying!

As it happened, I was flush with excellent strikers, including the fellow who'd scored 30 goals two seasons before. Someone offered me 60K for him and I was, like, "seeya!"

And we did just as well without him.

I think you've hit on important point, that team cohesion is really important in FM06. It was somewhat important in 05, but new players usually integrated fairly quickly into the team. Now, I think it is key to keep the core elements of your team together and add in more talented players slowly. I think that was one huge mistake I made with Leeds. By the time of my resignation, I had one player from the original squad of three seasons earlier in the first team. He was also the only English player.

I took the Schalke position after a few months of just coaching the US team. I've brought in some good new players, but will try and work them slowly into the team. I've kept all the key players from the previous season, regardless of whether I think they have top talent or not. We'll see how it works. ;)

Yep, I'm managing an English team. Thanks. Now I've got to check and see if his birthday is coming up soon.

Anecdotally speaking, it appears that you'll win a lot more often if you are proficient with more than one tactic. My team has three, but I've only been using two for the last year and that has done pretty well. Now, mine are all variations of a 4-4-2, but they have a lot of differences, and it seems to be enough to keep the opponents scouts confused.

I haven't really noticed this. I've used the same tactic for 2 1/2 seasons (with very slight changes) for a Conference side that is now in a promotion battle in League One. I think as long as your tactics fit the abilities of the players, you should be able to do reasonably well.

I bought the digi-download last Sunday and last night when attempting to fire WSM up it says that I only have the evaluation copy...I've been playing for a week straight and this is the first time it's happened, so I tried the to get a new key with my order number and password but it doesn't seem to be working. Haven't really read through this to see if anyone else has had this problem but it's kind of irking me. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

my advice to you would be to contact Marc Vaughan via PM with all of your details. He'll help you out...

FM

Since I wrote that note I tried sticking with one tactic for s string of games and that worked alright for me. I'm sitting at 4 wins, 1 draw, and no losses. I did notice that the first win was a blowout (I had used a different tactic previously) and the others were tight games. My players are much better now than in the past, too. Maybe once you've got good players and you put them in the right places, you'll win sticking with one tactic. But I also have a hunch that there is a benefit to launching with a surprise tactic, if your guys are proficient with it. I think the blowout win, against a team the media predicted to smoke me, might be pointing to that.

Ok, my start with this so far.

I have started a few different careers, tinkering around some. I really didn't want to start up a serious league on this laptop (the crappy one), because I am hoping to finally get my normal one fixed in the next month or so. But I started one up and I think I will be sticking with it as long as possible now.

I have all the English and Scottish leagues on normal, along with Wales and Northern Ireland. Anyways, I like to 'work my way up' and I figured starting in a lower prestige place like N. Ireland would be something different then a lower English or Scottish team. Boy oh boy. Can't say I am sure I recommend starting this way though, but it has been fun.

I gave myself Scottish nationality, and took over NI2 team Portstewart. No money to work with, $13,500 or so a month for salaries (yes I use $), awful facilities. They expectations for year one was a decent mid-table showing.

Right away I started trying to bring in better players, and right away I find out it is very difficult to get someone from England or Scotland to come to a NI2 team (and it turns out any NI team really). So, I move on with the roster I have, filled with some decent younger players but really I feel the only thing going for me is that all the other NI2 teams are just as crappy. Start playing some games, using the basic 4-4-2, sometimes moving to attacking and defensive to try those out. I am doing ok right away as I play in Intermediate Cup (I think that's what it called) for the lower division clubs. Then the league play starts and I go on. I found my key guys, brought in a few guys on free transfer from other clubs and went from there. Also, I found I could barely get any players from NI1 and NIP to come play for me. One thing I did do was get a good veteran (38 years old when I got him) DC/DM who also was a coach, he he played pretty good for me. That, along with getting a couple more coaches, really helped my younger guys.

So I keep plugging along and low and behold I find myself sitting in 3rd near the end of the year as I found a decent combo of players. With three games left I win one and draw one, and things fall just right that I go into my last game of the year against the second place team, Queens University Belfast, and I am down by two points. A win and I'm promoted. The game went great, and I won 2-0.

So into season two I go, now in NI1. The board is thrilled needless to say and they are glad they signed me to a 3 year deal before season 1 ended. I am expected to fight against relegation back down to NI2, although I get the impression they wouldn't care if it happened. I start lookingfor some new guys again, hoping the promotion will have helped getting guys in. I think it did a little, but it wasn't much. I brought in a couple guys from an English team's youth squad who didn't get signed by them, and then it hit me that once I got rid of a few guys I didn't want around anymore that I needed a couple more defenders pretty bad, since I had no depth there. So I was able to bring in a couple guys from the Albion Rovers who didn't re-sign with them. Still, my starting roster was going to be pretty muc the same.

I am into season two a good amount now, and I am amazed. At the end of season 1 I started messing around with the sliders for team tactics, and was getting good results so I kept it up and am getting much more comfortable with these. Even with the individual player instructions too. I am almost 10 games into league play now and have not lost a game. I started out with a couple draws, then got a couple wins. My team is sitting in 3rd and I think I may crap my pants if I find a way to get promoted to Premier after only 1 season in NI1. One of my newer players, a striker, has teamed up with te guy I considered my 2nd best striker from year one, and the two of them are tearing shit up. Also, my goalie is looking like he is going to be pretty good now. My only real weak spot seems to be DL, were I can't get real consistent play from my 2 main guys I use there. One the plus side, McInulty from Albion, who I brought in to contend for that DL spot (but he also plays ML) is doing pretty good at ML.

Not sure how long I can ride this thing out. I have no money still. But I upgraded my coaching staff between year 1 and 2 and that could carry me for a while I think as these young guys are getting pretty good. My only question is, as I lose about $10,000 a month, how long do the board take that? They don't seem to care right now.

Eventually they will restrict your wage budget to the point where you will be unable to sign or resign anybody half way decent. Unless they manage to secure a loan to pay back the debt, which you then have to make monthly interest payments on. After awhile, they should start mentioning to you that the finances need to be sorted out. The best cure for that (other than having a rich chairman buy out the team) is promotion and lengthy cup runs.

True. I think tweaks to a stable formation (as in one you use constantly) help quite a bit as well. I just beat EPL Birmingham with my League One side in the League Cup away, just by slowing down the tempo and playing more aggressively on defense than I regularly do in the league. It's not pretty, but it works :)

you know, I have not played FOF in almost a year (at least not really seriously) and that was maybe my main gripe about the game: the finances didn't seem to matter. I mean yeah, there was a salary cap and everything but I remember losing something like $20M a season for a couple seasons in a row and well and that didn't change much to my team planning and then earning $30M three years later and again, not much change... Try losing $20M in one year in FM, you'll hear about it...

FM

I think there is a benefit to switching tactics in-game. If you're up by a few goals, switching to a shut-down tactic will close out the game for you. I think you benefit more from sticking with one main tactic as your players are more comfortable with it.

Is this a 'for sure' thing to happen? Year one I didn't make any money either except at he begining when I sold a few guys. Oter then that I lost a good amount of money in year one, and in year two they raised my monthly salary allowance by $1500 which surprised me. Getting promoted from NI2 to NI1 hasn't done a whole lot in terms of attendance, so I am not sure there is much of a solution to this except enjoy it while I can and then sell guys off when I am forced to.

It's not how much money you are losing, it's how much money is in the bank. So as long as the bank balance is positive, or near positive, you're fine. The definition of "near positive" is obviously going to be different depending on the team.

well, are you still in the green overall or is the team's bank account beginning to dip in the red? I'd think that losing money isn't a big deal as long as you're not in the red overall...

FM

Desnudo summarized my explanation pretty well ;)

FM

So...anyone know a way I can find this in a store yet?

I picked mine up at Software Plus (suburban STL).

Is that the full name of it? I can't find it on Google.

http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product_id=646382

Enter in your zip code and see if it appears in any of the stores listed.

Thanks, that worked. I tried this a while ago, but I only looked within 10 miles. Turns out there are some 25 miles away.

As far as I know. As the others have said, it's based on your balance rather than your profits. Of course, if your profits are negative, your balance is eventually going to disappear. I was saddled with a 1.3 million pound debt at the start of my career, and in trying to put together a promotion team in the conference, my balanced had slipped to about -1 million just before I got promoted. The board had restricted my wage budget to 0 pounds, until we started making some money again.

On a side note, I signed a rolling contract that year for less than I was making because of the financial crisis. However, it just keeps the expiry of the contract one year from the current game date, thus the board has never offered me a new contract, even though we are now in League One and have over 1 million in the bank. Soon I'll be the lowest paid manager in the EPL. :(

I've wanted to try this game for awhile now but not knowing much about football (soccer) it seemed too much to learn the game and football at the same time. I have tried the demo and try and buy but could never really get
started, just felt totally lost. However since buying EHM and learning the SI style of gui I was looking to buy WWSM. Got up this a.m. and the wife needed to go to Mankato, Minnesota to shop of course and wanted to know if I wanted to go. Quick search on the net while she was out of the room revealed that the gamestop there had wwsm 2006 on hand. Snuck away from her in the mall and went to gamestop but only saw wwsm 2005. The store was crowded and the clerks were busy so I looked all over the place to see if maybe I missed it. Was about to give up when one of the guys at the counter appeared to be free. Asked him about the game expecting him to not even recognize the name. To my surprise he replied " why yes I do have wwsm I just put it on the shelf. So now old Dad is the proud owner of one wwsm 2006 and has the feeling he is about to be overwhelmed, not necessarily a bad thing :)

I won't get a chance to play now until tommorow but was wondering if anyone here has tried the game unpatched? On the SI board there are some that say the game actually plays better this way as the first patch seems to have unbalanced things. Here is a link..

http://community.sigames.com/groupee...1/m/6732008771


Anyway was just curious if anyone here had any comments on the patch issue?

Now I know nothing about football or the leagues other than looking through the lists of available teams in the try and buy menu. I selected Oldham to start my test career only because it sounded like a good old English name :)
From what I could gather this seemed like a mid-level place to start. Any comments positive or negative on this selection? Is there a better place to start? I'm open to any suggestions.

The disk is laying on the desk next to me and I am fighting the urge to "just" install it now and then go to bed. I know if I do I'll be lucky to get two hours sleep. So off to bed I go, I'll fire this baby up tommorow and see how much trouble I've gotten myself into.

Thanks for any replies.

Sweed

say byebye to your social life sweed.

personally i didn't play much before the first patch, but i havn't really notice it being unbalanced. i also havn't checked the SI boards for the specifics of their arguments though.

I wouldn't worry about the people complaining that the patch unbalances anything, over at the sigames board every patch will be met with a flurry of posts from people who want to call it crap. People like complaining, I guess.

For comebacks, all that's happening is that you can't just select a formation, stick in a few names you've read about being worth buying, then win the champions league. You will have to change formation and/or tactics in some situations. I'm just coming to the end of my first season and I've only seen one "odd" comeback game, they happen rarely in real life as well, so I'm not crying bug or unbalanced.

But then again, I'm going to get promoted after winning the Scottish First Division with Clyde, so I don't have anything to complain about :)

I've noticed one thing with training.......tactics and ball control training are important! I set up various schedules, GK, Defense, Midfield, Wingers, Attack. All of them have tactics and ball control training in the "high" range. After just a few months my players are all maxing their training ability, and the improved off the ball, anticipation, decision stats have really helped them to take off in the league. I'm playing Stromsgodset in the Norweigian First Division, am now at 13 - 0 - 1 and have a 6 point cushion. Scored 30 odd goals to this point and conceded less than 10 playing a slightly adjusted 3-5-2 attacking. God, I love this game.......

But the point is: Training. Tactics and Ball Control. And a coach for each category.

Oldham's a good place to start. The English League One is my favourite to begin a game in; its a competitive division, and most of the teams there have at least the potential to do something in the higher leagues (Oldham were last in the Premier in 1994, I think).

Here's an open question regarding database sizes (mostly addressed to Marc Vaughan but if you know the answer, please chime in): What is the real difference between database sizes?

I know it makes more players available in the game, but are there real numbers I can look at, like small has 15% of the database, normal has 40%, large has 65% and huge has 100% (these are hypothetical figures for comparison sakes)?

Thanks in advance.

FM

I just checked on Gamestop, and as of right now the closest store that carries the game on hand is 94 miles away. That is terrible when I live in Metro Cincinnati. FM2005 had a much larger release base for stores. I guess they are relying on the web for most of the NA purchases. :(

Its impossible to indicate such figures I'm afraid as the algorithm involved in the selection of players to retain is fairly dynamic.

For instance the Welsh league is fairly small in structure and so has less players associated with it than most leagues, as such with any database size you'll retain less players than say the English league with the same database size setting.

Also 'Oceanic' leagues retain all Oceanic players because the people who play in that territory requested it etc.

Generally Small is for people who are impatient, Normal is well 'Normal' and Huge is for people with the patience of a saint ...

(but thats just my opinion ;) )

hmmm, that's a fairly politicianish answer Marc ;) :p

Let me see if I follow you. The algorithm works in such a way that it retains the player from your selected leagues, then adds on a set of players from around the world depending on what DB size you've chosen, is that about right?

But then, for four games, each one whit a different db setting, say all with only England running, how bigger is normal compared to small? and large compared to normal? and so on...

FM

Have you guys ever had a deal that seemed to be too good to be true in FM2006? If so.. how'd it turn out..

Looks like I'm going to pick up a monster goalie from a 2nd division Argentinian club.. but there has to be a catch... that I can't see... the goalie is literally looking like he's world class, and I'm getting him for 1K (transfer listed, base value is 100K). If you check my Revs thread (Shameless plug).. I can't see any gotchas.. but looking to see what you guys think.

One more try... any thoughts on this? Just a shortcut to generate a lot of frssh players easily?

I looked at my game last night and it doesn't really seem to apply to my universe (fictional). Could have something to do with database size and the game trying to generate enough mid-quality players, a lot end up with similar skill sets? Otherwise, I'm not really sure what would cause it. Of course, I'm several seasons into my career, so perhaps it evens out later and I just didn't notice it early.

I had two deals like that. One was a striker that was valued at around 200K and I got for 1K and the other was a central defender valued at 120K and I got for 2K. Both signed for really low salaries too. The striker turned out great. He's scored 35 goals his first season and 30+ goals the second. The defender....not so good. Despite his great ratings, he just didn't perform. He wasn't a troublemaker or injury prone, just didn't play up to his ratings. I gave him a season and a half to prove himself because his ratings were so good (his rating over that time was probably around 6.3 or 6.4). Ended up selling him for 15K.

I've certainly noticed it in my fictional universe. I think my database size is mid-level, for what that's worth.

What did your scout say?

Found this for anyone who might want to try an older copy of the game:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MESE%3AIT&rd=1

That he would be a useful part of the first team.

I'm hoping I acquire him, my computer crashed while I was at work and I lost a month :P :D

If that bid doesn't work out, and I end up getting the new game, I'd sell my copy for a pittance.

Got to finally play some yesterday and the depth is incredible. I'm still trying to get a handle on things.

I really don't know much about football and the tactics required to be succesful.
Playing out games should help with that. In time the basics and then the in depth stuff will come.

What I have trouble with is wrapping my mind around the transfer system. I've never dealt with anything like this. I'm used to the American sports with drafts where you own the rights and the only real player movement comes through trades. This buying, selling, and loaning of players is just so foreign. I get an offer that someone wants one of my guys and makes a cash offer. I've got to say I don't have a clue if it's a good deal for me or not. I find it hard to accept anything knowing all I'm getting is money and no players in return.

I do have some questions..

1. Are all contracts guaranteed?

2. If you have a good young guy that isn't playing on the first team you should try to loan him to a lower level club to get him playing time, maybe even paying his salary?

3. Does your U18 team play a full schedule of it's own? So if the young player in question two is under 18 you wouldn't need to loan him out as he would be getting plenty of playing time?

4.Your second team players are only resereves for the first team? They only play if you activate them due to injury or bad play of a first teamer? These are guys you would look to loan out if you'd want to make sure they get playing time and can develope for you in the future?

If any of these questions are stupid please ignore them and consider the source is a total noob :)

Let me try to take a stab at your questions...

1. yes contract are guaranteed. Try hitting the "release on a free" button for a player and it will tell you what you have to pay the player to release him.

2. If the guy really isn't playing for you, then yes you could try to loan him out while adding the "can be recalled" clause in case you need him back because of injuries.

3.(&4) U18 and reserves squad both play schedules of their own so they don't only play when an injury happen to one of your starters. I'm always careful to check the other team's training facilities when loaning out a youngster. I wouldn't want him to go from my "top facilities" to a team with only "good facilities" as his training could suffer and he could be worse off somewhere else than he'd be with us.

As for the transfer market, learn to search for player (SEARCH on the side menu) and you will see players that you can "buy" with the money you'd get from the guy you just "sold". By customizing your search filters, you can even ask to see only players that are "unattached" also known to us north americans as free agents ;) You can offer these guys contracts without paying anybody any fee and sometimes you can find a nice older player that could fill a hole for a season or two...

I really got a hold for the whole transgfer market once I learned how shop for players...

Good luck !

FM

1. In most leagues, salaries ARE guaranteed (In some cases where they really want away, they'll settle for a negotiated buyout. In MLS, contracts are binding on the player, but the team can terminate the contract at any time (cutting the player)

2. Reserve and U18 football is nice, but it's no substitute for real live games, even in lower leagues.

3. They do, but you're only playing similar players.

4. Since teams can play up to 60-70 games a year depending on the competitions you are in, burnout is not a possibility, it's a probability, you always want to try to rest players in some games. But yeah, if a good player is not getting player time, it's nearly always good to loan him out and get him in a good atmosphere AND playing time. If you have a full fledge training centre, and the team who wants to loan your player has a bag of balls, an empty field and some little orange cones.. you might want to think twice, as the training benefit with you may outweigh the first team experience there.

Edit - looks like everyone beat me to it.


I'll let someone answer this in better detail, but there is a penalty to release someone early (aka cut them). You can see the penalty by selecting the "release on a free" (aka cut them) option and it will indicate on the screen the penalty.


I often do if I don't think I'm going to need his services (if someone gets injured on the first team, you have to make sure you won't need him). Some players dont' like getting loaned out and they'll tell you when they return saying it was a waste of time or something.

At least at the bigger clubs yes, they play a schedule. I still may loan a guy out of he's on my reserves if the opportunity comes to give him better competition. E.g. a champions league team loaning him out is probably better competition for him than the under 18 team.

Yes, but be wary of injuries to first team guys when loaning folks out (make sure your first team replacement isn't loaned out when an injury occurs). I also occasionally send my first team players down to the second team to get them in shape (like when they come back from a long injury) prior to playing on the first team. Typically it will say something like lacking match fitness in the player screen, and I'll give them a runout with the reserves to get them match fit before returning to the first team.

I like how the above three explanation posts all were posted with 2 minutes of one another. Good work guys. :)

proof that anybody new to the game should come and post their questions in this thread. There should alway be someone to answer... :)

FM

Yes, thanks to all that took the time to answer. This post in this forum is a big reason I finally decided to try WWSM. You can feel the excitement when guys talk about their teams and leagues. And the way questions are answered here is an indication of the quality of the game, the people that play it, and how immersive it becomes.

Thanks again. I'm off to continue my climb up the learning curve, the top seems so far away. I have a feeling though that getting there will be fun.

Okay, still curious about players retained vs database size, I set myself to do some testing in WSM2006 last night. I created many different games, with some different leagues running on normal and some different database sizes. Then, once the game had been created, I did a simple search using only the letter "a" in the search field. This returned everything that had an "a" in their name. I understand that this includes staff, clubs, and even referee, but I assumed these are always in the game no matter what size of db (especially clubs and referees). Also that was my only way to try it out and after seeing the data, it at least gave me a feel for relative size from one database to another... Fwiw, I tried searching for "e" but had a tad fewer hits, so I went with "a" :)

Don't know how useful this could be to anybody, but since I go the data, I might as well share it :)

Here we go...

First test setup was the most basic setup...
Leagues included: Enlgand L2+ (4 leagues/1 nation)
small db: 7756
normal db: 10916
large db: 13004
huge db: 42482

Every game but the huge database was created quite quickly. The huge db took a relatively long time to create the manager shortlists and as you can see, the number of hits is more than triple the one with a large database. Seeing that and with the fact that I will never run on a huge db, this will be the last time I create a game with a huge db.

The second test setup was something that I may like to run, mostly since I included only leagues I'd like to manage in, although not the biggest European leagues...
Leagues included: Enlgand L2+, Holland, Scotland, France, MLS (8 leagues/5 nations)
small: 14654
normal: 20165
large: 23233

As you can see, by including some other leagues to be run on normal, the number of hits has basically doubled...

The third test setup was one with the same number of leagues, but now including the top 4 in terms of European coefficients (as found in the game, Champions League screen), the MLS remaining as a constant.
Leagues included: England L2+, Spain, Italy, France, MLS (8 leagues/5 nations)
small: 20416
normal: 31765
large: 34781

This confirmed what Marc said earlier about when you run bigger nations, you get more players. I guess it simply made sense, but I had to see it with my eyes ;)

I was about done with my testing by then, but I wanted to see a couple more things, so off I went...

My fourth test setup had to do with seeing if running more than league per country made a difference, so I took my test #2 and created new games but now with the top 2 leagues where I could (USA is MLS only)...
England L2+, top 2 of Holland, Scotland & France + MLS
small: 15312
normal: 20123

Comparing it to test #2, you can see that adding an extra league per nation hardly added any new players to the database (658 over 14654 or 4.4%) and seeing how the pattern went, I didn't see the need to do the large db.

Finally, I wanted to see what would happen if I retained players from Canada. Well I also added a retain for players from Ivory Coast, since, well I'm attached to that great nation now (see sig for explanation ;)). Basic setup is the same as test #2 with a retain on Canada and Ivory Coast...
Leagues included: Enlgand L2+, Holland, Scotland, France, MLS (8 leagues/5 nations + retain)
small: 15169
normal: 20675
large: 23691

So these two nations added about 500 players, not that big a deal. I'd guess that retaining bigger football nations in Europe would have had a (much) bigger effect...

Do what you want with these figures, I know I'll be using them when I'll decide what leagues I'll run when I finally start my career...

fwiw, the first game I started as a test is England (L2+), Spain, Italy, USA (top in each) with a retain on Canada and a normal database and it gets 17693 hits... Kind of middle of the road and it runs reasonably well on my Athlon 2000+ (1.67) w/512mb RAM
FM

See the bolded part. This is so true. I've had great fun with FOF in the past, but I've never felt as attached to my players as I'm feeling now with FM (2005 for now). You really get a feeling that they are real, with feelings, sort of. On thing I saw in '06 that will only help this feeling is the prefered moves listed in the player profile. How can you not care about a player when you see simple things like this in his profile:
"gets crowd going"
"slides in tackles"
"argues with referee"

I mean, dang! How personal can it get?!? :eek: And you know what, most of the stuff I saw in player profiles in WSM2006 is exactly the way I felt about some players that were on my squad in FM2005. Marc Bircham for example is one that is said to argue with referees and I can tell you that I saw the sentence "Bircham is furious with the referee" more than once when watching a game....

Simply a great game...

FM

You can like soccer or not, in fact i didn't buy FM05 as i'm liking more USA sports since 2 years ago. As it happens to some guys with football, i'm tired of real soccer after 30 years having it as the only Sport in ut this year i couldn't pass to buy it as the FM experience is not in any other sport sim.


The true is that FM is the best test sim regarding playing personalities. That is what i miss from all the great USA sports sims we have like FOF, FBCB, OOTP, TPB (this one started to add them too on some way and i hope Gary will keep expanding that more and more), etc.

I would love a football, baseball or basketball game with the players personalities that FM has. Somebody argued in the past that players personalities shouldn't be included in sport sims as are not part of the sport, but real life and FM prove them wrong. Take a look at T.Owens, R.Williams etc where the player personality affects the team a lot. Also moral and professionalism are a big part on any sport and it varies a lot between players. In the sports sims, players personalities only affect when you want to resign them, but not for anything else. FOF has cohesion that i like too as it's something that affects real life too, a team who plays a few season together can play way better as they know each other.

I really hope that the future OOTP will have it too, at least as option as i understand that the players who enjoy replaying historical leagues only want accurate stats, but those of us who enjoy playing a rol game where we are the GM's, really want to deal with players personalities not just with stats.

I agree. I don't like soccer, didn't like it 5 years ago when I first started playing CM and don't like it now. I've watched all of 1 full match in my life (when I was in France and my wife's family wanted to watch it). I understand the sport better now, but still don't find it interesting in real life. But FM is my favorite game and has been for several years because of the depth of the game, the decisions involved in running a club and the player personalities. There are so many factors that go into making decisions in the game that go beyond just getting the guy with the best rating. The game is very complex for those of us who don't know soccer, but well worth it once you get past the learning curve.

Yes, I love this addition to the game. It definitely adds more personality into the game.

I agree with Icy's post: although football/soccer is my no.1 sport, the NFL is a fairly close second. But in terms of sport text sims, FM is way ahead of anything else.

The exciting thing though is that SI seem to be getting involved with developers like Jim, not necessarily officially, but in a networking kinda way, and offering advice on their own boards as to developing sports.

When you consider that FM has more than double the amount of released versions than FOF, it is only natural that it is more complex. But with the acclaim that it is held in, spread into the North American market, and networking that appears to be going on, features such as those Icy mentioned are sure to appear in future US sport text sims, hopefully incluiding (please Jim ;) ) the next FOF release.

Another thing I love about the FM series besides player personalities is the media messages that tell me what's going on in other parts of the football universe. It's nice to hear about cupsets, milestones, transfers without having to hunt for them like I do in OOTP, FOF, etc. I want to know when big deals have been completed, coaches have been fired and players have set records, but North American text sims don't provide this info easily. FM, in this respect, makes me feel like I'm part of a larger world rather than simply just dealing with numbers. Other game 'worlds' seem rather sterile in comparison to FM's.

Just to touch on some of what's been said here, I am getting very attached to my Exeter team in WWSM. Our second season started horribly. We were getting blown out repeatedly, and we couldn't win the close games either. I had brought in three players before the season because I thought they'd improve the club. One of them played so badly that I ended up selling him off early in the season. Another one ended up getting homesick. The third player was actually a pretty decent wingback. Unfortunately, my formation doesn't really use a wingback. He is listed as a natural fullback, so I backed him up, but no matter how much I told him to play defense, he was always thinking about running up and joining the attack. I ended up transferring in a sweeper a couple of months later just to sort of help cover this guy's mistakes.

I finally decided that I couldn't give these new players (the homesick guy, the offense-minded defender, and the sweeper) too much freedom. I had originally tried to tailor my team's game to these guys because they had the most raw talent. It just wasn't going to work, at least not in time to save my job. I sent the homesick player back to Morocco to let him get his head on straight. When he returned, he assured me and the Exeter fans that he would be ready to play. It helped that he has learned a little English now. :) The wingback ended up sitting on the bench for a few games. He was going to learn to play Exeter football, but he was going to do it in training. I wasn't going to let him screw over my matches. The sweeper also plays some midfield, and due to injuries, I moved him up. He played very well there, and he played within my system.

Now, as we enter January, everything is coming together. We've gone nine straight matches without a loss (most of them have been draws, but we've had comebacks from 2-0 and 3-0 during this run). We're manhandling small semi-pro clubs in the only competition we're still playing (the FA Trophy, maybe?), and that's got the confidence level through the roof. Our strikers were almost certainly getting frustrated because they weren't getting the ball, but all my players are learning how to play as a team now, and they're getting the ball to the scorers. We're in 13th place in the Conference National at the moment, but we're only about 6 points out of 5th. If we keep playing well and actually WIN instead of draw, we could be in playoff position within 3 or 4 matches.

Right now, the only problem on my team is that I had to kill a few egos. Last season, a lot of players were promised first team football, but as this year has progressed, some guys are distancing themselves from others. I've had to knock a couple of guys down to rotation or even backup. They may feel that I don't appreciate them, but when they get onto the field, they play their asses off. They're playing Exeter football. A couple of players have even saved their jobs this season. They may mope in the dressing room, but as long as they produce on the pitch, I'm not going to get on their backs. It's starting to work very well. We're probably not going to get promoted this season, but we will need minimal changes for next year, and with my guys knowing how to play as a unit now, I expect us to be a force when the new season starts.

LONG LIVE EXETER FOOTBALL!

The beauty of these version and this series in general is that everybody could have just reeled off 4-5 paragraphs about their current team just like Pumpy did.

agreed, you have just summed up why this is a great game. :)

FM

You ain't kidding. Such a fun game.

Even though I've played this series for 10 years, I don;t think I've felt so good after a victory before.

PLaying as Leicester, we get to the UEFA QF against Barcelona, after edging past Celtic on away goals. Away 1st leg, I'm a little bit scared tbh :D so for the fourth time this season I don't play 2 up front, instead playing 2 wide midfielders, 2 DMs and an AM to try and keep in the game for the second leg.

We are basically annihilated to start with by the mighty Barca: I realise that we had a huge hole in midfield, so bring the AMC back to a normal MC, and with a little help from my back up goalie and my FC playing the game of his life on his own up front, we managed to keep it to a 1-3 defeat. The away goal gives us hope.

So learning from the first leg, back at fortress Walkers Stadium I play a wide version of my old CM favourite formation, 4-1-3-2: high tempo, defenders very defensive, midfield & forwards attacking, on the basis of foreign teams don't like it up 'em!. 10 minutes in, we've got the two goals back, and lead on away goals :rolleyes:

I figure I need at least one more, so carry on as before - 16 minutes we get a third. My 5 defensive players are already on defensive, so wtf, stay as we are... 40 minutes: 4-0!

2nd half the commentary reads 'Barcelona change to a more attacking style' at which point I shat meself and played defensively throughout the team, but restrcited them to long range shots. We hold out for a 4-0 win and a 5-3 aggregate victory :cool:

Unfortunatly, next up are Roma in the SF! :(

I'm back in love with CM/FM!

Although in all honesty, it probably could do with a tweak to make it a bit tougher...

Okay, so I feel slightly 'tarded having to ask this:

I have Alexandre Song (Billong!) on loan with an agreement for a transfer, if I so choose. Except I can't figure out how to complete the transfer. Can I get a dumb down version of how to do it, please?

okay, been testing it some more, basically processing days and only managing the game, putting myself on holiday whenever a game for my team happens. I want to see how things are flowing over a few months. I'm now up to October 3 and here are some comments...

• I really like having leagues on basic details. It doesn't seem to slow my game too much but adds the league table to every leagues set to basic. Why I say it doesn't slow my game? Well, I have a very smallish setup for this game, with England (L2+), Spain, Italy on normal, and every possible top leagues in Europe set to basic, that's a big number of leagues yet, it's flowing quite well. On top of seeing who's in what position in Greece for example, you also get player stats for every players available according to your database setting. I'm on normal and was looking at the Polish top league. Some 15 players were available from that league, but I was able to stats for each and every one of them...
• I like seeing my players' training developments after a couple of months. The little graph you can access by clicking on a skill's label are nice and useful.
• I like the match previews and post game reports.
• The comments regarding when a player joined a team whenever they report an injury or a possible transfer are a nice addition.

I'll probably think of more at some point...

FM

Just click on him, you should have the option to make transfer offer or something siilar, and then offer the amount agreed on.. they automatically accept IIRC :cool:

For what it is worth, I did some tests on CM4 when it first came out for Godzilla Blitz (posted somewhere on the forum), and the smaller and normal size databases are virtually unplayable as a lower league manager due to lack of options in coaching and somewhat in players. I believe, for instance, there was 3 unemployed physios at the start of the game on a small database in England. Granted, things have probably improved two versions later, but I would still recommend going with a large or huge database if you plan to run in the lower leagues.

This may be good advice for other people, but not for me as I'm not really into lower league management. I like starting with a Championship team and try to bring them to Europe success, so I usually find plenty of players suitable for my level of team with the size of database that I computed in these tests...

I remember seeing your analysis for CM4 too, that's sort of what made me think about doing this very simple one...

FM

Well, I finally had my first crash. It was my fault, though. I hadn't rebooted my computer or even exited the game for about a week. I had it set to save after every month of game time, but after my crash (a result of low available memory), I had lost my last two weeks of game time or so.

This hasn't completely killed my enthusiasm for my Exeter career, but I'm probably going to step back from it for a couple of days. I want the results of my wiped-out matches to get out of my head. I want to feel like I'm going into them "fresh" again. I'm weird that way.

Aha! Thankee. :)

I look forward to your post in the near future after Roma beat you where you complain about cheating AI/goalkeepers and/or losing streaks ;)

Anyway - if you've a young kid in the reserves or U18's who's looking like he might be a future star but you don't want to risk putting him into your first team then I'd definitely recommend loaning him out, especially if your main concern is his lack of experience.

Playing in the U18's and reserves is not as stressful as playing first team football at pretty much any level.

For instance a Premiership U18 match will have a couple of hundred supporters present if that, if you loan that player to a Championship level side then he'll be playing in front of ten thousand baying fans .... this builds character and the increased tension and pace of the Championship match will help the player develop.

Obviously offset this advantage with any disadvantage their might be due to their level of training or coaching at their club.

(and finally of course if a player has really enjoyed or hated a loan he'll tell you about it afterwards which helps you know if it was a 'good' or bad thing)

A few random thoughts (about the game) from m'self as my initial season ends:

• I always felt first touch was underrated and under appreciated but they seem seriously huge in this edition. And rightly so. Still, I've got some guys who are rated for it (Dennis is rated 20 and deservedly so) and yet are having some horrid first touches. That's irritating me some.
• If you bring in new players, especially from other countries, keep an eye on and watch for both the team coming together and the new players adapting. In my game, it wasn't until the last two months before Aliaksandr Hleb got adapted to life in the Premiership enough to do his dribbling runs. On the other hand, Loftus Road-favourite Chris Wilhelmsson only took until about the New Year. I also had an Argentinian kid who managed to start scoring after about 2 months and a South African kid who started scoring from day one and started becoming "favoured personnel" with others at the club after about a month.
• The whole contract and negotiation thing with you and the club is nifty. It gives it a more human feel to it.
• The left wing-dominance of '05 doesn't seem to be there anymore. That said, if you can get yourself a GOOD winger who can make some run and threaten, life is much better. Somebody with 17+ speed (pace/acceleration) will probably be necessary, though. Le Bob's speed is down to 14/14 in this setup and he can't get away from anybody anymore.
• Watch for form. It's insane (and fair) how far an in-form player can take you. Early in the season, when I was trying to get everyone incorporated into the lineup and trying to get the right mix going, it was ridiculous how far an in-form Titi took us. He's darn good - Heck, GREAT - anyway but he was so in-form it was ridiculous. We'd be having a boring and struggling game then he'd just put us on his shoulder and drag us along. Then he strained his back and went out for 3 weeks and lost that feel. That was when RvP started playing up front instead of on the wing and, thankfully, HE was now in-form. He basically carried us through during those winter months (really not too far from what's happening in real life right now, actually - THAT's how good SI is!).

Now a problem I have. I downloaded some new kits for the Premiership from sortitoutsi, Rixx's 3GT serie. Highly recommended, by the way, they're gorgeous. Anyway, so I install these. They look great. They work for every team in the Premiership except . . . yeah, yeah, you guessed it: ARSENAL!@# I don't know why. The only one that works is the away. We're stuck with the default one for the home kit. Anybody know what I might need to do?

Great example of this is Arturo Lupoli who desperately needs to be loaned out. Reserve games are really doing nothing for him and the more physical play in the Coke league would do him good as that's that's his main "flaw" right now.

I'd love to see SI try to tackle that "feeder" club system where teams can enter specific agreements to send over loanees for a few years. Like the one Arsenal has with Beveren or, even better, the one Manchester United has with Antwerp. I can't even remotely imagine how it could be achieved but, if it's at all possible, SI would be the crew that could do it.

Oh, on the topic of loans . . . statistics does not seem to be accruing properly for players who have returned from loans. Like, a player who has played a game or two for me before going on loan. Once returned, their numbers do not add up proper.

Oh, major annoyance for me: Reserves and U18s do not hold onto the filters I set. I like to have every squad show with the nonavailable players removed. The first squad's screen retains this information properly. The Reserves and U18s screens do not. I have to go into filters and reset this every time. Major deal? Nah. Irritating? Definitely. Great game? For now, eating gives me the strength to keep on playing.

It's a dola-tastic day.

Good reading at this site and definitely this article on Playmaker and Target Men. I'm not certain who pointed the site out first but I *think* it was Icy.

hehe, nice inside, I'm sure my 7 readers were able to appreciate it ;)

FM

I'll be sure to give an update - probably will next be able to play tomorrow after a couple of days FM down-time.

For the first time I am in a dilemma (spelling?) though - the 4-1-3-2 worked so well I'm wondering if I should stick to this every week (especially as two days after we beat Barca I reverted back to 442, rested the tired players, and got beat by a struggling Southampton 3-0!). Staying in 4th is still looking pretty good though (5 points clear of 5th), and 3rd is by no means out of reach...

Ok boys, I'm still struggling with this whole transfer thing :) Ok, the whole game :D

Maybe I'll start titling my posts .. stupid question #1
stupid question #2
etc. etc. etc. ;)

I'm Oldham and get a news item saying another club wants to take one of my players on loan and at the end of the message it says Oldham accepts. I want to loan the guy but I actually didn't do anything to accept the offer. Was it accepted by my assistant since he's ticked to control the reserve club?

Second thing is I got two more loan offers for the same player and they all said accepted under them but he's still on my team. One of the teams was in the North Conf one in the South Conf and the other didn't list a conferences at all . I believe that one was Marine and was only semi-pro? The offers came on July 4 and 5 I believe and it's now July 11. If I look at the last and best team to make the offer my player is listed as a future transfer (loan) but this team has already started playing games. When does my guy go to the new team?

By the way all the links in this game are just plain cool. At first I cliked on the team name and then info to find out about the guys wanting the loan. Then by accident I found out I could just right clik on the team in the news aticle to accomplish the same thing much quicker, very nice.

Yes, this may be why.


The player receives the loan offers you have accepted and basically chooses between the teams which one he wants to go to. He sort of can refuse to go to a lower league team on loan. Once you've accepted a loan offer for a player, you should see something like "is considering a contract from xxx" in one of his profile screens (transfer I think)...


The game is very well integrated imo. You can get tons of info from tons of places. Same when you see a report about a game, click the score and there is the match screen...

FM

I did a search on "harchester" on FOFC but didn't find anything about it, so here goes...
=========

Here's something for you all for when you'll start a new game. You may have noticed two ticked boxes in your preferences, one is "harchester.ddt" and the other is "harchester.edt". These two files, from what I gathered on the SI forums, relate to some fake team mimicking a TV show called "Dream Team". By leaving these two boxes ticked, that team will only be able to play friendlies and the players on it will all be grey, thus a non-factor in your game.

You need to leave these two boxes ticked, or else this team will be filled with fake players, signable by anybody. This happened to me last night when I started my real game. I had some .ddt files of my own and I unticked the harchester ones. First thing I saw once in the game, while looking for player with expired contracts to bring to my team, is that some very good players were not only available (Danny Sullivan comes to mind) but also heavily scouted by other English teams (many of them in the Championship, the league I start in). I do not want that in my game and will restart it tonight.

If you don't want the Harchester players to be active in your game, YOU NEED TO LEAVE THE BOXES TICKED.

Hope this is of some help for some of you.

FM

dola,

fwiw, since I like reading about other people's selected leagues, here's how I've set up my football world.

I will be running a small database with 10 leagues from 5 nations on normal: England (League Two and up), France (Ligue 2 and up), Scotland (Scot's first and up), Holland (Premier only), and USA (MLS).

I looked at where the main qualifiers to the group stages of both the Champions League and the UEFA Cup were coming from and added 13 other nations' top league on basic: Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and Ukrainia.

This gave me a game with 23 leagues from 18 nations in total.

I then created a .ddt file to retain the players of Canada and Ivory Coast, in order to possibly manage one of these countries on the international scene later on. I also made some test and decided to add a retain on England, as weird as this may seem. Doing that, it added almost 7000 "persons" to my list of search result. This made a few unemployed scouts and physios available for me to sign and it also populated all the conference teams, which would have been all grey players since I sim only at the league level.

Finally, after I had started a test version of my game, I took a look to see which European clubs, among those that had made it to the group stage of either the Champions League or the UEFA Cup, had many grey players (with the small database that I was using). I found the following club and added them in a separate .ddt file:

Team	country
AEK	GRE
Anderlecht	BEL
Basel	SUI
Benfica	POR
Besiktas	TUR
Club Brugge	BEL
Dinamo Kiev	UKR
FC Bayern	GER
Fenerbahçe	TUR
Galatasaray	TUR
Genk	BEL
Grasshopper	SUI
Hertha BSC	GER
Leverkusen	GER
Olympiakos	GRE
Panathinaikos	GRE
Partizan	SCG
Porto	POR
Red Star	SCG
Schalke	GER
Shakhtar	UKR
Slavia Prague	CZE
Sparta Prague	CZE
Sporting CP	POR
Stuttgart	GER
Trabzonspor	TUR
Werder Bremen	GER

This added about a 1000 "persons" to my database but also meant that European competition would look at least a bit lively :)

I know I'm leaving plenty of players behind by not simming Italy or Spain, but I don't have much interest to go manage in these countries and their top teams are all present in the database, even at the small size...
I know I'm a dork, but that was a fun process :)

FM

IRL sometimes a big club will let a player go for peanuts if he's surplus to requirements to them ... especially if he's on a reasonable wage and they can shift that out of the way.

These are normally reported in the media as being a 'nominal fee' irl ... something which might pop up in a version of FM at some stage ;)

I have a stupid question. Does the Norweigian league prohibit signing bonuses? I have not had one request for a signing bonus from anybody -- not when renegotiating with my own players, not with transfers, not with players available on a free, not with staff -- nobody.

It's so strange that I find myself just offering them out of guilt. I haven't heard anyone else bring this up, which makes me wonder if it was just a Norweigian thing or not.......

Here are two issues I have and I was wondering if anybody knew of these issues or what I am seeing wrong.

First: Salary. The salaries don't jive with each other, one page says one thing, another page says another.

www.fftrealm.com/ramzavail/Misc/salary1.bmp
www.fftrealm.com/ramzavail/Misc/salary2.bmp
www.fftrealm.com/ramzavail/Misc/salary3.bmp

Second: Profit. Again, one page says one thing and another page says another.

www.fftrealm.com/ramzavail/Misc/profit1.bmp
www.fftrealm.com/ramzavail/Misc/profit2.bmp

Any help is appreciated.

2nd one should probably be profit2.bmp :D

yes thanks.

but that's not helping you much, is it? :D

Seriously, I remember Marc mentionned that there's some sort of overhead that gets included in the overall payroll, maybe that's the source of the difference...

Other than that, I don't have much, sorry...

FM

Id really like to find out why. Is anybody else seeing this problem on their game?